We have had ups and downs during this year with our gardens. Here is a round up of how Phyllis’ gardening went..
Growing in Pots Door Step PlantingFrank’s WellHomemade Planter
These pictures are from Phyllis’ front garden, it gets full sun most of the day. The lovely well planter was made by Frank, he has hung bird feeders and hidden bird boxes in the roof. He also made the wooden tiered planter where the vegetables are growing for their yummy, fresh Christmas dinner.
Front GardenChristmas Dinner
Phyllis had a bumper crop of fruit and vegetables this year, here are a few pictures to show how well she did!
What a CropCarrotsBeetrootPeppersTomatoes Potatoes Netting From Pests New Raised BedsGrowing SeedlingsBeautiful Baby Cucumber Butternut Squash Chillies
It’s been a hard year and being in the garden has given Phyllis a project which she has thoroughly enjoyed. Next year Phyllis is going to focus on flowers, including a wildflower patch to encourage wildlife.
Leaves Turning RedFuchsia Canopy of ClimbersGrowing Well
No better way to prove how amazing it is to grow your own, a delicious fresh Sunday lunch! Where’s mine?
When Sophie and I walked around the garden, I asked her to pick out her favourite fruit and vegetables we are growing. Well, she chose these lovely Lilies. Not quite what I asked for but she’s right they are lovely.
Orange LilyWhite Lilies
While we are talking Lilies, look at our amazing 8 foot Lily trees. They tower so high and they are so fragrant you can smell them all around the garden.
Back to our fruit and vegetables, below is our cucumber and we have grown conjoined twins! Double the trouble and size! Poppy ate it in one sitting!! She said they were delicious.
Our apples are coming on nicely, they are getting plumper, Monty Don says you can tell when they are ready as they twist off easily. Guess we’ve got to keep waiting. Be worth it though. We also have onions, tomatoes and strawberries growing strong.
ApplesOnionsTomatoes Strawberries
In the greenhouse the Luffa vines are growing tall and strong. When they fruit the children are going to make luffa soaps.
Luffa
The Cucumbers and Chillies have now left the greenhouse and are in the garden growing strong. Tracie watered everything and added tomato feed to give them a boost.
Our new project this summer is the bath pond. We had our bathroom turned into a wet room and thought the cast iron bath could be up cycled into a large pond. Our growing tadpoles and frogs will have more space and we might even get some fish! We will add photos next time.
Phyllis has been busy collecting her fruits and vegetables that she started growing earlier in the year.
BeetrootPepper
Phyllis has grown some lovely beetroot which is Tracie’s favourite. They are tasty in a salad or as a compliment in a comforting Scouse. The peppers in the greenhouse are looking good! Chloe loves to munch on these for a healthy snack.
Tomatoes Pumpkin
At the moment the tomatoes are still green, but by next week with a lot of sunny weather, they will soon turn red and be ready to eat with the beetroot in a summer salad!
CarrotsAmazing
The carrots are looking fabulous watch out for any rabbits Phyllis this is their favourite snack!
As you can see, Phyllis has a vast variety of fruits and vegetables growing. Looks like all her time in the garden has paid off.
This is my Dad and Rosie’s garden in Lincolnshire, it is so beautiful and well kept. They both must spend all their time mowing lawns, dead-heading flowers and watering the plants.
Rosie has been working hard to produce a wonderful wildlife garden ready for my dad’s bees to arrive.
The Bee Hives
The garden has grown up so tall and I bet there are 1000’s of different insects thriving, living in the flowers.
Pathway of Wildlife
My dad has mowed a pathway to enable them to get through to the hives and greenhouse. I just want to go and run through, looking at all the different flowers there are.
All Dad and Rosie’s hard work has paid off and here is the evidence Thousands of bees have made it their home. They will be busy bees making lots and lots of delicious honey!
How do you all like your honey? I like mine on a chunk of crusty bread mmmm. Hopefully, later in the year I will be able to post photos of the honey!
We have been so busy over the last month. Today we were able to harvest our Mangetout. The little seedlings tried them once Tracie had washed them.
Three seedlings wanted to try them and no matter how much we encouraged Sophie she wasnt up for tasting them.
Alfie and Georgia loved the Mangetout and ate loads but Emma and Fearne were not so keen. We loved the faces Fearne made, at least they tried them!
