I plough the plot and scatter.......

Just  a quick word about ground preparation.  Sadly and as with most things in life doing the boring mundane things well leads to long time joy and satisfaction.


If you haven't yet there is still time to give your garden a good dig.  (More on ways of digging in a later post),  Just turn the soil over and remove as many stones as you can.  Do it now!!  I normally pay the Junior Gardener and the Under Gardener in smarties for doing this for me.  This part does really pay dividends.  I always wonder where the heck  all the stones come from because no matter how many I dig out this year there will be more next.  Even worse if you live in a modern or new build house this is when you find out where the builders dumped all the brick rubble I'm afraid.  I helped a friend set up a new plot last year and the bricks we dug out went towards a fairly substantial wall!

The junior gardener looking for more stones

Anyway, once you have dug it over then its time to dig in some "organic material".  We produce and use masses of compost over the year and this is where it goes mostly.  I'll talk about composting sometime but thats a whole subject on its own.  If you don't have any compost you can of course buy some in in great big bags or sometime get it from your council.  If your plot is fresh you might also want to apply some manure to it.  I love a bit of shit in the garden me!  If you are digging dung in please please please make sure it is well rotted down, I get a delivery every year and it gets dumped in a dark corner of the garden for a year to rot down before use.  Also.  And this is getting more important.  Know your source.  There have been many reported cases where dung applied to a garden has actually made the garden almost infertile due to the amount of pesticides used on the farm and passed through the animal.  Disaster!  Ask the farmer or ideally get it from an organic source if you can.  My prefered shit of choice is horse but cow will do and the creme de la creme is chicken shit. It is so full on with nitrogen though it really needs proper rotting - and a whole stack of chickens!!

Fairly well dug.  (Note the surface coating of shit!)

Anyway, once you've done all this, taken paracetamol and paid the chiropractors bill its time for yet more soil prep!  Rake your soil to what the garden books call a "fine tilth".  This means get as many stones out and make it as smooth as you can be bothered with in my book.


When this is finished, on a normal cold winter I'd cover the soil with a bit of polythene to help warm it up for planting in.  I don't think you'll need to bother this year it's so warm.  It's still a bit too early for planting anything much in the ground up here so now its time to kick your wellies off, pour a cup of tea and plan what you want to grow..........

More soon!  Happy digging!

Go on then, lets talk gardening!!

I've been a right grumpy old bugger lately. (Sorry about that).  In fact the only thing that has made me truly happy recently is the kids and pottering in the garden. Last night a few good and trusted twitter friends suggested I write about gardening - so here we go.

Before I start writing all about it I'll tell you a bit about our plot. 

Luckily for a house in the town we have just under 1/4 of an acre of south facing garden which believe me is plenty.  It has the usual lawn and borders with some really lovely touches.  It is what estate agents refer to as mature established gardens.  In no way can I claim the credit for building this garden.  It was what contributed to selling us this house 5 years ago and I am thankful to the last 100 or so years of owners who have looked after it so well.  I hope I leave it as nice when I get carried out many years from now in my box! 

So, the garden!!  Heres the highlights.  It has an area we have christened "The secret Garden" which is a hidden away area with some lovely herbacious borders, a nice little pond, an old sundial and a lovely old sandstone patio.  This is our child-free part of the garden where us grown ups can sit, enjoy the fire in the chiminea and a glass of wine while the sun sets. 

The main part is mainly lawn with borders and some really beautiful trees and shrubs.  Its great for playing football on, for learning to ride bikes, for having a paddling pool in and for lazing on a summers day (remember them?). As well as a couple of massive fir trees, a pretty birch and a rowan we have a full size cherry, a plumb tree and a really old but productive big apple tree which much to the dissapointment of the kids produces masses of fantastic cooking apples.

Great for playing on.  An arse to cut!

Then we come to the part that I will mostly write about, my domain - the kitchen garden. 

Our permanent fruit bushes are: blackcurrants, red currants, white currants, gooseberries, blueberries, raspberries (red and gold), rhubarb and a strawberry patch.

Also within the kitchen garden of course is the veg patch.  What is in this varies depending on the fads of the time. We also grow some of our veg in bags or pots.  As standard however every year we always grow - potatoes (main crop and early), carrots, onions (red and white), garlic (yes, in Scotland!!), lettuce (various varieties), spring onions, peas, beans, leeks, brussel sprouts, squash and normally a pumpkin for halloween.  Apart from that we do whatever takes our fancy.  This year that means purple sprouting broccolli - so delicious but so expensive to buy and maybe cauliflowers if I can find a way to keep the caterpillars off!

