Planting the first seeds of the year and pressing daffodils, then in July opening up the flower press and replacing with wildflowers. Sewing a very small wildflower meadow in the back garden. In May we plant out broad beans and runner beans and make something for the latter to climb up from the old willow sticks; when the bunnies eat the runner beans we try tomatoes; then June arrives and we discover strawberries; July – and B picks a home grown tomato… In September we try planting the ginger that’s started to grow in the fruit bowl.
297 – Planting seeds
Monday 10 March. Cloudy. 11°C
It’s the last day of warmish weather before the cold comes again and we decide it’s time for planting seeds. We’ve got a bed out the back which we scattered wildflower seeds last year and it worked well. Hoping it will again. We prepare it by turning the earth over (and do some minimal weeding) then B has fun scattering seeds up and down and watering. We got a bumper pack from the supermarket and are planting cornflowers, love-in-a-mist and poppies. Then I clean out some plant pots and we also plant sunflower seeds and sweet peas to grow inside. We’ll keep checking in on them and hopefully will see them soar.
252 – Sewing wildflowers
Thursday 24 April. Sunny. 15°C
Over a month on and the garden is beginning to bloom but the largest bit of earth is suffering from rabbit damage. Our pet rabbits have eaten all the grass and are even stopping the weeds coming through. We don’t see much point in planting more grass seeds as they’ll just eat them… so we have a go at wildflowers instead. We’re hoping either there’ll be more than they can chomp or they won’t like them.
We get spades and try and even up the ground and then rake it. B empties all the seeds into a pot and walks around scattering them as evenly as she can. Then we rake it again and get the hose out. We both get quite wet but the ground does too.
B steals one pot of seeds and heads out the back to plant her own pots (“not for the challenge”). I’m ok with that. I plant out the pots we planted in March – which I suspect have been left inside too long and won’t survive. Hopefully she’s more green fingered than I am.
238 – Planting out beans – and making climbing frames for them
Thursday 8 May. Sunny. 17°C
A couple of weeks on from our seed planting and B’s plant pots are doing better than the wildflowers. I give up on seeds and buy some bean plants to try. Broad beans (B’s favourite) and runner beans (which we haven’t tried before). After some discussion we decide to risk them in the main bit of the garden and hope they don’t appeal to the bunnies. I’m hoping B will plant them for me but she’s not getting her hands dirty – so she waters and supervises instead. One final challenge – we need a climber for the runner beans. The willow we spent the winter trying to find uses for comes to our aid again – and B is happy to get dirty hands on that one.
232 – Planting tomato plants
Wednesday 14 May. Sunny. 21°C
The broad beans from challenge 238 last week are doing really well but it turns out bunnies really like runner beans. I’m a bit surprised. We fetch them some leaves from the public vegetable patches out the back sometimes and they never seemed too fussed. Maybe it’s because they’re in the garden.
I decide there’s time and space for one last plant out of the spring. We’re going to go for tomatoes. B loves tomatoes but usually the slugs and snails get to them long before we do. I’m not putting them where the bunnies can get them though. There’s a space outside the very sunny front door and we’ll try them there instead.
B’s getting an old hand at planting out now. She won’t do the actual planting – too dirty – but she waters. We’re going to need to water these daily but at least they’ll be under our noses and away from the garden destroyers out the back.
197 – Discovering strawberries
Wednesday 18 June. Sunny. 22°C
The benefit of having a messy garden? While playing the floor is lava we suddenly notice we’ve got ripe strawberries growing on top of the old playhouse. Better still, the snails haven’t got them yet. B spits hers out and says it tastes funny. More for me then.
158 – Picking and trying a home grown tomato
Sunday 27 July. Cloudy. 20°C
The tomatoes we planted in May are looking good. I’ve been tweaking the extra flowers off for the last month or so and we’ve now got quite a few red ones appearing. The first few were mouldy on the bottom but, on the upside, the dry weather has meant the snails and slugs haven’t found them.
We get home from walking the dog and I find a perfect red tomato on the stair post…
Me: “What’s this?”
B: “I picked you a tomato”.
Me: “Amazing…” (pause) “Don’t you want it?”.
B: “No. I think it will be disgusting”.
Me: “Oh no. Home grown tomatoes are THE BEST. They taste way better than any you can buy…”
She considers. She is not sure but she LOVES tomatoes normally. Favourite food. We wash it and she takes one very cautious nibble… “EURGH!!! Yuck. That was disgusting.”
More for me then. It’s a bit tough skin wise but I found it very tasty.
98 – Planting the old ginger
Thursday 25 September. Sunny. 17°C
I thought we’d do this with potatoes but it’s the ginger that catches my eye. Innocently sitting, unobserved, in the fruit bowl for a month or so it’s started to grow. I don’t know what a ginger plant looks like but we’re going to try and find out!
The internet suggests soaking it for 24 hours before planting it out. We then position it in a sunny spot in the kitchen, and hope for the best.
290 – Pressing Daffodils
Monday 17 March. Sunny. 8°C
We only have about twenty minutes on Mondays for a challenge at the moment but my mum has some daffodils which are ready to be thrown out. We dig out the flower press for the first time this year.
B is not particularly crafty and has an ambivalent relationship to the press but I got a bit obsessed with it last year. B will normally help picking them and likes opening it weeks later but is, at the moment, bored with the pressing. I ask her to write the numbers (290) on the paper around the carefully positioned daffodils and she’s happy doing that and adds some dots “for people looking at the photo to find”. We just do one layer for now. I’m planning a flower collecting day later in the season.
160 – Undoing the flower press and replacing daffodils with wildflowers…
Friday 25 July. Sunny. 24°C
We’re going to press the wildflowers we picked yesterday. First we have to open the flower press and make some space. We find the daffodils we pressed back in March. They haven’t gone particularly well – they’re a bit brown. Heigh ho. We think the wildflowers will do better.
We have a limited amount of blotting paper left but we just get it to stretch to all the wildflowers. Some of them have bumpy cores which make them hard to press but the poppy leaves work really well. We fill it to the top and put it back on a top shelf. Reckon we can use it for Christmas cards…
