The Potting Shed Playdough

My gardening bug has extended into playdough play. Behold, the worst playdough I have ever made. It was supposed to be 'soil' playdough, but I couldn't for the life of me make brown. I ended up with a khaki green colour and because of all the food colouring I added to try and make brown it was too watery so I had to add extra flour but then it was too crumbly. Not that the girls complained!

To the 'soil' playdough play I added some clean plant pots, lollipop sticks, glass beads, pea seeds and a pen. Poppet set about filling up the pots and putting the 'seeds' in and even labelling the sticks - she was giving me the finished pots and telling me who they were for - one was for daddy, one for her little sister and the others were for little friends she has made at playgroup. 

They've been playing with it for a few weeks now. It's dried out a bit and has quite a lot of peas and pen ink in it. Little was a bit too fond of putting the glass beads into her mouth so these have been taken away now to remove the temptation.

For a change I gave her the playdough with magnetic numbers and she really enjoyed pressing all of the numbers into the playdough and then carefully removing them all again and putting them back into the tub. Very methodical. When she was done she went into the cupboard to retrieve the much-loved glass beads and a cocktail umbrella and stuck them in too. She was concentrating so hard with her tongue poking out! Unfortunately after a while the glass beads went into the mouth again and had to be removed from the play. I'm amazed at how much use this terrible coloured and textured playdough has gotten! Hopefully the next batch will be a lot nicer.

Poppet: 3yrs

Little: 20 mos

A Rather Large Gardening Update

At last, a blog post! Mostly I have been preoccupied (read, obsessive) with gardening matters. With the extension finished we can finally focus on getting the garden up to scratch and the nicer weather (especially in the evenings) means we've been spending lots of time outdoors doing just that. Even in not nice weather we've been out there; I would contend there is no nicer place to be in a rain shower than a greenhouse.

I've big plans to make the garden child-friendly so we can spend lots more time outside, including a sensory garden area on the decking, a mud kitchen for outdoor culinary creations (not that Little needs anymore encouragement to eat soil), turning the vegetable plot into raised beds so it can be more easily accessed by the littles, a wendyhouse (have to talk very nicely to Grandad), an alpine garden, a fruit patch, ooooh I get all carried away! I have been reading a lot of gardening blogs and websites for inspiration and bookmarking ideas.

So this is what we have managed to do so far. Our garden was quite a mess after the scaffolding etc... came down so it has taken a lot of work to get it looking tidy again. Behold, a lot of photos. I love gardening before and afters.

We chitted our potatoes (in bun tins) and planted them out in our lawn borders and one row at the bottom of the veg plot. I chose 'Accord', a variety known for its scab resistance as last year we had a bit of a problem with it so fingers crossed we get some lovely scab free potatoes!

Potatoes growing in the borders

I let Poppet choose what else to grow in her little garden this year and straightaway she replied "strawberries!".  So we planted 10 strawberry plants and already they are full of little green strawberries that Poppet is very excited to check up on. It's a first growing strawberries for us so hopefully it is fruitful!

Planting strawberries

Poppet's play garden is looking very productive, and this was taken a couple of weeks ago - the 4 cabbage plants are ginormous now. She also has purple-sprouting broccoli plants (we got an amazing amount of broccoli just from these 2 plants!), lavender, thyme, lupins, alpine strawberries and a willow tree. She loves having her own little bit of garden - she smells her thyme and lavender, gets rid of 'naughty' slugs or snails she spots because they 'eat my broccoli ', but any worms she finds get a very warm welcome as she picks them up and carries them around trying to find their 'mothers'. She likes worms because 'they help the plants to grow' so is always careful to place them back down near a plant. She also cautions any birds that happen to land in the garden "don't eat my strawberries!".

         

My dad gave me an early 30th birthday present of wood and stakes to make the much longed for raised beds for the vegetables! This is what the vegetable plot looked like before:

Happy Birthday to me

We did a lot of digging and weeding over a few evenings and then daddy put together the beds with some help from Poppet (with her pretend chainsaw). She loves to help her daddy,

Then a few more days spent weeding and digging and raking to get them ready for planting. Poppet really liked helping. Once Little went down for her afternoon nap, Poppet would fetch our wellies and suggest we go out to do some digging, and bring some "appletini" (which is her word for Ovaltine).
And here they are now!

