About

About the Blog:
I love making blogs, designing them and tweaking them until they are just right...then I loose interest in updating because I have 5 million blogs for different things.  So basically I'm trying to make the ultimate combination blog for me, where I compile gardening, recipes, healthy living, crafts and projects, making my own cosmetics and general sustainable living stuff together as one.  I'm hoping this will help me succeed in being a better, more attentive blogger...

About Me:
I'm a 25 year old woman, living in Scotland, UK who has a degree in the technical and practical side of making clothing.  As a vegetarian who loves, loves, loves cooking, and preferring to make dishes and products where I know what are in, them naturally I turned to gardening!  The hope is that I end up with a mainly self-sustaining vegetable garden, at least that is the plan!!  My husband is less than enthused by my monthly forced tours of the greenhouse, but doesn't complain about the nicely flavoured dishes put down in front of him!

Location & Gardening Experience Types:
I live currently in Edinburgh, where we get a lot of strong, strong winds.  Previously I lived in Dundee (further North than where I am now) and Galashiels (further South in the Scottish Borders).  My habit started as a student, during my summer holidays.  I began growing in pots on a windowsill in Dundee, which soon grew to every windowsill in the flat once re-locating back to Galashiels.  I successfully grew a lovely container garden (as I had no outside area to actually use, everything was grown on the inside windowsills) of peppers, chillis (Which I managed to overwinter in my first year!) tomatoes, gooseberries (But had to throw away before any fruits appeared because I had to move house), spinach, lettuce and courgettes.  I did manage to germinate and grow 2 ft sweetcorn, but it never came to fruition.  And there were a few other experiments which never became anything either (namely squashes).  So I have a good bit of experience with indoor, container gardening.

Now I have a greenhouse and large garden, but its mostly slabbed so still everything is container grown, but I plan to put in my first raised beds for next season and get rid of those horrendously ugly slabs.

Favourites:
I love to grow courgettes because of their fascinating trailing, weaving look as they wind themselves in all sorts of directions around themselves and each other.  However, I've only ever managed to cultivate a single courgette because the male flowers all seem to appear and disappear before the female ones even appear, and only in one case did I have a male one left to fertilise the females with (again, only one of these actually managed to come to anything.  I'm thinking the container aspect of my gardening thus far has been a big factor in this, and that I also need to stage growth so that the ones which finally get onto those females are flowering ladies while the slower ones are flowering men.

I also love growing sweet potatoes.  This is the first year I've grown them (2013) from just a store-bought sweet potato, but the lovely purpley-green leaves are just stunning and look so interesting amongst the solid green of everything else.

Uses:
Since this is my combo blog, I will be showing you how I use my garden treats to feed not only me and my husband, but the creation of all sorts of cosmetics which I'm learning to make through several useful books and websites!

Most of all though, I grow because its just plain fun :)