More gardening 2013

I was going to do a knitting update as several projects have made real progress, but there's more going on in the garden at the moment so I'm doing that first!

I had a lovely day out with my Mum to the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Wisley (more in a different post), and bought a couple more plants so that I could plant up this new border. The new plants are a Physocarpus, plus a Heuchera "Chocolate Ruffles", to go with two Euonymus  "Emerald n' Gold" we already had, a Phlox and a rose we were given as a wedding present. Of course, it's been ridiculously warm ever since, over 30°C sometimes, so we've ended up having to water these a lot to help them settle in!

We've been able to harvest some produce already. This was the first strawberry, and we've had loads more since then. Unknown variety, I propagated our plants from runners from one plant given to us by a friend a few years ago.

The apple trees both have a lot of fruit ripening, which I've thinned out in the hope of ensuring at least some of them get as far as the eating stage. Unfortunately the squirrels love eating them before they're ripe, so we have a strong suspicion that we're not going to get to eat the ones from the espalier tree as there's no way of protecting it. This fruit below is on the standard tree, which I think we might manage to protect.

The first lot of broad beans I brought in from the garden today. Can't wait to eat them tonight, combined with...

the first crop of potatoes!

In the less edible but pretty side of gardening the Phlox paniculata is in full flower, and much loved by the bees.

All the fuchsias are developing flowers, but this one, Fuchsia Mojo Boogie is my favourite (Fuchsia Mojo is a newly bred range). We've had a few accidents with it, as the first one I had was trodden on by a builder when we had a new wall built, so I had to get replacements the next year. It's also only half-hardy so had to spend the winter in the cold frame. But worth it for the beautiful flowers.

This is my now huge Eryngium planum, which I bought for £1.50 as a teeny tiny plant last year at a nursery 'oop north (where plants are a LOT cheaper). I was hoping it would get big, as it's a really good source of nectar for insects, as well as having seed heads that look dramatic through the winter. And it has SO many more flowers on it that last year, it's brilliant. Behind it you can see the wire netting I've put up so I can espalier the Pyracanthas. (does this sound like I actually know what I'm talking about?!) The Pyracanthas were rather spiky to prune, but I did manage it with many "Ows".

I'm rather pleased with this new acquisition (as a plug plant) last year - it's a new type of Foxglove, called "Illumination Pink", which won Plant of the Year at Chelsea last year and is perennial. We've got three of them and they've all grown really well and have beautiful flowers this year. Next year it should be even bigger with even more flowers.

And this is the rather pretty Sisyrinchium, which I've had to move as it wasn't very happy where I'd originally planted it a couple of years ago. It's now flowering in its new home.

I've using the RHS' Plants for pollinators list when planning what plants to buy, as it helps you find plants that flower throughout the year.

That's all for now, I'll be back soonish for more of an update!

Gardening 2013

I don't seem to have posted about gardening yet this year. I kept forgetting to take a garden at the beginning of the month photo, so I totally lost impetus with it. Then Spring took so long arriving, for ages there wasn't much to photograph!

Since then I've made quite a bit of progress though, even if a lot of plants are still about a month behind in growing terms, and the tulips are only just dying down.

The strawberries I propagated last year have finally flowered and are growing fruit, so I've now covered them in little cages to stop the birds eating all the fruit this year(!). I'm allergic to strawberries, but the OH didn't get to eat one last year!

This is my raised bed, with square metre gardening attempt one on the go. This contains garlic, shallots, broad beans (2 sowings), purple sprouting broccoli, salad leaves (4 varieties, 2 sowings), plus marigolds and nasturtiums to attract pollinating insects and hopefully distract the aphids. Everything but the broccoli I've grown from seed - the broccoli plants were reduced to 20p at Homebase!

The broad beans are a dwarf variety but it's been so windy they kept flopping over on top of other things so I ended up staking them anyway.

I'm rather pleased with how that square has gone. This is the square a month ago. The square to the left of it is a little further behind and has later sowings of salad leaves, radishes, broad beans, plus beetroot and cauliflower in it.

 I've also planted up containers of herbs to have near the kitchen door: thyme, rosemary, lavender, mint (2 varieties), bergamot, chives and parsley. There are also four tomato plants here as well, but they've only just flowered. And we've created a sitting-out area on the patio, with a new little table, plus some fuchsias I grew from cuttings taken last year, a rose that has moved house with me from Newark and a heuchera that just refuses to grow planted in the border.

