Necessity is the Mother of Invention .........

For the last couple of weeks my mum has really been getting into planting her seeds. She has even started getting into the whole biodynamics thing, in fact she is now almost as much of a geek on the subject as I am which is saying something :-) and as a result, I'm now itching to plant something myself. A distinct lack of funds at the moment means I can't afford a greenhouse just yet and it's really not warm enough to plant things straight outside, so today it was time to put Plan B into action. When I made my raised beds a couple of weeks ago, I bought some pointy stake things that you hammer into the corners of the beds but unfortunately I bought the wrong length and no matter how hard I hit them with the hammer they just wouldn't go any deeper. Necessity being the mother of invention and all that I came up with a cunning plan to turn my raised beds into temporary mini polytunnels. I managed to get some nice thick plastic sheeting for the bargain price of 55p per metre and after adding a couple more stakes halfway down the beds and stapling the plastic down one of the long edges I pulled the plastic sheeting taught and weighing it down with bricks and .......Voila ...... instant polytunnel.

I would just like to say a quick thank you to my mum who knitted these amazing gloves for me and sent me these wonderful Aquilegia seeds which I will be scattering on my flower beds after I have finished weeding them :-)

Raised Beds

Last year, with little help from a friend, I turned a mound of soil, which was dumped onto my lawn by the so called landscaper that gravelled my driveway, into a raised bed so I could plant some veg. By the time I got around to doing this, the earth mound had been there for well over a year and was covered in grass and weeds. Having no spare cash to buy wood to make the raised beds, I decided to make use of some large lumps of slate that I had rescued from a nearby bank that had been demolished, and after much weeding and digging and spreading it looked quite good. In October of 2011, I picked up a few trays of cheap veg plants, at 29p for 12 plants, I just couldn't resist and bought trays of cauliflower, cabbage, leeks, carrots, sprouts and kale and I planted them into the bed to see what happened.

Biodynamics

Right well here comes post number 2. I know it's taken a while to do this second post but hopefully now I will be able to update the blog on a regular basis. Recently, I have been reading a a book that I bought myself with one of my Christmas vouchers called Gardening and Planting by the Moon 2012. I was curious after reading an article in the Guardian about The National Trust giving biodynamics a go so after doing some research on the subject and chatting to a few people, I have decided to give it a go. Being a bit of a geek, (according to my daughters, although I can't see it myself) I have devised a bit of an experiment to see if it has any noticeable effect on the veg I plant. I have been collecting wooden fruit crates from my local greengrocers and I am going to fill 3 identical boxes with compost from the same compost bag. Then I'm going to use seeds from the same packet to plant the seeds. Box 1 will be planted on a day which corresponds to a recommended planting day for that particular veg, box 2 will be planted on a day when it says not to plant any plants at all and as a control, I'm going to plant box number 3 on any old day. It seems a bit complicated but from the reviews I have read and the planting by the moon book, I figure it can't do any harm and if it increases the yield of my veg this year, then I'm all for it. I will be posting a weekly photograph of the boxes so you can see for yourselves.