Growing Progress

My onions, shallots and garlic are growing really well :)

So, while I am dig dig digging for the rest of the vegetable patch this'll have to keep your avid interest in my garden at bay for another day or so.....

The Stuttgarter Giant Onions

The Karmen Onions

The Red Sun Shallots

The Casablanca Garlic

The Apple Tree budding... oooooh YEAHHH!!

Right, I'm going to go outside for another whole day of digging.  The new All Steel Spade is epic, but this is really hard work as I'm having to dig through turf and pull out a large amount of roots and glass and metal and plastic and whatever crap has been buried when the garden was laid.

Remembering the purpose of this blog, I think this is something to add to the lexicon of knowledge about Part Time Homesteading - if you have prepared ground then it's very easy to do this part time however, as soon as you need to do what I'm doing now you need to be able to dedicate hours and hours to digging and breaking ground in prep. The good news is that next year it won't be as hard to prepare for growing.

Dig Dig SNAP!

The best laid plans and all that...

Today I decided to try and dig out a bit more of the garden to make space for more potatoes, maybe some carrots and parsnips and certainly some horse radish for my house mate... 

this is what I was digging out.

And this is what happened! You know when you don't know your own strength :D

Of course I got the plant out and have a little more of a vegetable garden to go at, once I've gone and bought myself another (better made) spade.

Digging, and planting, potatoes

So another nice weekend day, and another load more digging. I managed to turn over this entire plot to a depth of about 2 foot, and removed a load of glass, weeds, roots and stones. This plot contains Maris Peer potatoes, which I've never heard of but hopefully will provide a good crop of tastiness.

I have another load of potatoes yet to plant, but I need to dig roughly the same again somewhere else in the garden and, bizarre as it may sound, I'm running out of space where I can do that.

Watch this space...

Digging for potatoes

While appreciating the progress made in the onion/garlic bed I decided to target the next bed, for carrots and potatoes. I have a lot more space around this area but I've dug a small-ish bed at first.I also have three old tyres so I can test which works best, a dug out bed, or fake deep bed in the tyres. Watch this space

Pre-any-dig.

First-earth-break.

The first bed dug.

Now to find some carrots and potatoes to plant

Green Shoots

It was a lovely fresh day today, so I went to check on my existing growing things and, JOY OH JOY!! we have some green shoots :) so some pictures have been taken.

The herb garden, fruitful as ever

Garlic starting to sprout through!

Garlic making itself known

Some crocuses(?) that have just start appearing around the garden

Lovely sun on the grass, new veg plot being done on the right near the orange wheel barrow

Gorgeous day, gorgeous garden.

A man, he gotta DIG!

So it's been a long winter, and so I've not been posting but now I'm back and today I went outside digging out a vegetable patch :)

So, for your pleasure, below are a selection of photographs showing my progress today :) I feel GOOD!!!

1. The Herb patch, post weeding, showing the winter survivors.

2. Starting to dig out the vegetable patch, ready for Onion Stuttgarter Giant :)

3. Vital fuel for a digging man - that and chocolate.

4. My wheel barrow with lawn dug out to make space for veg :)

5. The first planted section, now housing little baby Stuttgarter Giant Onions

6. Starting to dig out the next section

7. A friendly little robin that was hopping around all the time I was digging.

8. The finished vegetable patch

9. Left to right: Stuttgarter Giant Onion, Karmen Onion, Red Sun Shallot and Casablanca Garlic

It doesn't take ANY effort

As I have said, one of the main reasons for me doing this blog is to talk about how I have managed this growing food and self sufficiency thing, while being very very busy at the same time.

And I have found that it is the BLOGGING which is more of a challenge than finding the time and energy to get into the garden.

I am very lucky in that my garden was totally overgrown with brambles; in the last couple of weeks I have been able to pick well over a kilogram of ripe fruit having put NO effort in whatsoever beyond reaching my hand out and plucking.

The apple tree by the front gate is also laden with fruit which I will be bringing in shortly to make a blackberry and apple crumble for some friends.

And finally, barring some minor (5 mins a week) weeding the herb garden is flourishing.

The point being, it really IS easy to gather and grow food in your garden; I will probably be reducing my yield of blackberries by continuing clearing the garden.

So, get out there and gather. Don't be scared of "how much work it is" you only need put in 30 mins a day (and you get the benefit of fresh air and stretching exercises)

TPTH