Allotment may be closer...?

Okay, so still not much gardening news to report back - although I did ring the allotment man yesterday and he said that he will ring me at the weekend when he has had chance to look at the list so he can tell me whereabouts I am on it. Hopefully I am near the top!

I have mostly cleared all the pots in my garden now, just a few peppers and chillis remain, and my one and only aubergine which I will be eating soon. Still got some bulbs left to plant - I put some tulips in at the end of October and I have some more to go in and also some snowdrops, which I am thinking I might put some on the edge of my "wild" area of the grass. ALso will put some in pots to have around the front of the house. We have some bulbs on the windowsill at work - dwarf daffs and tulips and large flowering crocus. They came from Morissons in super-cute little wooden pots that just look lovely on the sill. I'll try to remember to bring my camera in to work to take a pic of them. Although they've not sprouted yet so maybe I'll wait til then to make the pic more interesting!

Some other news - went to see The Feeling last Friday in Liverpool and they were FAB, and I'm going to see the Zutons tonight in Manchester. Can't wait, except I'm totally knackered cos I stayed up late last night making seed packets to do swaps with the nice people from A4A. Oh well, I'm sure I will overcome my tiredness when I get there!

That's all for now, will try to post some pics from the gigs, if any of them are good enough.

OH YEAH! Me and my mum have entered the Moonlight Walk, a ladies only half marathon that sets off at midnight! It's not tilnext June, but I've set up a sponsorship website if anyone fancies donating a few quid? Very worthy cause, check out my "Moonlight Walk" link to the left over there...

Not blogged for ages... Update!

Well, it’s been ages since I last posted – a mixture of not much going on in the garden, stuff going on elsewhere, and me being lazy! So here’s a quick update of the non-gardening stuff – I went to see Robbie Williams at Roundhay Park, Leeds on September 8th and it was FAB! Click the link to the right to see some pics. Saw my bro and his girlfriend yesterday with their dog Ayesha, she’s a cutie… The last time I saw her she was the size of my trainer – look at her now!

I’ve also been doing a bit of running and entered my first race of the year with my friend Andrea – Blackpool Beach 10k. It was actually shortened on the day to 5miles due to “adverse weather condition”, i.e. wind! What can you expect on the sea front? Here’s us running!

At the start...

Yes, we're at the back!

With our T-shirts!

Okay, so now for the gardening. Not heard from the allotment man and I know it’s early days but thought I might ring up at the beginning of October if only to see whether I’ve been added to the list and how near the top/bottom I am. In my garden I have had some firsts…

First set of aubergine flowers…



Then my first aubergine! I know it’s really late in the season for this to be starting, but I only sowed in May! See how it’s growing…



And here’s my ‘first’ pepper – bigger now! And turning red too!



My first ever strawberry! It’s an alpine variety, Mignonette – my parents were round the day I found it, so it got cut into four and we all had a tiny sliver each! Yum!



And my first passionflower, it really is beautiful! It has had buds for quite a while now, and I just happened to glance over at it today, as I wasn’t doing any work in the garden, and saw this…










I also have a new project in the garden. I was mowing the lawn last week and due to a combination of lots of wet weather, and my laziness (again!) it hadn’t been mown for a while, so was quite long. Anyway, I decided to leave a section long, to have as a “wild” section to hopefully attract some creatures into the garden. I know there is a bat that lives nearby because I’ve seen it swooping over in the evenings, so it would be nice to attract some nice creepy crawlies for it to eat! I plan to sow some wild flower seeds there so it is a bit meadow-like. Watch this space!



Everything else is still ticking over nicely – getting some lovely tomatoes that my bananas are helping along to ripeness! I made a tomato sauce for pasta tonight and didn’t use tinned tomatoes – it was the best! I hope the rest all turn red so I can make more sauce to store. The Cayenne chillies still have loads of chillis on them – here’s the littlest hobo…



The other varieties that I started late seem to be a bit stunted and I haven’t got any buds on them. I guess that might be as far as they go this year, but I could always overwinter them indoors and give them a nice early start next year.



In the next month or so I hope to start a plan for next year – I’ve bought some seeds already from the T&M sale, but have just received the catalogue in the post and I can feel another spend coming on! I really hope that I’ll have an allotment next year, when I rang up to enquire about plots I was told that there were only three people on the list and they were likely to be getting their plots in the next month or so once they had had time to tidy them up and sort out which ones were free. So fingers crossed!

Exciting news!

Well, I have sent off my application for an allotment! Whoop whoop! The guy said there is only a short waiting list, of about three months so fingers crossed I might have one before the year is out!

Also exciting stuff happening in the garden - my toms are ripening!



My costulotu fiorentino - am pleased with these as they were seeds given to me by my OH's mum who had no luck with them last year, and these have worked! Yippee! I've picked these two now and given them to her, hopefully they are tasty! I'm sure she'll tell me if they're not!



