My Garden - She Provides for Me

One of only three lonely little flowers remain in my garden. The vast majority of space has now been taken over by fruit and vegetables. A few on-edible plants remain, not the flowering variety but still lovely to look at.

It's a tiny little garden really, but perfect nonetheless, in my humble opinion. Is it a little bit mad and overgrown? Well yes it is. But I love it that way to be quite honest.

Tucked away behind the tiny little hedge row, that I'm assured one day will grow to about two feet tall, is my deck. I started it just before a bad car accident. I wasn't too badly injured just some minor whiplash but Himself was put out of commission for months. However I was determined to finish the project which involved digging around five ton of soil out of the first level of the garden and replacing it with roughly the same amount of hardcore then bedding in twelve railway sleepers. This was no easy job mind you but I'm very pleased with the outcome. That was six years ago and I've spent many a happy morning hiding relaxing up there with my coffee and a book. Also it isn't obvious from the picture but the first level is four feet off ground level with a flight of steps running up to it, you can just see the handrail from the steps on the far side of the picture...see over there. Yep those are the ones.

I love lavender and use it all over the house, in baths and showers, drawers and in the bottom of the bin, so you'll hopefully understand and excuse the monster of a lavender smack bang in the middle of the picture.

Anyway, with all the rising costs at the minute, I decided to turn over much of my little garden to plants of the edible variety. I already had the two pear and apple trees planted around four years ago and I've been happily reaping the rewards ever since. Unfortunately, due to some particularly bad weather, in particular some very strong winds, a month or so ago, my little pear tree has been left barren for this year. All of the flowers had already been blown to lord only knows where by the time the brown bees arrived in the garden. She's still beautiful though, fruit or no fruit. That's her in the picture above, all big and green and lush.

It would have been a bit difficult to start removing some of the larger plants already in place to make more room for veggies, so I've given containers a go. I have to say it's working very well so far.

Cute aren't they? The top row are one pot of spinach and two pots of red fire lettuce, the middle row are two pots of rocket and one pot of curly cabbage and the bottom row are another two pots of rocket (Himself got a bit carried away) and another pot of curly cabbage. They've gotten a little bigger since this shot was taken three weeks ago.

Spinach, lovely jubbly.

Red Fire Lettuce

Curly Cabbage...Not so curly I know, but we can't be picky.

So I've gotten a bit carried away and Himself has built a trough type affair for me to add more plants to.

I probably could have done a better job and separating the plants because it does look a bit mad, granted.

I managed to squeeze in, peas, carrots, more cabbage (a different variety, the name escapes me at the minute though) and some dwarf beans, which aren't doing great to be honest

I've plans to head to the market this weekend and pick up some onion sets and potatoes. I'll be emptying the two window boxes in the top picture to use for the onion sets and I'll be planting the potatoes straight into a bag of compost. I'm assured by Gardener's World that this works well. I can poke a few small holes in the bottom of the bag for drainage and prop it up on a couple of broken bricks so that water doesn't collect around the bottom of the bag. I'll let you know if this works or not.

I'm quite proud of myself to be honest, I'm usually a bit ignorant when it comes to gardening and tend to have a brown thumb rather than green. The first thing I check for in the garden centre is whether a plant is hardy (translation = Leanne proof). If it isn't it doesn't make it home with me. But these plants are almost idiot proof, I opened a pack of seeds, shook them into a pot of soil, added water and voila.

I'd love to hear of things you've done in an effort to reduce your food bills at home.