Gardening and Other Plans

Although it may not seem like it, I do have plans. Kind of. Oh, ok then, things I would quite like to do if I don't get sidetracked doing other things or if I can actually work out how to bring these things to fruition.

Many of my gardening plans involve spending money. Now there's a surprise! I'd rather they didn't, obviously, because that means they will all stay in my head instead of becoming a lovely reality.

However, the bones of our garden need shaking up a bit. Take the front garden. I dislike it intently. Every time I walk up the path I think "I hate this front garden" and, this may sound loopy, even if I don't articulate the thought it is still THERE. The feeling is as much part of me as....say, my eyelashes. I don't need to say to myself "I have eyelashes" to know that there they are.

So. It is becoming is quite stressful. I hate the wibbly hedge, the fact that we have no gate (it rotted and has never been replaced) and that it is a dumping ground for ladders and deliveries for Hubby's work.

I also intensly dislike the layout - path, grass and two boring borders under the windows. Yeah, I'm not proud of it.

Other gardening related ideas include deciding once and for all about moving this blog, posting more often and saving up for a macro lens, costing out the front garden's redesign and, gulp, save up for it.

Oh yes, and find a money tree to plant in the back garden.

Oh Okay, Now I Get It

Oh my. I think next week I shall watch "Gardeners' World" with a notebook. At least it'll save me having to rewatch it on iPlayer later.

As a newbie gardener I've steered clear of discussions about the presenters, who should take over and what needs to be changed. I didn't watch it when Geoff Hamilton hosted it, nor Alan Titchmarsh and just started tuning in when Monty Don became ill.

I read the reams of opinions found on others' blogs but it was with a bemused air. What does it matter, I thought, the programme's ok, all the presenters are ok, whoever takes over will be ok.

Oh how wrong I was. Obviously I was missing something - and that was how good the programme can be. I watched the first one with the new presenter Toby Buckland, who I didn't really know (should I admit that?), and I enjoyed it immensly but I did wonder what experienced gardeners would make of it. Would they find all those tips patronising? Wouldn't he be offering people anything new?

But watching last night, within minutes, I knew that I suddenly loved this programme, and I loved Toby (only don't tell Hubby). He managed to share his enthusiasm, impart lots handy tips and inspire me to ditch my plans for an expensive potting shed and track down a secondhand greenhouse, complete with a home-made bench made out of breeze blocks and scaffold planks.

And really, anyone who can make me feel I can garden and do it cheaply wins my vote every time.

The Flower No Garden Should Be Without

Oh sunflower! How I love you! Let me count the ways -

you are easy to grow, you are bright and cheerful
and you are fun!
What more could anyone ask of a flower? (Except, perhaps, next year
a whole lot more of you....).

Why I Love My Blog #1

Not sure I'm allowed to say or admit that. I mean, it's a bit big headed isn't it?

But stop!

This isn't a Carrots and Kids Blow Your Own Trumpet Day. Good heavens, no.

One of the reasons I love my blog is because it's made me take photos, tons more photos than I ever would have done without it.

Pictures of flowers, weeds, birds, my allotment, my children, watering cans, packets of seeds. Obviously I would've taken photographs of my children but perhaps more posed, less of the ordinary mucking around at the allotment and back garden kind of stuff. The every day things that usually go unrecorded.

And my blog has enabled me, pushed me to do that. It's given room in a very crowded life for a love of photography. And for that I'm grateful. Thank you 'Carrots'.

Whaddya Think My Chances Are?

Way back, when it was properly summer, I was dragged from my favourite spot in the garden and from the Sunday papers and had to go out.

"When it's my birthday," I proclaimed with all the confidence of someone whose August birthday is always hot and sunny, "I shall spend the whole day on this swing seat, reading and sipping Pimms."

So, what do you think of the chances of that? Yeah, me too. Slim is too optimistic a word for it. How about absolutley no chance at all? Not unless the wind and the rain disappear and the weathermen stick lots of lovely suns on their map. Here's hoping....!

