Potting up and moving on

It has been a while since the last update on this blog. For a good reason, because the last months we’ve been busy preparing to move house. For the first time in our lives we’re house owners.
We weren’t sad to leave our old house. But to leave the garden behind, in which we spent so many hours transforming it into place of beauty after years of neglect, was a different story.
To keep the costs down, I mainly grew annuals from seeds, so there weren’t too many plants to dig up and bring along at the end of the winter. But still we’ve managed to pot up quite a selection. Hopefully they will form the start of a new beautiful place that we can create together.

We’ve even potted up a small apple and quince tree that we got as presents from our old neighbours a year ago. It was quite a challenge to dig them up. But we managed and found a more or less suitable container. They’ve spent the winter in an industrial plastic “pot” getting waterlogged every now and then. But it shows how resilient plants are: they are budding so fingers crossed that they will survive and bring us some fruit in the future.

Produce

Finally the potatoes were ready. Or at least so we thought because we had been waiting for flowers (apparently a sign), but they did not appear or we missed them.
In any case it was the undergardener’s birthday, a good reason to lift the potatoes from the ground and use them in the birthday lunch. And the three little wrinkly (forgotten to be eaten) potatoes that I put in the ground in the spring did not disappoint: besides feeding 10 for lunch we got dinner out of them several times too. (Note to self, potatoes are very prolific so don’t plant too many.)

Besides the potatoes, the runner beans, tomatoes, courgette and patty pans also start churning out edibles. Last weekend we turned this little bowl of goodness into home made tomato sauce and had a handful of blueberries for desert, yum yum!

After a tropical week with rain, shine and high temperatures, the patty pans are truly flourishing. They are taking over the best part of the garden and show no sign of slowing down. With this growing spurt also comes a steady produce of even more patty pans. Not long and we’ll have to start giving them away. (Note to self, also patty pan are very prolific so don’t plant too many.)