Thursday's square lashing

I have neglected the garden a bit. Whilst I was away for a long weekend, I had asked Matt to water it for me. He managed this (nearly twice a day). He also decided that it needed feeding. He did this with a copious combination of fish blood and bone (which I have learnt is a combination of the blood of fish and the bones of fish, not fish plus blood and bones from elsewhere) and chicken manure pellets (as well as the tomato feed water that I had requested). Now, I am not a gardening expert but when I examined the plants the fact that there was a thick layer of these fertilisers all around them, along with flies all over the garden and the revolting smell (which would be passable on a farm but not in an urban garden), something seemed amiss. It was possibly the horticultural equivalent of giving a small child too many brightly coloured sweets.

So I did the most obvious thing that came to mind and set to in removing the vast majority. This filled two standard bins. In it were lots of earwigs and maggotty things - also rather dubious, I'm suspicious that it's the larvae of flies. In a slightly grumpy manner I requested that Matt should deal with this. He has apparently emptied it into a black sack but beyond that I'm not sure where it's gone. I really must find out more about the whole nitrogen/phosphorous/potassium content thing with the fertilisers and then maybe we can take a more scientific approach to feeding. I've remembered that nitrogen makes leaves (I have plenty of those especially on the squash plants), potassium makes fruits (which is mostly what I'm after now) and phosphorous makes roots (I don't know if I need any more).

This evening the garden seems both more fragrant (I can actually smell the lavender rather than chicken poo) and less fly infested. Matt is still sure that the Wormery is an excessive source of flies but I'm not sure this is such a problem. The after work task was to improve the support for my beans and mange tout peas. I had constructed a rather amateur frame for them a few weeks ago but they (both the frames and the plants) were flopping all over the place so I needed a better solution. That better solution was inspired by seeing my mum and dad's garden (they are experts), and the frame that they had erected for their tomatoes (my tomatoes are not needing that sort of support yet). 

So I carefully extracted the existing support network and formed it into the new one. This also required me to do a bit bamboo cane cutting which I have found can be done very easily with some secateurs. I went for a more standard grid formation and I fixed the horizontals and the verticals with green string. I never really used to understand the rationale for green string. To do this fixing I utilised the skill of square lashing. Well, something akin to square lashing - I'm sure it wasn't Girl Guide regulation square lashing but then I wasn't trying to make a washing up stand. Once in situ I tied the plants onto the frames too. 

The peas are doing well and I got a good harvest from them tonight. The beans are looking a little sorry for themselves so I'll have to give them a bit more attention. The other job for this evening was harvesting the beetroot. I have looked in four books but none tell me how I can tell if they're ready for harvest and I can't remember when I planted them. Matt pulled one up and it didn't appear to have a beetroot so I might just leave them a bit longer. 

I actually quite enjoyed my square lashing; tomorrow I'm going to make some frames for the tomatoes. Perhaps it will encourage them.

Sunday's worm transplant

We returned well laden from a trip to Lucy’s and Pete’s) (Matt’s sister and her husband) in the Cotswolds. The un-seasonable midsummer weather that didn’t deter us from midsummer gatherings which included:

1. 1kg goosegogs from Lucy and Pete’s garden (I think that Pete is mainly responsible for the garden)
2. 18 eggs from Pete’s mum Lorna
3. 2kg of cherries that I forgotten that we’d bought from a food market at a conservation charity's property 
4. 4 tomato plants (also from Pete’s garden)
5. 1 bag of worm dense compost from Pete’s compost bin

(keep an eye out on Slack Lasagne for updates on items 1, 2 and 3)

Maturing bright lights chard

We also nearly came home with some with rhubarb until I pointed out to Pete that what he thought was rhubarb was actually swiss chard variety rhubarb red. I was slightly embarrassed in pointing this out given Pete’s agricultural credentials but since I am having success with my swiss chard variety bright lights and there would be little space in our courtyard garden for more of this type of crop.

