More from the garden trenches.......

Well, I couldn't do much in the garden last weekend as my green bin full of weeds missed it's weekly collection. This weekend was a different story.

Saturday I put away a load of wood for Mr SFP as he was studying. We have had a particularly cold winter in Christchurch and had run out of wood for the log burner. As we were expecting a lot of wet weather this week I didn't want to get caught out. Very satisfying to see it stacked in the wood shed- made Mr SFP go and admire it. A little dark in the shed for a picture.

Sunday after Church I donned my gardening clothes, gumboots and rolled up my sleeves. I've decided to try and concentrate on one small area at a time. I'm in awe of gardeners who have every part of their gardens organised, utilised and neat and tidy. I have such a long way to go, but am looking at the small, rather than the big picture. I worked on the garden where we have 2 feijoa trees which are in front of my compost bins. They reward us with a fabulous crop each year for very little effort on my part.

Feijoa trees

I trimmed the trees away from the washing line and compost bins and mulched under them with pea straw- they look much tidier now. I mulched the foliage in my muncher- amazing how a wheelbarrow full of branches becomes a small basket full of goodness.

Compost bins- see the horse poo.

One job in the garden always seems to make another. I then needed to reorganise the compost bins so I could add the munchings. So I turned the middle one into the end one and covered it with pea straw and some weed mat. Mrs HMM needs some worms for her worm farm and I was happy to see there were hundreds of wiggling ones there. Told her we would have a worm hunt on Friday when she comes to craft. We have got a lot braver at handling worms since our first attempts. Started the new bin with the munchings and the horse poo collected earler in the year.

Chicken corner

My big news of the year is that we're seriously thinking about getting some chickens. Since having bantams and chickens growing up, I've always wanted to have some of my own. We have a HUGE convolvulus problem in this area which should be the vegetable garden. In the past few years it's gotten away from me to the point of despair. I've now decided to move the vegetable garden to an area without convolvulus which means this can be chook corner. Hope chickens enjoy eating convolvulous!! Next step is getting a friend to help us build an enclosure and chook house, I can't wait!!

Beans are up

I'm also excited that my beans are up. To date all are up, except for one. This is my first real attempt at seed raising and it's definitely given me confidence to keep going. It's still a miracle to me that you can plant seeds, raise plants and get food from them. I'm a true believer. Mrs HMM and I will be scouring seed catalogues for tomato seeds to plant in August.

Blueberry plant

I treated myself to a visit to the garden centre today- one of my favourite places to shop. Decided I would invest in another blueberry plant. I have one and harvested 2 blueberries last year. Hope to do better with another plant, maybe enough for a muffin this year.

Well that's my garden round up. I must admit I'm very excited about my new adventure. I go to sleep with gardening books next to the bed and gardening dreams.

TTFN Mrs SFP XXX