t’s Spring time, and there is lots of new, fresh life in the garden. We have been planting new seeds, and now have baby tomato, cucumber, courgette and basil plants. Gardening Pixie is, quite simply, going green!
Category: gardening pixie
The Gardening Pixie is Back!!!
The past few months have been a bit harsh for gardeners. The cold weather has seen off many plants in our garden, including many old favourites, like our rosemary and basil, the carrots and even the winter lettuce. The freezing temperatures were also too much for our two elderly fish.
The Gardening Pixie was so saddened by the situation, she decided to go on holiday for a few months. She returned this week to see that, with just a few days of spring sunshine, the garden is returning to life.
Many plants, such as the parsley and spinach, are sprouting new baby shoots. The biggest successes are our leeks! I’m not really sure when you’re meant to pick leeks. But we have some lovely fat ones, which we pulled up and ate with a butterbean hotpot yesterday. Hmmmmm! Also, ironically, the sprouts, which were meant to be for Christmas, have suddenly started growing. Perhaps we’ll have sprouts for the summer! Who knows.
We have now started planting fruit and vegetables for this year, we will write about their progress here!! And we’ve cleaned out our pond, to establish it for some new fishy friends! We’ve also been researching organic gardening solutions over the winter months, so hopefully the garden will be buzzing with kind activity this year!
Bye for now! The Gardening Pixie xXx
The Gardening Pixie: Lean Pickings
he winter has been a bit harsh on the Gardening Pixie’s vegetable garden. For the first time we have attempted to grow a winter crop this year. We have brussels sprouts, Leeks, carrots and winter lettuce.
Sadly, the lettuce is limp; the carrots are tiny and the sprouts are growing, but certainly won’t yield a Christmas crop. Perhaps our garden is not sunny enough to grow much this time of year.
Yet, on a more positive note! The Leeks are growing well, and we can use them in soups and stews. We also have an abundance of herbs: plenty of sage and rosemary (all grown from seed!). These are perfect for Christmas foods; such as sage and onion stuffing and rosemary roast potatoes.
Even more positive, the compost is thriving! Yes, you may laugh. But compost is a brilliant way to dispose of kitchen waste and scrap paper or card. Hopefully, it will be all rich and crumbly in time for Spring, and will provide a fairly organic start to next year’s crop.
Bye for now, The Gardening Pixie X
The Gardening Pixie: Harvest
hen I was little, about this time of year, we always celebrated ‘Harvest Festival’ at school. Loaves of bread, piles of autumn fruits and pumpkins would lie in abundance at the front of the assembly hall, and we sang hymns and songs for a special service. Back at home, I’d swap playing outside for sitting in and reading, books like Charlotte’s Webb or Enid Blyton’s Hedgerow Tales.
Those days are long over, yet autumn still holds its magic. Here are a few autumn pics to share…
Our little apple tree has never produced apples before, this year it grew about ten! They’re quite hard and bitter, so we will cook them in pies…
My herb garden is doing particularly well this autumn, especially the rosemary and sage plants. I’m proud of these, as I grew them from seed in the spring. Sage makes really nice homemade stuffing, to go with roasts (including nut roast!) and rosemary is very tasty cooked in the oven with roast potatoes or baked into a cheese and herb bread (we cook this one – very good!).
I’ve also been composting old plants and autumn leaves, along with kitchen waste. A really cool idea was to add shredded confidential mail, which can’t be recycled.
Finally, autumn is a great time for crisp morning walks. We spent some of this weekend walking through Kingsford Country Park in Worcestershire, which is just beautiful. Though Dan wasn’t much of a fan of the Indian Summer insects!
The Gardening (and Nature Loving!) Pixie, X
Gardening Pixie: Further Adventures
ell, it’s been a long time since The Gardening Pixie’s last blog. I had intended to blog more regularly, but as always time goes so fast, and it seems that the end of the summer has flown by!
And things have definitely changed in the garden over the past few weeks. We have now prepared for the next season. Our compost heap is also growing steadily. Many laugh at my compost! But, you’d never believe how much it reduces household waste (I’ll write in more detail about that next time!). Gone are the courgettes, peppers and tomatoes (I was very sad to pick their last slightly squidgy fruits and to throw them into the compost), and in are the leeks, carrots and sprouts (yes, sprouts).
