Posts under ‘Garden from Scratch’

It’s around this time of year that we start to clear our drawers of old socks which have got too many holes in to remain decent. It seems a shame to throw them in the bin, so cut them all up for compost. Stirred into a hot pile compost heap, these socks will rot down [...]

It has been a shamefully long time since I spent a couple of hours in the garden, but this weekend, I finally managed it. I have been hiding inside, cold and grumpy that the snow was halting my normal routines. And I was rather worried that when I stepped outside, I would find a great [...]

Parsnips are pretty ugly, curmudgeonly beasts. But one of the things I love about them is their sheer size. Perhaps it is because I’m expecting something the size of a maincrop carrot to come up when I start forking about in the soil in the middle of winter, or perhaps it is a chance to [...]

A few days before Christmas, I took three streps out of my front door, slipped on a sheet of ice, skidded all the way to the end of the path, and landed on my bottom. I was so angry with the hard frost we had had overnight that I huffed my way back inside and [...]

The other morning Toby and I were sitting around insulting each other. The conversation ran over the normal you-smell-and-your-face-looks-like-a-pickled-onion (yes, we are most courteous and poetic when together – you might almost believe we liked each other), and skipped into more delicate territory. Before I knew it, I heard him saying ‘and your carrots are [...]

Oh why would you buy a pasty, bland pumpkin after eating this homegrown specimen? As I cut these fruits open, I could see the sugar seeping out of their flesh. I drank in their sweet scent, chopped them up,  roasted them on trays with a dash of sunflower oil, and made them into sweet, nutty [...]

What do you do when you have a week off? Today was my first day off in a while, and I spent it shovelling poo. After Toby built our compost heap from crates last year, we haven’t had to buy in any soil for the garden. But a hot-pile compost heap requires a certain amount [...]

Last weekend, I sat myself down and worked very hard to harvest a great deal of garden produce. But this harvest was not an edible one. It is seed-saving time, and I have got plenty of work ahead if I want to increase my stocks for next year.

The garden is now flinging out produce at full pelt. Fortunately, given we are vegetable-eating fiends, and our plot isn’t the largest in the world, we are just about managing to keep up. I pulled up the spring onions today to make room for a late sowing of carrots to take us into the autumn. [...]

When we started househunting last April, I never imagined we were going to have a garden. I envisaged growing a few lettuces in a window box, and maybe even some herbs on the kitchen windowsill. So when we found a house with a large fire escape and small balcony, I was thrilled that I would [...]

It feels a little confessional, unveiling the work I have been doing on this garden. I’ve had no outside help, no hard landscapers, no garden designers, nothing. Just me, some scribbles and lists on scraps of paper. And a husband who likes chopping up old pallets and reincarnating them as compost heaps and raised beds.

So we had the Garden from Scratch…and now we have the allotment as well. When the lovely owner of this allotment got in touch through Landshare to say she had more room on her plot than time, I jumped at the chance. This long, wide bed is all mine. It’s not a full allotment: but [...]

It was inevitable; it was in fact part of the deal, but still, it was hard letting go. Today I dug the billowing nasturtiums up from the front of the raised bed and tipped them onto the compost heap. All through May and June they have been rambling happily over the wooden frame and across [...]

Every evening after work, Toby and I inspect the garden. This really is the loveliest part of the day, especially if work has been a little bit rotten for either of us. Everything is so thoughtful by six o’clock, and there’s always something new, or which we haven’t noticed before. This evening it was the [...]

We’ve just picked our first peas from the balcony.  I know most people like to boil their peas for a few minutes before eating them, but I prefer them raw. You get much more of the pea flavour that way, and a good crunchy texture as well.