Home Grown

This year I've been taking my first real steps into gardening in our very tiny back yard. I'm learning to use all the available space including walls, pots on the ground and even inside on window sills. There are successes and failures but overall it's been good so far with lots of surprises along the way!

The cornflowers I sowed months ago don't appear to have sprouted anywhere which is a bit disappointing and the slugs have finished off all the sprouting sunflowers but orange and purple walls flowers are in full bloom still after weeks and weeks of colour already. Looking back at the photo's of when we first planted them it's amazing how much they've grown in the last few months.

My three real projects out of the flower bed are the sweepeas, the bread beans and the chilli plants.

The sweetpeas seem to be coping outside in the hanging basket although they're not growing as fast as when they were inside. Being high up on the wall means they get lots of sun and avoid the slugs so they're doing well, putting out tendrils to climb further before blooming later in the year (hopefully!).

The broad beans looked like a lost cause a few weeks ago as the tiny shoots were ravaged by hungry slugs right down to the soil level. But after returning them to a table hope has been rewarded as we now have lots of small plants pushing up into the sunlight. I really need to buy some canes for them to start growing up soon. I've been told they need quite deep soil and the pots are only about half a foot tall so they might do less well later in the season, but we'll see how things go. I'd love to have some home grown beans to cook, fingers crossed.

Our chillies are some of our oldest plants. Sowed back in September these have survived the winter and are now shooting into life, one even has pretty white flowers. They're staying put on the window sill where we can water them and keep them warm. But with three strong plants I think our own chillies for cooking look like a possibility, I just don't know how long you have to wait until they start to bear fruit.

So those are my garden highlights at the moments, as well as the sparrows which are getting more and more confident on the feeder. I still haven't found that nest though.