Weeding, money saving and EXCITING PROGRESS

Today I went out in the garden as soon as I got home from work and did a load of weeding; the weather forecast for the next four days is rain so I thought I'd take advantage of the sunny conditions.

My target was the overgrown areas behind the main vegetable beds and this leads me to a little hint and tip for you:

Always dig your vegetable patches with access from both sides.

Yes, an obvious one, but the contortions I had to go through to get behind my vegetable patches were CRAZY and I've got a fair few scratches from the bushes and trees I was crawling through (and stings from the nettles).

I was successful though. When I started it looked like this:

Behind the parsnips and carrots

Behind the onions, shallots and garlic

As you can see, the undergrowth is very lush where I've not dug it out, and it does creep so my aim was to take as much out as I could (not digging it over, just basically clearing through) and I achieved the following in about half an hour of effort:

Behind the carrots/parsnips

Behind the onions, shallots and garlic.

There is still some clearing to be done, but I removed two wheel barrows full of stingers, sticky weeds and other stuff. So that is better than it was.

While I was struggling around behind the polytunnels I noticed that it looks like there are some seedlings developing where the parsnips and carrots are!!! I am SO excited, I really thought they had rotted in the ground.

Finally, as I am getting ready for repotting the tomatoes (ready to give away a fair number to any of you nice people who want them) I have been struggling to find enough pots. Then I remembered that in the shed there were some Candy floss pots.

The pile of candyfloss pots.

So I decided to get my new drill and make these into pots for tomato plants.

It did not take me long to drill three drainage holes in each pot and now I think I have enough pots to split up the plants for y'all.

My housemate's family runs a flower business and he had also got me a load of boxes to convert to planters (for my own tomatoes, and also possibly some lettuces and horse radish) so I took the opportunity of converting these.

The box prior to drillage

About to drill.

I managed to take this while I was drilling. Took a photo of my foot and one up my nose in the process :D

Six holes drilled out as drainage holes.

So, there you have it.

Thanks for reading again.

I have some plant pots (and a progress update)

I have been freecycling (as I think I've mentioned before) and today I made my second collection of plant pots from the nice lady in central Blackpool.

I now have a nice collection of plant pots ready for filling up and putting my Tomato Plants in.

Well when I say a "nice" collection:

I had to wash each one of those; I got SOAKED to the skin; good thing the sun has come back :)

So I'm going to be filling each of these up with soil and planting tomato plants in them; I will be taking requests from people for tomato plants via this site so please keep an eye on it. When I know how many I have to give away I'll put a blog post for y'all to say how many you want.

Anyway, the rest of the garden is going pretty well; the ONLY things not growing are the parnsips, carrots and mint (though I'm hopeful they will start in the next couple of weeks - I really did expect the parsnips and carrots to have started to show green by now) but everything else looking great so, without any further ado, status photographs below:

Chillis: not as good as Jon's at work are (apparently, though he's refused to take any pictures to prove how impressive his are) but they're still alive and growing, though slowly.

Blossom has all gone from the Apple tree, but it is looking very healthy and happy :)

The Stuttgarter Giant Onions; nicely weeded today

The Karmen Red Onions, again nicely weeded

The Red Sun Shallots. These are looking so bountiful :)

The Casablanca Garlic. I'm starting to consider how I'll know when to harvest these things :)

Just showing; the cabbage :) this is very exciting for me indeed!

The potatoes in the main bed; I've lots count now of the number of plants that are growing.

Potatoes in the old tyres. These are growing great guns, since I put the second tyre on they have accelerated dramatically.

The herb garden; in all seriousness if anyone wants some Parsley (who lives near Blackpool) just ask and you can come get some :)

The Sweetcorn is coming on really well; only 2 days after the first green started showing they are already a good inch and a half long.

The tomatoes. I have SO many of these coming on!!! I've been taking daily photographs of their progress and will post a seven day progress blog tomorrow.

So, there you have it. Things is growing and growing well.