An allittlement*

My summer vegetable garden arrived today, actually two gardens, I’d ordered an Instant Patio Container Garden and a Compact Herb Garden  from Rocket Gardens (I’m getting sooo middle aged, it’s what I splashed out my birthday money on last January). The box it all arrived in was so big I had trouble getting it up my front door step and then when I managed to get it up my front door step I couldn’t get it any further, it was too big, bulky and heavy, so I had no choice but to unpack the plants in my broom cupboard hall way, the box literally taking up the entire hall way, with me standing in my living room doorway, reaching down into the box.

Unpacking the delivery is always one of my favourite parts of getting a Rocket Garden, as you never know completely what or how much of what you’re getting (they give you an indication on their website but obviously it depends on how well the stuff has grown), so it’s like unearthing a gardener’s treasure box as you gently brush away the straw, revealing layer upon layer and sometimes having to guess what the plant is (until you find a plant that looks the same and has got a label or sometimes you never do find a label – I have one such mystery plant in my garden right now).

This season I got in my herb garden;

• Chives
• Rosemary (which I can’t cut from till next year, boo hoo, so that leaves me still depending on my current twiggy rosemary bush)
• Mint
• A purple basil
• Thyme
• Sage
• Majoram

In the vegetable box I got;

• enough salad to hopefully keep me and all the snails in my garden happy all summer (including my favourites rocket and mizuna)
• spinach
• rainbow chard
• pumpkins
• cucumber (groan, I swore after last year that I was never ever going to attempt to grow those again)
• runner beans
• peas
• strawberries (mostly one type and a sickly looking specimen of another type)
• tomatoes
• a single mystery plant

All these join my potatoes which I’m already growing in the black dustbin you can see in one of the photos below and I plan (i.e. haven’t got round to it yet) to sow some salad onions. Also if we were lucky enough to get some BIG DIG seeds, we’ll be growing some beetroot, carrots, butternut squash and more lettuce and tomatoes, it’s lucky I’ve got a big patio.

I haven’t managed to plant everything up yet either as I need to get more pots, so the tomatoes and cucumbers are still in their biodegradable pots in the greenhouse (watered of course though), as is the mystery plant, which I think might be a courgette plant. You can’t see the pumpkins in the photos, they’re in a growbag off to the left or the runner beans.

So a summer of watering, snail patrol (Girl Lacer is good for both those things) and me eating a hell of a lot of salad (no one else eats it in my family). I am rather sadly excited about how much money this will save, as long as I don’t kill it, it gets eaten by snails, it doesn’t bolt.

* Allitlement definition a small allotment in pots, word invented by Nicola Morgan 2009 (scroll down towards the pictures of the plants at the bottom)

How cool is this?

A waiting in day today, my baby vegetable plants are being delivered by Fedex, hopefully today but it may be Monday. So when there was a knock on the door I flew to it thinking it was the Fedex man (I can’t even go out in the back garden at the moment to hang out the washing, I won’t hear the door, so I . . . want . . . the . . . Fedex man . . . to . . . come . . . NOW!) but of course it was just the postie, however he had a very nice parcel which put a massive smile on my face. How cool is this?

It’s from Appetite for Cake’s Pass it on and it is perfect, just the colours I love and I adore skull and cross bones (poor Boy Lacer probably can’t wait to be old enough to buy his own clothes, the amount of skull and cross bones tops he has!) and it’s the perfect size to, I was just thinking the other day as I spent the umpteenth time searching round the bottom of my walking rubbish bin tote bag, that I needed a smaller bag so that I wouldn’t be tempted to carry so much rubbish around and I’d be actually able to find my keys and phone without panicking first that I’ve left them behind somewhere. And a ball of Noro wool to, in perfect colours, I’ve been stroking the Noro in John Lewis and I’d been too ‘nervous’ to buy any, as lovely as it is, because I feel too much of a novice knitter to do it justice, but ooh I will definitely be doing something nice with this!

So a big massive thank you!