We had purchased a wormery online back in March but as yet had been insufficiently organised to acquire the worms that were needed to power it. The system is that you set up your wormery and then order the worms by mail order once their home is prepared. We saved up peelings etc on a number of occasions over the last few months and never got around to ordering said worms so ended up discarding the waste in the normal way when we couldn’t stand the smell any more.

This weekend I was on a mission since the company we had purchased the wormery from was Cotswold based and I had a plan to collect some worms in person. So I left an answerphone message on Saturday morning with my request. For the rest of Saturday I was very excited every time that my phone (or indeed anyone else’s’ since I have a popular ring tone) rang. But come the afternoon I was so desperate for a nap that I turned it off for an hour. When I awoke I had an answerphone message myself and my dreams of worms were shattered. Apparently the worms are dispatched from Yorkshire.

Fortunately Pete came to the rescue and told us all about how his compost bin was full of worms. I was a bit wary because I know that you’re supposed to use a special type of worm.

A camera shy worm

So I did a quick search of the interweb search for an image of an appropriate worm. I shared this with Pete who assured me that his were the right type of worm. It’s a shame that there’s not some home worm DNA sequencing test to check their pedigree but I was happy to give it a go.

Worm extraction

So on Sunday morning Matt, my husband, helped Pete extract some worm rich compost and package it; we all hoped they would survive the 130 mile trip southwest-wards. Matt and I stopped off for a bit of cheeky department store shopping on the way home so the worms’ welfare was in even more peril.

It was with great anticipation that I unpacked the worms from their sack into the wormery. The first test of the enterprise had been passed as the worms had travelled apparently unscathed. Now all that remains to be seen is whether they are the right sort of worm and start making lots of lovely worm juice for us.

Initiating the wormery

House design makes the
wormery look nice in the garden

The wormery after a feeding

While I was in the garden I harvested our first home grown salad of baby spinach and rocket, to go with our toasted sandwiches. It was a good job that I investigated the rocket as it had become water-logged. It wasn’t until last week when I planted some strawberries that I knew anything about making holes in the lining of hanging baskets. So today I urgently tipped off the water from the rocket basket (this has made me think about growing watercress next year) and pricked a load of holes in it with an extended craft knife (this was the only thing I could find that was pokey enough to get through the hanging basket). Hopefully I have averted potential rocket failure – from this perspective at least – I did have to launch a number of snails over the garden wall and I fear that these may be my greatest challenge.

Sunday's strawberries

I must say that I’m rather pleased with the things I’ve planted in the garden. After the disappointment of losing so many seedlings while we were on holiday it was an uncommon pleasure seeing the mange tout peas and the dwarf beans popping out from their troughs.

And it surely won’t be long now until we’re harvesting rocket and baby spinach leaves from their respective hanging baskets. Three out of the four courgette seeds that I planted straight into a pot germinated and have healthy looking leaves (which leaves me with the dilemma of what to do with two of them as I’ve been informed that you can only have one courgette plant per pot – how do I choose which one to leave alone?). And my mini squashes are going from strength to strength. The tomato plants that my mum kindly brought (although they don’t replace my own deceased seedlings) are maturing a bit in the cold frame. I have been informed that I must resist transplanting them into hanging baskets until their pots are full of roots, so they get a daily inspection.

I had a scare with my chillies last weekend when I thought that in the brief spell of hot weather I had managed to scorch them to death in the mini greenhouse but they seem to have revived.

On a floral note I’ve managed to pick (well, cut with the kitchen scissors) a decent bunch of sweet peas to give to a friend and my Californian poppies are on the brink of flowering. 




None of my newly potted flower plants that I put in the front garden have died or been stolen and there are even some rose buds appearing. On the down side my sunflower hasn’t germinated (obviously not enough sun) and the wildflower seed that I sprinkled over the gravel out the front seems to have been defeated by weeds (unless the wildflower seed was actually weed seed). I’m not totally clear on what the definition of a weed is because some of what my mother disparagingly says are weeds actually look quite pretty.

