Stephanie's Garden Blog

The ComposTumbler uses a unique process which can make compost in as little as 14 days. You can make compost in 3 easy steps with a ComposTumbler.

This week In Stephanie's Kitchen Garden we will be sowing crops such as spring cabbage, turnips, pak choi, autumn carrots and winter salads.

This week In Stephanie's Kitchen Garden we will be pruning our espalier apple trees. Summer is the ideal time to carry out this annual job and our apple trees have put on an enormous amount of growth this year. They are definitely ready for a haircut!

This week In Stephanie's Kitchen Garden we will be planting out some winter broccoli in to new vegetable cages. We have two identical cages put up side by side. One is covered with white insect mesh and the other in covered with new black insect mesh. We are running a trial to see if the plants grow differently according to the colour of the mesh.

With autumn not far away now it will soon be the time to pick the bountiful harvest of fruit that you have protected and nourished through the summer months. The question is, 'what do you do with all the excess apples?'

This week In Stephanie's Kitchen Garden we will be harvesting our blackcurrants in the fruit cage. This is such a low maintenance crop, with the bushes needing very little attention through the year.

Caterpillars develop from eggs laid by Moths and Butterflies. There are many different species and many that produce caterpillars damaging to plants. Some of the most damaging for brassica plants are the cabbage white caterpillars; the large cabbage white (Pieris brassicae) and the small cabbage white (Pieris rapae).

In a recent blog post by the Hip Horticulturist they discussed 5 ways to cheer up a garden shed this summer and talked about how our wooden raised beds can transform the look of any garden.

This week In Stephanie's Kitchen Garden we will be planting out our leeks. It's a little later than we would normally like to plant them, but they always follow our new potatoes into the ground and these are a little late being harvested due to the cold spring. The leeks are good size plants though, so should have plenty of time to get to a good size before the winter.