Plaiting Garlic

We are back from a week camping in Norfolk and I have spent the day unpacking and washing while Garden Dad spent the day tidying up the garage so we could put our camping equipment away and still access all the garden bits and pieces we need. While tidying up he came across the garlic we harvested before we went away so Garden Girl helped me plait them. The garlic, by now is almost dry so was easy to plait. We also plaited a piece of string into each bunch to hold them together when we start cutting some out to eat. They will now hang in the garage to dry out some more. They are apparently ready to eat when the skins are fine and dry and flaky.

While we were plaiting the garlic we came across this small bulb halfway up the stem of a large bulb. Having never grown garlic before I do not know if this normal or not but it seemed a little unusual to me.

We have also harvested some large cucumbers and courgettes that Daddacool and Zooarchaeologist must have missed while they were looking after our garden, so that is dinner sorted tonight; sausage and courgette casserole.

I always return from a holiday with renewed motivation for getting organised so tonight we are making lists of things we want to get done over the coming months and making sure our diaries are up to date, so we can start next week with purpose and make real headway in the garden and house, but I will update you about our holiday and garden over the coming week, as well as our snail related activities from the week before we left.

A Poem by Garden Girl

Mole in the hole
Hello Mole!

Bird fly from the tree,
To see what you can see.

Hello Frog, I need to swim
I have to go
Bye, Frog.

A Kiddizoom Video Camera Documentary of Our Garden by Garden Girl

VTech very kindly sent Garden Girl a Kiddizoom Video Camera all of her own, so this week she has been using it out in the garden and has produced a documentary of her favourite things in the garden for you all to see.Check it out here.

Garden Girl absolutely loves the video camera and really got into the role of documentary presenter. It was lovely to see the garden through her eyes, which parts are important to her and what she knows and it will be a fantastic thing to show her when she is older, with a garden of her own.

To find out more about the camera check out the review here. We think its a great first video camera. Thanks VTech!

Learning About Ladybirds

Last week our garden bug of choice was the ladybird. Garden Boy loves ladybirds. He gets very excited every time he spots one and loves to let them crawl onto his hand. Even when one of them nipped his arm he was happy to go back for more. So it wasn't hard to get him interested in learning all about these friendly garden creatures. Garden Girl on the other hand was trying her hardest to persuade us to stick with butterflies and caterpillars so the first thing we did was to look at the similarities between the two and eventually she was persuaded.

Things to Tell your Toddler

• The lifecycle of a Ladybird is the same as a butterflies 
• A ladybird lays a tiny egg, out of which emerges a ladybird larvae. 
• The ladybird larvae spends all its time eating blackfly, much like a caterpillar spends all its time eating leaves. 
• Like the caterpillar, the ladybird larvae sheds it skin a number of times
• The last time the ladybird larvae sheds its skin it turns into a pupa, just like a caterpillar goes into its chrysalis
• A few weeks later an adult ladybird emerges from the pupa
• There are around 46 different species of ladybird in the UK.
• Not all ladybirds have the same number of spots. In fact, many have no spots at all.
• Ladybirds crawl on 6 legs but also have wings for flying.
• Ladybirds have two antennae which they use to feel, smell and taste
• Ladybirds eyes are shaped like hexagons so they can see a lot of different directions all at the same time.
• Ladybirds eat aphids which are tiny insects such as the black fly and green fly which suck all the juice out of leaves, ruining our lovely veggies
• Ladybirds are bright colours as a warning to predators that they do not taste very nice. 

Activities We Have Done

• We made 'The Ladybird Game' and played it lots. I remember playing this when I was a little girl so it was really nice to play it with our Little Garden Helpers. The rules are simple; If you throw a one you get a body, throw a two and you get a head, throw a three and you get an antenna, throw a four and you get a spot, throw a five and you get an eye, throw a six and you get a leg. The winner is the first person to make a complete ladybird. It is a really simple board game for toddlers to play and the best thing is, you can make all the pieces yourself.
• We visited a local museum and made a ladybird mask. Garden Girl insisted that the spots should look tidy!  

