Creating my corn bed!

My weed bouquet

Our grass badly needed cut - I've been so busy nurturing seedlings in the greenhouse that the small grassy area of the garden (the rest is currently slabs and a half made raised bed) has been severely neglected.  I went round pinching off all the weed heads (dandelions which had mostly flowered or gone to seed eek), and then pulled up some of the long grass to dry out and use later as mulch.  At least the weeds went to some use and gave me a little weed bouquet pictured above.

Then I instructed hubby to use the scary lawnmower and get rid of the jungle dwelling there.  Well though the lot was very green the lower areas had obviously started to die off a bit, and left the ground looking rather...well, barren.

I decided that the grass has just been a nuisance, and if I want it I can purposely plant it later, where I actually want it!  So I got about digging it up and digging it over...

A few hours later I had a lovely bed of soft, crumbly soil. It's roughly 4 foot by about 5.5 foot.  I chose to grow my corn here up against the shed because it is the only part of the garden where it can get plenty of sun but not block out sun for any other crops.  (The sun hits the shed and the corn won't block out any more light than the shed already does).

My corn varieties have been sitting out for a few days getting accustomed to the harsh Edinburgh winds and I like them to dry out a little as it makes it easier to get them out of the pots and separate them.

They were soon sorted into their varieties (Starting from top left to right then bottom): Popcorn Fiesta, Spring Treat Sweetcorn, Strawberry Popcorn and Minipop.

I then planted them into block of rows to help with germination later in the year.  Many people say not to mix varieties because they can cross pollinate but to be honest, I just want some corn, I don't really care if they mix.  Though hopefully I'll get some gorgeous Strawberry Popcorn cobs, they look so appetising!

 

My very technical sketch to plan my planting...

As you can see from this angle, the "grass" area is really awful, so I'll just HAVE to dig up the rest of it to make more beds...What a shame!

You can also see the raised bed here - I've still got a whole plank depth's worth of filling up to do, but I've have some stuff essentially composting in there (air can still get in at the sides of the cover) so I will see what happens with that.

Please ignore the weeds, I'm still developing a lot of the garden this year, having never had time last year.  So I've let the weeds grow because I know that I'll be overhauling the entire area within a few weeks anyway.  

These are all the stones I found when digging this bed area.  Yes all of these were UNDERNEATH the grass, apart from the longer one, which was edging part of it.  I'm quite surprised by how clean they look!  Foot is added in for size reference - bear in mind my feet are a UK 8 which is quite big!

It may not be the neatest, being a little flimsy, but hey I spent £6 in total buying this bamboo edging in Poundland (6 packs of 1 metre in order to get enough length).  There were some bits where the wiring wouldn't allow it to sit flat, hence the odd overlap area.

After a good watering and mulch with the dry grass, the bed is finished for now!  I'm planning to fertilize them soon with a liquid fertilizer.  I like to let them settle in a bit before feeding them.  Does anyone know if Tomorite is okay for corn or should I use something more general purpose?

Also, I'm trying to decide what to put in the corner area between the raised bed, steps and corn bed.  It's quite triangular, though I had planned to pull up the other steps too so could be larger.  Was thinking either a companion flower for pest reduction (The raised bed will be mainly squashes) or possibly parsnips?  Any recommendations?  I don't want something that will shadow over the squashes too much.

The Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh

Banana flower

 This is pretty late, but for my birthday in February we visited The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.  Though it was generally soggy and not greatly flourishing outdoors, they have 10 glasshouses with individually controlled temperature environments, so they can grow a broad variety of plants at any time of the year.  These are a select few of the 1000s of photos I took on the trip!

The gorgeous glasshouse in the winter sun (and captured hubby standing admiring it too!)

Inside the glasshouse there were all sorts of different areas.  I have to say I loved the tropical ones the most for their range of colours!

Those green bits = bananas!

Cocoa pods

A maturing pineapple

Sorry - camera a little steamed up!

There were so many gorgeous flowers!

No idea what this is, but it looks very alien!!

There was even a range of fascinating and unusual leaves

Odd leaves didn't look like a real plant at first, but they are!

In the cactus and succulents glasshouse

There was even a Robin in there!

 Outside crocuses were one of the few plants growing happily outdoors on February 26th, literally coating the ground!

Crocuses

So much detail in tiny crocuses

 The rhododendrons were also out in a range of buds and full flowers.  

Rhododendron 

You're allowed to take photos as long as you don't sell them (I think you can sell them but you need permission).  I'll certainly be getting some of these beautiful plants made up as prints for my own wall though!!

If you're ever in Edinburgh, drop by the Gardens - outside is free entry, and the Glasshouse is a bargain £5 per person to the whole thing.  As you can see, even during Winter there's plenty to see, so its worth going at any time of the year.  There's also student gardens and vegetable patches to visit, though these were pretty quiet in February.

Strawberries were almost on the way out...

You'll have to wait for the Malta updates yet I'm afraid, as I still haven't uploaded my pics.  Instead I bring you my overwintered strawberries.

Before I went to Malta in mid-March I saw this!  My first strawberry was appearing after all my strawberries had been overwintering in the greenhouse.  I had several flower heads appear in December but they were too cold to set fruit.

As you may notice looking closely at the flower head stalk above the fruiting one, my poor strawberries have been overrun by aphids.  When I returned from Malta the green foliage was mostly brown on all of my plants and this strawberry was nowhere to be seen.

Excuse the weeds between the slabs please - not got to weeding this part of the garden yet

I've had the strawberries sitting outside for about a week now, trying to get the greenfly away from the rest of my greenhouse.  They've been looking steadily worse each day and I decided yesterday it was time to let go.  So as I went to throw them out I of course saw new growth appearing in all of them!

I decided to prune down all the dead and dying foliage to allow the new growth a chance.  Pretty much all of them look like this now.  I left some old stalks as I didn't want to risk cutting too close to the new growth.

I left flowers on some, as most still had flowers, but I pruned them off the ones that didn't look like they were going to survive anyway.

I also treated them with a nice organic pest deterrent.   I've heard garlic and chilli combined are supposed to ward of particularly aphids, but apparently most insects.  Be careful not to go too far with the garlic, because it can put off beneficial insects too.  Hubby had just so happened to have made a fresh batch of pureed garlic, ginger and chilli paste for culinary use.  I used just about 1/3 of a teaspoon in a spray bottle, topped it up with water and shook it up.  I sprayed all of the strawberries and poured some directly over the worst aphid infested plants.  They are still alive today (the plants that is) but I've noticed there are certainly less greenfly hanging on.  Hopefully if I continue to treat them this way they'll leave my poor strawberries alone.  I see now why strawberries are considered the most pesticide-exposed fruits in the supermarket.

Anyone else find strawberries to be an aphid-magnet?  Are some varieties more susceptible than others?  Where are all the ladybirds this year?

Autumn Colours

Summer...

Autumn :)

(Sorry these were taken at dusk and the light is pretty rubbish)

Tomorrow I'm revamping the garden and going to buy compost and set up a bunch of raised beds.  I've also applied for a job this morning, had a driving lesson where I made huge progress, and came home to find I had an interview next week for said job.  And this is a biggie one, so fingers crossed. Sadly between work and prep for the interview I won't get a lot of time in the garden this week, but fortunately its come at a time when everything is slowing down anyway!

Cold & Wet

Apologies for the extreme lack of updates!!  There are several reasons for this, one being that when I'm at work its always a 10-hour shift, plus commute, and I've had to pick up some extra shifts because the boss has been ill and I'm basically management when he's not there.  Another has been that its super soaking and cold right now, and really too wet to do anything in the garden right now.  But now that our first frost has finally happened (over a month later than predicted on the weather website I checked it out on in August) the rain has gone off but its extremely windy!

I fleeced a few of my plants, my almond, who went into autumn mode before any other plants, my goji berry (who still thinks its the height of summer and is producing new branches and is filled with greener than green leaves) and my blackcurrant, which is just realising autumn has appeared.  I noticed some white fungal symptoms on some of the leaves of my goji berry, and trimmed some of the branches which seemed worst effected, but I'll have to look into what it might be to stop it getting any worse.  So far the fleecing has proved to be problematic and helps the plants catch the wind and causes their pots to fall over, but thankfully the goji berry has a massive heavy pot, otherwise I would be quite worried, because its a huge plant!  Should I be fleecing my other fruit bushes?  They seem quite acclimatised, particularly the blueberry who is a gorgeous shades of red and orange.  I wouldn't have bothered with my almond, since its already pretty barky, but its still very small and having never grown one before I thought it best to be safe.

My tomatoes are STILL producing new tomatoes, but I picked the massive giants I was waiting on to ripen indoors, but they're being pretty stubborn! Much of my greenhouse doesn't seem to know its nearing winter...

Check out these triplets:

My strawberries also seem to think its perfect fruiting time...though I've heard that sometimes these are planted for a November harvest before, so maybe its normal?  They were planted late, I was hoping to try to overwinter some.

Got my new fruit bush canes planted, potted and out.  (Loganberry, Raspberry, Gooseberry, Blackberry and a new variety of Blueberry) I still have a lot of weeding to make new beds to do, and planning the beds as well as finally getting my garlic and onions out.  So hopefully lots of updates to come now its drier!