My alicante - this is the first one I started with and they're looking good! Am saving them until the weekend when my friends are coming round for a barbie, and I think we'll have them on a salad. Yum!

Growth standstill

Well, things seem to have come to a standstill in the kitchen garden recently. Tomatoes are still green, as are sweet peppers and most of the chillies. Orelia courgettes have been non-existant for a while now – I think there has been a lack of male flowers for pollination as fruit have been appearing but then falling off before developing. The Zucchini are not doing too badly, but I’m not overrun with them as I had expected I would be. However, there was a nice sight in the garden this morning – a huge bee in the open flowers. Lovely!





And here is Daisy, one of the local moggies. Quite friendly but can be a bit moody too. No more sightings of Mr Bunny so hopefully he will have been taken into somebody’s care.



Aubergines are starting to get going though – not as advanced as they should be at this time of year I don’t think, but I started them quite late (sometime in May). Anyway, they all have little tiny buds on them now so fingers crossed they will turn to flowers, then into fruit! Always the optimist! I have repotted three of them into bigger pots and they seem to be loving that. The others will unfortunately have to wait due to lack of funding in the garden area! Skint again.



I also have some okra but they are not doing that well – this is the best one…




I think that all the plants have been liking the weather recently – rain, sun, rain, sun, rain, sun… I can’t believe that today I overheard someone saying there was a touch of autumn in the air (!?!?!?!?!) Noooooo! There must be much more sunshine for ripening!

There’s not really much else to report on in the garden so here’s a few pictures of where I went at the weekend…. (Cockermouth, near Lake Bassenthwaite in the lake district)

This is the north part of Lake Windemere, on the journey up.






Cockermouth castle…





The sky!




Some mountains to the east of Lake Bassenthwaite, taken from Thornthwaite.





Geese! They hissed at me, so took the pic and ran!




There was a Food Festival in Cockermouth town centre and these lads were entertaining the crowds with some street circus – quite impressive actually!

They call him the wanderer....

I found this little fella on my front garden the other night, poor little thing. He'd actually been spotted a few days earlier by my OH, at about 6 in the morning (I'd actually dismissed it as an early morning hallucination when he told me he'd seen a black and white rabbit outside the house!) so he's been out for a while. After consulting a bunny owning friend, I have put out food and water to see if I can get him to come back to the house in the hope that I might be able to catch him and keep him safe in the back garden until we can find out where he belongs. I have rabbit friendly catching equipment by the front door in case he comes a-wandering again!

Thank you eBay! Now I have my own camera!

So I will be able to do lots of updates without having to rely on my unreliable Dad to bring his camera when he comes to visit! Here goes...



Here is my sweet pepper, on the 24th July - see how much it's grown!



Also my beefsteak toms are doing well, here is the biggest...





My OH's mum gave me the seeds for these, she grew them last year but couldn't get them to ripen so they ended up all rotting away. Hopefully mine will be okay, I'm looking forward to eating them.






Also some fennel, looks like it might be ready soon!

A bee in my courgettes!

Getting the work done...

My okra - another donation from the lovely people of a4a... I think mine are a little slow and they also seem to have come to a standstill with no new leaves having grown for a while.

Quick update (borrowed a digi-cam!)

Okay, so this morning I went and took some pictures of my plants and here they are....! (Please no comments about the dodgy lawn!!!)

In their entirety - funny where they came from when I only started with a couple of chillies and tomatoes!


I was given some seeds for beefsteak tomatoes, Costulotu Fiorentino, by my OH's mum - she hadn't had much joy with them last year so gave them to me (thanks, I think!?!). I have about six of these and they are all doing pretty well. Here is one of the toms off the CF, probably the biggest I've got so far but the others aren't far behind!







This is one of the originals! Cayenne chilli with about fifteen chillies on - have eaten a couple from it and they were pretty hot! Also have one of these growing in the office at work and the chillies on that one have turned a lovely red - will try to post pic soon.



Some other chillies I also have on the go are Tropical Heat, Inferno, Tabasco and a couple of others (can't remember the names!)

Welcome to my Kitchen Garden

Here's my kitchen garden just after it started off in March this year (2006). It all began when decided I would have a go at growing tomatoes and chillies, and then there was no stopping me! I now have loads more stuff, and while I do not have an allotment, and am not "allowed" to dig up the lawn, I have been doing quite well growing things in pots in the back garden. So here's where I'm going to share it all with the world!

Here's two pots of Chanteray Red Cored carrots that I thought I would have a go at....

And here's how they turned out...........

.... they were yummy!

I also have some courgettes, Orelia and Zucchini (Orelia pictured)

I enjoyed them too!

I'm also growing tomatoes (Alicante and Costulotu Fiorentino - and recently started off some Golden Sunrise too) and took some into the office at work too, cos it gets loads of sunlight through the huge windows - making us suffer now in these heatwaves! But the tomatoes love it. They were first to show, my ones at home in the garden are still only small and green.

Here's the office tomato when it was small and green, as soon as I get my own digital camera all the pics will be updated!