Archive for the ‘garden’ Category
Sunday, September 20th, 2009
Tags: autumn, Christmas, garden, garlic, greenhouse, house, lawn, potatoe, potatoes
Posted in All, garden, vegetables | Comments Off on Keep the vamps at bay
Thursday, September 17th, 2009
Cleaning up for the autumn, and here’s a picture of my poorly tomatoe plants with blight. Another year of no tomatoes, next year if I decide to grow any, I think I’m going to have to grow them under glass or shield them from wind or rain.
tomatoe plants with blight
Tags: tomatoe plants
Posted in All, vegetables | Comments Off on Another disasterous year for tomatoes
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
As promised a few months ago, these are pictures of the Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) which patrols our garden chasing the sparrows. I finally spotted it again today on my neighbours aviary (full of budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus)), so I quickly ran for the camera (already on tripod), fired a few shots, and then realised I needed to change to a zoom lens. So quickly replaced with a 300mm zoom lens and took a few more, before it flew off.
Sparrowhawk on aviary No.1
Sparrowhawk on aviary No.2
Sparrowhawk on aviary No.3
300mm zoom lens is the largest I have (it’s not image stabilized either)
Tags: Accipiter nisus, sparrowhawk
Posted in All, birds, garden, photographs | Comments Off on Sparrowhawk!
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009
ALL the hedges are now finally cut for the autumn/winter, and I’ve put my hedger away for next year!
During Cutting …
hedge before cutting no.1
hedge before cutting no.2
After Cutting …
hedge after cutting no.1
hedge after a tidy-up no.1
After the tidy-up, where do I put all those hedge clippings…
hedge after a tidy-up no.2
My arms ache!
Tags: hedge
Posted in All, garden | Comments Off on ALL hedges are finally cut!!!
Sunday, August 16th, 2009
This is why we don’t see many plums each year, the birds start to peck at my plums, and then the wasps come and finish them off!
wasps eating my victoria plums
click for a closer high resolution view – if you dare!
another close-up of wasps on my plums
and then my tomatoe plants got struck by bl**dy blight!
tomatoe blight
My tomatoe plants have been doing very well this year outside, but in the last few five days, with the cooler, wetter weather, it looks like all my cordon varietys have been struck by blight!
Damn it!
Oh well, there’s always next year!
Tags: blight, plums, tomatoes, wasps
Posted in All, fruit, vegetables | Comments Off on Pestilence & Disease
Sunday, August 16th, 2009
Un-earthed some more potatoes for tea this evening, this crop is from two tubers, planted in different bags.
more potatoes
and I thought I better pick me plums off the tree, we have an old victoria plum tree in the front garden, it’s very old, some people in the village think it was planted before the house was built, and the house was built in 1862! The plum tree is now crooked and hollow, and the number of plums it delivers each year dwindles now!
victoria plums
Some I’m surprised that this year, I’ve manged to save as many as this.
Tags: plums, potatoes
Posted in All, fruit, vegetables | Comments Off on Summer Harvest
Thursday, August 13th, 2009
These were dug up from two plants…
Salad Anya
Maincrop Organic Lady Balfour
I’ll definately be growing more of Salad Anya potatoes next year. These have done extremely well, considering a bag of these in the supermarket is about a pound.
Tags: potatoe, potatoes
Posted in All, vegetables | Comments Off on Best potatoes crop yet
Saturday, August 1st, 2009
There’s only one drainpipe that drains the water off the roof ofg the house at the front when it rains, and because we don’t have any drains, it just soaks away. I’ve had a few issues with the flatpack water butts from Rainmate, they leaked, but after some recplacement internal liners they sent me, and I’ve eventually replaced and installed them, I’ve now completed my rainwater harvesting project, I use alot of mains water in the fish house already, so it’s good to use rainwater in the garden.
Three Rainmate Water Butts
It was raining alot when I took these pictures, so you can see the flow of water running into the water butt. I have three water butts linked together, so when the first one fills, it overflows into the next and so on. Each water butt holds 200 litres of water, and with the recent rain we’ve been having in Yorkshire only takes minutes to fill all three water butts. There’s also an overflow, so when all three are filled, the water flows back to drain, (soak away) eventually I’ll connect this to some soakaway housepipe and embed it in the border under the hedgerow.
Three Rainmate Water Butts connected with Eheim aquarium tubing!
Tags: rainwater, rainwater Harvesting, water, water butt
Posted in All, garden, general | Comments Off on Rainwater Harvesting
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
my old water feature
This is my “pond” in the front garden, I’ve had this old water feature for many years, it’s half an oak barrel. I always like to have goldfish in it, but I thought that my remaining single goldfish had not over-wintered because I’d not seen him for many months, so I purchased a bag of ten goldfish today from Pets R Wright, Hull. On checking the bag later, I had eleven!
a bag of 10 goldfish
I always like to quarantine any fish I introduce, and if you check the water feature picture above, you’ll notice that my single goldfish did survive the winter! So the gold fish remained in this small tank for a week before I introduced them into the “pond”.
Tags: goldfish, pond, water feature
Posted in All, fish house, garden | Comments Off on Goldfish
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
I’ve harvested the last of the First Earlies I planted out in March this year and dug up the last plant, it revealed much better potatoes, the variety I grew was Epicure. But I don’t think I’ll be selecting this variety next year.
First Earlies Epicure
But the Second Earlies Edzell Blue I also planted out in March, have done extremely well, and I thought the tubers, when planted were all shrivelled up and rubbish when I planted them out. It just goes to show, looks can be deceptive.
Second Earlies Edzell Blue
Tags: potaotes, potatoe
Posted in All, vegetables | Comments Off on Potatoe Harvest Time
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