Grow Your Own Magazine

Wasn't sure where to put this so mods please feel free to move. Well this is my small garden this year, one side is veg, the other flowers and various herbs in containers. The toms are my favourite they are a plum variety called Olivade and produce loads of fruit. I use them in salads instead of cooking as they are so flavoursome.

Attached Thumbnails

         

and here are some more. Sorry it would only take 5 piccies per thread

Mods don't know if you can merge the threads as am about to put part 3 on for last 2 piccies, sorry to be a pain

Attached Thumbnails

         

Right no doubt I have bored you all to death but I promise these are the last two!!

Attached Thumbnails

   

Looking good! You've been working really hard.

__________________
Gardening forever- housework whenever

Now that looks like a lot of work but well worth it congratulations ..jacob

__________________
What lies behind us,And what lies before us,Are tiny matters compared to what lies Within us ...
Ralph Waide Emmerson

Love your garden Selfraising. Its packed full of interest. The toms look really healthy. You must spend a lot of time watering as I see all your plants are in containers.

__________________

And when your back stops aching,
And your hands begin to harden.
You will find yourself a partner,
In the glory of the garden.

Rudyard Kipling.

Well done Selfraising - what a lot you have crammed into a small garden - a lesson for us all. And it all looks so lovely too - I bet you love just being out there in the garden!

__________________

Olliecentric Eulogy Minister

Binley knows Best
"Fan Of DarkCrow's Manipulation Of Words Society"
Courtier to the Queen of Baking

I particularly like your orange & yellow plant pots

very lush, and what lovely ring culture you have going on

__________________
~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkt82aeOCFo~

~ my allotment photos ~

All gardeners know better than other gardeners." -- Chinese Proverb.

There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments." -- Janet Kilburn Phillips

Lovely garden SR and you've given me an idea to keep my tomatoes upright next year, thank you!

__________________
Granny on the Game

Forgot to ask SR - you have made some nifty use of your plastic blowaways - what is it you have growing through the shelves there - looks like a melon but I thought I'd check!
Very clever whatever it is: the plant is doing all its own training!

__________________

Olliecentric Eulogy Minister

Binley knows Best
"Fan Of DarkCrow's Manipulation Of Words Society"
Courtier to the Queen of Baking

Was wondering the same on the blowaways - if it is melon, what type, and do you close up the door at all on them to keep them hot enough?

Yes, they are both melon Sweetheart, I would say they grow no bigger than the size of your hand. They climb there way up through the wire shelving and at the same time cling on to it. It also helps support the melons when they get bigger. I close them at night and on cooler days, otherwise they are left open so the insects can get in

Thanks, I water every other day. It is a small garden but I use every bit of space I can

Hi TS the orange and yellow plant pots are in fact waste paper bins I bought cheap at homebase, made some holes in the bottom and spray painted them

Beautiful garden SR, you must be so proud & so you should be.

Fab SR, really fab! You deserve a bigger garden!

__________________

Lol don't know if I could manage a bigger garden. This ones only 40ft by 20 ft and with working full time it only gets done and weekends and hols! Thank you for all your kind comments, it's always never wracking putting piccies on because everyone has different tastes but I hope it inspires people with small spaces how much you can fit in if you want to.

You put Alys to shame ............ Well done it looks great.

__________________
Last night I lay in bed looking up at the stars in the sky, and I thought to myself, where the heck is the ceiling?
Jo aka Binbags

Binley Knows Best - and if you believe that...

Member of Mojo by mail club

Member of the Queen of Baking and Parsnip Appreciation Societies

Tell me about it.
It's taken me a fortnight to get over a neighbour saying that I had the "worst garden in the street".
It wasn't a joke.

I now realise that their idea of "tidy" is a square of lawn with a busy lizzie in the middle

__________________
~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkt82aeOCFo~

~ my allotment photos ~

All gardeners know better than other gardeners." -- Chinese Proverb.

There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments." -- Janet Kilburn Phillips

Bored????..flipping heck...you're doing a fantastic job...and they all look so healthy!!!
What an amazing amount of different crops- plus flowers.....well done you!!!

