… to gardening.  Or at least learning about gardening.  The weather has been glorious for the last few days and I’ve taken advantage of it.  Our garden really isn’t that large to be honest but I’ve been wondering just how much we can make the use of the space we do have available.  Of course, the children still need room to play, and the chickens room to run around when they are out of their run during their daily forage every evening before bed.  One side of our garden is quite shaded so I don’t expect much would be able to grow there, whereas the other side catches the sun for most of the day.  The patio area directly outside the kitchen doors narrows on one side and has steep steps going up to the garden.  These steps are horrible and we had our first real accident on them yesterday when Sid fell off them headfirst.  Thankfully he’s ok.  He’s sporting a bump on top of his head and a graze on his face but apart from the initial shock and tears he’s fine.  Mike is planning on making some decking stairs along the side of the wall which won’t be as steep and will also have a handrail so should be a lot safer.  The existing steps will have to stay though, as they are concrete and will be a pain to remove, so we’ll fence them off so that small people can’t climb on them and use them as staging for plants and growbags.

Anyway, I digress.  The garden, as I was saying, isn’t that large but we’ve managed to use several containers for herbs and vegetables.  I’ve been looking around for information on container growing and trying to find out what will work successfully in pots or hanging baskets.  We’ve got several tomato plants in pots and window boxes along the wall, a window box with a couple of gherkin plants as well as freestanding pots on the patio which contain herbs, peas, dwarf beans, onions, garlic, blueberries, and cucumbers.

We also have the cold frame (still no proper top to it so we’re making do with glass, so no pic till it’s done!) and the raised bed that Michael built along the narrow part of the patio…

… plus the raised bed that we won in a competition that turned up out of the blue which is in the main garden …

Do you like the homemade chicken/child/pest proof (hmmm) cage that we made?  It was very simple, relatively quick to make and much cheaper than the shop bought versions.  The raised beds have been divided up into square feet as in Square Foot Gardening. 

We also have some growbags with cucumbers and some waiting to be planted up with something, plus hanging baskets, two of which have strawberry plants and one has a Gartenperle tomato plant complete with our first tiny tomato!

We’ve got a couple of wall baskets waiting to be hung and another couple of hanging baskets.  Can you think of any other ways we can utilise the space we have?!