All of that gardening is new this year, and I'm glad to finally get vegetables more into production than before. Both of our apple trees are also covered in fruit this year, so we should hopefully get a crop (they were planted 2.5 years ago, but we removed all the fruit in the first year to let the roots develop and the small harvest was eaten by something last year!).

Knitting and holiday updates to follow!

Of kitchens and heffalumps and other knitted things

I haven't really disappeared off the face of the earth. I've just been a teeny tiny bit distracted by having a new kitchen. Little did I realise how disruptive this was going to be, or how long it was going to take, plus all the new muscles I'd develop carting the contents of the kitchen upstairs to store, and then back down again afterwards.

The old kitchen

The other side of the old kitchen

All the planning, disruption and work has been well well worth it though, as the new kitchen is both lovely and light, as well as giving us more storage space and being easier to clean.

The new gleaming kitchen

Lots of storage space!

I have got quite a lot of knitting done, although it had to happen around all the dust and everything else. We had to eat out every night for about three weeks (ouch) which cut into the time I had available. My main project during this time was a present for my nephew, who had suddenly requested a soft toy for his seventh birthday - a bit of a surprise, as I'd been expecting a list of Desired Lego.

I'd wanted an excuse to knit the Elijah pattern by Ysolda Teague, and this looked like the perfect opportunity. Heffalump was knitted using Sirdar Countrystyle DK so he'd be machine washable. The pattern is great - no sewing up as you pick up stitches and knit in the round so it's a very fun pattern and was quite quick to make. I made a label to go with him too.

 I've also made some more progress with my Aeolian Shawl, and have finished the first section of the pattern, although there's still a long, long, long way to go. We received an invite to a wedding in mid-June, and I had thought about getting it finished in time to wear for that, then realised that is a bit of a vain hope as I just won't have time!

And I got my Froot Loop socks finished - this has been my default easy and portable pattern for knitting group/taking on the train etc so these got finished relatively quickly. I still really like the cheap and cheerful yarn (going to be interesting to see how well it washes), and the pattern is fun - 4 round repeat so easy to memorize.

That's all for now - but I still have various gardening updates to blog about, as well as some yarn shopping expedition(s)!

Startitis

I appear to have got a bit carried away with starting new projects, although there is a reason for the craziness, especially now I have more knitting time. I started off working on a Mini Mania Scarf, which is looking good, but the linen stitch was making my hands hurt if I did it for more than an hour, so I needed another project to work on alongside it. I decided to cast on a different lace shawl, as I was struggling with the South Seas Stole pattern, so decided to switch to something else. One of the other librarians on our knitting librarian jaunt in February was wearing a beautiful Aeolian Shawl, so I have started one of those instead. So far, so good, although it turns out I can only knit lace when I'm the only person in the house and nothing else is happening (other than the Cazalets on Radio 4), which has limited the amount of time I've spent knitting it.

I thought a nice contrast to the lace would be some aran, so I cast on Velvet Morning, which I'd planned to knit after acquiring 9 balls of Araucania Toconao in a sale from Norfolk Yarn whilst on holiday in Norwich a couple of years ago. I then acquired three more balls in contrast colours in an online sale from Stash Yarns later on.

This is lovely squishy yarn to knit with and feels wonderful. I got gauge and happily knitted away, until I checked gauge again on the Fair Isle section and realised I was way off. So, having got this far, I had to go back and start again.

 Although it turns out the variegated colour works better on 5mm needles as the pooling's been eliminated. I'm really enjoying knitting this, and using the two handed Fair Isle technique I learnt on a workshop at Get Knitted in Bristol back in 2009. I can still remember how to knit continental!

 Whilst the Fair Isle is OK for TV knitting, it really wasn't suitable for taking to a conference (too many colours, too many balls to consider alongside taking notes, and lots of aran not a great idea for on the train), so obviously I needed to start another project. This one needed to be small and portable, so I went back through my queue and chose Froot Loop, some socks that I've been wanting to do for a while. I got my 4 ply boxes out and chose some stash (funny how that's easier with the actual yarn out, rather than going through my stash catalogue). I matched it with some cheap n' cheerful Woolcraft Superwash Sock Yarn (they must have spent ages thinking up that name), purchased at the Knitting Box in Barton-upon-Humber. Actually, I'm rather pleased with the yarn, as it's nice to knit with and the colours are great.

So, I have somehow ended up with four projects on the go. Oh well, they all seem to be progressing well and variety is the spice of life...