BBC GARDENERS WORLD SHOW - NEC Birmingham - June 14th 2015

Each year we tend to visit this event held at Birmingham's NEC for all gardening enthusiasts like myself. It is very interesting and there are so many things to see and buy. Stalls selling everything you need for the garden as well as plants. The RHS tent is worth seeing as there are lots of plant nurseries with hundreds of plant types and many have seedlings and larger plants to buy from them. Outside are a few show gardens, plus the food catering stalls. Inside the main halls are loads of stalls, from wildlife gardening , greenhouse sales, books, odds and ends, to landscaping tools, etc etc..... So a full day there really and this year extra seats were there for the occasional sit down!

It can tire you out!! But very enjoyable indeed.

JUNE IN BLOOM

Clematis

Ceanothus

Rhododendron

Honeysuckle

Perennial Thistle

Aqualegia

"Poached Egg Plant"

"Canary Bird"

Our Rockery

French Lavender

Early Summer and things are already looking very colourful at home.

These are photo's of just a few of our shrubs at home and they have really started to look nice with the recent sunny weather we have enjoyed.

Allotment Photos - June 2015

With my Cultivator

View of two allotments

Sweet Potato Slips

Beans to plant out

Strawberry Bed number 3

Inside large polytunnel

Kale under fine netting

Potato Crop

In my Greenhouse at home

It's all systems go on the allotment plots now and everything is growing nicely too.

This year we are trying some Sweet Potatoes, which are not easy to grow in the UK, so I just wanted to give them a go!. So I have set those in a raised bed of compost and just hoping the climate suits these. Was not really possible to grow them in the polytunnel, so outside was the only option. They arrive as "Slips" in a plastic packaging from the nursery. As you can see above I use my Cultivator machine to turn over the soil on our plots, which makes life much easier. Though I still need to dig manually in places. But anything mechanical does help on such a large area of land. Weatherwise here it is still pretty chilly in the early mornings, which does not help too much regards certain plants like the Pumpkins and outdoor Tomatos. But hopefully it will improve soon.

Allotment Plots Video - Part 1 - May 2015.

Here is a Video I made recently of our Three Allotment plots, just after I had almost completed the planting out. So this is an early stage of the plots growing season this year. I will add another video when everything progresses as the season goes on.
But already I think you can get an idea of how it is all shaping up now.
It takes a lot of work to keep on top of everything, like the weeding.
But so far things are coming along nicely.
We have planted quite a variety of vegetables again, plus there are the fruit plants that are getting established now. The weather has been quite cool so nothing is growing too quickly yet.
I hope you find the video interesting.