Actual Gardening! - Shock Horror!

Yes, I dragged my sorry butt off the sofa today and went out and did some gardening - yay!

I think the thing to do is try and do a little bit at a time and try and do one specific job: I've an awful tendency to start on something and then get distracted by all the other things that need doing as well. And then everything gets partly done but nothing's completed. It's so satisfying to do a job through and finish it - I must remember this!




So today I weeded my raspberry (and gooseberry) bed and pulled up the half-dead pea plants that were still lingering there (thanks to the lovely Liz/Hedgehog for the seeds). I had put some beetroot seedlings in (with protective plastic bottle 'cloches' - thanks to the lovely Roobarb for that tip) ages ago but only three of them are looking any way healthy so I pulled up the others; they can benefit the compost heap instead. (more positive thinking, see!)

Loads of new little shoots are coming up from the raspberries, I'm wasn't sure what to do with them but am hoping I will be able to split them off in the Spring and make lots more plants - I do like my raspberries. (many thanks to Splodger for the canes earlier this year)


I'm concentrating on that one bed; it's the one I'm mulching with every spare molecule of compost I get from my heaps and the soil level and quality is improving slowly but surely. It will take me forever to do this throughout the other beds/whole garden but I will get there one day.


Is that a bit sad; to be taking close-up photos of my soil? I don't care :P It's so much better than it used to be - not to rocky/stony and full of lovely worms, creepy crawlies and vegetative matter.

I emptied all the big sacks which I'd supposedly been growing Chinese artichokes in, but have to admit that they were a big flop - I must have only had about 5-10 tubers out of three or four big sacks, and even then the little tubers were miniscule: smaller than one of my finger nails. Not sure what I did wrong, maybe it was all the rain we had through the Summer? I didn't even take a photo of the 'harvest' - it was just too pitiful. I'll pot them up and keep them through the winter and try again next year, but I think they will end up just fading away.

Never mind, maybe I'm not meant to grow them, right? AND I still get the compost out of the bags they were growing in, so that's something beneficial from the whole experience.

I've got four or five big sacks with Jerusalem artichokes still growing in - I'm going to wait til they die down before investigating how they've done. Not getting my hopes up for them either..but we'll see. Positive thinking! It'll be a while yet before they are ready, but I did open up some of other sacks earlier in the season - the ones that hadn't made much growth. It turned out that the tubers were riddled with slug holes - sigh...I'm hoping that as these remaining plants are really healthy looking I'll get some healthy tubers too, but we'll have to wait and see.

While I was over by the sacks I noticed this little fella in a bucket of rain water - luckily he was still alive so I hauled him out and set him out to dry on a plant. Hope he survives. It isn't a great photo but I didn't want to handle him too much; I love the dirt on my hands! :D