The Gardening Adventures of Firsty McStub

are the tomato seeds that I thought wouldn’t germinate!  Yay!  They had a sow before date of 2006 but loads have come up so should be getting some cherry toms if all goes well.  lettuce are up, they were very keen and the courgettes are starting to push through too.  Blackcurrant twig is still upright but I think that may be all that’s going for it.  I have hope though

Made a lovely vegetable crumble tonight with loads of root veggies (not home grown though) and a rhubarba and apple crumble (although we’ve not eaten that yet, maybe tomorrow).  Aim for this year is definitely to make more seasonal food and buy food from the UK.  If I could grow most of it that would be good too, but lets not get ahead of ourselves eh?

*edit* completely forgot to post about sowing seeds we got from The real Seed Company.  love the idea of this company, so shall supposrt it as and when I can.  I bought some more tomato seeds, some pepper and cucumber which have all been sowed with the help from Alex.  Still have some peas, mangetout and sweetcorn to think what to do with!

On Sunday I went to the local allotments and put my name down for one.  I’m not hopeful it will be any time soon though, I’m 27th on the list!  However, I supppose I need to be on it to ever get one so the deed is done.

I’ve had a  twig sat on my desk at home for ages, it was a blackcurrant cutting we sent off for last year from Ribena and I forgot about it.  I decided to find out what I was supposed to be doing with it and found the instructions online.  It suggested keeping outside once it arrived to stop it from drying out.  I felt the twig and it was bone dry - oops.  But, I decided to plant it according to the instructions anyway and see if anything happens.  Hopefully!!  It’s in a pot so moveable when we move as will most things.

Now I know this isn’t my knitting blog, but I’m thinking of combining it to encompass all my daft obsessions I get.  I’ve figured that most of my obsessions tend to come round again which is a good thing and I’ll remember that next time I think about ebaying everything!  I have a stash under the bed of  some yarn, not all of it mind, but a smidgen of the grand total available in the (shhh) garage.  I sorted it yesterday and decided to get back into it.  I took some free yarn I got from a magazine and decided to turn it into a triangular head scarf thing (idea in Stitch n Bitch) and completed it in one evening - fab.  Shall try to get a pic of me wearing it.  Got a  few other UFO’s about which I’ll try and attack, I think I need one of those status bars so I can record how far I am with them all eh?

So on to today, back to gardening and a trip to Wilkinsons was planned to try and get some seed potatoes.  I wanted some early potatoes and so came back with a small bag of 10 ‘Nicola’ seeds.  Although on looking at the internet it seems they are early maincrop, but I suppose that doesn’t matter does it?  Says they’ll be ready in July- Aug.  Also got some lettuce seeds and courgette and a rhubarb crown/plant thing.  I need a pot for this though so will sort one as soon as.  Alex and I sowed the seeds when we got home and set the potatoes for chitting (well they already have some growth, maybe they are ok?  I dunno, last year I just shoved em in the ground!!!).  So although it’s small steps at the moment, the wheels are being set in motion.  Looking forward to eating home grown stuff again

unfortunately we moved from that fantastic farm house in scotland to a much smaller rented house in Sheffield.  So the climate might be marginably more favourable, but space is severely limited.  I spent the winter trying not to beat myself up over too many things such as home made meals every night and recycling as we were getting used to the new house, had lots of things on (getting married for one!) and well sometimes you just need to give yourself a break.  So I did.  Actually I wasn’t sure I’d do any gardening this year as I was so uninspired by the thought but recently as spring has started, I’ve become more interested.

So, the back garden.  It gets light all day so that’s good, but it’s small and losing last years crops due to moving is making me want to do it all in containers.  All I managed to salvage from last year was the blueberry plant, I did want my dh to bring the strawberry plants but he didn’t.  Anyway, that’s all a long story and in the past.  So this year I want to concentrate on stuff I want that is expensive to buy like peppers and won’t spend too much time and worry on cheap stuff like onions and carrots.  I can’t find all my seeds from last year which is stressing me slightly, will look more tomorrow, but I’ve ordered some from The Real Seed Catalogue.  I’ve ordered some peppers (nice early ones!), tomatoes, peas, mangetout (never tried that before), cucumbers and some sweetcorn.  I’m sure some will have to go in the ground (thinking of sweetcorn at least) but we’ll see.  Also want to get some courgette as we enjoyed that last year.  Might try and get some early potato seeds too to have in a bag that I can earth up.

Today I cut back some of the garden, it seems to have been neglected for ages, and it’s made a difference at least to the size of the garden.  Also planted some cherry tom seeds I found on a shelf, although they are out of date so not sure if we’ll get any results.  If we do though I’d like to put them in a hanging basket.

Hopefully lots to update with soon, took some pics today too so shall put them on once they are on the puter.