Watch This Space...

Sue Anne, Steve, and I have been digging a garden in Sue Anne's back yard. It's great to have a friend who rents a cottage - with actual land. I wish I had actual land. I just have a wee flat. Most people here only have a wee flat. Steve also has only a flat, no land. So, the 3 of us are taking advantage of what land we can use, and working towards growing our own food this year. I am super duper excited about it too. We've been tearing up grass and trying to get it all sorted for the last 4 weeks or so. Last week we put our wee greenhouses out and staked them to the ground. In the greenhouses, we are growing tomatoes and peppers. We bought 2 varieties of tomatoes - Money Maker and Shirley. You can see in the picture that we are using a grow-bag - which is really useful if you want to see quick results. Steve bought 4 different varieties of Peppers (which I am unable to name at the moment - but they look good) We put these in our smaller greenhouse.





So, that's one project we have. We've also used grow bags for our Blue and Oca Red Potatoes...



I wish I had taken pictures of the yard the way it looked before so that you can see what we've done to it. Sufficeth to say, we've done a lot of digging with what little time we had.

With this strip of land (which we dug up from sod)...



...we are going to lay down some fabric and plant vegetable seeds tomorrow. Among the vegetable seeds we have, there are Carrots (Purple, White, AND orange), Beets (yellow and maybe purple), peas, beans, bright lights - chard, cabbage, spring onions, yellow zucchini (what Britons call Courgettes), and other things I'm having trouble remembering at the moment. We have to get up super early tomorrow, because we've had a late start for something like 4 weeks in a row, and have tonnes of work to get done. We also have a commitment to climb the Lomond Hills tomorrow afternoon, so that will cut into gardening time substantially.

We've actually planted wee leeks, and purple sprouting Broccoli in this part of the garden already, but have a lot more to plant. Here you can see the Broccoli, but the wee leeks may be harder to spot...



On this side...



You can't see them, but there's DEVIL ROOTS in there. By that I mean - roots of which there seems to be no end of. This has been my bane for a few weeks now. Tomorrow, if I get a chance, I shall finish cleaning it up, and perhaps get it looking presentable enough to plant something. We're thinking though, that because of the devil roots, we'll just plant something that needs a shallow root system - like squash. We've even discussed raised beds a bit, but that always costs so much, so we'll work with what we have.

Some highlights of the garden...



RHUBARB!!!!!!!!!!! I found these 2-year old Rhubarb advertised on the University weekly newsletter. 3 of them for £7. They're "Early Red" variety - good for pies!!!!!!!!!! I'm a wee bit over-excited about that part. Hopefully we'll get an excellent crop from these lovely plants.



Sue Anne unleashed her ample creative skills and organized this lovely rock garden - with adorable moss-covered rocks and wee plants - along the edge of our veggie patch.



The yard in all it's splendor. Note the 3 chairs and BBQ. The BBQ has become our very good friend - as it always is.



The Garden Mascot - Miss Meta.



And here - just for the fun of it is Steve doing his Physio exercises. Heehee.

So - yeah - watch this space. I'll take pictures as we go along and see progression in the exotic vegetable garden. I say exotic, simply because we all seem to agree that vegetables of unconventional colour are far more exciting than plain ones. They probably contain more varieties of phytonutrients as well. The more the better I say. Must get to bed early tonight. Busy day tomorrow.