As a bonus, the Christmas tree that we felt sure was dead seems to have found a new lease of life.

Despite all this relative success (I hope I haven’t spoken too soon) one regret persisted. I had no strawberries plants. My mum had told me a couple of weeks ago when they were visiting that I was too late to do strawberries so I did my best to move on. But their absence in my garden was hammered home yesterday when I saw a neighbour’s hanging basket full of them and the beginnings of some fruit. But fortuitously on the very same day my mum had some good news for me. During a phone call she randomly mentioned that she had read in the paper last week that it wasn’t too late to plant strawberries. I was on a mission now; if I didn’t get these plants today then I would definitely have missed my chance, the next few weekends being full of other things so the garden would not be a priority. My mum didn’t sound that optimistic though: she wasn’t sure that I would be able to source strawberries at the point in the season and even if I did she wasn’t sure they’d be economically viable.

So I planned my afternoon carefully. It would start with a trip to the dump as Matt, my husband, had prepared a car-full of junk from the roof (from previous inhabitants) for me to get rid of. Then I had in mind a route round various local garden centres based on a combination of convenience (it being a Sunday I had limited time before they would shut) and value.

The trip to the dump was, if anything, even more satisfactory than usual. I think the slightly drizzly weather reduced the number of visitors (this is based on anecdotal evidence only, when it’s sunny the dump seems to be rammed) so I had several men in fluorescent jackets assisting me with my disposal. Plus it was more straightforward than usual because everything was designated as “general household” so I didn’t even have to navigate around the various skips.

The first garden centre (or more technically a bit of everything centre) was both the most convenient and, I estimated, the best value. My luck was clearly on the up as available to me were 6 strawberry plants for £3.99. This did seem like good value, although I suppose I can’t really judge this until I’ve tasted the results. The purchase was not straightforward however. There were three different varieties: Honeoye, Elsanta and Pegasus – the description on the labels being remarkably similar. I had no idea which to choose and I knew that my mum was by now uncontactable (she hasn’t totally embraced the concept of the mobile phone). I tried to get some advice from the interweb but couldn’t find anything particularly useful. Lots of websites told me that strawberries are good in hanging baskets; but no websites told which strawberries are particularly good. I ruled out Elsanta as I know this is what you mainly get in shops and wanted to try something different. I wasn’t sure how to pronounce Honeoye, so this left Pegasus. I felt happy with this selection, Pegasus also being the name of a bridge in Normandy that Matt and I had enjoyed a visit to 3 years ago.

It was a good job that I hadn’t planted those tomatoes up after all as the hanging baskets that had been reserved for them would now be deployed for strawberries. I did a bit of hanging basket rearrangement in the garden to make sure that the strawberries would get the sunniest spot possible – hopefully this won’t be too much to the detriment of the rocket and baby spinach – and introduced the strawberry plants to their new home.

When I spoke to my mum this evening she seemed reasonably impressed – most likely at what seems to have been a bit of a strawberry plant bargain and also that I followed some instructions in terms of planting them shallowly. She advised that I give them some tomato feed. What ensued was my first ever plant science lesson:

• phosphorous makes roots
• potassium makes fruits
• nitrogen makes leaves

Apparently tomato feed is rich in potassium. Mum couldn’t explain to me the plant biochemistry that makes this so, but I feel inspired to find out. Watch this space…..

Saturday's plantings

After several weekends away from home and more busy ones coming up it would be now or never for the garden (well for this year anyway) and with a garden warming party planned for a few weeks’ time there’s some serious sorting to be done. So I was delighted this morning that the sun was out and the lingering chill that’s pervaded all week seemed to have passed. Rather than persist with his interior DIY projects Matt, my husband, decided to join me outside too.

