Saturday, April 14, 2007

Up to my elbows in compost

So this is how I spend many a merry hour, making home-made soil blocks, using a soil blocker made by Ladbrooks in the UK (the only people in the world to make them) and organic worm compost. They have been a tad hit and miss in terms of size (they have tiny, medium sized and HUGE and none seem to be quite right for any seedlings) and moisture holding ability... they hold WAY too much and the cucumbers hate them, which is a shame as they are supposed to prevent transplant shock.

Anyway, far too much information for the non-gardener... which brings me to my sun room.
My little oasis, the place that I would go to crash out on the sofa, read and plan to take over the world... which has been taken over by basil, peppers, eggplants and tomatoes. In fact, now that ALL of our furniture is in a large pile in the living room, the only places to sit down are the office, the floor or the bed (and revising for a pesticide applicators license in bed only leads to sleep).

We are well and truly back into winter again having had significant snow twice this week. I have to wear several layers of warm clothes and wade through deep drifts of snow to get to the greenhouse (which has been renamed 'the Bahamas) , but once there I'm down to a T-shirt.

See how beautiful she is becoming! It gets greener in there daily as new blocks of soil warm enough to germinate the seed... plus twice as many weeds.
Yesterday we harvested, and sold, our first 10 bags of arugula and chinese greens and ate a few ourselves with a red wine vinaigrettes. Loverly!

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