The biggest one yet!

The veggy's patch is still producing!

We didn't have a great crop this year, mainly our fault in not getting better organised (we are new at it!) we still have carrots as you can see, some Spinach, Lettuce (cut and come again) beans, the tomatoes have yet to turn red, so no doubt we did something wrong! we had one plum but loads off small apples, which I have to admit the dogs ate!

I have grown on some cheap heathers from the supermarkets, which are now 3 x the size they were when I bought them, haven't planted them out yet and maybe I'll let them grow some more and put them out next year, we bought some more laurel hedging plants at the auctions and these too I have re potted and are now strong and healthy 3ft ers! ready to go into place...

I do enjoy re potting bits and taking cutting to see if anything grows, makes so much financial sense...Think we did our last cut down in the agility area, I do try and leave 3-4 inches and then hopefully will help to keep it all together over the winter, but with Sennen she'll going to be one of those dogs that will enjoy skidding around in the mud, doing handbrake turns...

Talking of Sennen she came into season on Saturday, well at 11 months I suppose it had to happen sooner or later! but I suppose that will give me time to decide when to spay her...December time maybe...Harry thinks all his Christmas have come at once, was wondering whether this would bring Mindy in too...have to wait and see.

Mindy had her last Treadmill session yesterday, she is so fit now and has muscled up nicely, free running she looks great especially in the woods, jumping ravines, ditches, logs bigger than small height and staying upright whilst playing chase with Sennen and Harry through the undergrowth, stretching right out as she jumps brambles etc, lovely to watch now rather than being very scary..I have not stopped the ground work but trying not to make it a chore as by the end of 8 weeks I was exhausted and running out of ideas of what else to do with her...so now maybe once a week we get all the balance stuff out the shed and line it all up big balls, small balls, peanut ball, wooden balance board, plastic one and the blow up one and she walks from one to the other etc. I have started playing with her agility toys, throwing them letting her retrieve them from a stand still and now on the move, mainly for me to not to panic as she skids and slides and somersaults over the top of them, well if I cant play with her toys she isn't going to be able to do the next stage agility IMO...she couldn't care less, it's just my nerves but one step at a time...for me! Mindy would rather just get on with it...and I have witnessed her chase after a bird jumping the jumps along the way, which is why I have put the poles back down on their lowest height on the jumps (for my sanity!) out in the agility garden...

So maybe she can do some agility in time...Peter the vet, seems to think so and he also said to hang fire spaying her, especially as it was an accident. Still not sure about that, but I'm not sure whether I'll do agility with her either...we will just have to wait and see...

ONE STEP AT A TIME!

Yummy !!!

Lettuce, purple sprouting broch, Spinach, carrots, spring onions........

They can listen to the old CD's and grow slug free, Ian's "plumbed up" a copper ring around the edge of the raised bed and not one slug has munched on them.......

We've had two days of Lettuce in our sandwiches and the dogs have started on the spinach!

YUMMMMMMMMY

Having a go.......

Well we've made a start.

Neither of us have a clue but we read the back of the packets and so we now have 4 lines of spring onions, lettuce, spinach and carrots, I thought I was being clever in putting them in my stride regulators/jump bumps/guttering, but then I could have done with them in a lesson I had last week! Silly me, so have Ian on the look out for some more!

We've also put in pots, sweet corn and runner beans and eventually we will get some tomatoes, hopefully the Beans and Corn will go in that patch in front of the green house, in between that and the first raised bed that you can see in the photo, we just have to get into a routine of watering them now!

....the lettuce and spinach have bounced up and I can just see little bits of colour coming up on the onions but nothing can been seen of the carrots, we decided not to use the whole packet and have divided them into 3 lots, so we don't have loads of everything at once, sounds a good idea, just have to see if we can remember!

Should have started this......

last year, but just didn't get around to it!

Anyway the green house got moved the day after Buzz ran into it! Hopefully he can't run in to it here.
I took some cutting last year to fill in areas in other parts of the garden, not that I'd a clue whether they would take, or whether I'd done it right, but they did, so I have lots of "Stuff" ready to go out, when it gets a little warmer!

We've made a start on the raised Veg area, 6 x 3 not very big, but we don't really know whether we will be successful at this veggie growing thing! But I've been taking notes from "Nellie-Beans" blog and their's always looks amazing.....mind you I've got to get Ian to eat them first! ......only kidding he will eat the basic veg's, runner beans, tom, spinach, pots, carrots, so we will start with that and "If" we really enjoy it, maybe we will add a few more raised bed areas.

So we have 2 raised beds 6 x 3, second one is just placed on top of the other until Ian moves the "Power fab" digger out the way, the soil has quite a lot of clay in it, so will be adding lots of horse manure and some of our own compost, which has been rotting away for the past three year (as if was here when we moved in, it looks great!)



...along the wall of the shed to the right, we planted in tyres a plum and pear tree, oh and strawberries, which last year never made it to the table as we ate them whilst we where working in the garden! hopefully we can train the plum and pear to go along the wall, it a lovely sunny spot, but a little on the windy side too.....

....any one want a Discovery!
I'm sure Ian would let it go and he tells me I'm a hoarder!

Grow your own!

Vegetables

In Bristol we had tried to grow “hanging tomatoes”, and “runner beans”, yes they where successful until we went to Pembrokeshire show each year and then they all would die! Well they where all in baskets and pots, we didn’t have a garden as such more a concrete parking area for four cars!

So last year we decided to stick them in the ground and see what happened, we grew “runner Beans” mountains of them! And froze a lot, unfortunately that was not successful (freezing part) they tasted horrid and we ended up throwing them away, we had various people telling us that we should have blanched them before freezing them, some said: add salt, others said no, so armed with all this advice, Ian had been given for Christmas some seeds of Runner Beans, Spinach, courgette and Maize, we added tomatoes to the list.

We had decided we would put the beans and Spinach nearer to the house this year as it had been a pain to remember to go down behind the shed’s to water them, so choose a nice sunny spot, nearer to the top. We grew them on in the green house first and then put them out the Spinach was put straight out into the well manured ground (horse) and we waited and waited…………

In the mean time the tomatoes we put in grow bags in the green house and the maize went where the beans where last year, oh we also bought a pumpkin!

…..Back to the runner beans and spinach, we quickly realised the spot we had chosen was very very windy and they struggled, so with sadness I had to admit defeat and pull them out and re-seed the area to grass!
More grass, I hear you say, well I have tried to put some nice flowers in the area, but they too have been affected by the wind and the SLUGS – I hate Slugs and Rats (but that is another story!)

The Maize - I think look okay and the pumpkin seems okay too.

Here is the proof: