One Year On!

It’s been one year today since I started this blog. I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve enjoyed it having never kept a diary or been much of a writer in my younger days. It’s just a gardening journal really with a few other bits and bobs thrown in. This is my 132nd post and you’ve popped across over 10,000 times. Thank-you for reading and commenting. I’ve also enjoyed reading your blogs; here’s to a great year and an even better 2011!

Over the last year I’ve grown some great (and not so great) veg and flowers, won some prizes, given one or two things away and generally enjoyed my time with family and friends.

So how did I spend my anniversary? I picked some veg of course for tomorrow’s roast dinner.

Those sprouts and parsnips are going to taste good. And while the girls had some friends around I took my dog Polo for a walk in nearby Bentley Wood.

We’re lucky to live only 10 minutes away from such a special place. At 1700 acres it’s one of the largest areas of unbroken woodland in Wiltshire, an SSSI, and home to rare butterflies such as the Purple Emporer, White Admiral and Pearl-bordered Fritillary. It was too late for the deer rut which dominates the wood in October but the small birds were on good form and I managed to spot one of my favourites, the Jay.

I think Autumn is becoming my favourite season. There’s still interest in the veg plot and garden, it’s a great time for foraging and when the leaves are coming off the trees you can see so much more wildlife in places like Bentley Wood.

There’s only one contender in my garden for the most colour over the next few weeks. I love this Japonica.

My local Horticultural Society held their AGM & Supper last night. We had a lovely meal and some great company. I was elected to the committee so if you have any good ideas for events or new show classes we could do next year let me know.

I think 2011 is going to be an even busier one!

Spring Show……The results are in!

Today was the Winterslow & District Horticultural Society’s Spring Show and the local village hall was full of flowers and other exhibits. I couldn’t go last year and this year the entries are significantly down so I can only imagine what it would be like on a good year.

I managed to get one entry in, 5 daffodils (3 varieties), but now I’ve seen the categories I could have entered 3 or 4 more classes. I won 2nd prize! Rach entered a Victoria sponge, although had a bit of a disaster with the edge of one half breaking away slightly but she managed to patch it up and also won a 2nd prize! That will go down nicely later with a cup of tea! So not bad considering we weren’t going to enter anything just before the deadline.

My daffodil varieties were St. Keverne, Ice Follies, and an unknown variety I planted a couple of years ago.

Entries were 50% down this year due to the harsh winter putting the spring flowers back so far.

First and second prize in the flowering shrub went to a Mahonia Japonica (should have entered mine!).

Nice collections of spring flowers.

The baking section.

This flower arrangement won a first prize in the “arrangement for Easter” class.

This arrangement took second prize.

This arrangement won the “fun without flowers” class.

Last, but not least, were the children’s entries, decorated eggs, welly boots, Easter hats and bunnies!

I’ll definitely be trying some more classes next year and can’t wait for the summer show now as I did really well last year.

First though I’ve got my sights on the Salisbury Community showin early July. The schedule is out now so if you live around Salisbury why not give it a go? See you there!

A nice day off……

Had a day off work today to catch up with a few jobs round the house and garden. My last post said I was giving up on this year’s Spring Show but I’ve been talked into entering one of the classes as entries are only half what they were last year (Rach is also entering one of her lovely Victoria sponges). So first job was to get some daffs cut for the class of 5 daffodils, three varities. I’ve grown three varieties of daffs, St. Keverne, Ice Follies and Fortune plus there’s a few random ones scattered around the garden already. So now there’s a dozen cut flowers in water and I’m hoping they will be in full bloom for tomorrow.

I’m really pleased with the daffodils in the front garden, they’ve started to bloom at last!

I wanted to do a tidy up of the flower beds and noticed that I do have a hellebore growing, just the one flower, despite what I said in my previous post. Hadn’t noticed it before, I have no idea when I planted it!

I noticed the smaller of my two Japonica’s was still in flower (the larger one flowers in Autumn).

I tidied up the herb containers ready for some new arrivals in a couple of weeks.

On the veg front everything is growing on well. I planted some broad beans that I’d grown in toilet rolls and noticed that some of the ones I’d sown direct ages ago are just starting to poke through the soil. I dug over the main bed that I manured a few weeks ago so that can settle ready for some salad potatoes that I’ll put in next weekend. No sign of my exhibition carrots yet but all the salad veg I sowed under the cold frames has germinated nicely.

Strange going’s on in the onion bed though. I covered the shallots and onions with one of my mesh tunnels to stop the birds pulling them out. Now a hole has appeared at one side of the mesh tunnel and something, I presume a rat, has tunneled underneath two of the onion rows and there’s a couple of tiny carrots lying on the soil surface. So this creature must have found a couple of tiny carrots in the soil I’d dug over in one of the other beds and dragged them through it’s tunnel in my onion bed. Weird! I replaced the soil and put back the one onion that had been dug up so no damage done really.

Finally I noticed this spring bulb in one of the beds, does anyone know what it is?