I have been very busy...

 

In our garden. Painting our new Dutch barn style shed; refurbishing a long flower bed; preparing our greenhouse for my tomato and cucumber plants. In addition to this we painted the boundary fence, arbour and shed.

I will first share with you our Dutch barn. This style is not readily available here in the UK so I searched on line and found someone to build it for us, Sheds Unlimited in Hawkwell, Essex. We are so pleased with it and now it is painted it looks just how I pictured it.

Before

First coat, you can see how patchy it is. Though there was stain applied when it was built the wood still sucked up the first coat.

Second coat, still patchy, will need a third coat

It was still not quite right after the third coat, so the front and side you can see in this photo received a fourth coat. Especially as this corner of the garden gets very hot and it will be baked in the sunshine.

Here it is finished, complete with country cream trim.

I will bring you the progress of the flower bed tomorrow.

Bright  Blessings

Julie

 

 

Garlic and onion harvest and beets on the way...

Last weekend we harvested our garlic, I had never grown it before and though there was plenty of foliage to be seen....

 

Garlic on the right this was quite early on.

I didn't know if there was anything going on in the earth. so with some trepidation hubby pushed the fork in and slowing lifted the earth; and surprise, surprise up came lots of garlic bulbs. Some are quite small but that doesn't matter. Here they are drying off....

You can see in the top photo on the left the foliage of the red onions. These were amazing, they didn't grow particularly large but the just grew out of the ground almost harvesting themselves he he. Like the garlic we had not grown onions before but we will be again this year.

The onion and garlic sets are planted in the fall and harvested in July the following year. The main draw back to this is space. I only have the patch of ground they were for growing outside (other than containers) so they do delay the planting of my butternut squash plants. Still this weekend we will (or I should say hubby) will be digging this tiny patch of earth over and digging some nutrient rich earth and I will get the squash plants and my final 2 sweet corn plants planted.

And finally, my beets. they are growing in the greenhouse and one side the leaves are enormous, while I was in the greenhouse tying up my tomato plants I noticed that some of the beets are showing above the ground, they are not as big as I thought they might be going the leaves but it might not be time to lift them yet. I will check my growing vegetables book.

I will share my beet harvest soon.

Bright Blessings from the Cabin xxx