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This is the time when last years stock is being sold off by garden centre’s so if you fancy saving money on new plants, now is a really good time to visit. Whilst they might not look great now and to convince you, I have bought six plants this week and we will see how they are looking as the year progresses.
Don’t worry if you were expecting some baking related post. Read on and let me introduce you to a lovely variety of snowdrop you may not have heard of but can be found right here on your doorstep.
The Christmas Dinner table needed a quick and simple stuffing to bolster things and we settled on an leek , thyme and lemon stuffing adapted from a leek and sage stuffing recipe.
A quick post, this was something we had been waiting a while for but with only a couple of days to go it was off to the allotment to gather some veg for the Christmas lunch.
Having some general idea of when they are here is going to help with garden planting and planning and for Didcot and the surrounding areas the first frost will be around mid October and the last frost around early May.
Thanks to the Internet you can enjoy gardening TV programmes from around the world so if you have a spare half hour, here are a few programmes you might like to try and catch.
Garden Ninja’s YouTube Channel You will find Lee Burkhill’s enthusiasm infectious when you take yourself over to his Garden Ninja’s YouTube Channel. It is full of interesting and engaging short videos on a wide range of topics. Definitely recommended. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuhMHrXyf2bvga2Mq0DJvwQ
Bear with me on this as I am in the process of writing up details (with pictures) of various local gardens that are worth visiting.
Having the right tool for a job ensures the task is done in the right way and that is what my clients expect of me. A quick trip into your local garden centre for replacement or new spade or fork or any other bit of gardening equipment soon becomes an exercise in how to loose a Read More
Make use of that time when you are digging over a plot and your mind wanders off to listen to gardening podcast. Here is a small selection of a few I like to listen to. I have also included a list of some others you might like to try.
With no shortage of gardening and horticultural websites to visit this list could end up being very long indeed however I am going to just jot down those websites I regularly visit or blogs I think worth reading.
This is more for my own reference really and so here is my A-Z of common weeds I come across, their characteristics and some pictures so you can recognise your enemy and how to deal with them.
Along the edge of the allotments are a couple of damson trees which always have a mass of fruits on them. What to do with this free bounty? Jam of course!
As is usual at this time of year, no matter how hard you try, at the allotments courgettes are plenty. In fact I am sure there is a game of courgette knock and run going on as when you return to your plot the next day, what was harvested previously has miraculously been replaced overnight! Read More
I am really not having a great deal of luck with my radishes. In theory radishes are, after cress and strawberries, easy peasy to grow – unless you are me of course. Problem 1 – Holes in the radish leaves We had a few radishes earlier on in the summer but the “crop” wasn’t great Read More
It is always interesting wandering around gardens of big houses and the vegetable plots in particular are always a great place to see how others do things. One area of creativity is different ways people support their tomatoes. And so when we went over to Stow Gardens recently (https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/stowe) there was a small vegetable patch Read More
Earlier in the season I came across the lazy-persons way of watering – Ollas – terracotta pots sunk into the ground next to your plants which reduce the need to water. Really, honestly(ish), I was more interested in this as a means to save water and it had the added bonus of not watering weeds. Read More
The redcurrants were ready for picking at the beginning of July but space in the freezer was already running low so what to do with all those redcurrants? As it was another hot afternoon I thought we should have a bash at making some redcurrant cordial.
We finally got around to taking a walk around Waterperry Gardens (thanks to a 2 for 1 voucher!) and it was well worth it. The gardens are far more extensive than we thought and the borders and the “Yew Henge” are really great – you can easily spend a good couple of hours (and we Read More
As the summer was getting underway I was looking at how I could improve my laziness (sorry efficiency) by using a drip feed system or something along those lines for my vegetables etc. and I came across a reference to something called an “Olla” – huh? A bit more Internet digging later and if you Read More
