Is that your pile of dead leaves?

Well, the net result of spending 2 months on the frontline at the other end of the country was that everything in the tunnel and everywhere else pretty much died except for the runner beans.

The runner beans had a bumper year on the other hand and clearly benefited from the lack of supervision.  We had soooo many beans.  I even salted some, tho to be honest, looking at them now, I really hope we never get that hungry.  They've kind of turned into a vegetable 'dwarf bread equivalent'.

The bottle of beans apart, last year was pretty much a bust so on with the motley, a new year beckons.

I haven't ventured out into the garden yet,  there's a bit of a pile up in the utility room and I don't have any mountaineering gear to hand.  I have, however, recieved the first of the gardening catalogues and spent many happy hours leafing through it and deciding which seeds to go look for on the internetz.

So after extensive research (playing on the net) and cross referencing (googling stuff) and considerable agonising, I have put in my first order for this year's seeds.  I am attempting to be more disciplined about it than usual by making a list of things I want to grow and dividing it into sowing months.   Thus all the seeds on the order are sowable now.  In theory this will stop the usual May bottleneck where I suddenly have more plants than space LOL.

So here it is:

	Tomato Black Russian 50 seeds
	Tomato Gardener's Delight 100 seeds
	Tomato Roma VF 100 seeds
	Aubergine Black Beauty 200 seeds
	Hot Pepper - Habanero Orange 25 seeds
	Hot Pepper - Tepin 10 seeds
	Sweet Pepper D'asti Giallo 50 seeds
	Onion Braunschweigi 300 seeds
	Cauliflower All The Year Round 200 seeds
	Mangetout Pea Oregon Sugar Pod 200 seeds Strawberry white soul Strawberry regina

Keep on swimming, swimming, swimming....

This one fits in  around the end of last May.

You probably know the title from Finding Nemo, sung by Dory, the very absent minded fishy freind of Nemo's Dad.  Why fish on a gardening blog? Well, that's kinda where my head is at right now.  Since my last post some idiot has put a bunch of holidays all close together and what with processing up and down the country to various relatives and working and whatnot, my brain forgot my blog password. Duh!  But I've remembered it now, as you can see.

Many things have happened, stuff has grown, I put my growhouse out in the yard and we had a gale and it fell over so many things are now randomised, which is always good for a laugh at planting out time.  I can identify things generically, but I have several varieties of tomato, some experimental, and a bunch of different cucurbitae that I can no longer tell apart (Joy!).  Suffice to say, the growhouse is now firmly attached to the fence, but the damage is done, and I should have tied it down in the first place, it's not like it didn't happen last year (just keep swimming.....that's a nice castle!.......)

The polytunnel, however, is being an absolute life saver, my beans are romping away and it's starting to look like a little enclosed jungle.  I've been short on time of late, trying to earn a living, so everything all needs potting up and planting out now and I haven't even ventured as far as the allotment yet.  Still, I saw this really cool thing about making pots out of newspaper on the Chelsea Flower Show so I'm going to give that a try.

So much stuff, so little day.  I can hear you saying 'Well stop blathering on about stuff and do some gardening' and I totally agree with you, so if you want me I'll be in the polytunnel..............

The End of the World, Part 2

The one or two people that actually read any of my blogs will be aware that I have not updated them for a while.  This was sadly due to a family bereavement which basically took the rug out from under us for a while.  I am hopeful that as the world returns to normal updates will resume.