I had planted quite a few seeds a couple of months ago – my green fingered mum warned me then that it was too early. I tended to them in mini-propagators in the spare room, balanced on a pile of cushions on top of the chaise longue by the radiator to maximise sunlight exposure and warmth. I was not disappointed: 11 out of 12 mini squashes germinated, 6 out of 8 aubergines germinated, 8 out of 8 tomatoes germinated. Not quite as successful germination of peppers and chillies as I’d hoped but still over 50%.

I transplanted some of the mini squash seedlings into pots. I ran out of plant pots so transplanted the rest of the seedlings into sawn off milk bottles. Some of them grew and some of them died.

And then we went on holiday. I transferred the seedlings and surviving seedlings into the greenhouse. Barbara, Matt’s mum, had kindly agreed to water them for me while we were away. My mum said that it was still too cold and that they would die. But apparently the first weekend we were away the weather was scorching. Barbara was away visiting his Matt’s sister Lucy so the plants went untended. I think that the seedlings died of heat stroke. And then apparently during the following week the weather deteriorated and there were gales. The greenhouse blew over which saw the demise of any remaining seedlings and the emptying out of my (as yet ungerminated) herbs.

But with some careful salvage work from Barbara we came home and still had three living mini squash plants. And after today one of these is now potted into what I hope will be its final growing container. If I have any more big terracotta pots left when I’ve planted the rest of the produce that I’m aiming for one of the other mini squash plants might get a chance to grow up and fruit in our backyard. Otherwise I will be looking for good homes for them.

Matt did a lot of work on clearing out the garage. This required me to offer various items on Freecycle®. The list is like a selection of dodgy prizes from the Generation Game:

• 12 concrete blocks (one of which was previously stabilising the re-erected greenhouse). 4 “wanters”. Collected by a chap who’s going to use them to build a pen for 2 Staffordshire bull terriers.
• An exercise bike. 11 “wanters”. Collected by a chap who’s wife needed it to do some exercise.
• A dehumidifier. 26 “wanters” – obviously there’s a lot of damp in Plymouth. Still awaiting collection.
• A bag of building sand, half a bag of cement and half a bag of floor levelling compound. 2 “wanters”. Collected by unknown from the garden path.
• A chest of drawers. 14 “wanters”. Collected by a couple who were “desperate for storage” (after I had re-located a spider who had made a nice home for herself in the bottom drawer).
• A skanky set of shelves. 4 “wanters”. Awaiting collection. But the people who collected the drawers and the blocks and the exercise bike all wanted it too when they saw it. As well as a random chap who spotted it and drove down the service lane to ask us if he could have it.

There’s something strangely satisfying about offloading stuff that you can’t really imagine people wanting at all to people who are absolutely delighted to have it.

Before lunch I also planted a clematis, some chard, some mange tout peas, some dwarf French beans and a sunflower. The only one I remember the Latin name for is the beans: Phageolus vulgaris which is kind of catchy.  And I tied some canes together for my unruly sweet peas.

After lunch Matt put up some hanging baskets. Into which I have planted rocket and spinach. The instructions on the packets are very vague, and tell you to plant rows 40cm apart. This is challenging when the diameter of the hanging basket is less than 40cm, so I just kind of sprinkled the seeds in what looked like a reasonable density. This strategy seems to be working for the beetroot seeds that I planted a few weeks ago as they are now sprouting nicely.

The planting has come to a standstill for now as the compost has run out (it’s surprising how far it doesn’t go, even when you bulk out the bottoms of the pots with empty sawn up milk bottles). And it’s kind of strange after spending all that time working only having a load of pots with compost in to show for it. But I did get to see some baby blue-tits close up on the bird feeder which, even if nothing grows, makes the day in the garden worth it.

Saturday's shoe bag

Part 1

Wow, sunshine today. Proper sunshine. Or as Matt, my husband, said when I drew back the curtains this morning: we’re on an alien planet where the sky is blue rather than white.

