Updates

May 9th 2021

May has gotten off to a strange start with some unseasonably cold weather. Late frosts and hail stones have made progress slow in the gardens for our plants.

Highlights:

  • Despite the cold weather we have had some more signs of life. The tulips have been amazing and the first potato plants are just appearing up out of the ground.

  • We have had several "mountains" of woodchip delivered so our food forest is starting to become more of a forest.

  • Before that though we created paths between all our beds. Its been hard slog but it will save so much time cutting the grass. Finally no more going in and out between things.

  • Nishta took delivery of her first bamboos (she's a huge fan). We've ordered more for her birthday so now we just need a panda. These will provide some wind shelter, some great shade for the dome as well as looking and sounding good in the garden

  • For the house we had solar installed YAY (see the energy efficiency page for more) and we used some wooden tiles we got in Aldi to make our front entrance look a whole lot tidier. The solar was a huge step for us in terms of our energy efficiency goals but more importantly we now consider the house to be officially complete.

  • All in all for less than one year in our house we have come a really long way. The house is complete. Its comfortable and already really feels like home. We have moved 12 tonnes of compost and maybe 30 tonnes of woodchips but we now have the foundations of a food forest and no dig garden. Things are starting to grow and when they do they seem to love it here as much as we do. We are energised and optimistic and as lockdown lifts we're excited to have more visitors, both to the house and our website.

I love the diversity of gardening some days I shovel compost and others I shovel wood chips.

Giant Chard
Red Gooseberry Thanks Anja

April 25th 2021

Since our last update we have managed to secure a lot more woodchips and we have been hard at work creating paths between all our beds and building our food forest.

Nishta loves bamboo and we had a big delivery so she was super excited. We planted some out the front of our house in the food forest (but only after we removed a big stump that was in the way) and also a smaller variety out the back to eventually provide some much needed shade for our dome.

Our greenhouse is finally starting to look like its being run by adults, with moneymaker tomatoes going into the ground and with some new growth on our citrus plants.

We bought some cameras to allow us to shoot time-lapses. Attempt 1 was a complete failure so fingers crossed in mid May we will get some better footage of our Artichokes seedlings that we can share with you all.

This month also saw some mild relaxing of COVID restrictions so we could finally have a visit from our Assistant Head Gardener Anja. It was so good to see her and she gave us a cute red gooseberry who is now at home amongst our currants. It was really nice to see her and Nishta discussing seeds and getting stuck in planting seedlings.

April 5th 2021

The long Easter weekend provided a great opportunity for us to work in the garden. This was paired with Blue Skies but often deceptively cold winds.

This weeks projects:

  • Defeating the giant compost heap that was delivered in a 12 tonne truck meant that this was a week of hard slog making lots of new beds for growing in. The garden is starting to look a bit more professional but we are still waiting on a wood-chips delivery so we can add more pathways.

  • This weekend also provided an opportunity to cut the grass and generally to tidy the space up. We have a new strimmer so edging will on the agenda soon.

Other Happenings:

  • Things are starting to get pretty with flowers blooming and our fruit trees blossoming.

  • We are excited to have some flowers out on our Almond, Peach, & Cherry tress but really the next week or two will see most of the bloom across the food forest.

  • We also some flowers appearing with our Tulips coming through.

Wildlife:

  • Its been a week of visitors. We had regular pheasant visits. (one pheasant got into a hilarious battle with his reflection and another decided to try and take up residence in our Garden Dome)

  • Unfortunately we also saw a Rat under our bird feeders. So work started on removing any potential food and water sources.

Create paradise and nature will come find you.