What I'm Enjoying In My Garden

This is what I'm enoying in my garden this evening. A very cold bottle of pear cider (excuse the wine glass, so desperate was I for this liquid gold I just grabbed any one).

It's been sitting in my fridge for nearly a week but I've held off (aren't you impressed with my restraint?) until tonight - the start of the summer holidays.

I did think it was a mini celebration but after the day I've had - four tantrums before 9.30am coupled with three trips to school (take the children, go back for the special assembly and then, blow me, back again to pick them up after lunch) - it's probably a case of drowning my sorrows. Still, this glass has made up for it. It is definitely my most favourite thing in my garden.

Looking Down and Looking Forward

Oh dear.

My veggie container garden has been neglected along with the allotment, this blog and to some extent the school gardening club.

First it was apathy, inertia and just being downright fed up and then it was the Vile Vomiting Bug that had six out of seven of us laid low.

The Cloud of Gloom is still hovering above my head (can you see it? Can you?). Nothing is growing. Well, that's a lie, green things are obviously growing because they're not dead but as for copious "look at the kilos of veggies I've harvested" posts - forget it.

I can't pretend I'm not green with envy at others; well, I could but really, what's the point? And I shan't, as a stand against some of the (non-gardening) blogs I read, pretend life is wonderful and I never get fed up. Life is quite often hard and I am very fed up.

If I start waffling about why then this won't be a gardening blog, so I'll just contain my ire for my Albatross of an Allotment (told you I wasn't happy). I just can't seem to get to grips with it. The weeds are under control, in that they are there but small and easily remedied with two hours work, probably every day.

There are great big patches of dirt where voluptuous veggies should be and I don't know why I haven't filled them. Then there are the veggies that have decided to put in an appearance. Honestly, I don't know why they bothered. It was hardly worth the effort.

But enough! As I cling to the edges in my Pit of Despair, trying to get a toehold so I can haul myself into the fresh air and sun of normal life, I've decided to reach for the rope labelled Looking Forward.

At the end of this is the box marked Seeds I Can Plant Soon For Next Year, thanks to Sarah Raven's website which I was browsing for a friend's birthday present. I've often wondered why she can't make do with Suttons seeds but she is into the pretty pretty version of country living (think Cath Kidston, Emma Bridgwater) so click away I did.

I read a couple of articles and discovered seeds you can sow in August for next year and - oops - accidentally put two packets of ammi majus Bishops Flower into my basket, y'know, one each. Apparently they make a lovely cut flower although I haven't a clue where they'll go in my garden. I'll worry about that later. I also bought some sweepeas to sow next month and a couple of other things for my friend.

It was a bit of a relief, frankly, to find these articles. I had thought that, in my usual way, my interest in gardening and this blog has run it's course and they were just another entry on the long list of Things I Never Stick At.

But it is nice to have a goal, even if it is to see how hopeless I shall be in growing these flowers. Hopefully my potting shed, built by Hubby, will be up by then and that will help. Oh yes, ever the optimist me.

It's All Change In the Carrots Garden

I'm really indecisive. The subject of how many times the kitchen and Aga have been moved gets brought up far too often if you ask me.

Unfortunately, I'm just the same with the outside. We are Not Happy with our garden. Basically, it's not big enough (and neither is the house) but it's all we're ever likely to have so we, I, need a way to come to terms with it and lurve it.

Gardening books, mags, programmes and shows have been scrutinised, nay obsessed over, in a bid to find Ideas. But some changes are happening and some have been thrust upon us. And all without a plan being agreed.

Take, for instance, the shed at the bottom of the garden. All forlorn, unloved and leaking it stood, forgotten. Until Hubby decided he needed it for His Stuff. So it's been spruced up, made water-tight (funny how that happens when he needs it) and moved.

Actually, I quite like its new home, near the house, at the top of the garden. I'm thinking a lick of paint, something lovely growing up the sides, room inside perhaps for a fork or two. He's thinking Hands Off!


The bottom of the garden, also neglected, is now crying out for attention. "Do something with me before the neighbours complain" it shouts at me every time I look out the window. Sometimes it cries "Look at all this wasted space. Space! Wasted! How could you, ye of such small home crammed with lots of kids!"