__________________
"Nicos, Queen of Gooooogle" and... GYO's own Miss Marple

That's a really harsh thing for someone to say, especially if that's all they have to show for their gardening.

aaaaw thanks Nicos, wish I had a bit more confidence in myself but we can't all be like that I guess

WHAT?????

...shame on them

__________________
"Nicos, Queen of Gooooogle" and... GYO's own Miss Marple

Yikes [ walks off muttering must do better ]

__________________
Caro

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day

lovely job, I'll definately be pinching the melon growing idea as I'm always looking how to support the fruit effectively.

__________________
A friend is someone who overlooks your broken fence and admires the flowers in your garden.

Tremendous use of just about every imaginable type of container and almost every possible square foot of available floor space! Love the way you've achieved different elevations with the raised beds etc.

With so many containers - do you have a watering sytem in place or is it all by hand? Perhaps you have some 'little slaves' - ie your kids - or some bigger slave available - spouse?!, who lend a hand and learn a few things at the same time!

Great thing with containers is you can move to best position as the seasons changes and also when you do come to move house any precious plants/projects can move with you if you have sympathetic removal men.

Lovely job - well done - I who is NOT AT ALL envious and whose garden needs much work still to be done.

Thanks for your kind comments, I'm afraid the watering system is me! Each container has an upturned plastic bottle in it so I can water direct to the roots and I put a manure mulch on top of the soil to stop it drying out. The garden has gradually evolved. When I first started about 3 years ago it was mainly layed to lawn with loads of couch grass in it. As the veggies took over the lawn went. The garden is a funny shape and is at it's widest at the top and then bends round and goes downhill slightly, narrowing as it goes. I have tried to create some height inbetween and added mirrors in behind the flower borders to give the illusion of width and as the back of the borders are shady, they seem to reflect some light.

selfraising..your garden is wonderful, I only wish I could see it for real. please take some more pics for us to see as the year progresses.

__________________
All gardeners know more than other gardeners

Thankyou frogdoctor. If you are ever down this way, you are more than welcome!! The only thing I haven't quite got the hang of yet in the flower border is putting things in there to cover all the seasons. I just buy what I like the look of and pop them in but often they all flower at the same time Trying very hard this year to keep the successional veg sowing going, trouble is I keep forgetting!!

It's all looking fab as always SR - it shows the love you put into it

Sorry I can't merge your photos into one post - even mods are only allowed so many pics per post... It draws the experience out nicely, so don't worry about it

__________________
Sarah

http://www.hypermobility.org http://wixypixies.blogspot.com/

Hi

I'm sure I have had comments about my garden as my veg patch is at the front of the house but never to my face. However I did have a lady stop my wife and comment how the garden had inspired her and her husband to start a veg patch and that she loved to see it all growing as she passed on her way to work. I was chuffed to bits!

I think after seeing the pictures of the coloured buckets however I may be going on a bit of a shopping trip soon!

Thats a really really lovely garden you have selfraising! what a pleasure to see it. My friend was delivering an old cast iron gate for me the other day in order that I could use it to train plants up and he commented that it was increasingly loking like steptoes front garden!!!!

Maybe so!!! But my garden is a reflection of us, a family of 4 on a limited income trying to make the best of the limited resources we have!!! I prefer to say we have an ecclectic garden, and house for that matter!!!

__________________
aka Donna

Just like my father in law! One year he very kindly dug out all my weeds/wild flowers so I had a clean patch of bare earth. I find it funny now but at the time I could have killed him. His idea of a nice garden was 1ft bare earth, 1 red geranium, 1ft bare earth, 1 red geranium...

Eclectic is good! I would much prefer to see a garden with interesting bits and pieces in, used in unusual ways rather than a pristine garden I have lots of items in my garden that I have re-used, which you may not be able to make out in the pictures. For instance I have the two scrolled metal ends of a garden bench placed between some low growing plants. At certain times during the year, when these plants are in flower it looks like a flower bench
The wooden slats of the bench, I re-used to make a framework which I have hung on my shed wall. It has butchers hooks on it to hang plant pots on and some of my hand tools.
I also have an old tin bath in which there is a Gunnera.

You just took the words right out of my mouth yes what a lot there is there! GOOS STUFF!

__________________
Live like you never lived before!

Laugh Like you never laughed before!

Love like you never loved before!

One Love & Unity

http://iriejans.blogspot.com/