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Oops! After reading this forum on and off for a few years, I recently joined and posted this elsewhere but now realise it should have gone here.
My wife and I have fairly demarcated growing roles. Hers is flowers and shrubs of a purely ornamental nature, mine is fruit and veg.
We have a small back garden in Alderney, in the Channel Islands, which is mostly paved area surrounded by flower/shrub borders. My wife also does LOTS of hanging baskets an containers annually.
My bit is just outside our back gate and is a kind of informal allotment. The land belongs to a neighbour, who kindly lets me use a patch around 16M x 13M. At the moment, due to my neglect last year, there isn't a lot out there.
One part contains our fruit bushes and trees. We have a Bramley and an Elstar apple, both planted about a year or so ago, along with a Victoria plum to replace the previous one which upped and died on us in midst of fruiting a couple of years back. We have a couple each of Blackcurrant "Ebony", Redcurrant (can't remember variety but very prolific) and Whitecurrant "Blanka", which I've just pruned properly for the first time since planting them 4 years ago. In addition we have six gooseberry bushes of varieties "Invicta" Hinomaki Red" and "Hinomaki yellow". Our tayberry growing efforts have not been terribly successful unfortunately and that is on it's final warning this year before I bin it and get something else. We also have several canes of (unknown) summer raspberries and various colours of autumn raspberries. Our rhubarb clump is thought to be "Victoria" and produces masses of immense stalks, far more than we can eat.
The remainder of the "Lottie" is divided into an asparagus bed, which I planted early last year, a strawberry patch, planted through mypex. and four, roughly equal areas for a four-year veg rotation.
I usually grow all the basic veg, plus courgettes, sweetcorn, florence fennel, butternut or Crown Prince squash, depending on which I fancy.
this year I'm going to have a first go at a hotbed, using manure from our horses. this will accommodate the sweet potato slips I'm nursing indoors at present.
In the garden we have an 8x12 ft greenhouse, in which we grow tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, aubergines and chillis.
Well done to anyone who has read all the way through this essay!
My wife and I have fairly demarcated growing roles. Hers is flowers and shrubs of a purely ornamental nature, mine is fruit and veg.
We have a small back garden in Alderney, in the Channel Islands, which is mostly paved area surrounded by flower/shrub borders. My wife also does LOTS of hanging baskets an containers annually.
My bit is just outside our back gate and is a kind of informal allotment. The land belongs to a neighbour, who kindly lets me use a patch around 16M x 13M. At the moment, due to my neglect last year, there isn't a lot out there.
One part contains our fruit bushes and trees. We have a Bramley and an Elstar apple, both planted about a year or so ago, along with a Victoria plum to replace the previous one which upped and died on us in midst of fruiting a couple of years back. We have a couple each of Blackcurrant "Ebony", Redcurrant (can't remember variety but very prolific) and Whitecurrant "Blanka", which I've just pruned properly for the first time since planting them 4 years ago. In addition we have six gooseberry bushes of varieties "Invicta" Hinomaki Red" and "Hinomaki yellow". Our tayberry growing efforts have not been terribly successful unfortunately and that is on it's final warning this year before I bin it and get something else. We also have several canes of (unknown) summer raspberries and various colours of autumn raspberries. Our rhubarb clump is thought to be "Victoria" and produces masses of immense stalks, far more than we can eat.
The remainder of the "Lottie" is divided into an asparagus bed, which I planted early last year, a strawberry patch, planted through mypex. and four, roughly equal areas for a four-year veg rotation.
I usually grow all the basic veg, plus courgettes, sweetcorn, florence fennel, butternut or Crown Prince squash, depending on which I fancy.
this year I'm going to have a first go at a hotbed, using manure from our horses. this will accommodate the sweet potato slips I'm nursing indoors at present.
In the garden we have an 8x12 ft greenhouse, in which we grow tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, aubergines and chillis.
Well done to anyone who has read all the way through this essay!
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