All that comes with it

Kerry recently alerted me to a website called freecycle, a sort of altruistic ebay where people offer to give away for free various things they no longer want. The aim behind the idea is to reduce the amount of rubbish ending up in landfill sites.

Over the course of the last few days I have become increasingly addicted. The most common items that appear to be listed are freezers and washing machines, but in my three short days of perusing the listings I’ve seen everything from stuffed parrots to classical guitars find new homes.

And I haven’t been slow to jump on the bandwagon either. As I type there are thirty bags of topsoil sitting on my driveway waiting for me to lug them up the hill to the vegetable patch. They normally would have cost me around fifty pounds if I had bought them from a commercial source, but some kind chap in Crosland Moor was levelling his garden and let me have the mound of earth he had dug for nothing. He even bagged it all up for me.

Of course the effort involved in getting the bags in and out of my car has nearly killed me, but that’s not the point.

Anyway, things are developing well in the garden at the moment, so here’s a quick update:

Tree Watch: week 56

I was looking through my blog archives the other day and came across the entries I made after I planted my three apple trees. The trees went in during the dormant season and I was a little worried that I had effectively stuck three dead branches in a hole then added water. My fears were unfounded however, and although they were slow starters they eventually showed signs of life.

This time round however they seem to have got their acts together and are already in full bloom. What’s more I’m allowed to let the crop actually develop this year as the root system should be adequately established. There is the small downside that I don’t actually like apples all that much, but I’m sure I’ll find someone to eat them.

Oh the humanity!

Whilst preparing to install our double glazing last week the workmen had to move a number of pots and containers out from under our lounge window. In the process of moving the mini-greenhouse a tray full of tomato seedlings was tragically upended; scattering it’s fragile passengers all over my lupins. As if to add insult to injury, one of the individuals responsible for the incident was my own wife. Needless to say she shall be sleeping in the car for the foreseeable future.

A few brave souls managed to survive however, and we do have some more growing in individual pots elsewhere. But if Amy develops rickets caused by tomato deficiency then you know who to blame.

The rest of the veg

Our potatoes are doing rather nicely and it will soon be time to add a bit more earth to increase the crop. The strawberries are growing well, although I suspect that the slugs have their eyes on them as they have already had a nibble of the lettuce. Not that that stopped me from eating a few lettuce leaves too this morning. They are very nearly at a size where we can start wandering into the garden and getting a few leaves for our salad. The runner beans are shooting up, but the French beans have some mysterious damage round the edges of the leaves which may be a bit cold damage, apart from we haven’t had any frosts recently. hopefully they will recover, but there is still time to sow some more if they don’t.