Veggie trials and tribulations

One of the main points of the house and garden has always been to grow our own fruit and veg. This has met with mixed success. The giant sunflowers survived to produce this beautiful seed head.

 We are also succeeding with the courgettes.

 My son, managed to grow sweetcorn. This is an old variety so it has been a bit slow to take off. It is growing well now but I don't know if there is enough daylight left for the corn to grow to a decent size. He's done a lot better than I have managed before.

 The spinach is definitely still perpetual and the chives are growing well. The red lettuce finally bolted but after providing 3 months supply for 50p, I'm not complaining! The new lettuce leaves are growing in front.

Sadly, the peas died in the wet weather having been blighted with fungus.

Likewise, the cherry tomatoes that covered a whole bed failed in a mouldy mush.









The butternut squash is growing finally but with little chance of success,

unlike my son's efforts, I think they are pumpkin or some type of squash.











The curly kale is taking off so hopefully we will have some more greens in late Autumn

My sister gave us some delicious raspberries canes that are particularly tasty this year. Thanks!










The last of the desiree potatoes are ready to come up. They have been fantastic addition to our cooking recently.

 For many years I have been trying to grow carrots but this is the first time that they have grown successfully. They have been under a fleece layer to stop carrot fly getting to them.







This is despite the close proximity of the fleece to the chickens (see back left of photo)

 The dwarf beans have been good.

 I have no idea what these are as my son grew them. Any ideas?

 Swiss chard has been very tasty in salads.

 Meanwhile, our little extravagance has been the dehydrator. Dried apples are great but they just get eaten too quickly.

The chickens have been benefitting from their mixed diet of perpetual spinach and pellet feed. We're still getting 2 eggs a day, mosly jumbo size!

Sunny September

This summer has been so hit and miss with the weather but somehow there have been some successes. The colours are really cheerful as the rain hits us again.

Here are the blue Salvias and the orange ones whose name slips my mind. Any guesses?






These pink ones are Zinnia and are in my safe keeping from a friend. Hopefully they will survive the dog.

 The hydrangea quasiflora is looking rather elegant despite having a mid-summer prune thanks to Rosie.

 The wild flower bed is still looking interesting with cornflowers and other plants giving colour.

 I love the luxurious dark purple of the dwarf sweet peas. I hope to collect the seeds and have more next year.

 Thanks to  my son, we now have a new Photinia (discount from garden centre) which hopefully will grow in the corner of the garden on the remaining pebbles left over from the landscaping. I was pleased because most of the flowerbeds were too full to have any more plants in them. A drastic improvement on this time last year!

 Contoneaster and

Crocosmia are setting the garden on fire with colour.

Gardening with Rosie

So the wet weather is back again. So far it has made the peas and sweet peas fail miserably. They are covered in mould and aphids. Thankfully, the nasturtiums have thrived. I'm going to try putting some in salad and see what the reaction is.














The garden is a bit of a mess with dog stuff everywhere but I have finally got around to doing a bit of weeding.















The dog decided to help. Here she is looking a bit sheepish as she has dug up more plants and decided to sit on them so there was no incriminating evidence.

Rosie has kindly shown me the correct way to scrape clean a plant pot


Thankfully, despite having eaten a chicken diet she will still come back to us for cooked chicken. Here she is enjoying a walk at the lake, rather a quick snack break on the way. I can't believe it, she's managed to gain a whole kilo in a week, despite not being well. That's chicken power! Now if only she could eat eggs...

Trouble for Rosie

Poor Rosie has been feeling a bit rough for a couple of days. She was prescribed a diet of chicken and rice by the vet and, not surprisingly, loved it.

I think the chickens knew something was up because they refused to lay eggs for a day.

 Here you can see Rosie is sitting nicely for a small chicken treat.

Here she is back on her four paws again. Has she learnt not to drink pond water, eat flowers from the garden, dig up and eat the chew toys from the soil? What do you think? I'm sure dog food is not one of the purposes of the multi-purpose compost.

Pond life

 Finally the sun has been shining in our garden, and the sunflowers in the vegetable patch are stunning.









The wild flower bed is inundated with colour, its full of cornflowers and poppies









Surprisingly, there are some flowers that the dog hasn't eaten.

Rosie met Chip and was very interested in his bone. No chance, Rosie! The two of them managed to dig a large hole in Chip's garden. Chip has a very patient owner...

The pond is also full of life, although it is still green, it doesn't seem to put the dragon flies, water boatmen and pondskaters off. There is also a frog or two who  I see late at night when I shut up the chickens.








There is also a more common spotted Spaniel who thinks no one will know where she's been. It's a good thing you can't smell her.

She still likes the chickens although she barks at them a lot because Big Bird pecked at her (it was well deserved).

To be continued....

When Bailey met Rosie...

A dog's garden

 The garden has had to take a back seat. In fact we're lucky if we get a chance to weed it with magic paws here. She loves to dig..
















...nearly as much as she loves to chew. Here she's in the process of stealing a padded envelope. Her list of favourite things to chew are post it notes, smelly trainers, dirty tea towels, anything that's been worn for sport, not to mention wellie boots and toes!

 Rosie loves to follow me everywhere and that includes to inspect the chickens. This is her cute look, but I'm not giving in because I don't like to think what Rosie would do to them.

More to the point, I don't know what the chickens would do to Rosie, since they are considerably larger than she is!

Rosie's other favourite thing is to run from one end of the garden to the other shredding flowers and then eating any that take her fancy.

So Rosie has turned our lives upside down in only 10 days but we love it. Those sad eyes and floppy ears combined with a little tilt of her head and I'd forgive her everything.