ooooby.org

we had a nice hello from Po, a new zealander, letting us know about 'oooby.org' and also his blog http://ooooby.blogspot.com/ it's all good interesting stuff, go and take a look.

the acronym is out of our own back yards.

so, i took stock of my own back yard this morning and photographed most of the edibles we are growing and enjoying at the moment.

the garden is small, perhaps 3m x 10m, there is a large, mature apple tree right in the middle, a decked area, a place for the dog to pee, a compost bin and a washing line. this is what i've managed to pack in !

in pots by the back door:
some chamomile from seed, with the intention of tea making, i now realise you'd need way more, but heck, it's pretty

also in a big tub, my trusty old blueberry bush,just beginning to ripen. this is the fourth year i've had homegrown blueberries

then there's a couple of brassicas, we tested these out at the allotment last year so i'm quite confident that i know what to do with these

and runner beans, two wigwams, 12 plants, starting to flower now. the easiest thing to grow ever.

some peas, bought as seedlings from the garden centre, first time i've tried to grow them, seems to be going well

and lovely sweet peas, grown from seed got at our seed swap. i will definitely be finding out how to save seed from these for next year

strawberries and raspberries, again first time crops for me, the birds seem to like the strawberries more than the raspberries but i don't mind them having a few.


more fruit, this is the crab apple tree, at the moment they are all going straight in the compost bin, does anyone know anything better to do with them ? they are exceedingly tart.

a couple of courgette plants are more than enough for any family and easy peasy to look after

then there's some herbs, mostly in tubs, this is the thyme flowering and there is also some mint, basil and rosemary, they all get used in dinner-making

moving indoors, strawberry and alpine strawberry seedlings

this is camellia sinesis which is the tea plant, it took 3 months to get to this point from a seed that looked like a malteaser and i'm very excited about it.

and this is a lovely dog rose that will provide us with hundreds of rosehips in the autumn and is just now home to a blackbird family who made their nest with straw from the strawberries :)

voila, demonstrating the value of good homemade compost!

sweetpeas sown at the same time,
left: at the allotment - clayish, unloved for a while
right: my garden - rich in my first ever batch of homemade compost

and this i bought from a lovely flower stall at the bohemia market (where, incidentally we have an offer of a free stall if we can get our act together / anyone has any bright ideas, do let us know )yesterday, nice lady with lots of beautiful plants at very reasonable prices.

this is a kale called 'ragged jack' i got the seeds at our seed swap and think it's really pretty.



here's kim, planting, watering, covering more brassicas

the chamomile i planted in a wheelbarrow is thriving

some rhubarb had to be cleared so that we could plant the brassica seedlings, i've just eaten it for breakfast, it was very good.