Nikki Gardener @gardenernikki
What I have been up to in the garden this week:
May is mental health awareness Month and it’s so good for your mental and physical well-being to get your hands in the dirt and do some gardening! Even if it is just pottering about in the greenhouse , getting outdoors is the best natural form of therapy!
It been a very busy time at home and at the nursery as I have been busy planning our garden for our pocket picnic garden competition. We have been busy painting the pallet , plant pots and our mud kitchen.
Next week we will be adding soil compost and our plants up the Eco friendly wildlife garden at the nursery. I will also be making a kitchen herb garden to add to our Mud kitchen area.
At home I have been busy sorting plants and deciding which ones to donate to our nursery garden.
I have been repotting Lettuce , Lolla Rosa Lettuce, Kale , Mini pumpkins Jack be little and Baby Boo. The pumpkins have started to grow their true leaves and were ready to be potted on into their own individual pots.
I am growing two different types of lettuce Iceberg and Lola Rosa which is a dark red variety of lettuce. The leave start off green and then beginning to change and become a dark red. The great thing about it is the more your cut your lettuce the more it continues to grow new leaves. I am hoping in a few weeks time I will have them planted outdoors in the garden!
This is the first year that I have grown peas and broad beans in the garden. They have been very easy to grow and are very fast to germinate. It was time this week to repot them into a bigger pot to help give them support I have added some bamboo canes to the pot and made a mini t-pea.
Broad Beans
Peas plants
I have also been busy getting our fruit trees (Apple, Cherry and Pear tree) ready for the competition which I have reported and have been looking after unto next week when they will be added to the nursery garden! They are all growing well and have started to grow new shoots!
I can’t wait to get the Nursery garden sorted and all planted up next. Until then you will find me in the garden!
Laura (laura_at_plot10a)
What I have been getting up to this week at the Plot:
In case you weren’t aware, this week was Mental Health Awareness Week, and the theme this year was #ConnectWithNature. As someone who suffers from bouts of depression and anxiety, I have definitely found that gardening and being outdoors helps to ground me and calm my mind. Before we bought our home, we lived in a one-bedroom flat with no outdoor space and (being incredibly unfit) I decided to try out Couch to 5k. Running, slow as I am, really helped me to stabilise myself mentally and became a coping mechanism for me. After we got the house, the front and back gardens were spaces I really wanted to tackle so that they could become somewhere I could be proud of. Working on the gardens, and now the allotment, has helped me get through rough patches in my mental health and I am eternally grateful to have access to these outdoor spaces.
Throughout 2020’s Great British Lockdown (how amazing was the weather!) I completely transformed the back garden and this year’s project is completing the front garden! I plan to put in a flower bed under the window, and put my cherry tree into the centre of the gravel area - once the weather allows. I’ll also be painting the front door and painting a Victorian stencil onto the door steps.
Of course, my biggest project is my new allotment! I haven’t been able to spend more time there at the moment, but last weekend I managed to level and slab the area where my shed will be going! My dad is going to be building me an 8 x 6 ft shed, and inside I plan to have a potting table and shelving, and space to sit and listen to the rain (I’m sure that there will be plenty!). I also managed to get my first veg in the ground there - potatoes and peas! They’re doing brilliantly, and loving the mix of warmer temperatures and rain. I’ve also been working on levelling the rest of the plot, as in places it’s pretty uneven.
Next opportunity I have to spend some quality time at the plot, I am planning to finish levelling and turning the soil, and pulling up the clumps of weeds. There are also a couple of berry bushes growing where I plan to have veggie beds so I need to pull them up (I’ll save them if I can). In the meantime, I have been busy sowing seeds - in fact, my greenhouse (and house) is now at full capacity! Luckily, my dad has a couple of smaller ones he said I can have.
Kelly (kelz_veggies_plot9)
What I have been up to this week at the Plot :
What a crazy week it has been. Work has been undoubtedly the most stressful lately and I have found myself becoming panicky alot during the day and evenings - constant worrying if I have done X Y and Z. I managed to get to my plot 3x this week just to have a mooch around and see how things are coming along (really must do the edges of the beds! What a mess!). I had a lovely day this weekend planting out squash, pumpkins and courgettes and making a new bed for some kale and cabbages. I absolutely love having time to plant bits... literally felt all the weight of work lifting off my shoulders. Feels so good. Absolutely love my plot - my little bit of heaven as I call it. Managed to sort out the garden borders this week - all flowers are in now they just need to grow and bloom (I went crazy for dahlias this year and have about 20+ in the garden!). I have also got tomatoes and potatoes growing too. I really can't wait for it all to grow ... so I can eat it all!!! So thankful The garden and plot this week. Definitely needed the time out from normal life.
Sam - The Nottinghamshire Gardener
What I have been up to in the Garden this week :
Over the last few weeks I've stalked my dahlias tubers everyday...waiting to plant them outside. Although I'm excited about growing all of them, there were two that I was extremely interested to grow. One being Cafe au Lait, which hasn't shown any signs of life. The latter being American Dawn, which rotted into the most disturbing mush. Oh well, that's part of the gardening experience isn't it! Or at least that's what I told myself, after a small tantrum.
Late last year, I turned an old concrete path in our garden, into a flower bed, my vision was to create a border of colour and joy! The work started in December 20 but took a while to complete. Breaking up the concrete, was way harder than I ever imagined! Thank you to my husband who did most of the hard work. It's just over 5 metres long and about 60cm wide and there was one thing I wanted in it....dahlias.
So after weeks of watching the frost forecasts, I finally said enough and planted my dahlias out this Sunday.
I planted them all out, paying no attention to any colour clash, it doesn't particularly bother me and they've taken really well. There's just one problem.... I didn't label them. After months of meticulously labelling plants, I had failed at the final hurdle.
Oh well, let's see what blooms the border brings in late summer. I managed to get 15 plants in, it might be too many buy only time will tell. I'll let you know how they get on.
Audrey @MrsARose1- (Twitter)
This weeks jobs in my garden in Carmarthenshire:
Hardening off your seedlings:
After taking so much time and effort planning, choosing, sowing, germinating, potting on and caring for all your precious seedlings 🌱 they require some extra care before they are free to grow in the outside world 🌎 🙌
I am now starting to move my seedlings 🌱 to the cold frames for two weeks from the greenhouse to acclimatise them to the difference in temperature 🥶 🥵 you will find that a lot of seedlings will thrive so much better out in the fresh air and the movement of the wind will also help strengthen them. If you don’t have a cold frame then leave them out for a few hours every day at first and then gradually lengthening that time until they are ready to spend the day outside before eventually planting them out.
Armadillo Blue - (Twitter)
So its mid May and as the football season comes to an end and the weather turns its time to split my free time between following Chelsea and tending to the plot.
The weather has turned and I hope the frosts have now gone so I have spent time planting out my nemesis Swedes, I have tried them so many times but they will not beat me and are now in the ground under netting, I have also planted out Cauliflowers and a couple of Broccolis that I have grown from seed.
I am watching the seedlings that I have in my free plastic greenhouse given to me from a neighbour that gets free runner beans, courgettes and eggs when I have too many, in here I have beetroot, runners and French beans, sweetcorn, tomatoes, aubergine and courgettes.
So here is to a happy weekend to all and as we start to come out of lockdown stay safe.
I would just like to thank all the Gardeners for all their hard work this week for our blog. You are all amazing and I love seeing what you are getting up to each week. Until next week , you will find us all in the Garden or at our Allotment 🪴👩🏻🌾🌿💚
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