Martha's Marvellous Munchies

...of the garden variety, that is! BEFORE... ...and AFTER! The posts surrounding the raised bed at the back of our garden were decidedly past their best.  Some had toppled of their own accord, and some more only needed a sharp tug to come out, like a loose tooth.  I decided to flatten the whole thing, do away with metres of weedy gravel, and create a big vegetable bed where beans, carrots and cabbages could roam free. Graham accordingly ordered a ton of topsoil from the horticultural company he works at, borrowed a rotavator and a wheelbarrow, and we set to work.  The boys enjoyed helping to tip the topsoil off the truck. operating the tipper Like all these jobs, there's always more to it than you first think.  The posts which weren't rotted at the base turned out to be embedded a foot deep, requiring a good deal of hammering and levering with a garden fork.  Then the hundreds of bulbs in the old raised bed had to be fished out and stored...

Those neat little sprouts in my previous garden post are now great floppy plants, overflowing their boxes like leafy fountains.  Theo has been particularly keen on picking things, sometimes before they're ready!  So, what harvest have we had? Peas I was really pleased with the peas.  Every couple of days we could go out and grab a boxful of fat green pods - and it was fun popping them and seeing how many peas were inside.  The boys and their friends from next door happily ate them straight from the pod, and we had them raw in salads, cooked as a side, and even made into pea fritters.  Their season finished early so I've put some more carrots, onions and rocket in their place. Strawberries We only really had enough to pick a few and eat them one by one.  However, we went to Scaddows Farm and picked LOADS, so we haven't felt short of strawberries. Carrots and spring onions The spring onions have done well, and got lovely and ...

Isn't it exciting when little seeds you've planted start cautiously unfurling stalks and leaves, and turning into proper plants?  Most of my vegetable planting is now done for the spring, so I thought I'd update you with what's in this year. I used some plastic sheets to turn my vegetable boxes into mini greenhouses, which I'd like to think helped with the germinating process.  One unexpected thing which sprouted were half a dozen courgette plants, which I assume are the same ones that never came up last year.  I transplanted them to some pots, where one has already been savaged by slugs. The seeds that I did expect were spring onions, carrots and rocket, which have duly come up in neat little rows.  I haven't tried carrots before; they're supposed to be good companions for spring onions in some mutually beneficial way, so I'll put in another couple of rows soon and see how they go. tiny spring onions and carrots tomatoes and rocket ...

I don't usually do politics.  Occasionally I have felt like I should take an interest, as an intelligent citizen of a democratic country, but I get rapidly disheartened by all the name-calling, and my resolve quickly dissipates.  So I try to get enough information to make a reasonably informed vote, and that's that. But on a day like today, politics is hard to ignore.  The EU referendum campaign involved at least as much name-calling and twisting of the truth as any other, and I felt even less qualified to make this decision than usual (how am I supposed to know anything about international trade agreements?  Does anyone know anything about international trade agreements?)  Being naturally inclined towards the status quo, I started off tending towards staying in, and didn't find any arguments compelling enough for me to switch sides. So I am still slightly disbelieving that we actually decided to take the leap.  About the only thing I can think of to ...

My ambition is to have a glut. Maybe not quite the kind where you make a million jars of marrow jam and secretly leave tomatoes on your neighbours' doorsteps at midnight.  Just a little glut would be fine.  So far my vegetable gardening has tended to produce three tomatoes at a time, to be ceremonially and reverently   consumed.  Then you wait a week until the next three come along.  That is pretty much an anti-glut, I would say. So, this year.  The Year of the Glut.  Well, I have tried courgettes (zucchini) for the first time, which are notorious for being prolific.  Four plants, looking pretty healthy so far. Still in growbags.  Maybe one year I will get a permanent garden.  I wasn't even going to attempt tomatoes again, because last year I got 10 ripe ones and about 100 unripe ones, and I have almost finished the green tomato chutney.  But then the garden centre had some interesting varieties, including a yellow o...

The sky is blue, the air is warm, and our garden is getting some colour again! Texas doesn't boast the same array of early spring flowers as the UK, but I planted some daffodils in the autumn, and they duly sprouted and produced yellow trumpets to herald the spring. This bed also includes a clump of four-nerve daisies which has done particularly well. On the fence in our back yard, the unidentified creepers (anyone got any ideas?) nearly froze to death in the Big Snow last year. I had to chop them back severely, but it did them good. This year they are a mass of yellow flowers. The bees and butterflies are having a field day out there.

Cooler temperatures have arrived, and every living thing in Texas has breathed a sigh of relief.  There's even been some rain!  I lost a few plants to the Great Heat of 2011, but those that have survived are perking up and even daring to put out some flowers.  Also, a couple of weeks ago I attended a Yard Smart seminar run by the city of Fort Worth, which left me all excited about gardening again.  If you live in Fort Worth and are at all interested in plants, go: the speakers were engaging, entertaining and inspiring, and it's entirely free! One of the topics at the seminar was fall greens.  My last attempt at greens was spring lettuces, which put out about six leaves before deciding that it was far too hot to bother growing.  The advantage of planting in the autumn is (hopefully) a longer period between baking and freezing temperatures, and also, apparently, the shorter days encourage the plants to store sugar, thus making the leaves sweeter to eat....

My son is in bed and my husband's washing up, so I'm snatching a few minutes to update you on my garden. It all started with a visit to the plant sale at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens... Actually it all started before that, with a fair bit of research about heat-loving perennials. I knew I wanted something easy-care that we didn't have to water too much. The climate is so different out here that I had a crash course in previously unknown plant names and varieties. It paid off at the sale, though, where it was really useful to recognise a few things and have some idea what we wanted. This is the bed once planted. From far left, clockwise: Turk's cap, which you can hardly see in this photo Wormwood, with pretty silver-grey foliage Autumn sage - sages or salvias are generally very Texas-friendly Coreopsis or tickseed - the seeds look like ticks, apparently; they don't attract them, fortunately Blackfoot daisy, with the white flowers Another yellow core...