Tree - gone!

Oh, and in other news, the big tree in our garden is no more!

 

 

 

That's a lot of tree! The garden looks much bigger and brighter now.

Things we grew this year

It seems that the summer is over. Autumn is upon us, with its deliciously crisp days and kaleidoscope of colours, making me want to eat nothing but pumpkin soup and roasted tomatoes.

Tomorrow my parents and I will be clearing my little back garden of its summer blooms, ready for the winter. I've had such a lot of fun in the garden this year, and have been rewarded by quite a lot of produce from it.

My successes have included mixed salad leaves, raspberries (I'm anticipating a second crop later in a couple of weeks), spinach, chard, lettuce, potatoes, carrots, runner beans, and blueberries. I have three butternut squash vines still growing, and I think at least one of them is going to fruit!

Failures: purple sprouting broccoli (never got going), dianthus (pinks - not sure why they didn't grow), tomatoes (blown over by the wind), rhubarb (two of the three crowns lost all their leaves, but I'm hoping they'll grow back next year). My strawberry plants are still in the ground, nearly all of them have survived so hopefully I'll get some fruit from them next year.

Next year I hope to be a little bit more organised and plant a lot more pots of different vegetables. I like climbing ones the best, as they take up so little room for the size of crop you get. So perhaps green beans or peas instead of or as well as runner beans? As well as my trusty salads which are super-easy to grow, and totally fresh when you eat them.

All in all, it was another fun gardening year!

First crop of the year

Yesterday we ate salad leaves harvested from our garden. They were so easy to grow (pot plus compost plus seeds plus water equals salad), and tasted so much more flavoursome and less watery than those bags of mixed salad leaves from supermarkets.

Currently my tomato, chilli, sweet pepper, spinach, basil and lettuce seedlings are doing very well, but butternut squash, purple sprouting broccoli and dianthus (pinks) are floudering a bit. I have also sown chard, carrots, artichokes, thyme and runner beans, but they haven't made their appearance yet.

My plant wishlist

I love my garden. The trouble is, it doesn't have that many plants in it at the moment. The previous owner let everything in the garden grow enormous and so when we decided to do something with the garden (which you can see in this slideshow) we had to get rid of most things. We were left with a few trees, four roses, an archway with honeysuckle and a few other climbers, and masses of Spanish bluebells, which apparently are considered a weed as they are so prolific. Anyway, I am hoping that over the coming months and years I will be able to add to the garden bit by bit, planting shrubs and bulbs that will make it cohesive and beautiful. So I decided to start a plant wishlist, so I can keep track of all the lovely things I'd like to see in my garden.

• At least one peony bush
• Cherry tree
• Clematis Montana 'Elizabeth'
• A climbing rose on the shady wall next to the twisted hazel e.g. Rosa 'Madame Alfred Carriere'
• Hostas
• Lots of tulips
• Giant alliums 
• Dicentra Spectabilis 'Bleeding Heart'
• Geraniums in pots

Seen at a National Trust plant shop:

• Hosta 'Sum and substance' - £7.50 for a 3 litre pot
• Hosta 'Cherry berry' - £7.50 for a 3 litre pot
• Scilla 'Peruvian' - £6.50 for a 2 litre pot

I'll keep adding to this as new ideas come into my head!

Our garden in the winter

A selection of pictures from our garden this winter:

Frosty morning. 7 December 2010.

Then it got even colder! 18 December 2010. The snow was with us until just after Christmas.

The violas were snow survivors, planted in early October and still there on 6 February 2011. (Update 20 March 2011: they are still going strong and show no signs of fading.)

Crocuses and snowdrops, heralds of the approaching spring. 6 February 2011.