The Vegetable Garden and our Land

Since moving here in September 2008 we have done a lot of work, not only to the inside of the house but also outside. Changing the rear flower garden and also rearranging and extending the vegetable garden as well as adding a large polytunnel, which 'himself' designed and built in March this year. We have also added raised vegetable beds which make life a lot easier!

We have nearly 7 acres of land with this property, most of which is used by 'our girls', but we have now decided to use the top paddock nearest the house as extra growing space and hopefully, next year will have more fruit trees and more planting beds.

The polytunnel was one of the best things that we have done and have grown loads this summer.

We have grown an abundance of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, chillies and melons and we are still picking!

The raised beds.

We have grown all sorts outside in the garden this year and have a great success with lots of things, various squash including marrows (far too many!), courgettes, patty pan, sweet dumpling and pumpkins. Also have grown haricots verts, various different lettuces, radish, rocket, some excellent broccoli, cauliflowers, spinach, turnips, chillies, potatoes, parsnips and beetroot. As well as various herbs, including parsley, coriander, dill, mint, oregano, tarragon, and sage to name but a few. Various fruit also from the garden includes gooseberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, strawberries and a few apples. We have also scoured the fields for our own blackberries and have bags of them in the freezer, which is now heaving! Not to mention the mountain of jars containing jams, pickles and chutneys.

This is the herb wheel that 'himself' built for me earlier on in the year, which has been very successful providing herbs close to hand, I have also planted larger rows of herbs in the other part of the garden.

We recently added yet another veg bed as we found that the raised bed area was just not enough! We still have things coming up in there such as, more radish, winter lettuce, purple sprouting, parsley, coriander, beetroot, more haricots verts and have just planted our garlic for next year! The next thing to plant will be the broad beans.

We are now collecting walnuts every day from the walnut tree in the top paddock, loads and loads each day, so a brilliant year for walnuts. Have made some amazing things already with them! Also, we now have bucketfuls of chestnts to deal with.

Now we are also storing our pumpkins and seem to have quite a few for the winter. We planted them in our compost heap, as they could then take over as much space as they wanted to! Needless to say, there were loads!

We also have a small framed greenhouse, which was already at the house when we bought it, so have been lucky enough to be able to plant a few more tomato plants and jalepeno chillies in there.

Having cleared out most of the tomato plants now, we now have some lettuce in for winter. We still have peppers, aubergines and chillies and a few remaining tomato plants in the greenhouse.

The jalapeno chillies are now turning red.

These are peppers still growing in the polytunnel.

Aubergines still growing well.

Apart from the remaining peppers, aubergines and a few tomatoes in the polytunnel, we have also planted winter lettuce, plus a few haricots verts plants that we brought in from outside, just to see if we could grow some inside....so far so good!