Clearly the best thing to do on a sunny day is to go shopping. Today we needed specialist shopping: tyres + shoes. So Matt dropped me off for the shoe part the above equation while he headed off to the tyre centre.

It was not any ordinary shoes that I was after. No. I wanted dancing shoes. I have 2 pairs in black. One pair is rather the worse for wear - from a combination of Matt standing on my feet and me standing on my own feet (mostly the latter). The other pair are highly blister inducing (although they do have the benefit of sparkles).

We went out quite early. Well, early for a weekend anyway. Unfortunately the dance shoe shop didn’t open until 12noon. This scuppered the plan of Matt picking me up following the successful completion of both shopping tasks. But I wasn’t too disappointed: I was on the Barbican and the sun was out.

So I wandered around a bit, browsed one of the city’s best charity shops (narrowly resisting purchasing a bureau and several cake stands), bought 30 rather classy Christmas cards (all different designs which was immensely pleasing to me) and then met up with Matt for a bit more of a wander and then some tea and scones. By which time the shoe shop was open.

I have no pleasant memories of early shoe buying and things have not got much better as I have got older. The major advantage of today’s sortie was that I was buying dancing shoes so:
1. Colourful and / or sparkly was absolutely in order (I don’t think I ever had pretty shoes as a child)
2. Size 7 would be an option as well as my usual size 8 because my toes would come out of the end.

The shop was AMAZING. It’s like playing that game consequences (on the topic of games, I beat Matt at both a left- handed and right-handed thumb war this morning) with shoes: choose your style + choose your material (or materials) + choose your heel.  Unfortunately this made to order footwear take 3-6 weeks to come in and I want my shoes in 2 weeks’ time. Fortunately there were 5 possible pairs in stock. 80% of these fitted. 75% of these weren’t black. I chose some multi-coloured shiny ones with a medium heel. It’s the kind of fabric that changes colour depending on what angle you look at it from and I chose them for a combination of comfort and glitz. My only complaint would be that they didn’t come with a bag, but that would soon be dealt with.

My elation with my new shoes was tempered only slightly by the fact that during the time it took me to get them someone failed in their efforts to parallel park and scraped my car. I think it’s only cosmetic damage and it didn’t ruin my good mood.

Part 2

Due to our outing being longer than anticipated I had lost some of the time that I had planned to deal with the garden so upon our return I skipped lunch (I had had a scone and jam) and threw myself into it with gusto.

The first task was to clear the debris from my previous pruning. With a lot of brute force I got a large quantity of tree into some garden waste sacks. As the council seem to have omitted to reinstate green waste collection this year this would necessitate a trip to the dump later.

Then to assemble the mini-greenhouse. This was considerable simpler than the cold-frame assembly that I had done a month or so ago. The only challenge today was being in competition with Matt for space as he was putting the washing on the line. (Look at us with our gender role reversals.) Nonetheless mini-greenhouse erection and positioning was achieved and I was quick to populate it with my various young plants.

I had planned to plant out some courgette plants today, they are not thriving in the intermediate pots I put them in after they germinated. But Matt suggested to me that I could have a bit of a sort out of the front garden. I think he wanted me out of the way while he mounted the hose but this would also give me the opportunity to fill up the garden waste bag to make my trip to the dump worthwhile. So I dead headed the daffodils (I think I probably should have done this a while ago) and then set to work on the weeds. Apart from the dandelions I’m not really sure if they were weeds but I hadn’t planted them and didn’t like them (the second of these being my mum’s definition of a weed).

Weed free

The nice lady who lives up the road walked past with her dog and confirmed that mostly what I was pulling up was indeed weedage, told me that the little blue flowers are forget-me-nots and suggested that I might have pulled up a foxglove. Clearly my medicinal knowledge of the foxglove (it’s where cardiac glycosides such as digoxin come from) is greater than my botanical knowledge of it. But I suppose you’d worry if it was the other way around.

