All change!

Well, its been a week now since I resigned from my thoroughly crap job and basically telling them to stick it. The straw that broke the camels back was being hauled in for a disciplinary meeting for not selling kitchens to the people who have not been into the studio. So, once I was sure that  had been paid for the month I resigned with immediate effect, no notice period as A. I did not have a contract and B. They have a nasty habit of not paying or reluctantly paying those that have walked in the past.

Luckily the Mrs has a good job which she has returned to after a career break so we have swapped roles until my little lad is old enough to attend school. So as reluctant as I am to get the iron out,  I will be able to access the garden a damn site easier! Bring on the new growing season.

Future plans

With such a small plot you do tend to mull a lot of ideas over as to how to expand your growing potential. This year that has included inter planting kale and fruit trees amongst the shrubs in the 'pretties' garden, and growing buckets of potatoes (see post below).

This year I intend to construct a couple of large raised beds to add to the front garden to help increase the harvest. Additional carrots, salad, beetroot and then leeks etc will all be planted in these beds and boost the amounts of the produce we use day to day. It is my intention to make these from scaffold planks lined with plastic, similar to those on Blickys blog. However due to where they will be positioned I don't feel that I could totally wrap them in plastic, like Blicky. I will obviously post their progress as I construct them over the winter and then the fun and games of trying to fill them!

In addition to these I will also be hanging a few more baskets and troughs on the wall for tomatoes. I could turn the entire garden over to tomatoes and they would not go to waste due to the volume we can consume, so being able to grow some additional bush and basket types will go down well.

As a footnote to this I tried a few 'Hundreds and thousands' basket toms this year, however they were planted far to late in the season to do them justice. However the tiny toms explode in your mouth like sherberty tomato tasting bombs. Gorgeous, and my little lad eats them like sweets. I had always been put off by these in the past due to the cost, as a true Yorkshire man, £3.50 for around 6 seeds does not sit right, especially as I assumed them to be F1's at that price.

Following a chat on The grapevine I discovered http://tomatoseedsuk.co.uk/seed-shop.php and not only found them at a more reasonable price but discovered that they were not F1's so I could save seed for the following year. Bargain.

Other major plans include procuring a dozen metre long soil pipes to have a crack at growing some exhibition long carrots. This year for me and for the crack but maybe to show locally in the future, assuming they still have shows in Donny?

However as life can and often goes to rat droppings at the drop of a hat, this may all be subject to change!

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

And so begins the yearly battle of trying to convince myself that my plot is actually larger than it really is and ordering far too many seeds!

Will work for food!

It never fails to suprise me what my kids will do for a bacon sandwich! To my two best helpers, thank you for all your help and you did a great job.

I may have to promise them a full english after what dropped over the weekend though!

Why the "Front Yard Blog" Part 2

Having decided to rip out the shrubs and move the front garden over to vegetables it was time to plan the plot. Due to the shape and size it was important to try and maximise space and yield so the decision was made to use three beds to try and help with some form of rotation system and keep pathways narrow. In an ideal world with plenty of garden I would be able to get a barrow between the beds but space would not allow this. It's not ideal but I manage and more importantly I maximise the growing space.

The second decision was to only grow produce which would either be expensive to buy or stuff we simply love too much not to have fresh. So I don't bother with onions as they are generally cheap to buy, but I grow garlic and leeks at the back end of the season so no bed lies empty. I grow salad potatoes but not main crop, apart now from a few buckets (see below), for the same reason. And if a hole opens up I try and stuff something into it even if its only a few salad or radish seeds, maximising yield and helps with successional plantings.

The first season was a real 'Suck it and see' moment. Money was tight due to being in sales and ploughing head long into a recession, so everything was done on a shoe string budget. The beds were 'improved' with some cheap compost I had come by, double dug and remained cordoned off with garden twine for the first year. What money we had went into seed, shallots or garlic.

