The first apple has fallen!

Autumn is one of my favourite seasons; it’s so vibrant with the change in colours and I love a cold, crisp morning when the sun is shining. As for up on the roof, I’m not sure that it knows what’s going on.

A lot of my plants that did awful earlier in the year have come back to life and are flourishing long after I thought they had died back (well they looked pretty dead for a long time anyway).

For a prime example my sunflowers, and my canary creeper had a total of one flower all summer when the plants down at my mom’s were covering walls and went over months ago. These are now (aptly) creeping all over the place.

When I picked up my camera for this blog I did think I might struggle to get some  good photos which weren’t predominantly bare sticks, even though I had to do some pretty tight close-ups I was surprised how much colour there still was.

These Blueberry leaves are an excellent example not only of the magnificent autumn colour but also of the joys of cropping photos as they are pretty much the only two leaves left on the bush.

This is my beautiful dahlia that I thought would never flower, but it was worth waiting for and I have had some cut flowers from it too. As each flower wanted to grow directly under this one (so they couldn’t be seen from above) I sadly snapped the stems trying to show them off.

I bought these winter pansies at a car boot sale in September and they have been great. I will definitely get some more in for the dull winter months, and nothing seems to eat them which is always a bonus ...

... which can’t be said for my ornamental cabbages, which have been continuously attacked.You may be able to see all the cabbage white caterpillars all over it – I’ve had to net them to stop the pigeons, and the slugs really like them too. So the fact that they got this big is a great achievement and, to be fair, this is a picture of the worst one (to add to the dramatic effect, of course).

I’ll leave you with an apple up-date. 

The first apple has fallen!  I’m hoping it’s a winner; it has a few grub holes but nothing serious. Rich and I did try one early last month – I couldn’t help myself, I had to pick one. I won’t do it again – on the first and only bite our faces got so contorted it hurt. If you needed to bottle pure bitterness, then this apple would be a great place to start. So, fingers crossed for tonight’s tasting.

Happy Gardening!

I thought water snails liked water.

I’ve finally been able to get down to some serious gardening the last couple of weeks.  With the sweet peas gone and the lobelia going over it was all looking a bit too green so I set out to get some colour.

These are Echinacea, with the great name of ‘Purpurea Pow Wow wild berry’.

I love these flowers – not the most exotic looking but they add such a lot of sunshine to the garden and they like it in full sun, which is a priority in picking flowers for the roof. They are called Coreopsis, ‘grandiflora rising sun’.

This is Wild Bergamot ‘fireball’; the bees love this.

I have tried to grow ‘Black-eyed Susan’ over the last couple of years to no real success but I’m not deterred. The only time it really worked was when I grew it in the ground, but this one is called ‘Sunshine Suzy’ and it says on the label it can be grown in window boxes. As of yet it looks pretty weedy (hence the close up photo). So fingers crossed, because I love them.

Now please tell me if I’m wrong, as it’s a wild statement, but we have managed to witness, and I would like to think have a hand in, the speeding up of evolution in water snails.

You can see in the picture above, this little water snail that I found along with a few others. I don’t know how they made their way up here, but I felt terribly sorry for them so I popped them into some water with some lettuce leaves. 

They hated it and climbed straight out. I kept putting them back in but they just wouldn’t stay and now they can only be found on the sides of pots away from any of the little trays of water. It’s very odd.

Now to some very sad news. You may remember my amazing pumpkin plants on my last blog. Well look at them now.

Black fly has struck in biblical proportions and death and disease has set in.

The majority of the leaves are covered. The ladybirds and their larvae were in heaven but so were every type of fly you’ve ever seen and I HATE flies. so we made the sad decision to pull them up.  

We were just left with 2 very small pumpkins.

Our potato plants have become victims of little killers too – I think slugs. There is not a stem or leaf left but amazingly there are potatoes.

They may not the be the biggest and the best, but I’m proud of them just the same.

Happy gardening!

The Tropical Woodland will have to wait.

It’s been a while since my last post, mainly because over the last few weeks the gardening has consisted of pulling up a few weeds in the rare dry patches we’ve had.

Though the plants have seemed to like all this rain and we have had a lot of successes, I’ve learnt some valuable lessons, such as; not to pod your pea harvest into a colander, don’t suddenly stop feeding the pigeons, and just because it’s been constant rain for weeks doesn’t mean that you should stop watering house plants.

My greatest success so far has been my pineapple lilly seedlings that I planted in March and had completely given up on, but just the other day I  found them in a corner of the cold frame. 

These below are the originals that I took the seed from last year.  

I’m trying to keep quite positive about this wet summer (mainly as we are not exactly overrun with produce). Although the fruit is going well, I think we will be eating apples very soon.

I also got these beautiful pink strawberry plants off a friend for my birthday. As well as looking stunning they also taste amazing.

This fantastic white flower is one of last year’s carrots that I left in the ground to see what it would do. I think I’ll be leaving a few more this year.

