ALLOTMENT ADDICTION, AND A CRAZY IDEA!

Its been a long winter, and a miserable spring so far.  It's very hard to stay focused on the coming of summer, and long days of sunshine and heat.  A local farmer told me we are in for an unusually cold and wet summer.  I hope he's only 50% correct.  We could use the moisture, but cold weather is something we have all had enough of.

How are you coping with this somewhat disappointing spring weather?

I have to say, I am spending an awful lot of time on YouTube of late... particularly watching all the "allotment" videos from the UK.  It started with "Katie's Allotment", and now I am also hooked on  "Jane's Allotment" video series.

Jane is an older version of Katie - and funny beyond funny - but also very knowledgeable about gardening.

My love affair with the "Brits" way of gardening has not just blossomed now.  Long before there was a thing called YouTube, and long before I even had a garden space of my own, I was buying gardening and decorating magazines that featured Typical English Gardens.

In particular, I have always loved the wild hodgepodge look of an English Country garden.  The natural look of them - so like Mother Nature's planting, really appeals to me.

Jane's Allotment, is a typical English Gardener's Garden.  She has vegetables, flowers, herbs, all stuffed together in a small space, which might seem a little over-much to Canadian gardeners - but it all works for her.

It works for me as well - and I want it all - in my garden!

So, as well as choosing to plant my garden according to the phases of the moon - I am also going to change up the arrangement of the garden.

To begin with, I am going to make a relatively small flower garden right in the middle of the vegetable patch - to encourage the bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects to come to my garden.  And I will follow that up with interspersing more flowers throughout the vegetable patch itself.

I am going to section off my vegetables into proper "beds", so I can grow companions together.

I am going to dig up some more lawn and add a Raspberry patch outside and behind my garden where I planted my little cherry tree a couple of years ago.  I love raspberries, I know they can become a pain in the neck, but hopefully giving them their own separate space will give me a chance to keep them under control.

And this morning while I was having a soak in the tub to help my very sore joints and back, I came up with the most brilliant idea!  Yes - she thinks about gardening in the tub!!!

I'll tell you more about that - next time!