Finished raised beds!

After filling the raised beds with our brussel sprouts, 1 courgette plant, radishes, carrots and swiss chard there was still loads of space so I bought lots of lovely baby veg plants from the local garden centre. So now we have calabrese, purple sprouting broccoli, romanesco, pak choi, peas, mangetout, beetroot, little gem lettuce, leeks and kale. Quite a few of these are firsts for me; already the pak choi has been a bit disappointing as the hot weather we have been having caused it to bolt. 

We have still to finish putting down weed-suppressing membrane in the pathways and then cover them with bark but it is already a vast improvement to what we had before! I love the little network of paths and the girls already seem to enjoy exploring them which was the plan with this layout. I wanted to make the veg garden a place they could play in, and I read that raised beds are much better for gardens with children because they are less likely to stand all over the plants.

                                                 

I didn't take a before picture of this area between the greenhouse and garden fence but it was basically big weeds and concrete slabs and glass. After clearing it all and digging it over we have reclaimed it as garden, with a little walkway created from old kerb stones. We planted a rhubarb plant that my dad gave us from his rhubarb so I'm hoping it takes and next year we can enjoy rhubarb from the garden, and the plan is to plant some raspberry bushes in the autumn too so it can be our little fruit corner.

                                                   

I caved and bought some new packets of seeds......it was just too hard to resist!   I love James Wong's seed collection and blog and would love his book Homegrown Revolution (hint hint J it's my birthday soon, this will be a good test to see if you read this!). It's all about growing interesting and unusual varieties of plants here in the UK. I've started off with Cucamelon which is described as a 'vigorous trailer or climber, which is relatively easy to grow. It produces an abundance of fruit resembling tiny watermelons, which taste a bit like cucumber but with a citrus tang.'  How could anyone not want to try this!!

It took weeks to germinate and I almost gave up on it but I now have 3 tiny cucamelon seedlings in the greenhouse! It was a happy day when I finally spotted a little leaf curling to the surface. Can't wait to have some exciting new fruits/veg to introduce the girls to! If these work out I plan to try some more adventurous seeds next year. The other packet of seeds I bought was Atlantic Giant Pumpkin and we have ended up with one strong little plant, so we hope to have a mammoth pumpkin come October! 

So that was a little (big) update to get me back into the swing of blogging. I felt rather a lot of pressure for the first post in a while to be good, but figured I should just bite the bullet and write one so the next isn't too daunting! 

                                              

                                                  

                                               

Poppet: 3yrs

Little: 20 mos

P.S. Sorry the fonts in this post had a mind of their own.

Some Spring Sowing

We spent a lovely afternoon in the greenhouse eagerly sowing seeds; as usual I have probably planted far too many but I get a bit overwhelmed by the choice. Poppet was my trusty helper as usual. She loves having her own little bench down at her level where she can potter about planting seeds and watering them like mummy.

I have tried very hard this year to not spend lots of money on seeds so have been using surplus from last year, along with a Funky Veg Kit I got for Christmas from my sister, and some freebies we got as well.

Poppet chose what seeds to sow first and chose Purple Haze carrots. She was quite excited by the prospect of purple carrots. These will be ready to harvest mid August and should be interesting! Together we filled up the seed tray with compost - Poppet has her own little trowel that she loves using. Then we wrote a plant label - I wrote on one side and Poppet carefully scribbled on the other. On later plant labels if she ever found one with a blank side she would exclaim "you missed one!" and add some scribbles to it.

Carrot seeds are really little so quite hard for little ones to sow; Poppet's ended up all in one side of the tray so I spread them around a little bit for her. Then she 'put them to bed' by covering them with a light layer of compost. Finally we watered them, although we should have really done that first as Poppet's overzealous watering means the seeds got washed around the tray a bit.

We planted tomato seeds, which we got free from Heinz Ketchup - they are the San Marzano variety which I can't wait to try because they are the ones I really like from Marks and Spencers. Plus I love a freebie. We also planted Tigerella tomato seeds that were in my Funky Veg Kit and produce striped tomatoes. We used a sheet of perspex that we found as well as some old tomato and grape punnets as mini propagators for the tomato seeds.

