Zoe's Garden Prints

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Tag: the joys of allotment growing

April 16, 2015April 17, 2015Zoe

Allotment happiness

June 18, 2014June 18, 2014Zoe

Filling up and filling out

Welcome!

I’m a designer and illustrator who is passionate about gardening and in particular growing fruit and vegetables on my allotment.

On the home page, you can read about my allotment. There are posts about what and how I grow, how I combat pests and diseases, and how I store and preserve my harvests, along with as many photos as possible.

The shop page shows some of the items that are for sale in my Etsy shop. You can click on the link on that page, or the orange Etsy badge below, to visit the shop.

I also keep a little journal where I practice my drawing skills by documenting my allotment journey in ink and watercolours.

You can also follow me on Instagram and Twitter under the account @zoes_garden for more regular updates on my plot, shop and journal.

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Oof, 5 hours on the plot today, we’re going to be feeling it tomorrow! All of the potatoes are now in, the last of the kale and beetroot out, a couple of barrows of manure on the bed where squash will go, beetroot sown, beds lightly dug over and others weeded and mulched, garlic fed and watered along with the onions. Oh and paths all mowed and edges strimmed! So busy I didn’t have time to take photos, so here is the plum blossom from a few days ago. I’m so relieved it didn’t all die with the frost, we may have plums yet 🤞. Have you had a productive gardening day, or a lovely lazy Sunday?
A few pictures from my garden today - firstly Honesty (aka Lunaria) with ballerina tulips and forget-me-nots growing through and around them. I found this honesty growing wild in a verge just up the road. A few of the moon like seed heads found their way into my pocket, and now it’s happily growing here. This is pretty much how I garden these days, encouraging native wildflowers in (many do make their way without my help) and occasionally pinching what I can for free. I know they won’t have been treated with pesticides (as a lot of plants from the garden centre are) I know they’ll thrive as they’re local, and I know they’ll benefit the local insects. I’m just helping nature on its way with as little carbon footprint or expense as possible. Picture 3 - there’s a compost bin, fence, shed and table with pots hiding under all this somewhere, I’m certainly not a tidy gardener. The euonymus and ivy have gone a bit mad, but I don’t mind, and thankfully neither does my neighbour 😆. Pic 4 - Spirea ‘Bridal Wreath’ just because it’s so beautiful right now. Lots more sowing and potting on today - the coldframe is filling up, happy days.
The sweetcorn have germinated on damp kitchen paper, time to get them potted up. It’s not necessary to start them this way, it just takes away the guessing game of which ones may or may not germinate (typically every one of mine has) and I just like seeing those furry little roots. I’ll pot these into some root trainers tomorrow.
We took a chance in planting the first of our potatoes yesterday evening, as the weather was so lovely. I say ‘we’ - the most I did was take this photo 😅. These are Ratte which I’ve not tried before. Looking forward to harvesting them already. I wasn’t completely idle, I sowed a row of carrot seed and spring onions, did a bit of hoeing, and made a start on pulling out some of the kale. Some of it is about to flower (which I’ll leave for the bees) but mostly it’s been demolished by the pigeons. It’s just so nice to be pottering around the plot of an evening. 🌤🌱🥔
First bunch of spring onions of the year. They were sown last autumn sometime, I can’t remember exactly, but they’ve been in the ground all winter. Amazing they’ve survived. I love them stirred into scrambled eggs with a bit of cheese. 😋
Desperate to get these beauties in the ground. Had planned it for today, but then life and the weather had other plans 😏. Hopefully we’ll get down there a couple of evenings this week, the weather looks much more promising in the days ahead. Have you planted your spuds yet? 🥔🥔🥔 #potatoeschitting #allotmentuk #sprouting #veggardening #growyourownfood

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allotment top end June
mange-tout
top plot May29
courgettes
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garlic harvest
strawberry punnet
autumn flower bed
red raspberries
beetroot
Bess n beans
sweet williams June
leeks
parsnip harvest
sunflower1
broad bean seed
garlic harvest
yin yang beans
broad bean harvest
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sunflower seed head
broad beans
First sweetcorn
rhubarb harvest
bucket o' squash2
plum harvest
top plot + shed
tools
sprouts
sweetpea flowers
brussels plants
tulips harvest
alliums
garlic basket
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