golden signs of autumn

It's been a busy few weeks in the Black Thumb House. We were enjoying the last few weeks of summer before September kicked into high gear. School started last week and our view from the breakfast table has been enhanced by the sight of this, our lone surviving pumpkin. It has been green forever until we finally noticed that it is starting to turn that beautiful golden orange colour. My son is so excited. Of all the things he wanted to grow last year, the pumpkin was number one and here is the fruit of all our labour. Other excitements in the garden include.....

yes, cherry tomatoes that are (finally) starting to ripen after our long and cool summer, we had about 8 cucumbers before the plant finished for the season and our zucchini plant is still going strong. It hasn't been terribly prolific but it has been producing steadily. I think the garden experiment has been a wonderful success overall and the boys have plans on what we're going to plant in the bins over the winter....more on that next time. Let me just say though, that you will be surprised!!

steep learning curve...

Carrots. We love them and I thought I had the fool-proof plan for growing them on our patio. Well, it might have been a fool proof plan but, it wasn't a black thumb girl proof plan!

To start with, I started them off indoors. Yes... I know. Why???!! Mostly I think it was because I was just so excited to be sowing seeds that I couldn't help myself! I don't use the proper growing trays but biodegradable pots that then go straight into the earth and break down. Except that this year I used some snazzy peatish pots that start out like a disk, you add water and voila, in 5 minutes you have a perfect seed starter. They worked super well...except I found out that the little meshy outsides don't actually biodegrade very quickly. Now this doesn't matter with all my other plants but sadly, well...let's just let the pictures speak for themselves, shall we??

If you look closely, you can see the roots sticking out everywhere from being confined in the meshy pot thingys. I might also add that this was the best of the lot...the others were strange grown in outer space looking things with spindly roots sticking out everywhere. Sigh. However, we look on it as another lesson learned.

Top tip from us.... don't pregrow your carrots in mesh slow to biodegrade thingys!! Unless, of course, you need stand ins for your B movie about the return of outer space vegetables.

Planting Out and First Crop

At long last, I managed to plant out one afternoon. Please note that we have a patio garden~ having not been able to convince my DH that he could disrupt his happy straight line mowing to go around a veggie bed. We also have terrible soil so anything we did in the way of a plot would have to be in raised beds....too much work for us at the present time. I took a tip from a good friend, bought Rubbermaid bins (the 61 x 40 x 22 cm size), drilled some drainage holes in the bottom and filled them with good earth. We planted into that and the plants just grew and grew. You can see how they looked only a few weeks after planting out~ very healthy and growing like mad.

We continued to be successful with remembering to water and so I've been enjoying ( for once in my life) watching plants grow. This year we planted out cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini (courgette) and pumpkins. The plants are doing well in the bins...even the pumpkins which I was quite unsure about. The pumpkin plants are now spilling all over the deck and we have two pumpkins ripening. The zucchini haven't been terribly prolific...we lost one to blackfly (which of course, being a new gardener I had no idea what it was until it had really spread) and the other has had sporadic watering (this one was generally watered by the DS's) so I've had problems with bloosom end rot and other excitements. Here's how the plants looked only a week or so ago..

and our first crop and the crop to come...

The carrots are just about ready too....hope they'll be yummy!

Nemesis

yes, he looks sweet enough but this, my friends, is my nemesis. He is big and black and (more importantly), he'll eat anything green he can get his whiskers on.

these....

are just like candy for him. Part of my inability to grow things lies in my own problems....forgetting to water is the main one. However, for three years running, I started vegetable seedlings and then subsequently lost them to the black nemesis. Did I leave them just sitting about on an open windowsill?? Well...let's be honest here. Yes, one year I did.

However, the following year I learned my lesson and I bought one of those plastic green house things to cover them over. As we only have one windowsill that is south facing, I popped it and my precious seedlings on it. This window also happens to be the same one that W frequents for his sunbathing/birdwatching/hiding from small children activities. Things went along swimmingly until the seedlings started to grow well. Then I noticed more intent glances from said black cat. One weekend we went away.... and returned to seedling carnage. No, the cat hadn't eaten them this time, he'd dumped them out all over the sill and they had withered away.

The next year I tried again....green house, sticky tack on the bottom to keep it still, strong words with the feline. That year he outdid himself and managed to work out how to pry open the lid of my green house thingy with his claws. Goodbye seedlings...they were a quick green weekend snack.

This year I decided no more miss nice gardener. My DS was nagging for a garden, I was tired of losing to the fat cat. I put the seedlings on a different windowsill. And voila!

Nemesis no more.

to start with.....

I love to garden. However, I have a busy life, two small children and an amazing forgetfulnesss when it comes to watering the poor green things in my possession. Many a plant has withered away and died an unhappy death because I've forgotten all about it. I am a patient person though so I keep trying to think of new ways of getting myself to remember!

I am pretty passionate about organic gardening so I won't use chemical based fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides. In part this is simple protection for my small children, in part it is a desire to use this earth kindly and as God intended. I love having my boys help me in our gardening exploits and they love digging and mucking much like most small boys!

This blog was birthed because we harvested our first zuchinni today from the patio garden and I had to talk about it somewhere! I'll give photos and background in my next post. happy gardening!