Gardening tips on a budget

Gardening tips on a budget We're retired now so how we develop our garden with little money... that's what this page is about.

So overall, things are looking good. The summer is here and so, too are the summer plants. The strawberries were quite s...
01/07/2025

So overall, things are looking good. The summer is here and so, too are the summer plants. The strawberries were quite small at first but I allowed the new runners to take root and some of them have produced rather large strawberries. I brought them inside the house to let them ripen as I've discovered, from past experience, the birds are simply waiting for the right moment to get at them and that's usually just before we pick them. At first the birds and squirrels were eating them but I put some netting around to deter them. Since then the birds stayed back and I've since removed the netting deciding to let them have their fill anyway. It's not like we are competing with Wimbledon to get the best strawberries. Anyway, they must have got used to thinking the netting is still up as I have not seen the birds going for the strawberries at all since I took the netting down.
So, a few final photos to finish. Have a lovely summer.

Courgettes are coming along but it's too soon to say much about them as is the case with the aubegines. Those seem to be...
01/07/2025

Courgettes are coming along but it's too soon to say much about them as is the case with the aubegines. Those seem to be coming along very slowly but I will wait and see.

I was surprised at the Romaine lettuce. I cut them all and let new ones just grow from the old but found they were a lit...
01/07/2025

I was surprised at the Romaine lettuce. I cut them all and let new ones just grow from the old but found they were a little tough. Ok for soup but they weren't tender enough for salad. Other lettuce, butterheads and Tom Thumb were very nice and after cutting them I've let them grow back and they seem to be doing well though I haven't eaten any of the rejuvenated ones so I'll have to say later whether it was worth letting them grow again. They are looking nice though so hopefully they will be ok.

The sungold tomatoes seem to be growing nicely though they might be a bit spindly I'm not sure. There are lots of tomato...
01/07/2025

The sungold tomatoes seem to be growing nicely though they might be a bit spindly I'm not sure. There are lots of tomatoes growing on the plants so I'm expecting a lovely crop eventually. These photos are from a little while back but once the tomatoes are ready I'll post some new updated photos.

I might have mentioned and old wheelbarrow that was somewhat broken. I fixed it up and planted some dwarf French beans. ...
01/07/2025

I might have mentioned and old wheelbarrow that was somewhat broken. I fixed it up and planted some dwarf French beans. and they, too, are growing nicely. I think I said they are a type that doesn't need much depth to the soil so the wheelbarrow seems ideal and in fact, they are growing very well.

I mentioned the garden in ther springtime. One of the plans this year was to sow country cottage style flowers, which we...
01/07/2025

I mentioned the garden in ther springtime. One of the plans this year was to sow country cottage style flowers, which we have done. At first the beds were empty, barre plots waiting for something to happen. Well that something did happen. We visited a garden centre where my wife bought a couple of boxes of the cottage flowers. Once home and the soil raked over she sprinkled the flowers directly from the box and then... waited. Now we are well into summer and I must say they look stunning. They've grown well and indeed, are still growing well though I don't know if that will continue throughout the summer but I certainly hope so. As I've said before, we might die of starvation but we will be surrounded by beautiful flowers. In the middle of it all we have a small plot full of lavender flowers. They have yet to produce the fragrant smell we think of with lavender but the bees are coming in droves. It seems lavender is one of those flowers they simply love.

Hi again, here's the latest in my garden. It's nice to see the different stages of the garden's life... coming our of wi...
01/07/2025

Hi again, here's the latest in my garden. It's nice to see the different stages of the garden's life... coming our of winter we move into spring when the planting starts. I had too many aubegine plants so gave some away and in return I received some peppers and a cucumber plant. I kept them in the greenhouse while the fear of frost was still there but as the weather has warmed I moved them outside. Peppers, apparently don't like too much sun so I put them next to one of the sheds where they face north. Our garden is south facing so we get sun for most of the day - when there is sun that is - so the peppers are in the shade for much of the day. I must say they seem to be coming on well though as I've never grown them before I will have to wait and see how they end up. I wasn't even sure which type of peppers they were but now I see little green peppers growing so they look like the the traditional green peppers one can buy in the supermarket. This first photo is of the peppers when they were still in the greenhouse. Now they are outside they seem to be developing quite well.