But for once I know what to do. The climbing frame is earmarked for where the chicken pen is, nicely hidden by the willow tree. Next to it will be the hammock strung between two more trees. And that space opposite, recently vacated by Small Shed will be home to my Potting Shed! Hurrah! I did voice concern that my shed was a little too close to the Children's Corner to be anything remotely retreat-like but Hubby, with his shed no where near the children, assured me it would be fine.

We, of course, have done nothing yet. There's the rubble waiting to be used as a base. And the overgrown jungle hill has been flattened and is waiting for....well, not sure really. What we really need is a remote control to freeze frame the children for, um, two months to give us a chance to catch up with everything. Either that or a nanny. Alas we have neither so this weekend we will be cracking on.

And the motivation? The chicken pen has now been vacated, thanks to Mr Fox, who rather ironically made good use of the space made by Hubby's shed removal to spy the chickens and make off with them. We've had hens for years and never had any trouble.


I shall miss the Bossy one, who kept laying in my herb bed. Really I feel quite sad about them both. And the partridge eggs Broody (who was always broody) was incubating. Still, I'm trying to look on the bright side, in an irritating Pollyanna-ish way, because I guess it means the garden plans might, finally, come to fruition. If I don't change my mind.

My Happy Accident

To say that I'm clumsy is probably something of an understatement. This becomes too glaringly obvious when I'm gardening.

In my own garden I'm mostly fine. It's when I have to go to the allotment or the school garden. My biggest trouble is trying to do Too Much and Rushing, oh and Having Eyes Bigger Than My Arms.

Matters are not helped because I never seem to get everything planted. Either because I'm slow or time-poor. Or a combination of both. So mostly I'm scurrying about with plants perched precariously on buggies or trugs or, worse, in my arms.

Unfortunately I don't really have storage in either place. Nor a greenhouse. So, because I'm not rich, I grow a lot from seed and transport them. And this is where my problem lies. Usually on the floor, in a compost-and-seeds-all-mixed-up-mess. Or a crushed-seedling-mess.

Ages ago, on one of my too infrequent visits to the allotment, I dropped half a tray of purple sprouting broccoli. Rushing because it was getting dark and I'm a scaredy cat, I cursed and scooped the lot up before running to my car.

At my "potting table" at home I hurriedly filled some pots and planted, none too carefully, the seedlings I could salvage. And there they've sat for about six weeks.

And how wonderful and healthy they now look! All that benign neglect has worked wonders. I'm actually putting off planting them at the allotment because of those pesky slugs. I need to read up on how other people protect theirs because y'know how the ones I did manage to plant are faring don't you? Yep, they're a lovely row of chomped-to-the-stump of nothingness.

All Right Aubergine?

I think I may have posted before about how much I love aubergine plant and how I'm really looking forward to picking the handful of the vegetables that it will hopefully produce.

But I don't think it's very happy chez Carrots. I don't think I'm proving to be very adept at aubergine growing (which, let's face it, is hardly surprising).

I keep the soil moist but sometimes the leaves still look droopy. Plus there's an orange colour appearing on them and they're also looking a bit....raggedy.

So that's three things wrong with it. Apparently these plants do not appreciate windy, inclement weather. Thinking about it, I think I'll be lucky if the plant survives, let alone produces anything.

A search round the web hasn't provided much information about what may be wrong with my Baby Belle, but I have learnt it really should be in a greenhouse or conservatory. I don't have a greenhouse but the 'eating' end of the kitchen is glass so that may be it's new home. Then I'll be able to add 'Toddler' to the list of what's wrong with my aubergine.

Black Clouds Are Gathering......

So where are you summer? Who ordered the rain, and why is it so chilly?



I'm mighty glad that my vague thoughts about camping this weekend came to nought. Mainly because I failed to voice them out loud. Sometimes going away is so much harder work than staying at home. Especially when it involves tents. And little people.