I prepared a small vegetable patch, using compost from our garden, some fertiliser pellets, and then planted some small plants donated to me by a family friend. They seem to be doing well, despite the slug invasion (I try to pick slugs and snails by hand, and to move them somewhere less cultivated, but I’m afraid some have succumbed to pellets). I have a few other autumn seeds to sow, yet, despite a very busy group of wild bees, the garden does not seem to be humming anymore. So, it’s time to think about the spring, and about growing more veg next year!
I want to try to harness organic gardening practises more thoroughly. I think it’s important to remember that plants and vegetables in a garden are all part of an ecosystem, which incorporates the soil, insects, birds and animals. As a newcomer to ‘growing my own’, I think my first year has gone quite well. But, I couldn’t quite get my head around how to feed my veg organically (my local garden centre said it isn’t possible?). So, I couldn’t have grown as much as I did without the occasional use of chemical feed and pellets. I really disliked the fact that I’d had to handle, and ultimately eat, all these chemicals, so I hope to develop my organic-know-how over the winter.
One very good UK site is Garden Organic. I’m also finding advice posted on Organic Garden and Organic Garden (!) – really helpful. So, hopefully things will continue to prosper! Happy Gardening, The Gardening Pixie X
Introducing The Gardening Pixie
nce upon a time, I popped into my local garden centre, and I met the Gardening Pixie…
The Gardening Pixie and I have been busy this summer. Trying to turn a small plot of land and a very old and dusty greenhouse into a productive vegetable garden has not been easy. It started with growing a few herbs and a bit of weeding… then I came home with a garden pixie (not gnome) now named The Gardening Pixie. Since then I have become a gardening hobbyist.
Things have not necessarily been easy for the Gardening Pixie and me. We have had some tasty successes and some disappointing fails. Originally, we wanted our garden to be organic, good for nature, good for us. But the sight of yellow and drooping leaves led us to the occasional use of chemical plant feed. We also wanted to avoid slug pellets (how do people do that?!) but having lost so many leaves to slugs and snails, a few pellets have, sadly, been used. Our most successful crop has been the courgettes. Courgettes in many shapes and sizes! Fat, long, curly, green, yellow (occasionally brown!), stripy… They taste good!
The Gardening Pixie and I have big plans – which include more veg and one day, chickens (sorry Dan!) But, we start small. And we hope to share some of the information here, with a regular blog. After a season’s worth of gardening experimentation, I thought perhaps writing a regular blog about the world of The Gardening Pixie might be a good way to share and learn vegetable garden tips with other enthusiasts. If there are any others out there…?!
Once upon a time, I popped into my local garden centre, and I met the Gardening Pixie…
The Gardening Pixie and I have been busy this summer. Trying to turn a small plot of land and a very old and dusty greenhouse into a productive vegetable garden has not been easy. It started with growing a few herbs and a bit of weeding… then I came home with a garden pixie (not gnome) now named The Gardening Pixie. Since then I have become a gardening hobbyist.
Things have not necessarily been easy for the Gardening Pixie and me. We have had some tasty successes and some disappointing fails. Originally, we wanted our garden to be organic, good for nature, good for us. But the sight of yellow and drooping leaves led us to the occasional use of chemical plant feed. We also wanted to avoid slug pellets (how do people do that?!) but having lost so many leaves to slugs and snails, a few pellets have, sadly, been used. Our most successful crop has been the courgettes. Courgettes in many shapes and sizes! Fat, long, curly, green, yellow (occasionally brown!), stripy… They taste good!
The Gardening Pixie and I have big plans – which include more veg and one day, chickens (sorry Dan!) But, we start small. And we hope to share some of the information here, with a regular blog. After a season’s worth of gardening experimentation, I thought perhaps writing a regular blog about the world of The Gardening Pixie might be a good way to share and learn vegetable garden tips with other enthusiasts. If there are any others out there…?!
@Number 71 