My two pumpkin plants are adverts for the joy of chicken manure as the soil has been in this pot for about 3 years. Luckily our neighbours have a large empty roof. And the tomato plant below is my advert for the joys what comes from using the worm compost. I also have about 25 other tomato seedlings that I have planted up from all the other pots that it was used in. I had made a conscious effort not to have too many tomato plants this year.

These (above) are great. They are miniature runner bean plants. My mum has some in hanging baskets in her garden, producing loads of beans, and I can see that my plant had at some point, but I reckon they must have been a certain pigeon’s favorite snack. 

For some Gardening inspiration this summer we took a trip to Helligan gardens, while we  Yurting in cornwall. It was fantastic and I managed to come away with a few small plants for the roof. 

Though I would like to recreate their tropical woodland that might have to wait till we at least have a garden with some actual ground.

Happy gardening.

If Bob say's it's ok!

I had forgotten what the sun felt like. I walked out on to the roof with bare feet yesterday, and had to do a kind of hop, skip and jump back inside as my feet melted to the slabs. It’s very exciting.

The Roof has been a hive of activity since my last post. We’ve had sparrows, wagtails and some very noisy duck guests that left a few beak-shaped holes in some pots. I think they were after the vermiculite.

I finally got my tomatoes in. When I uncovered the plastic sheeting I found that my worm compost was obviously full of tomato seeds. You can see them all around the lettuce in the picture below. And I was trying to be so restrained on lettuce this year.

It’s all starting to get quite colourful now. The Antirrhinum is putting on the best show so far.

But also we have some rather confused daffodils, which I can only imagine were as disappointed with the spring as we were.

I was listening to Gardeners’ Question Time the other day and they were talking about growing watercress in containers. So, inspired by all the rain, I thought I give it a go.

It seems pretty straightforward. These seedling containers float so I’ve put a tiny amount of soil in and the seed. So, instead of the water moving, the tray does. If this works (and Bob Flowerdew says it does) it’s going to be amazing. I may even try and get my hands on a tray with 4 sides.

The good thing about being completely surrounded by neighbours is it shames me into be a bit neater – and my pea sticks were in a terrible mess. 

I’m not really known for being neat and tidy so I had to share this. I was very pleased with myself.

The little Swedish peas have started to flower, and are white but with beautiful green veins.

The brilliant new strawberries are also cracking along; I think they sensed that we are shortly due to go on holiday, as that seems to be when they always ripen.

Happy Gardening.

A Rooftop Greenhouse.

It’s been a while since my last blog, the main reason being that my gardening has consisted of staring out the window wondering if the rain will stop. And if it has been sunny I have been at work, staring out the window wondering if it will last till I get home.

But despite that, it’s all looking pretty great up here and the rain has certainly done it good.

I’m just starting to bring things outside to harden off in my miniature greenhouse. This was another little gem I picked up at the tip shop – in a former life it was a scientific weighing device, but I think it looks better like this.

My four tomato plants are all that will fit in as they have got rather too big and are desperate to be planted out. My cold frame has lost a pane of glass but despite this I still keep using it. I don’t know if the missing pane makes any difference, but it’s a lot easier to get pots in and out of now. 

My most exciting construction up on the roof is my second makeshift greenhouse. 

I’ve put ties on so that the plastic sheet can roll up to the top of the rail in the summer (I can’t show pictures of this as the big boulder is a lot heavier than it may look, and I can’t move it). As well as keeping my 3 lettuce plants warm, the sheet also keeps the majority of the rain off, which is needed, as the planter underneath is an old shelving unit that doesn’t have a lot of drainage, and I lined it with plastic. I have made a few holes in it but not enough for the amount of rain that we’ve had.

I stuck loads of chicken manure in ready for the tomato plants and of course some of the finest rooftop worm compost, which looks like it is full of tomato seedlings.

I’ve put some more lettuce seeds in as it was only these three that came up. The big hole in the cold frame didn’t keep out the small amount of unseasonal snow we had, which rudely put a stop to any decent germination. I’ve also had to put in some more marigolds, as the ones that did come up got attacked by slugs.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Lots of things have battled through and are looking amazing.

My little aubergines are doing fantastically well since I moved them into the bathroom.

And the pea shoots will be picked tonight along with the first wild rocket.

I’ve been on potting-up duty today – dealing with my one yellow pear tomato seedling, that I’m very pleased with. I’m not too disappointed that only one came up as space is really tight.

The big leafy seedlings at the back are from some seeds my dad gave me. I’ve got 2 pumpkins and 1 climbing courgette. I thought my little Hooligan pumpkins we’re never going to appear but this week there are signs of life so I’ve popped them back into the cold frame to see what happens.

But most excitingly, I repotted the white viola (you may remember I collected the seed from it off the ground at a National Trust house last summer). It was a long wait for this one but I’m thrilled that one of the two seeds came up.

The most time consuming of jobs up on the roof this year is ‘getting rid’ of unwanted visitors, that find the roof a haven on their way through town. (I actually had a terrible nightmare about carrot root fly the other night.) But this little cricket I found trying not very successfully to jump off the cold frame, is very welcome.  

Happy Gardening.