I have to say that while I have been at uni everything has had to take a backseat, it’s basically been uni or bed for many months. However, I can now work my way through that mental list I have. The garden needs a lot doing to it. The greenhouse has reached critical mass, with no help from the crappy weather that we have had recently. Things do however seem to be picking up now, so hopefully I can start planting things out soon.

In other news….I went to Wilkinson’s yesterday and got 3 plants for £2!!! I got a mini buxus for 50p an ivy for 50p and a large pot of strawberries for a £1! I had to cut some dead leaves and things off, but after that it’s looking great, and full of tiny green fruits. I have put it next to my other strawberry plant to aid pollination.

Keep your eye out for more blogs, they should come quite regularly now!

Roll down some ‘bags for life’ and fill with compost. NB: plant up AFTER you have moved the bags to their final place.

Mini Pringles tubs! This also contains ‘recycled seeds’. They aren’t from a packet of seed, but from a bag of popping corn. At the side of it is a sprouted apple pip!

Good ol’ marg tubs

Fruit trays and packaging

Here is also an example of a recycled baking tray, to catch drips and overflow.

You can also catch drips etc with….
Meat trays and plastic cups

The lid from a vending machine hot drink

Lastly, the joys of 2l drinks bottles!
Tall planters for carrots (or similar)

Small pots, which can be made from the left overs of…..

….tall cloches

Other cloches, bottles are clochetastic!

…and of course, novelty Buddah hats

Firstly I am setting to work on the plant order that arrived on Thursday. I had open the box and stood the pots in water, but everything needed to be planted into new pots. Good job I went to poundland that day for new pots!

The acer (Acer Palmatum Dissectum Seiryu) is now in a nice new pot in a shady corner of the yard that has been rather barren. It should do ok in this corner as they don’t need full sun, and it can grow to a fairly good size too as there isn’t much else there. I was a little disappointed with it though. A few of the stems had been broken in transit, only at the ends, but they were growing shoots so I may have to wait a little longer now for it to put on a growth spurt.

My magnolia (Magnolia Soulengena) was potted up next. It’s a bit of a twig with two leaves at the moment, but I’m sure it will put on some more shoots now it is planted up. There are buds on the main stem so it should all be fine.

The datura (Datura Metel, also known as Angel’s Trumpet) was well packaged and so looking quite a happy, sturdy little plant. I would love it to flower.

I also order a surprise pack of 6 mixed plug plants. I recieved Nepeta (catmint, oh the ‘babies’ will be happy), Aquilegia, Chrysanthemum (‘silver princess’), Jerusalem Cross (Lychnis chalcedonica), Russell Lupin (Lupinus polyphyllus) and a Verbena (Verbena bonariensis)
They are now all potted up in their own pots, except for the aquilegia, which I have popped in with the acer.

Now what to do…I have planted up a wall planter with some nasturtiums and dahlias. I’m hoping the nasturtiums will cascade in a wonderful waterfall of oranges, reds and yellows, but they are nasturtiums and they tend to do what the hell they like
I’m looking forward to this planter being fully grown, as I have grown all the plants in it from seed. There’s a strange sort of parental pride in planting plants that you have nurtured from seeds on your window sills.

There is so much left that I want to do in the garden today, but I have to say that I am starting to get cold, and if I don’t come in and get warm soon, I fear I shall be ill for days. The cats have just come in too, maybe it’s an omen?

Right, I have watered all the new things in, and given the rest of the garden a good drink, think it’s time for mine now!

The leaves were cooked, but were very bitter. The leaves are however best picked before the appearance of the flowers, in early spring, or after a frost. You can treat them as you do with spinach, or use them in salad. I would like to try them again, at the correct time though.

The flowers however were very nice! You dip them in a pancake batter and fry them in butter as fritters. I will certainly be having these again!

Dandelion Fritters

2oz flour (gluten free can be made from a mix of cornflour, gram flour and rice flour)
1 egg, beaten
pinch of salt
water
butter/marg, for frying
dandelions

I have also got round to making the trellis and sorting out the peas! Hopefully we will get more than 22 peas, I’m ready for the war with the caterpillars and slugs this year.

I haven’t been able to do much in the garden recently, due to being both ill and super broke, thanks to Mr Edward. I am however pleased to say that Eddie is doing much better now, he is home and moaning away like never before. I have just wrestled his tablets down him, so he will go and sulk upstairs now for awhile.

Due to this break in being able to do anything, I now have a very long list of things that need thinning, pricking out and repotting. I need to get some sort of twig like trellis something or another too, my peas are in need of taming! I’m hoping to get some work done on the website too, it will build on this blog and include hints and tips, more photos, notes I’ve taken from programmes and magazines etc etc. It is coming along very slowly, it’s just so tiring sitting and staring at pages of coding, soil is much better!

So I leave him there to get tests done asap as kidney problems can kill cats within hours. I get home, to a very confused Lucycat and had been in the house about ten minutes when the vet called with the blood test results. The kidneys are fine! Yey! The problem is a blockage in his penis (poor Ed!) so they need to sort that out, it’s why he isn’t passing water at all.

A couple of hours later the vet rang back. Eddie was just coming round from the anesthetic (queue images of Eddie in a hospital gown) and everything had gone fine. He has a catheter and a bag on for 24hrs, just to rest his bladder, but everything had been cleaned through and was ok.