Poppet planted some more pea seeds by herself, they are much better for little fingers to plant. First she makes a little hole with her finger and then pops a seed in. A couple of holes were left seedless so I had to point them out to her. We planted some peas last autumn that will be ready early in the summer but these will be ready a bit after that ensuring we have a continued supply of fresh peas! We only use them for snacking; Poppet loves eating peas like sweets straight from a peapod, Little has yet to experience it but she is not one to turn down food.

We also planted Little Gem lettuce, French radishes, Swiss Chard 'Brightlights', Chantanay carrots, red brussel sprouts, Mazur lettuce, yellow courgettes, coriander, parsley and a singly solitary jalapeno chilli pepper seed (for daddy). Poppet was very interested to see what the seeds looked like and especially liked the big courgette seeds. 

We have even had our first harvest of the year from the garden - our purple sprouting broccoli was finally ready to be picked from Poppet's garden. She was very proud of it and rightly so although the fact that it turned green after cooking disappointed her a bit!

Poppet: 3yrs 3mos

Little: 18 mos

Greenhouse Spring Clean

I actually really look forward to my annual greenhouse spring clean! As soon as the weather starts getting warmer my mind turns to gardening and what seeds we are going to sow this year. I love getting everything ready to start anew.

Little went down for her afternoon nap and Poppet got herself ready to help with the cleaning - complete with wellingtons, tutu, chalk make-up and a string of pearls.

The greenhouse was packed full so we started by emptying everything out, trying to remain calm despite the cobwebs and spiders! I felt itchy all day afterwards. We sorted out all the plant pots according to size, binned the broken ones, organised our tools and watering cans (there were two big ones and two little ones so they were assigned to the appropriate family members), washed Poppet's gardening gloves and decided to buy mama some new ones.

Then we brushed the whole place down; Poppet was very keen to help and made sure her own little bench was clean. I brought in a basin of hot soapy water and we wiped down all the benches

Little woke up and joined us so I gave the girls the task of washing old plant pots. It was raining by this point, and Poppet also naughtily decided to pour plant pots full of water over Little's head but luckily she had a good raincoat on. They had great fun 'washing' the pots, it was funny how much they loved playing in the rain. While they were busy I quickly washed all of the seed trays (with the outdoor tap which sprayed up everywhere so I also got very wet) and assembled everything back into the greenhouse ready to plant seeds the next day.

 

Then it was indoors to take off our wet clothes, have a bath to clean up (and kill off any spiders that I was paranoid had got under our clothes) and get into cosy clothes to finish off the afternoon watching Frozen.

Poppet: 3yrs 3mos

Little: 18mos

An Autumn Gardening Update

The foundations of our old second greenhouse (that has now gone on to a new owner) have been turned into a raised bed, giving us a lovely new vegetable plot to fill.

A bit of research online told me that garlic was the ideal crop for November sowing and we managed to pick up a bag at our local garden centre. This is my first time growing garlic but from what I read it is pretty simple so I am looking forward to when we can harvest it next June! Poppet loves the job of unpeeling the garlic and splitting up the cloves whenever I am cooking so I knew she would enjoy helping plant them too. I also found that you can plant early varieties of peas now for a June harvest, so ordered a packet of 'Douche Provence' online (we couldn't find any in the gardening centre).

It was a momentous morning as Poppet finally managed to get all her fingers in the correct bits of her gardening gloves! She couldn't actually do anything with the gloves on but that is besides the point.

It was quite a windy day so this is Poppet getting a bit worried about the the wind, but after some reassurance she was happy to continue.

I dug the trench and Poppet dropped the peas in, then 'put them to bed' by covering them over with soil with her trowel.

I got carried away and also picked up these spring cabbage plant seedlings at the garden centre so we put a row of them in there as well. I'm not sure if they will survive our icy weather recently, maybe I should have covered them with something!

So that summarises our morning gardening! We didn't even need to water everything as it rained all afternoon for us. 