My bags for dumping were now complete but before I could make that journey I would need to tidy my car up a bit. This comprised putting all the stuff from my boot into my passenger footwell and putting all the stuff on the back seats into relevant carrier bags: woolly clothes, rubbish, maps etc.

My trip to the dump was the usual joy I find it to be: as an unaccompanied woman the men in fluorescent jackets helped me with everything. As a bonus today I managed to acquire some perfectly serviceable plant pots that someone else was about to condemn to landfill (or whatever happens to it these days).

Part 3

Matt was heading out for a boys night by the time I got back (couldn’t resist a very minor detour to a combined DIY + garden + craft + home etc. shop). There were many things that I planned to get done in my evening.

1. Eat something nutritious (lunch eventually consisted only of a glass of squash and a packet of my 2^nd favourite cheese flavoured snacks)

2. Do some laundry

3. Make a shoe bag

4. Make a cake

5. Pack for holiday

6. Catch up on some random programmes I’ve recorded from the TV

7. Knit another swan for my 12 days of Christmas knitting. And maybe a turtle dove too.

8. Clean the inside of the lounge windows

Of the above I achieved number 1 entirely with a beetroot, smoked mackerel and rocket salad. Failed entirely on numbers 2, 4, 7 and 8. I managed to put 4 books, a magazine and some pens into a rucksack as a start to number 5. I did about 20 minutes of number 6 (a very interesting programme about tea). And I did make a shoe bag.

I’ve had my mum’s old sewing machine since we moved in here over 2 years ago and it’s only been used once – by her to make curtains. During that time I have been collecting fabric; my intentions towards the sewing machine have always been honourable. Spurred on by my bagless shoes I thought it was high time I put the machine and the fabric to use.

It was not looking good when I couldn’t even manage to get the case off of the machine. Fortunately mum was at home and a quick phone call to her sorted that out; it would be the first of many this evening. It took me about an hour and 3 phone calls to thread the machine. The instruction book (complete with 1970s style pictures) was not bad but I was far from confident. There is a particularly entertainingly named part of the sewing machine called the feed dog.

I decided to make my shoe bag out of one of my granny’s old pillowcases. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. This had the bonus of having quite a few seams already. I would have to sew just one side and deal with the opening of the bag. Perhaps I should have followed a pattern but I was eager to get on with the sewing. I had a few problems with the machine not going properly but managed a temporary fix with a mini screwdriver. I was using a different colour thread to the pillowcase, mainly because I didn’t have any bright pink thread. This had the benefit that I was clearly able to see the thread. It had the drawback that I was clearly able to see my wonky sewing. I realised after I’d done one seam that the professional thing to do would have been to pin the fabric prior to sewing. But I am a novice.

I turned over the top to make a “channel” for the string bit to go. This ended up being very untidy but I had completed my evening’s sewing machining without breaking a needle (my mum seemed convinced that I would do this) or sewing my finger (the prospect of this has terrified me since someone did it at school, but the phone was reassuringly close by should I need to call for emergency assistance).

I think that it is conventional to put cord through shoe bags but I had none. I would have been quite possible to wait and buy some appropriate cord but I was keen to finish my project today. So I was thinking about using wool. Fortunately my box of wool is stored next to my box of random stuff. Some sort of intuition led me to the random box first and I extracted a suitable length of black ribbon.

I found it quite easy to thread the ribbon into the bag but was then left with the problem that I would also quite easily lose the ends. So I sewed up the exit holes a bit more. Which fixed that problem but I was left with an unsightly melee of threads. I had found some buttons earlier whilst getting the thread out of my sewing box (an empty Christmas chocolate tub) and positioned this to cover the worst of the mess.

For a first attempt I am rather pleased with the finished article. I can see why, when you’re at school, they make you plan things very extensively but it was kind of satisfying just sewing and seeing what happened. I’ve got loads of ideas for more shoe bags. But maybe tomorrow I ought to get on with the more urgent tasks of laundry and packing. And that might give my mum a bit of peace and quiet too.