Things are Growing!

As the weather is getting warmer lots of the seeds I have planted have started to grow! As well as the onions I have spinach and peas.

 The strawberries and potatoes are also doing well.

Onions!

The onion seed I planted have finally sprouted! Here they are growing next to the garlic.

I have also planted one in a pot and taken it into the university so that we can x-ray it. We will wait until it is a bit bigger before we start scanning it.

Herb Garden

This weekend I planted a herb garden. The herbs will be added to other food that we cook to make it extra tasty! I have decided to grow fennel, sage, parsley, mint, thyme and curry plant. The mint plant smells the best!

Preparing for Chickens

When we bought our house there was a large chicken coop in the garden. We plan to get chickens as pets to that we can have fresh eggs. Before the chickens arrive we had to prepare the coop for them. For this we had two jobs to do. Firstly, some of the wood in the corner of the chicken house had become rotten because it had got really wet. When wood rots you need to remove it or the rot will spread through all the wood and the structure will become unstable. So we cut away the rotten wood and replaced it with some special treated wood that should rot slower.

We also had to build some nesting boxes to give the chickens somewhere comfortable and safe to lay their eggs. We made them out of an old bookcase and an off cut of laminate flooring.

Seedlings

Some of the seeds I planted have started to grow! I now have garlic, spinach and cauliflower seedlings.

Unfortunately, no red onions have appeared where I planted seeds. This probably means they are not going to grow. One of the frustrating aspects to growing your own vegetables is when things don't grow and you can't see if anything is happening until they appear above the soil. This gave me an idea for another x-ray experiment. Can we watch an onion growing beneath the soil? I'm going to plant a seed in a pot so it can be x-rayed as it grows.

Planting potatoes

I am growing potatoes in bags in my garden. This is to save space in my garden for other plants. I am using black garden bags, which are a bit thicker than your normal bin bag. I put some holes in the bottom so that water can drain out. I buried 4 to 5 seed potatoes in each bag and watered them. Now I have to wait for them to grow.

Mini Greenhouse

This weekend I built myself a mini greenhouse. I took some plastic shelves and wrapped a clear (apart from some goldfish!) shower curtain around them. This will keep the plants warm and protect the seedlings from insects. I placed the mini greenhouse next to the wall of the house. The bricks will be heated by the sun and hopefully some of this heat will be reflected into the greenhouse keeping it warmer at night.

Digging Done

We finished all the digging! As well as digging up the lawn, we also added some new top soil to the beds. This is a picture of it in front of our garage. We had to use a wheelbarrow to move it all into the back garden. This soil is half soil and half compost so it will provide lots of nutrients for the plants.

I have planted garlic, onion, spinach and pea seeds outside so far. I have also planted cauliflowers inside. I am also chitting some potatoes. This means that I am leaving some potatoes in the sun, inside so they are warm, to encourage them to sprout shoots. You might see this happen if you have had some potatoes in your kitchen for some time. Hopefully, this will mean lots of delicious vegetables later in the year. This is a picture of the finished beds. You can just about make out pieces of string which show where I planted the seeds.

I have covered some of the soil with boards. This covers some of the area where I haven't planted seeds and should help stop any weeds from growing.

Digging begins

With some help from my parents, we dug up the plants that were in the wrong place in the garden and put them into pots or planted them in the chicken coop. When we get some chickens this will give them an interesting environment to live in.

Nick cut up some wood and made a raised bed where two vegetable plot will be.

While digging, we found that the soil in our garden isn't very deep. Underneath the soil there is a layer of hard-core, stones and bricks, that the vegetable won't be able to grow through.

This means that I can't grow long root vegetables like carrots and parsnips.

We are going to build two more raised beds, but we have to remove the grass first.

New home, new garden

Recently, Nick and I moved to a new house and we now have our own garden. I have decided I want to grow my own vegetables. At the moment it has an area with plant and a big lawn as well as a shed and a chicken coop! I need more plots for planting my vegetables. So I drew plan of what I wanted the garden to look like

Then I measured it out in the garden and marked it out string

 

Now I will have to do a lot of digging! I will let you know how I get on.