I'm also cheering myself up with the thought that at least I don't have to get out the watering can. Not that I'm lazy or anything you understand. But, but....I'm not feeling great still and everyone is very grumpy. Roll on the end of term. Or maybe not.


So thank you everyone for your kind comments on the last post. To cheer myself up (and no doubt you, if you've made it this far) I took some photos of the blooms in my garden.

I'm not really into flowers. In a vase on my kitchen table but growing them? Not so much. I think I will eventually, but first I need to get a handle on growing veggies. But to remember that sometimes I do have blooms in the garden, I took these. While dodging the downpours.

Babies and the Baby Belle

I love my aubergine plant, a Baby Belle. I've never grown one before but I love the purpleness, the pretty flower, how it will produce teeny tiny fruit that, no doubt, only I shall eat.

The other day I repotted it, with a little help. As soon as they heard the rustle of the compost bag, the smashing of broken pots, the little ones rushed over, eager to be involved. So how could I resist?


Some compost ended up on the patio, there was a fair bit of patting down so it needed fluffing up and the tub isn't as full as I'd like but they're happy so I'm happy and, I hope, the aubergine will be happy.


I loved all the comments on my last Aubergine Post so I'm going to look out some recipes to use up those gorgeous veggies that will be coming our way. I can't wait.

A Big Green Leaf

Emma T over at one of my favourite blogs A Nice Green Leaf is celebrating the half-way point of the year and the sheer green-ness of the world with a Big Green Leaf shout-out. I love this idea as I'm more into veggie growing than flowers at the moment. All of my pics were taken in failing light last night so not the best. But - hey - I learnt how to do a slideshow too!

Veggie Wrecking Dog Anyone?

Y'know sometimes I wonder why I bother.

If it's not the hen decimating my precious herb garden with her egg laying exploits, it's the dog burying her prized pig's ear in one of my containers.


The wooden trough did contain carrots and spring onions, something I have struggled to grow on the allotment. Seems I'm struggling to grow them at home too. And to think, I was giving her a treat....

Shopping Til I'm Dropping

I popped into the garden centre the other day. I know, I know, you'd have thought I'd learnt my lesson. Obviously a glutton for punishment.

However I absolutely needed some tomato grow bags (which they didn't have) and some of those pots you use with the bags that's supposed produce a bumper crop. Or something. Anyway, they didn't have any of those either.

But did I leave empty handed? Huh, did I heck.

We'll just pop along to the plant section, I cheerfully instructed, pushing the buggy with a subdued and strapped-in toddler, trailing a chattering one behind me.

Big Mistake. I chose a three pots of runner beans, giving me at least nine plants, but thought I won't be able to use my card for that measly purchase.

Never fear, I managed to buy some other stuff. Pots to transplant my gardening club's end of term present of tomato plants into, a big pot for some veggies (haven't decided what yet), a lovely concoction of fish, blood and bone, chives and - tra la - my favourite chocolate mint!

Do I feel guilty, what with all this talk of high inflation, credit crunch, spiralling food prices not to mention the cost of the diesel to get me there? Of course I do, although being a stay-at-home mum means that I always feel guilty. I think it's in the job description.

But I've been feeling fed up (trying to unravel that one too) so a little retail therapy goes a long way. Plus, I reason, some women buy clothes or shoes to cheer themselves up. At least my purchases will benefit the whole family. I hope.

Everything is Blooming

I don't like to boast, really I don't. But I do feel a little bit pleased with my mini veggie container garden I have going on by the back door.

Pride comes before a fall, I know. In fact, when I was proudly, like a new mother, showing off to a friend my seedlings and dwarf French beans, that I thought would never grow, she very kindly pointed out all the weeds in the pot. Which weren't really weeds at all. Just little green things that shouldn't be there.

So here they all are. Some of the salad has even made it into our tummies; two of my children have now decided they like salad which warms the cockles of my heart. And makes it all the more worthwhile, if that's possible.

My Garden Journal

I had thought this blog would suffice as a journal for my allotment and garden. And it does, after a fashion but really I just need somewhere to jot down unremarkable but interesting-to-me-information like "sowed two pots of sweet basil".