Our First Vegetable Plot

Our very first harvest

One of my favourite things about our new house is it's garden (I say new, but we have been here nearly two years now). It came complete with a greenhouse (or two) and a sizeable, if neglected, vegetable plot. The first year we were here we didn't do much garden wise as the house needed a lot of work and I was heavily pregnant in the summer.

So this year was the first year we attempted proper vegetable growing. We have had so many great harvests from the garden! It has been such a great experience for the girls seeing from start to finish where their vegetables are coming from. Little has been too little to help much but Poppet has been involved in every stage, from the planting, to the weeding, to watering, to her favourite part - the harvesting. In the height of summer it would be our routine while Little was napping in the morning to visit the garden and see what was ready for picking, and everyday we would return with something. I think I probably bored facebook with my 'look what we grew!" posts but I was so proud of our hauls!

It has definitely encouraged the girls to try foods they wouldn't previously. Poppet just would not eat tomatoes until we grew them. Now, I can hardly make it back to the house from the greenhouse before she has popped all the delicious sweet sunlight-warm tomatoes into her mouth. She will happily crunch raw runner-beans straight from the plant. And her absolute favourite food is pickled beetroot! Actually it hasn't made much change to Little's eating habits as she already eats pretty much anything you put in front of her.

Gardening helped Poppet get over her dirt-aversion. This was a girl who didn't like getting her hands dirty and hated being barefoot in grass. She just loved helping to dig up the potatoes especially when she found a worm!

Making friends with the worms

Trying to photo our veggie loot before Poppet eats it all

Not strictly vegetable related, but our sunflower tunnel eventually got big enough to be a tunnel of sorts, Poppet liked it anyway but it looked a bit untidy. My plan next year is for a sweet pea tunnel, but even bigger! Shhh, I haven't broken it to the other adult of the house yet......

The Sunflower Tunnel

We had an abundance of tomatoes, they were my favourite thing to grow I think. Poppet liked to go collecting the ripe ones "There's another one mama!" and shared my annoyance when we returned from our holidays to discover a cat had made his bed in some plants and trampled them. Now when she sees a cat in the garden she asks "Is that a bloody cat mum?" Oooops!

The sweetcorn looked really impressive, and Poppet already LOVES corn on the cob so I though we couldn't go wrong but our homegrown ones just didn't taste as good as shop bought ones so that is one vegetable I will stick to buying rather than growing.... which is a shame because Poppet loved pulling the husks off (which is actually quite hard!) and then unwrapping them, and seemed just as amazed each time to find sweetcorn inside!

Pulling off a sweetcorn husk

Our pumpkin plants had been through a lot so I was not expecting much from them! Poppet planted the seeds back in April with her Papa but her seedling care left a lot to be desired. Three small plants survived that we transplanted out to the vegetable plot and watched flower. Lovely big yellow flowers. At first all the flowers were male ones and I was getting worried we would get no pumpkins but then the female ones appeared with their swollen tiny baby pumpkins and Poppet loved watching them grow. Until the day that Grandad arrived with his digger and promptly dumped a load of topsoil over them (well it had to go somewhere!).

A 'baby' pumpkin

We managed to rescue two pumpkins and dig them free of the soil, and waited to see if they would orange up in time for Halloween. They didn't - one died and the other stayed green and grapefruit sized. We will succeed next year!

Eating a bean

Runner beans were another easy crop, they just kept on coming! I still have bags of them in the freezer. Poppet loved picking them, and even eating them raw but she was not a fan of them cooked. Neither was Little or Daddy, so maybe we will try another bean next time.

We will definitely be growing beetroot again next year. It was so easy to grow and Poppet loved pulling them up out of the ground. We pickled jars and jars of the stuff, had it raw sliced into salads, roasted it, made risotto out of it (this was the only form of it that Poppet would not eat). Poppet particularly liked using it as a lipstick at dinner time.

Pulling up the beetroots

Holding her prize aloft

So there it is, our first year of vegetable growing. Hopefully next year will be even more successful! And I will have another helper in the form of Little who will be a lovely age next Spring to help plant some seeds.

Poppet: 2yrs 9mos

Little: 1 yr 1 mos