Although not particularly filling, it still beat muesli.

This is how some of outside the flat is looking:

The potatoes are still mega and I’ve had to clip the tops off the runner beans as they were getting too big. All awesome though.

In other news, I turned 30 over the weekend.

I’ve got three big bags of second early potatoes growing really fast, it seems every time I look at them, there’s a new leaf emerging.

And the runner beans are rocketing with the courgette looking very strong.

Fruit is doing well too, with lots of strawberry flowers and amazingly, I have a decent crop of gooseberries growing. Last year, I didn’t have one berry on that plant and thought it wouldn’t ever produce fruit.

It’s all good!

And why does watching Gardener’s World finally make me blog?

That pond is looking rather good though.

Hello by the way! Sorry I’ve not been around, I’ve been very busy. But Twitter has bucked me into writing regularly again (albeit in not more than 140 characters) so I should be here more often now, with photos (as my project 360 hasn’t been touched for months now. Sigh)

I do have plans for the flat and springtime should be productive. I’ll keep you posted.

I finally caught an episode of the new series of Gardeners’ World. Toby Buckland seems pretty good I thought. He reminded me of Geoff Hamilton a little. What do you guys think? I really wish the producers would stop using Sarah Raven though. She manages to turn what could be fascinating reports into dull pieces of beige.

I’ve not really written about gardening since I gave the allotment. To be honest, I’ve not really done any gardening. But a few weeks ago, Dave and I tidied up around the front of the flat. For what it is, it’s a generous space and had planty of room for a range of decent sized containers. A few flowers were planted, including a passiflora to cover the view of the snooker club below us. It’s doing amazingly well and I think it’ll take over the entire block. It wasn’t just flowers though. We have lots of salad leaves growing nicely plus a few corgettes, beetroot and lots of basil. The picture above is of mizuna, a very nice Japanese salad leaf. There’s some more photos in my Flickr if you want to have a look (link on the right of this page). They’re a bit out of date but I’ll take some more soon.

Flighty earlier this week very generously sent me a book on composting. It’s very good! Hopefully it’ll help me make up my mind about how I want to organise my kitchen waste. So thank you, Mr. F, it’s very cool.

Now I know I said I wasn’t going to go, but I gave in. I couldn’t spend a year without it. I’m going to Glastonbury Festival. Yay! I’m quite excited. In fact I leave for the coach there in but half an hour. Unfortunately it’s forecast to rain quite heavily tomorrow. Bum.

There is the option of a wormery. A lovely little wormery with lovely wee worms chomping through all the lovely food I don’t eat and the odd dead head I cut off my blooms. The more I think of it, it’s the most logical composter to get. It’s small, compost can be stored until I need it, I get a nice liquid fertliser and I get lots of lovely pet worms. Only problem is, I’m not sure how much work they are. How often do these worms need to be fed? I have a tendancy to dissapear for the odd weekend. We’re also in a bit of a sun trap and during the main part of the day it can get very (read: really, really bloody) hot so I’m not entirely sure if it would be very humane to keep worms there.

Still it would be nice to have something that could look after food and small bits of garden waste. I have to admit, I can produce a fair bit of food waste which is a bad thing I know and I’m trying to cut back on that issue at the moment as that’s the priority, obviously. However, I still want a little composting thing. Any suggestions?

The first gardening post in ages. Hooray! There’s more to come too, as soon as I get the camera out.

Anyway, we’ve found a venue. Athelhampton House near Puddletown. It’s a beautiful old house with amazing gardens and the Olivier film Sleuth was filmed here. Here’s a picture:

It’s lovely and this picture doesn’t do it justice at all, but you get the idea.

There’s a good chance that this blog will turn into a wedsite for the next few months, but I’ll try and include other things too. Such as the peppers I’m growing! Wooo!

It’s covered in aphids already.

I promise I won’t leave the next blog post for so long next time….

But that means I’ve managed to miss all the GW specials that were broadcast over the summer. Which is a shame as they’re worth a watch even if they do pale in comparison to the proper programme. I caught one, actually. I switched it on and mistakenly thought I was watching a Nigella show when in fact it was Rachael De Thame talking about so called super foods. Surprise, surprise, locally grown food and a varied diet is just as good for us as eating exotic foods imported from halfway around the world. Anyway, I have a question. Did any of you catch the specials? One in particular, actually. Joe Swift presented and it was about gardens in urban areas and brown field sites. If one of you caught it, could you tell me if they used a bit of footage from the House of Commons? I was the one who supplied the footage to them you see and I’d like to know if it was shown. In all my years of sending out clips of PMQs and public accounts committees to Dispatches and Tonight on Trevor McDonald and other news programmes and documentaries, I have never been so pleased and excited to be pressing play and record buttons at the same time before.

Also, and I’m fairly sure you all know about this before, but the GW website has a fantastic blog written by Berryfields’ head gardener. Needless to say, I’m insanely jealous of her. She’s too pretty, has the most amazing job and trained at the most amazing places. Bah.