So I've appropriated a Roald Dahl hardback notebook that I was saving for some random classmate's birthday. I love Dahl and as it's peppered with lovely quotes throughout I'll be encouraged to keep writing in it.

And believe me, I need all the encouragement I can get. I'm not really a "sticker". I'm not a quitter, more of a flitter and since having children I have developed the attention span of a gnat. It's a wonder this blog has kept going as long as it has.

I've listed all the seeds I sowed the other day at home, the repotting and planting out I did and then I remembered to list all my allotment jobs. It'll also be home to cuttings from the Sunday supplements, plans and ideas.

Do other people keep gardening journals (am I last to the party as ever)? I have previously toyed with the idea but thought it would be just another "To Do", plus there is always the very real possibility I'd lose it. Do other jotters write in it every year or just use it as a reference once they've got a year's worth of info? We keep one at the gardening club but it takes a while for me to transplant the ideas from there to home. I'm hoping it will also be a nice record for the autumn of my years.

I'm Branching Out

I fear I've been a bit boring in my veggie growing. That's ok; this is the first year I've done container veggie gardening and I'm feeling very pleased with myself.

Still, when I read The Edible Container Garden or other's blogs and they list all the wonderful veggies I do feel a pang. Part of it is due to lack of time - it's in short supply so I try to grow what I will know will definitely be eaten - and part of it is me being not very adventurous.

But all that is about to change! Behold my very first aubergine plant. I picked it up during the Awful Garden Centre Trip and was initially attracted by the beautiful foliage.

It's a 'Baby Belle' and according to the label it's attractive and bushy and just right for containers. The dwarf eggplant's fruits can also be eaten. I jolly well hope so. Even if it doesn't produce anything, I shall enjoy looking at it.

I-Spy Sunday

Not much in the way of gardening going on this week. Five children on holiday and a two-year-old's birthday put paid to that! But we have been in the garden a bit. When it's stopped raining.
Let's not mention the allotment. I'm a bit miffed with the allotment. Is it possible not to be happy with a veggie plot? I think so, yes.

Ideas I Am Totally Going to Steal from Chelsea

Another Chelsea post I'm afraid. But in my defence this is going to serve as a depository for all my ideas. I did try notebooks but I end up losing them. So, ideas I'm taking away from Chelsea include:

• Grass roofs. I saw them on bins and on a funky chicken house and run. Actually I'm nicking the idea for the chicken run too. Including the vibrant paint. Well, maybe not that exact colour.

• Next is the living wall in the Children's Society Garden. That is so clever, the only trouble is I'm not sure where I'd put it. I will obviously have to think about that one a bit more.

• The use of willow hurdles to edge beds. Actually, the use of raised beds in gardens for plants and flowers, not just veg, instead of slug-friendly beds at slug height.

• The tiny palm trees, succulent planted hillside, the hillside itself complete with a concrete pipe to crawl through all from the Marshall's children's garden.

• Sunken trampolines. I know, this is cheating somewhat as there were no actual sunken trampolines anywhere but I went to a talk by Bunny Guinness and she extolled their vitues. If it's good enough for Bunny.....

• A tipee that swings from a tree and can take up to 22 stone in weight and can be used as a swing, hidey hole or a mini trampoline. I saw these on sale and want one. Maybe by the time the children have left home I will have saved enough (they cost £299!) and by that time I could have it all to myself...

• The willow heart on the gate in the Solstice Garden.

• The watering rota board in the edible playground garden. Also the standard bay tree in the herb garden circle and the beautiful raised beds. Well, they were beautiful to me.

• The Good Gifts garden was a beach scene with a clever (too clever for me really) water feature that emulated the tide washing into a little inlet. It was so relaxing to listen to but involved pumps and buckets and so one for Hubby methinks.

• Tibetan cherries. I loved these and am now thinking about how I can have them in my front garden, which totally needs redesigning before the beautiful tulip bulbs I ordered arrive in October.

I think that's enough to be getting on with for now.