The cucmbers seem healthy enought but I'm not sure why but the fruit don't seem to be developing very well. As the small cucmbers reach the size of gherkins they start turning a funny shade of yellow/brown.

And so a few photos of the garden to finish for today. Though I'm still in my infancy as a gardener I appreciate it is a...
13/06/2025

And so a few photos of the garden to finish for today. Though I'm still in my infancy as a gardener I appreciate it is a learning curve. I've also come to realise that it doesn't matter if you have a large mansion estate garden or a tiny verander plant box there is great joy in planting a seed and watching and helping it to grow. Above all plants are living things and therefore... need love. How does one love a plant? Well talking to it is nice but just like us, if we are invited somewhere for a meal but the host simply talks and talks and forgets about the food it's unlikely we will return for another meal. So our plants need feeding, watering, sunshine and a little bit of chatter. They show us and tell us what they need by the state of their bodies. Too much sun or too little; too much water or too little; it's nice to learn what each plant or vegetable needs and I've discovered that as I become more aware and successful I am also more content with my gardening experience. But I'm still frustrated when I see a plant not doing so well and eventually... dying.🙁 I've much to learn yet!

Peppers and tomato plants in the greenhouse seem to be doing well though some plants in containers in the garden don't s...
13/06/2025

Peppers and tomato plants in the greenhouse seem to be doing well though some plants in containers in the garden don't seem to be growing well at all so I've brought some of them - aubegines - into the greenhouse. I told my wife that if we have just a few aubegines then that should cover the cost of the compost but I was assuming they would be growing and flourishing...🙁... they are not, at least not yet. But we live with hope!

The flower beds are starting to look good. It's hard to be patient waiting to see if any seeds planted are actually goin...
13/06/2025

The flower beds are starting to look good. It's hard to be patient waiting to see if any seeds planted are actually going to grow. It's not always a sure thing but eventually one seems to get things right though it does often seem more like luck than judgement for folks like me still learning one thing from another.

These are the Butterhead lettuce that I have started harvesting. They are very nice and tender, not like the Romaine let...
13/06/2025

These are the Butterhead lettuce that I have started harvesting. They are very nice and tender, not like the Romaine lettuce I talked about earlier. I ran out of space in the greenhouse but I had a wooden shelf unit which I placed next to the greenhouse and put the lettuce container on the top shelf. I put bamboo sticks around to prevent birds from landing on the lettuce because while the lettuce were still small I noticed birds - maybe a seagull or a crow had put or dropped a large piece of bread - no doubt gathered from a neighbour's garden - onto the lettuce soil. I wondered if a bird had landed on the soil and was trying to bury it as dogs bury their bones. Anyway, since I put the bamboo sticks there have been no visitors except... a large snail. How on earth do they manage to figure out there is something to eat so high up. It's a constant effort for the gardener to keep on top of things especially slugs and snails. Now I check daily.

I grew some Romaine lettuce. I understood if you cut the outer leaves they grow back but maybe it takes a while but I di...
13/06/2025

I grew some Romaine lettuce. I understood if you cut the outer leaves they grow back but maybe it takes a while but I didn't see any new growth on mine. I decided to cut off all the leaves and just leave the stumps in their pots to see what would happen. I went away for a few days and when I came back I saw that new leaves had been growing. I wasn't bothered if they would grow or not as my wife said the leaves are a bit tough. As I agreed with her I left them to do their own thing but at least they are growing again. Maybe the new, young leaves will be softer otherwise I won't bother with them again. I also planted other types of lettuce which I will show shortly. Among them are Butterhead May King - that's what it says on the packet though I hardly know one name from another - and these are really nice and not at all tough. We are competing with snails and greenfly but giving them a good wash seems to be the answer. They remind me of lettuce we had when I was a boy and there was always greenfly on those. I guess it's the more natural ones grown outdoors that attract the greenfly but still it's worth growing them as they really are nice.

Address

Cardiff
CF14

Website

,

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Gardening tips on a budget posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Gardening tips on a budget:

Shortcuts

Share

Category