• We took inspiration from 'Mister Maker's, Minute Make Time' and made ladybirds with air drying clay. They had a lot of fun making these and I had a lot of fun watching them play with them. They made them dance and talk to each other until in true boy fashion, Garden Boy decided to pull the legs off his, announcing afterwards, with a leg held high and a slightly forlorn look that 'my ladybird can't dance anymore.' At least it wasn't a real one!
• We read one of our all time favourite books, 'What the Ladybird Heard' by Julia Donaldson, over and over again, and enjoyed reading 'The Bad Tempered Ladybird' by Eric Carle.
• We went into our garden in the drizzling rain and counted and identified the different types of ladybird and ladybird larvae, then logged our results on the UK Ladybird Survey website.
• We searched the internet and our own photos for pictures of ladybirds and discussed what we would look like if we were ladybirds. Garden Girl decided she would be red, with seven black spots just like the 7-spot ladybirds we found in our garden. Garden Boy wanted to be orange with wobbling green spots. A number was never decided upon.

For Garden Boy the highlight was definitely spotting all the Ladybirds in the garden. He brought his wheelbarrow with him as he thought we were going to collect them all and had loads of fun trying to encourage them onto his finger and then into the wheelbarrow. For Garden Girl and myself the best bit was playing 'The Ladybird Game', Garden Girl thrilled with the knowledge that she was doing something I used to enjoy and me, thrilled to be able to share a simple childhood memory of my own with her.

Hide and Seek

Our Courgettes have been playing hide and seek with us. For the past few days we have been searching for some to harvest but have found nothing. Then today we discovered three large marrow sized courgettes hiding between the pots. Courgette Soup for us tomorrow then!

And incase, like me, you are wondering why there is a plug included in this picture, Garden Dad, who I asked to take the photo, claims it is there to give you all an indication of size.

Tips from Gardener's World

One of the things we have been trying to do this year is to keep up with Gardener's World. Last year we were so busy outside we recorded the shows and eventually watched them all about five or six weeks later than they aired. We nodded our heads at all the useful tips, noting that things they mentioned would have been a good idea had we known about them in time, but always having missed the boat by a good few weeks. It has been easier to keep up this year however, perhaps because by the evening I am exhausted and ready to sit down with a cuppa.

Watching Gardener's World reminds us of some things we need to do that we might otherwise have forgotton about and also spurs us on to get things done. It is just like talking to other gardeners; once we have heard what they have been busy with, we start to feel that we should get moving with that particular task as well, before we get left behind. Last year, all we could do was write down all the good tips and ideas to try out this year and these are the six things we thought were particularly good ideas and wished we had known about earlier;

• For tomatoes, line terracotta pots with plastic bags to help keep the moisture in
• Plant climbers at an angle towards the pole or wall it is climbing to help it find the support
• Plant trailing nasturtians and calendulas with brassicas. They attract cabbage whites whose eggs can be picked off the leaves
• Bury a tin can in the soil next to a plant and water into the tin can, keeping soil out of the tin can. This s apparantly paricularly effective for keeping runner beans, peas and courgettes moist
• Put olive oil on top of the water in the water butt to prevent the mosquitoes laying their eggs in there and totally empty the water butt every now and then to breakup the lifecycle of the mosquitoes
• Soak nettles in water and use as a general purpose feed on your vegetable patch

Sadly with all the delays we have had this year, we haven't had the opportunity to try all these out but we did remember to plant our climbers at an angle and we did put olive oil on top of the water in our water butt and both seem to have worked well. We are again this year gathering a wealth of useful tips from Gardeners World and, looking at my watch, its time to head to the sofa for a cuppa right now. And this week they are visiting the Ribble Valley, where I grew up, so I have an added interest.

Great Garlic and a Hint of Jealousy

At the weekend Garden Dad and Garden Girl harvested 32 garlics. It was very satisfying to see them resting on top of the soil, although we had to move them indoors at the end of the day for fear of it raining. Last year we didn't grow any at all because the catalogue we ordered them from had run out and we never got around to going out and buying some. But if this year's crop taste as good as they have grown we'll definitely be growing garlic again.

We also cleared away all the dead broad beans. It was starting to become quite disheartening seeing them there, all black and shrivelled. We were very pleased to hear however that the little orange bugs that had appeared all over them are ladybird larvae. This is great news as it means the black fly will soon be gobbled up and we will hopefully not lose any other crops to these little terrors. It is also good for this weeks theme which happens to be ladybirds. It should make for an interesting ladybird and larvae count tomorrow.

We also visited Grandad and Grandma South at the weekend to reclaim our camera and take a nosey look at their vegetable patch. With a hint of jealousy I must admit that their crops are looking particularly healthy and flourishing. Made all the more galling by the fact that some of these crops were started off by ourselves. I am consoling myself with the knowledge that our efforts earlier in the year have bourne fruit, if not in our garden.