OCG Lost But Not Forgotten!

Did the last 18 months really fly by seemingly in the blink of an eye?
Did my ideas hatch into something resembling a vegetable patch?

Here's a selection of pics from last year's growing season to put you in the picture..

Photos Of Summer

Courgette Footballs?

We are going to the USA on Tuesday en famille to stay with Jo's brother and his family. The men are staying for eight days and the women and children for an extra week - am I going to find courgette footballs when I return?

With such a proliferation of fruit, I am hoping that a couple of footballs won't matter too much! We should still be able to harvest some at the perfect size....

Sweetest OCG Harvest

What a treat just before we go away on holiday! The Build-a-Ball cage and netting was a sound investment, especially as they can be re-used year after year.

Our First Salad

Taken nearly a week ago now. Our first baby salad leaves were delicious. We have had three meals with homegrown salad this week and I have also enjoyed the leaves in my lunchtime sandwiches! I have planted 6 more rows of these delicious greens, using 6 different varieties and must remember to continue to plant little and often.

With the recent heavy rain, I am finding it a bit of a chore to wash these tiny mud-splashed leaves. Does anyone know of a good salad tumbler system or something similar? I know 10mins of washing is a small price to pay but time is precious in a lunch hour!

Lollies and the lesser of two evils

I have a dilemma.

Lollies. I love lollies.

So much so that they started to impact excessively on our weekly shopping bill and the number of wrappers that I was throwing away began to hurt my green credentials. I was happily munching through 2 a day, recycling the boxes they came in by either sticking them in the wormery, the compost bins or the recycling bin and washing and using the sticks as plant labels.

So, a reasonable effort regarding waste disposal but still a disturbing habit for a grown man, albeit one with a sweet tooth.

It wasn't until I noticed that my children had started to take on a similar hunger for lollies that I paused to reflect on my own appetite for these frozen wonders. I'm happy to stuff my face with sugary delights because I am long enough of tooth to understand what my body can take without suffering any ill effects or weight gain (I've been between 10 and 11 stone for the past 20 years) but to see my children eating brand lollies stuffed full of sugar and god knows what else started me thinking of alternatives.

Enter Annabel Karmel's Ice Lolly Moulds and pure fruit juices!

I no longer baulk when Milly or Tom ask for a lolly as a special treat. I happily open the freezer drawer and ask them what flavour they would like. Pineapple? Apple? Orange? Cranberry? Made where possible with pure juice, not from concentrate, these lollies are not just a treat, they're good for you too!

No more asking for a chocolate coin when she's been a big girl and done a poo - choc rewards are out, frozen goodness is in!

Guilt free lollies for me - brilliant, I can eat two and it's not even a glass of juice and if it was, it wouldn't matter!

Back to the dilemma. The Lolly Makers can be re-used hundreds of times which is a good thing. Their end product is healthy but just as much of a treat as those that Tescopoly offer - brilliant.

I can't recycle the juice cartons. Ah.

Can the Gods Of Green forgive me? Have I forged the greenest and healthiest path through my addiction? Answers on a postcard or in the comments section if you have to!

Personally, I don't like having to stop eating something or buying something because of its packaging but I have done and I will do again. The answer? Food manufacturers have a collective responsibility to produce recyclable packaging. Simple, eh?

Finally Some Green Stuff!

A seemingly long winter of digging and construction at OCG and a further wait for seeds to germinate before planting out has finally started to pay off.

Ably assisted by under-gardener, Milly!

My single row pea experiment seems to have worked in spite of this horrible-looking wormy thing that did for half the seeds before they had a chance to germinate. I have searched the hinterweb trying to identify it but to no avail. There are thousands of them in this particular bed which was part of the turfed area of garden originally. Wire worm perhaps? Any help on this would be much appreciated.

Greatly magnified - largest I have found is about an inch long when fully extended

Peas about to flower, the 45cm height guide was a little misleading (120cm!)

Carrots, onions, courgettes, french climbing beans, runner beans, tomatoes, cabbage, spinach, chard and numerous salad leaves are all putting on good growth as summer starts to arrive. My "suck it and see" approach (what choice did I have as a total novice?!) looks like it is working in the most part and we all can't wait to eat our first produce. No surprise that lettuce is going to win that particular race!

A few more pics to finish...

Springtime Blip

Yikes! It has been a while since my last post to say the very least. I got a headache on the afternoon of my last post. It hurt a lot and then it hurt some more and stayed with me until an operation in April stopped it in its tracks. I spent 8 worrying days in hospital during this time and lost a lot of weight (I didn't have a lot to lose!) but eventually got my allotted MRI slot which was the turning point in my diagnosis.

