Our Autumn Garden - 2023

Peter has been doing a lot of work in the garden with laying a new patio and ordering and replacing all the gravel around the house. The lawn has been levelled and re seeded and I've been helping out with tip runs and potting up plants, seeds and generally tidying up around him. There is still lots to do, but it'll be waiting now for the warmer weather.

Garden tools cleaned and put away in our new shed, we bought at the Three Counties Show in September.

New shed and side of house tidied.

Fig and Rhubarb covered for winter.

Bay tree covered for winter.

Gravel added around shed and weeded behind and now storing most of the bricks left over from the building work to build a raised bed with.

Herbs and new plants.

Autumn reef up. I'm off to a Christmas Reef making evening soon.

Peas, beans, cauliflower and sweet peas sown for spring.

Herbs brought inside for winter and basil planted.

Surprise strawberries.

Bobs memorial garden pot planted.

Table and chairs rearranged to make more room for the washing to dry.

Bougainvillea brought inside to protect for winter.

The two sheds on the left waiting to be dismantled.

The neighbours garden is higher than ours, level with the top of the concrete slab at the base of the fence. Drainage problems are an issue since we had building work done, but we can rectify with proper drainage and levelling off the ground to the right.

New gravel down and some tidying and soil shifting needs to be done.

Compost bin full.

Raspberry crop seems to be going on forever.

We're planning to remove the two sheds over winter when we get drier days. It's much easier to work in the garden now the patio and gravel is sorted and we have full access round both sides of the house.

I'm pleased with how my egg pod fits under the new canopy, I love being outside and can now enjoy winter mornings with a cuppa without getting wet.

My Spring Garden

We've spent a lot of time and money in the house since we came back with a new kitchen and extension and the garden and out door space has been ignored other than a new shed, mowing the lawn and piling up gravel, bricks, sand and soil.

We're having to wait for the builders to return to sort out the drainage from the roof as they haven't connected the down pipe into the drains, so when we have heavy rain the patio area floods and we can't finish it as they need to dig the area up.

I've got space now to hang the washing outside again.

The two sheds on the left will be coming down soon and then we can start building raised beds. The table and chairs are under the covered area and we've eaten outside a couple of times.

I've started doing some work in the front garden with planting a new hedge. The bougainvillea may have survived the winter under cover.

I've planted a variety of herbs both inside and out, the basil is doing really well.

Last years Chard

Potatoes

Lettuce

Peas

I tend to spend more time tidying up than I do actual gardening.

The wreath is back on the front door.

After all the rain the lawn is looking really green, there's little grass there, mainly weeds and moss.

We also visited the Three Counties Show to get some ideas and with the 3 bank holidays and nicer weather I've been enjoying being outside. It's half term next week and I'm hoping for quite a transformation in the back garden.

Sewing seeds and taking cuttings with #HDYGG?

I’m leaving Dubai for 2 weeks on the 8^th of September with hubby and as there will be no one there to water the plants, I am officially shutting the garden down for the rest of summer.

The sandpit has had a good weeding

The grass patch at the side of the house is being prepared for seeding

I’ve decided to spend the next few weeks researching and experimenting with cuttings and seeds, so that I can learn what grows, where it grows and under what conditions.

I've taken cuttings from several plants in the garden and they are staying alive by refreshing the water daily, inside the house and within 3 days roots were growing. I'm also attempting to grow an avocado.

Although sweet peas, nasturtiums and poppies need regular temperatures of below 15c to flower, they will provide plenty of leaves, they also require temperatures under 30c to germinate so they are sitting in the conservatory where the cat and dog spend most of their time and the air con keeps the room at a max of 30c.

There is plenty of natural light in the room and I will probably plant them out into pots to grow and hopefully flower in that room.

The three basil plants are the only survivors of my previous planting trial and they now have a woody stem, so I’m hopeful they’re bush out. They sit on the window ledge outside, which gets sun for part of the day and I water them daily.

The tomatoes grew into decent sized plants, but didn’t flower. This may have something to do with them being planted in recycled water cooler bottles. It’s best to use unglazed pots for planting outside in the heat. The soil in plastic pots reaches temperatures of 50c and moving them into grow bags did nothing for them.

Once autumn comes I will sew more seeds into clay pots and purchase a couple of tomato plants from the garden centre along with some tomato plants. I am quite prepared to move them into the conservatory as the whole villa is tiled and and easy to clean.

As well as planting some tomato seeds I’m also experimenting with spring onions, lettuce and chilli. They too are being kept on the window ledge with the basil.

This tomato and marigold seeds were sown on Thursday, this photo was taken 3 days later, unbelievable that anything can grow in this heat.

I successfully grew marigolds, petunias and celosia this year so I’m focusing on growing them again. These seeds are sitting in direct sunlight for most of the day and are watered daily.

Although these seeds are being grown in pots in compost, for purposes of germination time. They will be sown directly into the sandpit as plants that flower in Dubai do better without root disturbance, although I grew the last seedings in recycled newspaper pots, few of the plants flowered and the ones that did were very pale in comparison to the illustration on the seed packet. I will mix some compost into the top layer of soil before doing so.

You can see the celosia has very shallow roots.

My next job is to find out what jobs I need to do around the garden to prepare for autumn.

How does your garden grow in Canada?

The British are here in Canada. 

I arrived last week to stay for 3 weeks with my twitter friend @AlwaysARedHead. So I thought I'd take you for a walk around her garden this week.

So far quite a lot of Canada reminds me of the UK, the uniformity of the streets and style of houses, although much bigger than your average UK house, open front gardens with a path to the front door, grass and borders. Although you don't see many houses in the UK with a veranda or porch.

The summer weather is slightly warmer and consistent, although it did rain here a couple of nights ago. The flowers are in full bloom and the garden is looking gorgeous.

The 'erb and veg garden is full to over flowing, stocked with thyme, rosemary, squash, beans, peppers, carrots, onions and for the first year broccoli.

The trees in the yard/garden are very tall, much taller than you'd find in an average UK garden, usually I'd only expect to see trees of this height in a mansion house or stately home.

There's a pool in the garden and a hammock in the shade, which the dog likes to join me in.

I'm getting lots of rest, sun and catching up with blogging, chilling out with reading and just generally enjoying the garden.

Meanwhile back in the desert with hubby in charge of watering, it's not doing too bad. The gaps are where I removed the dead marigold before I left and I see the weeds seem to like the dry, hot conditions.