Then there is the greenhouse.  This is used to start my veg and Mrs M's flower seeds nice and early (miles, miles cheaper than buying plants), over wintering some pots, growing some really early potatoes in, growing new potatoes for Christmas (yes you can do that) and of course in the summer growing our hot crops - Cucumbers, peppers, chillies, aubergine and of course Tomatoes.  I LOVE tomatoes.  Not the crappy tasteless, chilled to death supermarket ones.  Wait until you have grown your own italians or cherry tomatoes or lovely old UK varieties.  Honestly, there is nothing finer!!

Ready for the big sowing, nice spring day.

I'll be blogging over the next few weeks and months with some tips to get you started, the story of how we are getting on, our successes and failures with some hopefully nice photographs and fun tales from our garden.

As I get going if you have any questions please just fire in and ask on here or on twitter (@daviemartin).  Now I've started I'm excited about writing this.

To those of you who suggested I do this thanks for the tip.  It has already really fired me up.

Thanks for reading.  Watch this space!!!

Best to just drink coffee on days like this

Scunnered!

Hello!  Oh my its been a while since I've sat down and put my thoughts into a blog.

So, whats been going on..... Not a whole lot to be honest, hence the title of this post.

Scunnered is a great word - it means so much more than "fed up".  My favourite definition from our friends at Urbandictionary.com is this:
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A Scots word used to mean that you are world weary, down-trodden, and thoroughly bereft of any lust for life when these words and expressions are simply too inadequate to signify the magnitude of your slide into shitdom. "Having to pay 550 euros to the locksmith on an emergency call out really scunnered him." The cause of all this is that old devil of work dissatisfaction.  I'm finding the realisation is that in actual fact I may have done my job for too long.  I still enjoy parts of selling cars to businesses - especially the meeting new people, connecting with them and building relationships.  However more and more I realise that it has all become a little mundane.  It's certainly not easy; in fact it's rarely been harder; but it just isn't doing it for me anymore. But what to do?  I am "qualified" to do sweet F.A apart from chat to people and sell them stuff, and lets face it the job market isn't exactly buoyant at the moment!  So a plea if you read this.  Got any ideas what a 40-odd year old unqualified chatty bloke can do to make money?  Thanks for listening to me whine!  Next time I'll try to be less scunnered!    The author at his desk, yesterday

You know you are getting old when........

Its sunday as I type this and I'm sat in a cosy kitchen with the smell of roast beef lingering in the air from lunchtime, shortbread just out of the oven and a nice cup of coffee beside me.


The kids are watching a Barbie DVD and Lesley is at work.  Quiet time.  And boy do I need it!


I'm a Queen of the South fan (thats a Scottish 1st division football club in case you didn't know).  I have been for some time.  In fact I have been going since I was a boy with my dad and have stood on the terracing (yes, we have such things still) on the same spot, with the same group of friends for we think 17 years.  Nobody is really sure.


Anyway, to the point of this post.  Queens were away to Aberdeen this weekend in the Scottish Cup.  This weekend was the perfect indication of how much we have all changed!  None of us fancied the bus anymore so Stuart drove up after work on Friday.  Riotous night out I hear you ask?  Nope, got to Aberdeen, had a whisky and we all turned in at the Premier Travel Inn for the night.


Next day, rather than hitting the town at 9am and getting "straight on it".  We all had a leisurely breakfast, a drive into town and a wonder round.  A bite of lunch in a rather nice restaurant and away to the game.  Admittedly we did have a few with the lads from the supporters buses when we found them but on the whole, remarkably sober! 


The game ended in a draw and we were straight down the road.  I was home at 10 and watched the highlights on TV.


Whats the point in all this?  Well, not so many years ago, a weekend like this weekend would have been a serious bender for all of us.  A huge amount of drink would be drunk and mischief would have been gotten up to. Heads would have been throbbing.  Hangovers would have been monumental and have been discussed for months, nay years to come.


Did I enjoy the game any less? Nope.  Did I feel not capable of joining the banter? Pfffft, this is me here!  Did I not sing as loud or cheer as loud when Queens went one nil up? Have you heard my croaky voice today?   In fact. Shocking revelation - I probably enjoyed it a whole lot more.  I am still totally crushingly tired though!


It appears I may be growing up gracefully.  With that dissapointing thought I leave you. I may have to have a wee whisky tonight to get over the shock! :o)

Chin Chin!