The Neurologist identified what he described as, "some crud" in my Sphenoid sinus (later, properly diagnosed as Acute Sphenoid Sinusitis). You have to remember that human nature had had me thinking the worst so this sounded like great news! I asked if he could give me a tablet to make it all go away but he referred me to Lincoln's senior ENT consultant, Mr McRae. To cut a long story short, antibiotics didn't help and he operated to cut into the sinus cavity, drain the infection out and make my drainage holes larger to hopefully prevent a recurrence.

I woke up from the anaesthetic without a headache for the first time in 5 weeks! A really strange experience, it feels like it happened to someone else now, very worrying for my family and friends, all of whom were fantastic throughout - I wish I had felt like eating and drinking all the lovely things they bought to hospital for me! A huge thank you also to the nursing staff at Lincoln County Hospital - such kind, hard-working people - they really made a difference to me. Such a shame that the poorly managed behemoth that is the NHS makes it so hard for them to earn a decent living....politics is for another day...

Blogging and many other aspects of my life have therefore been put on hold for a number of weeks. The OCG has however taken up a lot of my recovery time and I'll leave you with a couple of pics to bring you further up to date with progress.

Construction finished late Jan. Much work now needed on the soil!

3 beds de-stoned and weeded - only 4 more and the fence beds to go!

Getting into shape finally!

Fruit Plant Bargains

Thank you to Welsh Girl for the link to Lidl earlier in the week! This morning, I bought 2 blackcurrant bushes, 2 redcurrant bushes, 1 blackberry bush/bramble and a golden delicious apple tree.


I have never grown fruit before (or much of anything come to think of it!) so I'm pretty chuffed with my small collection. What did I pay for this array of fruity treats?....£8.94!! Bobby bargains don't come much bobbier! Just need to wait a couple of years for my first berries....

The Story So Far

We bought The Corner House at the end of April 2006. We jumped from 3 bedrooms to 5 but more importantly, from a postage stamp garden to one that is quite substantial for uphill Lincoln. I took it upon myself to dig over a small corner of the garden in our first few weeks here in order to at least get something growing for the table.

I always knew that I had a secret hankering for growing veg but even I was surprised by my passion and enthusiasm once unleashed on a bit of green space! Jane, my MIL, has had a lovely kitchen garden for many years and she was a great help delivering an assortment of baby veg plants - courgettes, runner beans, french beans, dwarf beans, tomatoes, chard and cabbages. What a great start!

This is the only photo I have of last year's rushed efforts, taken with my mobile phone so please excuse the lack of quality.

Difficult to see what is growing I know! Our new neighbour also allowed me to attach a downpipe to her guttering which solved my water supply problems early on. In a flash storm, those two butts can fill from empty in under an hour! 454 litres! Her house is now on the market and I fear that any solicitor worth his/her salt will not allow me to pilfer this water - there being rules about disposing of your own surface water on site etc. I do have 3 other butts on site but watering would involve a lot more walking if these two were to go! Watch this space.

Milly trampling the marigolds in her "bean tunnel"!

So last year was a bit of a rush, we shoved a few bits in the ground and hoped for the best. We are blessed with great soil, quite loamy, and everything we planted grew very well. I could have looked after the tomatoes better and been more consistent in my watering of them but apart from that, no major disasters. We of course had courgettes and runner beans coming out of our ears but were just so chuffed to be growing something, it didn't matter a jot.

Plans for expansion, growing from seed and proper organisation were never far from my thoughts whilst I pottered. I have spent the winter reading, learning, digging, reading, learning, digging and in my next post, I'll bring you up to date on how the Organic City Garden looks now and what I plan to grow this year.

Caught the veg blog bug!

The Winter is drawing to a close. I have been hard at work to prepare a corner of our city garden for our first foray into organic veg growing.

A brief intro is in order for post no.1. Your narrator will be mostly me, Wolfie, a 34 year old (before my time I am told!) husband to, Wolfwoman (37), father to two Wolverines, Emily (3) and Thomas (19months). We live on a busy road just outside the Cathedral quarter of Lincoln.

Tommy at the park

Autumnal Milly

I hope to be able to share my growing successes and failures throughout what will be my first full year in the Corner House garden.

Milly enjoyed pulling the runner beans down at the end of last season and was especially taken with the "magic beans" she found inside the pods, coveting them for days! Tommy was too young but should be sturdy enough on his feet this spring to help out with the magic process!

Wolfwoman is also looking forward to spending some family time in the garden. A huge improvement on rushing out with cups of tea for me on cold winter days and rushing back in to look after the Wolverines!

Please post and say hello - looking forward to "meeting" others bitten by this strange bug!