Happy New Year!

Well I thought I must poke up my head from where it has been buried over the Holidays and put together some sort of post for the New Year. 

I wish each and everyone a very Happy New Year and I hope it holds an Abundance of Happy gardening hours along with lots of Fun, Family times ahead. 

This time of year nothing much is happening, though a  New Blogging friend over at Our Organic Veg Trials  is starting out this year on a new venture. So you may like to pay Steve a visit and see how his year progresses.. I know I will be. He also reminded me it was time to get planting our sweetpea seeds, which was a timely reminder as i was late last year, but they did catch up. 

So, just a few photos to share with you.  Back in October we put our Garden motion camera to good use, and got a few videos and shots of our regular visitor to our home garden. Our Hedgehog.  These garden friendly creatures help keep the slugs and pests our gardens do not want at bay.. 

Yet they are finding it harder and harder to access our gardens, because of the sturdy fences and gates we all have around our properties.. So as I have mentioned before, try to leave small gaps in your fences at the bottom which help them navigate via your gardens and not via the road which they often end up as road kill, as they just curl up in a ball when frightened .  ( if you click onto the photos they will enlarge )  I am hoping all hedgehogs are now hibernating and fast asleep until the Spring. 

Hedgehog in October on our back garden

Hedgehog in June

We have also lit the gypsy stove I told you about in this post. and it soon gets the home greenhouse nice and warm.. Though we have only had to light it  a few times when temperatures have really dropped below freezing.. But we are well pleased with it. 

Gypsy Stove has been lit a couple of times during the low temps in the home greenhouse.

So what have I been keeping my self busy with? Well would you believe it, but I have been model making.. Yes Making a model wait for it   a  ‘Green house’ 🙂 Smiles. 

Our Daughter bought our granddaughter her niece, a model green house thinking it would be ideal for her to play with her Barbie dolls.. However, on closer inspection, its a little more complex than a 7 year old could manage.. And to be honest, it has Grandma scratching her head at times, as I glue, mould pieces of wire in shapes as handles smaller than my little finger nail and glue and cut and stick.. 

I will give you an idea..   This is the wonderful Green house Model 

Green House model kit when it is completed Picture curtesy of Bits and Pieces  uk. co. uk.

Below you get the idea of how small these pieces are, and each piece has many pieces you cut glue and put together. This little collection took about 6 hours in total and I have loads more yet to put together.  But I am loving it, and its keeping me quiet. 

My Granddaughter was gifted a Model making kit of a greenhouse and accessories, And Grandma volunteered to put it together

Next time I hope to be sharing more photos of Scotland with you as I put together our visit to Seil Island. 

In the mean time, have a wonderful start to your New Year.. 

And Happy Gardening 

 

Butternut Squash and a Gypsy Wood Burner

Already its been two weeks since my last post here, But a lot has been done in-between time in the garden especially. 

Where the potatoes were its now winter dug over and lime added

All the potatoes are now dug up and we have four huge hessian sacks full and sorted.. And I am using up all those that you manage to put the folk through first.. No matter how careful you are you always spike the biggest.. 

My Hubby has been winter digging where the potatoes were, a couple of hours each day while its been fine, and we have taken up the finished Pea rows..  The courgettes are now finished.  

Nearest is beetroot, Kale, and then the sprouts. Behind the sprouts are two rows of parsnips.

Here you can see the Brussels sprouts , Kale and Beetroot..  And we also have more young broccoli and cauliflower to mature along with leeks, parsnips, and rainbow chard.  

Spring cabbage planted.. And leeks to the left and as you can see the dahlias are still blooming, I regular pick and dead head them to encourage more flowers.

I still have an abundance of Dahlia’s and still keep picking these, until the frosts come and blacken the tops..  And then we will dig up the tubas to store them for winter.. But I will explain that when the time comes..

A different view of the cabbage under the cloche ..

We had some lovely young Spring Cabbage plants given us by a fellow allotmenteer… So we have now planted these in the allotment and put a cloche over them to protect them from the pigeons. Pigeons love young cabbage foliage and we have lots of pigeons in the woods near by and in a matter of minutes you can lose your crop as we have known to our cost in the past…. This will stay on now until the cabbages mature over winter..

Here are all the butternut squash, and under the bench are the four sacks of potatoes.. And yes, the shed got a clean out.

The Butternut Squash has been a bumper crop and we are so pleased with the harvest and will have plenty to share with our daughter this year..

these are the size of a small football, not huge but we can have fun sculpting these at Halloween.. 🙂

The Pumpkins too, although not Huge, will be ideal for what we grew them for Halloween, and goodness knows it will soon come around as time is certainly flying by so fast.

On our home Garden there are still a few blooms around giving us a magnificent show.. And our front garden although I have not taken a photo, is full of cosmos, and the chrysanthemums are all in bud ready to give us colour through Autumn.

My Husband has been busy in the greenhouse in our home garden, clearing it, cleaning it, and lagging it out with  a layer of thick clear plastic panels and bubble wrap.. We both have a feeling it will be a long colder winter this year.. Its been usually mild for several winters here in England and we have not had much snow.. Winters seem to be turning wetter and milder rather than cold and snowy.. But as we have some plants that we want to keep frost-free and cosy, My daughter treated her Dad to an early Christmas present, as he admired the Gypsy Wood burner she had got for her lean to greenhouse that sits on her walled garden..

Work in progress of fitting the wood burner in the greenhouse

So he spent some time working on installing it.. He went to a local garage that fitted car exhaust pipes, and asked if they had any pipe of a certain size to fit, He took the little wood stove with him as it is only the size of a shoe box..

Here is the small gypsy wood burner stove,, You could boil a small kettle on top when lit.. The Temperature soared inside the greenhouse once lit and it gave off lots of heat..

And he got two pieces of exhaust and two brackets.. When he asked how much the garage man said to give him a Fiver.. Five Pounds.. So he got a bargain.. And with metal and sealant he found in our garage he set about installing it to our greenhouse. You can see the progress of how below..

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Until Next Time 

Happy Gardening!