Author Archive

  October and November were such washout months that I hardly got to the plot at all. When I did go down, the place seemed just a little too grim for photography and so here I am, left with a tiny handful of snaps with which to rustle up a double ”month in pictures” montage....
Read more »

I’ve been finding it difficult to find the time to get down to the plot recently, but faced with the prospect of yet another meal of tinned mushroom soup, I thought the time had come to rescue some of the remaining winter roots. Armed with 4 high power bike torches I headed down to...
Read more »

I woke at the crack of dawn, dreaming of crunchy roast potatoes. Fortunately I didn’t have a stash of Kerr’s Pink in the flat or I think I would have been chomping away long before 5am. Not one to delay gratification for too long, I waited for daylight and then headed down to the...
Read more »

I had a phone call this morning reminding me that this was the perfect week to hide my abyssmal firestarting skills. What better than bonfire night (week) to hide a terribly smokey attempt at a fire/smouldering embarassment? Having received much advice of the paraffin/petrol variety, I thought I was assured a bonfire of truly...
Read more »

My parents visited again this weekend and while I was spoiling myself with another half marathon attempt, they were perusing the seed aisles at Wisley. Here’s my share of their finds: It’s a pack of 10 assorted yet edible Italian squashes. The seeds were packed together so there was hours of fun trying to...
Read more »

It was a bit of a struggle to find enough for photos for Septembers month in pictures. What a wash out it’s been. I’ve hardly made it to the plot at all this month. I’ve started saving a few seeds and amazingly some of them have even dried out enough for storing. In the...
Read more »

The weekend was a scorcher, which was a blessing as I had quite a few onion sets to plant. I arrived thinking I had a fairly big job on my hands trying to find a home for about 200 onions but when I opened the padded envelope and ripped open 1 of the 3...
Read more »

One year on there is a real sense of the growing season ebbing away, quite a different feel to last September when everything was just starting. The weather was quite different too, scorching last year vs sodden this year.  There are a few similarities, I’m back to digging and I’m planting strawberries again, I’ve...
Read more »

  Despite the grotty wet weather, August still flourished and I spent almost all of my gardening time harvesting crops. Can’t complain about that but it does mean I failed to sow any overwintering crops, hopefully September sown spring cabbages will still be productive. Blight inevitably struck towards the middle of the month so...
Read more »

I have slipped a long way back and can feel the pressure of a blogging backlog so I best bite the bullet and post these photos.  A while ago I noticed reddish stains appearing on the tops of my pear leaves or at least one reddish stain on one pear leaf. I humphed and...
Read more »