Mangetout
Having a Taste
Alfie
Georgia
Fearne
Thumbs up
Below are our other tasty fruits and vegetables we have growing in the garden.
Cucumber
Tomatoes
Ginger
Leaves
Strawberries
Thats not a vegetable. It’s a massive Lily!
This is a collection of photos of the plants the Rangers and Wanderers wanted me to post.
Allium
Our New Strawberry, we sowed in February
Hosta
Amazing Detail
Flanders Poppy
Fizzy’s Hiding Place
Hot Poker
Peony
Plum
We also had a few whoopsies! We had some visitors come and make holes in our cabbages! Georgia thought it was a hedgehog, Fearne thought it was a snail and Sophie said “I don’t know Tracie!” When I told them all it was a slug they all said yucky!
Slug
Cabbage
Our other problem was the giant Poppies, they have over taken our vegetable patch!
Gemma’s vegetable beds are amazing and full of lush green produce. When the days are sunny Gemma gets Chloe to help water them.
Vegetable Beds
All Growing Lush
Gemma loves Pac Choi and hers have grown really well. Once they start to flower, which is called bolting, the seeds grow for Gemma to collect for sowing next year!
Gemma’s radishes are amazing, they are as big as a large marbles.
Unfortunately my radishes have not turned out so well! Mine are as big as a grape, but not so juicy.
What a wet May we have all had! Its been so hard gardening because every time we go to do some, the weather changes!!
The garden has loved the wet weather and all the plants and grass are all growing lovely.
Early in the year, we sowed tomatoes in various ways to see which would grow better.
Jacy’s Tomato Sowed Early in the Year
Jacy sowed his tomato seed in a Bisto pot, he thought it would protect the roots when he potted it on. Eventually the Bisto pot will disintegrate when the plant is placed in the grow bag giving the roots extra space to grow.
What a fantastic idea Jacy had. His tomato plant is the strongest, tallest and has a tomato already growing on it! We are so impressed that we are collecting Bisto pots now!
The pictures below are of Tracie holding Jacy’s tomato plant up so you can see the amazingly strong roots!
The middle picture is a tomato plant we grew in the green house in a plastic pot. As you can see there are less roots and they are wonky (we do love wonky veg so thats ok!) they are much smaller, thin and scraggly. The bottom pictures (above) are of our other seedlings which we are growing in toilet rolls and they seem nice and strong! We will start hardening them off soon, ready to be planted among our flowers.
Above is our pot we sowed the Melon seeds in. We have no idea how but we have a tomato plant and weeds! No sign of a melon!
We have tried to grow cucumbers as we had a bumper crop last year. Unfortunately they didn’t grow even though we sowed 6!
We decided to go to the garden centre and buy one already established. Within 2 days they had slug damage! So back to the garden centre we went. This time we have put a water marker on it, covered the pot rim with copper (to keep slugs away) and placed it on gravel. We will see how they go in our next garden post.
Today the seedlings have celebrated National Nurses Day. Within our setting, we have seven Medical staff parents and we want to make them feel special for all the hard work they do everyday.
The children made their parents some lovely cards to thank them.
Thank You Cards
Between the Seedlings we have two doctors, three nurses, a Mental Health Worker and a Maternity Nurse so whatever happens, we’ve got it covered!
Emma used bandages and plasters to show the children the kind of work our nurses do. The children had the experience of role play using the bandages and Doctor’s bag.
The children were all so caring Emma and Tracie think we are educating a new generation of medical staff! So worth our efforts! You never know, they may be looking after us one day! Is that a good thing? Haha.
Georgia was off yesterday so we celebrated again today as her mummy works for the NHS.
Today, in between the rain and the wind, the Seedlings braved the weather to plant up the Strawberry wall. Tracie prepared the wall by filling it with peat-free compost.
The Living Wall
At the weekend Tracie dug up the strawberry plants from our plot that the seedlings made last year, she prepared them for the seedlings to replant in the wall.
Martie Had a Go!
Fearne Was So Gentle
We have decided to build a new pond in the old strawberry bed for all our growing frogs!
This is Mr Frog, he made Tracie jump! She was sitting on the sofa watching us play when the frog jumped next to her to see what she was doing! We all thought it was funny! Tracie very carefully picked up Mr Frog and took him over to the pond.
Tracie's Treasures 