The plans are in!

No i did not draw this, my garden plan looks much better (see last picture). I found this in an old book which had various designs you could use for your veg patch. I went with the traditional plot as it suits my space i have and what i need it for.

Here is there key not scanned very well.

Here is my plan try not to be too impressed. What i have done is dedicated a huge section to squashes because that end of the plot is pure stones so i plan to load it up with manure and compost and hopefully it will crop well. Then i will do crop rotation on the rows,but at the end of the rows i will have a few corn because they can't cast any shadow that way. The beans will grow up the fence and i can create a bean trench easily there also i have already started adding compost there. The very end where there are some red dots that's going to be my strawberry patch because we as a family are great strawberry eaters. Also i have planted a rhubarb at the end of it.

Experiment 2

To save money we are only using the fire in the house and no heating. That would be great if there was a fire in all the rooms but there is only one and that's not even in the main room, so i have many layers on , i look like a little bear. Back to the point my father hired a chainsaw and we have cut up all the stored wood and fallen wood we could get our hands on there is allot of wood in the picture but that's just a quarter of it, i promise, because it was I who had to put all the logs away. However we got left with a tone of sawdust, so using my initiative i scattered it onto my plot for another experiment maybe it will do something mulch down or it could act like a poison and i have just basically killed my soil we shall soon see.

Bird Housing Market

I have been redecorating the bird houses we have. Those lucky birds have been getting some new straw to keep there little beaks warm, because they probably can't afford heating this year with the credit crunch and one of the coldest winters.

Also to chear them up i have decorated one of the trees .

Experiment 1

Gardening can be an expensive hobby and so i am going to become more experimental with my gardening in order to a) save money b)use the facilities i have c) invent new ways of gardening and become the Einstein of the vegetable gardening world. The last one would be cool if it became true. On a serious note and non related veg subject i have been growing these Edelweiss seeds for months now and so far i have these tiny little seedlings which is great but they grow so slowly and my mother wants them off her window sill. So i have a wine crate and covered the base with straw to keep some warmth in. Hopefully because they are quite well established seedlings they will survive and you are meant to simulate the temperatures of the Swiss Alpes, i am praying they will be OK and not die on me. If anybody knows anything about Edelweiss at this stage in their life because i can't find any information on what to do with them as seedlings i just keep finding lyrics for the Sound of Music.

Disaster

The wind came and blew down my kiwi plant, from the sound of the bang i thought it was a burglar. As you can see the wind pulled it right over but luckily the root ball didn't come out, but all the leaves have been pulled off and it was touch and go for a few days but i have propped it back up and jammed it into a corner. I think i will feed it something to give a little boost, because it is looking very sorry for itself.

Feed the Birds

Nothing much has been going on in my garden because i didn't want to plant any overwintering vegetables because i wanted to give my soil a really good period of time to get more nutrients. So i planted a tone of green manure, but i planted it to late and none of the three packets i had sown grew. I was really irrated because i had spent two days breaking up the soil taking out enough rocks to build a house with and then racking it all over ready for the seeds. Then thank heavens above only a depressing three weeks later little green shoots appeared so i must have done something right.
Now the frost has kicked in they have stopped dead in there tracks, but at least the frost is breaking up my soil.

I have also emptied the entire contense of my composter and dumped it on my old veg patch coverd it with newspaper and cardboard and some old bit of fencing and fleece to hold it all down. The idea of this is to a bulk up the soil there and get the soil to get some more nutrients in there. I did a similar thing to another bed where i had grown some beans and it worked a treat until the rabbits bit off the stems.

Lastly don't forget to feed the birds!