Although we had a fair amount of success, more than we should have to be honest, forked carrots and leeks the size of spring onions were not going to feed a family. So employing the 5 P's principle - poor planning = piss, poor performance I threw myself headlong into the books and internet to improve my skills and stop the wife laughing at my pathetic octopus styled carrots!

At this time I discovered 'Grow your Own' magazine and then via this the magazines forum 'The Grapevine'. Through this site and the contacts I have made there I improved yield, diversity (i.e. Heritage tomatoes) and expanded my knowledge. However until I read a post by Dan about his onion growing exploits I still could not grow a decent carrot. So I read his entire blog, plus all the other blogs now listed on my follow list and started to use some of their advice for growing exhibition veg and adapted this to my own growing. Now, I'm not going to win any competitions with my stuff (yet) but by simply adopted some of their practices I have improved my harvest by leaps and bounds and I no longer hide my carrots. Still need work on the leeks though but that really is getting into the big leagues with those!

So with that you are just about up to present apart from I now garden a stretch in the neighbours yard, in return for some of the harvest. It's a good deal as they hate to garden and I'm always looking for more space. It also means I have somebody to water the garden if I go away.

Bucket O Spuds

Having never had any success with potato bags in the past I resolved to try one last time after watching the videos at JBA potatoes (see link) and basically discovered that I had pretty much done everything possible, wrong. So as an experiment and armed with 20 Morrison's flower buckets I thought I would try my hand at a few Pink fir apple. To those that may try this, the haulms are bloody massive, so think about their position! Secondly they do need plenty of water and if I am honest I was a little tardy with this point and I am sure this fact will have affected yield.

However I am harvesting an average of 600g per bucket of the most delicious PFA I have ever had. A good return considering both the size of bucket and lack of water. So with more water I hope to repeat this exercise again this next season and hopefully increase the yield!

So why ''The front Yard Blog?'' Part 1

Well, over the years the back garden has been nibbled (or with reference to the pond chomped (3000 gals) away by such things as decking, greenhouse and lawn but has always had a more landscaped, shrub type look to it. However the garden is dominated by a couple of huge trees which shade a great deal of the garden between 12 - 3pm during the summer, somewhat limiting the gardening activities at the far end of the property.

As we tend to spend most of the summer with the doors open, sitting on the deck and eating out (weather permitting) there was never the inclination to start stripping out sections for a veg plot as our lounge opens directly into this space. However as very enthusiastic cooks (250+ books and counting) we have always had plenty of herbs dotted around and as of six years ago, a greenhouse for a few tomatoes and chillis.

On the arrival our our first child and buoyed with the need 'provide' I launched into the allotment scene, hacking and taming a wilderness only to have to give it up when a change of job meant I no longer had the time to maintain the plot. Gutting now knowing how difficult allotments are now to come by but also due to a further change of job three years later which would have allowed me the time needed!

However during this time and the fact that the lounge was now at the rear of the house, the front garden was becoming a little unruly and neglected. As we only passed through the space to gain entry to the house, there seemed little point in spending a fortune on new plants for the neighbours in the street to enjoy and so a flippant comment of '.. I should pull the bloody lot up and fill it with veg' started to take shape.

So, three growing seasons ago, recession on the way and second child due, the decision was made to rip out the tatty shrubs and gravel, turning it all over to veg.

To be continued..... (assuming you're not bored to death by now)

So this is how the garden looked three seasons ago with # 1 helper supervising the work!

Time to get my fat balls out again!

Well, with the first frost I had better start adding bird food and 'fat balls' to one of my summer jobs- the new bird table. I didn't want a bog standard table or have the money to buy a decent one from the local garden centre so I built my own after much harassment from my daughter. I think the main post will need to be replaced for a thicker one but really its good to go.

Hello, is there anybody there?

Well the garden is starting to wind up for winter now with the first frost, work is painfully slow so the obvious thing to do is start a blog. ( Well its either that or lose my mind with boredom!)

Please bear with me whilst I learn how this thing works and bugger about making sweeping changes.