A few more hours later, the vet rang back again. Eddie was comfy and doing fine. He is passing water through the catheter, but we won’t know 100% that everything is ok until he is reconnected back up tomorrow. If he is ok we can bring him home, if not he will be there until Monday, as it’s cheaper and easier than letting him come home and then having to call the (very expensive) out-of-hours service. He will call again tomorrow.

Eddie will have to go on a special prescription diet for a few weeks to break down the stones and crystals that have caused the blockage. He has struvite crystals which are very common in cats, and are caused by diet. As are his teeth problems I found out about today too, even though I check his teeth, I missed the rot, looks like he may loose one or two, now

So what was so wrong with his diet? The common cheaper cat foods (felix, supermarkets own, go-cat etc etc) are all full of sugars and salts, and this is what can lead to the stones and dental problems, amoungst other things. If we hadn’t been such observant cat parents this could possibly have led to kidney failure and death, all because we were feeding our cats what we thought was good food! This has made me so angry! The companies make it look like it’s good for the cats, but it turns out that it could have killed them! I strongly recommend that if you feed your cats these things that you swap, asap! Good brands to swap to are Royal Canin or Hill’s there are others about too. These brands at first can seem more expensive, but you only give your cats this, no wet, although it can be given as a treat, maybe once a week. They don’t have to have that much either, so a big bag lasts a long time! They have formulas for different conditions, and all of them contain a formula that helps to break down the struvite crystals, before they can cause problems. I recommend everyone at least looks into this, give your vet a ring, they may even have free samples, ours did!

Will update again tomorrow, when we know more. Poor Eddie, we are all missing him. Lucy keeps sitting on the window sil thinking he is outside. Hope we get him back tomorrow!
I thank all the people at Vets4Pets Preston, they have been amazing and I recommend them to everyone!

So what have I been up to in the garden? Well, not as much as I would have liked! I have managed to prick out my marigolds today and planted some dwarf beans in a hanging basket and some free round carrot seeds. Free seeds are always good!

I’m pleased to say the butternut squash, courgettes, melons, peas, tomatoes, kale, mixed leaves, lettuce, rocket and herbs that I planted a week or three ago are all doing well. It’s such a shame that I don’t have more window sils!

I got in touch with the landlord today too about our back wall. It’s slowly falling down, the frost has got in it and every time the cats jump on or off it, some piece of brick flakes off and clatters to the floor! He said he will try and come over next week, which will be good. I want to get that wall rebuilt, firstly because of the fallydown nature of it, but for another reason too. Space!
When that wall is taken down, the outhouses (which are in pretty much the same shape) will come down too, and that means I will have access to more floor and wall space! In a back yard, this is very important anyway, but here in our yard it’s big news as it means that I will have the sun for longer, always a good thing. I’m hoping to get a small table and chairs too. I think it would be good to be able to sit out and actually enjoy the garden, sitting on the backdoor step just isn’t the same!

In other news….I need more muck! AGAIN! Why is it no matter how many bags of compost you buy at this time of year, it’s never enough!? Will hopefully see Mummy and Jeff at the weekend, will have to ask them nicely to point the car in a muck selling shop type direction! Homebase again me thinks, the last lot of stuff from there was both cheap and good, although I do seem to remember Morrisons had some good deals on too! Hmmmmmm….

I have been repotting mostly, my aquilegia are now in a nice big container pot, and the asters and dianthus that were on the window sil upstairs have been upgraded to bigger pots and are now in the greenhouse.

I have also sown my carrots today. ‘But Indra,’ I hear you cry, ‘you have only a backyard, how can this be?’
I have used 2l plastic bottles! Cut the top off the bottle, make a couple of holes in the base and fill with soil/compost. Sow your seeds into the top, cover and water. Seedlings will need to be thinned out, but it’s a great way of growing carrots, even if you have very little space!

In other news….we had a window fitted a couple of days ago and it’s great! Not only is it much warmer and quieter, but it opens fully, which means I can put things on the window sil! I popped some cornflower seeds on there today, hopefully they will do well! I’m going to sow some lobelia soon and when it’s grown I shall have some cascading down off my window sil, I think it will look good.
Here is Lucy modelling the new window!

In celebration of this I bought a plant and many packets of seeds today. My plant is an orange berried pyracantha. I thought that would add a bit of interest in the months when not much colour is in the garden. I have planted it up, and I’m hoping that it will do well, it looks happy enough and at £2 (from B&M’s) I think I did well!

As for seeds, I’m slightly snowed under with them! I bought around 12 packets today, and I have loads anyway! I get some each week free with my amateur gardening magazine, but I often pick up more when I’m out shopping anyway! Thankfully however I do have a seed sowing obsession at the moment, which is only being tamed by the number of window sils we own! And to be fair, I did lose a lot of plants in the frosts over winter

I had a good clean out yesterday too, throwing away so many dead things! I waited a while to see if anything was going to happen with them, but after patience and probing, I have discovered all the dead looking things to be actually dead. Boo to frost! I have started to grow seeds and buying plugs etc to replace the plants, and I have kept all the labels, so I know what I need to be buying!