Zoe's Garden Prints

Prints inspired by a love of gardening

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Tag: training plum trees

May 3, 2013May 3, 2013Zoe

Anticipating fruit

Welcome!

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

The gallery of pictures on the home page show 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.

On the blog 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.

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 and prints.

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I took a quick trip to the allotment yesterday evening, the first time I’ve managed to get down there after recovering from a bug. It’s all looking so lush with growth after the rain. The peas (sweetpeas and mangetout) have gone mad, so too the brassicas, the beans are past the tops of the poles already, and I struggled to get to the lettuce in between the chickpeas which are in full flower now, and these lettuces are big enough to fill a large sized round trug. I came home with 3 good sized courgettes (from 2 plants) the first beetroot and kohlrabi, a huge bunch of sweetpeas, 2 huge lettuces and masses of yellow mangetout peas. 😋🥰 Forget Christmas, this is the most wonderful time of the year! #allotmentuk #allotmentlove #allotmentlife #installotment #allotmentgarden

BTW these are now available in my shop. You can buy them individually or as a set of 4. 😁🥕🌽🍓(😒no pea emoji). #badges #etsybadges #badgesforsale #vegbadges #gardeningbadge

A few flowers from the garden prior to pressing. Just debating whether to draw them first 🤔 I think they might wilt too much before I get chance, so I’d have to draw them from the photo, but maybe I could incorporate the drawings and pressed flowers together somehow? #debates #thinkingoutloud #flowersforpressing #flowers #gardenflowers #pinkandpurpleflowers

More harvests from the allotment. Garlic and onions, and sweetpeas. All the pink and whites. I’m currently fighting off a cold, which seems very unfair in mid summer when I should be gardening, but painting sweetpeas has definitely helped. I actually just sat in my garden today watching the insects flying around, enjoying the space without doing anything, a rare but lovely thing.

Last year I was horrified to discover that lots of commercially made jars of pesto contain lots of ingredients you wouldn’t expect to find in there, such as potato flakes and even animal fats that mean it isn’t even vegetarian. I’m a big pesto fan, so this year I’ve decided to grow masses of basil (more than usual), so that I can make my own all summer and hopefully be able to fill the freezer too. Of course you don’t always need basil, you can make pesto from rocket, spinach, garlic scapes, nettles, and even carrot tops - or so I’ve been told. Anyone else make their own pesto?

It’s definitely looking like it’s been a good year for the garlic. We haven’t pulled it all up yet, just those whose stems have gone over. There are some tiny ones too, as per usual, but on the whole they look much better than last year. ➡️ All of the red overwintered onions have been harvested and are now basking in the afternoon sunshine. I planted out 2 rows of leeks this morning and a few cosmos and nasturtiums in the emptied onion bed. That’s it now, the plot is officially full. See my story for a little plot walk along.

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