Alice in Wonderland

There is something of an Alice in Wonderland quality about step over fruit trees and the more I see them, the more I can imagine them in the Queen of Hearts garden during the flamingo croquet match. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, there is more info about them here.

With a step over apple on order – along with various other mini or pot growing fruit types recommended by the Gardening Guru – I’m now being a tad impatient waiting for them to arrive….. not that I actually have any ground ready to put them in yet you understand but hey!

It’s going to be a scorching 25 degrees today and with the day off work I’m gonna be donning the Hunters and doing some digging, to hopefully transform one of the now cleared plots of soil into something that resembles a dug over bit of soil. Wish me luck!

First post

I’m boring my friends to death with tales of raised beds, window boxes and when is the best time of year to lay turf and quite frankly I think their suggestion to start a blog was a polite way of saying I’m boring the pants off them, but what the hell, I thought I’d give it a go and see if anyone with an interest in this sort of thing was interested enough to read it.

Progress has been a bit slow as sorting the house itself has taken up a bit chunk of my time, as has that annoying thing called work, which also seems to get in the way of all things fun, but I do have a full functioning wormey up and running. It’s a tiger wormey, so I’ve nicknamed them all Charlie in honour of the one and only tiger blooded Charlie Sheen. Not sure he’d actually be too impressed with the honour but hey!

Being a total wormery novice, there’s been a few hiccups already. Mainly with the bedding being too wet (able to wring out is probably a more accurate description) but after a bit of poking about, adding newspaper and draining the water off it’s looking more healthy and the worms are happier.

A rookie error apparently is overfeeding the worms in the early stages. Being shoved in a plastic bag, stuffed in a box and then driven miles in a transit van is probably traumatic enough (not that it’s ever happen to me mind), so I guess it makes sense to leave the poor little things bee for a few weeks so they can settle into their new home and get over the trauma. Soggy bedding probably wasn’t the wormy equivalent of rolling out the red carpet then but I think I’ve since made amends and they seem quite happy with a handful of mouldy food every few days. According to my good worm guide, they like to munch on nettles, so I have been bunging in a bit of that as a treat as well. Well it’s cheaper than a bar of Green & Blacks and means I can save the Bombay Sapphire for me…..

So, next up is operation bush pruning and a quick masterclass in fruit tree selection from my gardening guru….. I’ll let you know how I get on!