Gardening bore
Lessons from the garden 2022
I’ve not been very Gardening Bore this year, have I? (On here, at least. I regularly bombard Instagram with pictures of tomatoes and courgettes.) Anyway, for those of you who come here for the garden porn, I apologise. Let’s give you a little fix to tide you over...
In the veg garden
Let’s check in on the veg garden, shall we? Because I realise I’ve hardly mentioned it since April, which is not very Gardening Bore of me at all. It’s been our best year yet for the veg garden. After we expanded it last year to make some extra new beds in front of...
A predictably unpredictable Bulgarian April
It’s a tale as old as time (or, more accurately, as old as this blog): I write about the excitement of kicking off the new gardening season and, sure enough, the weather says, ‘Nuh-uh. Here, have some snow. And some frost. Would you like more snow?’ Needless to...
Welcome to Gardening Bore 2022
If you’re wondering where I’ve been all month, we went to England for two weeks, which was rather nice actually, and I got COVID, which wasn’t so nice. Not that I was very ill, luckily. It was more inconvenient than anything, isolating in a house with a partner who...
David Pumpkins
There’s an old Saturday Night Live sketch with Tom Hanks where he’s playing this bizarre character called David Pumpkins. (Google it. It’s weird as shit.) And I think about that weird-ass sketch, and his funny suit, and the dancing – oh God, the dancing – every...
Cluster sowing, beetroot recipes
Always one for trying something new (*cough* bullshit *cough*) I did something a bit different with my beetroot this year. I tried the ‘multi-sowing’ (cluster-sowing) method espoused by Charles Dowding, the guy who made no dig gardening famous. If any form of...
July in the veg garden (a deep dive)
Hello July, you cheeky motherfucker, creeping up on me without warning. I’m sure last time I checked it was still April. Now it’s high summer and the year is running away from me. It’s downhill from here to Christmas. You know that don’t you? Before we know it,...
Greenhouse reveal (sort of), and a June roundup
Like a D-list soap star cutting the ribbon on a new local Tesco, here I am unveiling our rustic greenhouse. Sort of. It looks very finished from the front, you see, but there aren’t any windows on the sides yet! In this 32°C heat, that’s not necessarily a bad thing...
We built a (very twee) garden shed
I say ‘we’. Our friend built it for us, as Rob has his hands full with the never-ending rustic greenhouse project, and I don't do manual labour. Anyway, didn't he do a great job? It’s based on the metal shed in Monty Don’s veg garden, which has always given...
Be more Blanche
We went back to the fabulous plant shop in Sofia last week. I mean, we were supposed to be in Sofia looking at ovens. (Our electric oven hasn’t worked for years and every time spring rolls around, when we no longer want to put the woodburner on just to cook...
Dumpster-diving window beggars
This is our life now. Every time we go out, we’re on high alert for abandoned wooden windows to finish off the rustic greenhouse. We eyeball people’s gardens as we drive by. We scour municipal bins. We tell anyone who’ll listen, ‘We’re looking for old windows. DO...
Springwerk, greenhouse progress and wild garlic
We finally had a warm, sunny, spring-like weekend, so we spent all of last Saturday and Sunday in the veg garden, attempting to impose some order on the chaos. It was hard work (werk schmerk). The first gardening weekend of the year is always murder on my back and...