Carly (Container Team – Tiptree) has begun a ‘Get Growing’ project by redesigning her whole garden. She has kindly agreed to share her story with us. Her son Albi has also been helping out to get their garden ready for the busy growing season. There’s nothing like getting your children involved to teach them gardening top tips.
Here is Carly and Albi’s growing journey:
THE GARDEN
“We started our little garden just over a year ago after buying our house a couple of years previous, we used the first lockdown to start designing our garden from scratch, we started with a new patio and then we went for new turf and borders.
Unfortunately, our dog ruined the new turf so we decided on a nice grey slate instead. Since then we have been filling the borders with all sorts of different shrubs, trees, and plants.”
VEGETABLES
Carly and Albi have also been extremely busy growing their own vegetables and flowers from seed. They will have an abundance of fresh produce ready to use in their cooking. Also, plenty of flowers to make the garden pop with colour during the summer months.
“We have also created a little greenhouse in our kitchen where we have sown some tomatoes, chilies, and herbs.
Around January, we sowed the seeds and as you can see from the photos, they are thriving really well.
Chilies – click here to see Carly’s grafted chilly plants
The most important thing is to give them lots of good light and to keep them well watered – do not let the tomatoes dry out! This weekend we are making troughs for them to continue growing outside with a protection cover until we are 100% sure no frost can get to them.
FLOWERS
These are the sunflowers that Albi and I planted from seed on 27th January, we have had to put them outside now as they outgrew a little stand in the kitchen. However, I’ve placed them between the furniture outside and the side of our house to give them some sort of protection from the elements. In a couple of weeks, I’m going to plant them all down our fence line and hope we have a lovely summer display.
Sunflowers – click to see Carly and Albi’s sunflower plants
We have also tried a new variety this year called ‘Evening sun’ and they are growing nicely. We hope there will be a dark orange colour compared to the yellow colour of the traditional sunflowers.
This is our Peony tuber which we planted from a tub, it has started to grow really well. We are looking forward to this flowering to give a stunning display in our container.
We’re just letting the garden mature now and are going to fill any gaps as we go. But we hope to have a wonderful display like we did last year.”
Update 25th May
“Our chilies are growing really well so Albi and I have planted them into larger pots.
We have also decided to plant up our tomatoes outside into a bigger container (we used the Levington Tomorite compost). This way they have more room to grow!
Planted sunflowers outside – check out Carly’s videos
The sunflowers are starting to show yellow in the flower heads already. So these have gone outside along the fence line, hopefully we get a lovely display out of them.”
Update 9th June
“After we planted the little tomatoes into the troughs they’ve gone from strength to strength. We started feeding them last week and have our first few little tiny tomatoes. Albi is so thrilled with his achievement which I think is just fantastic as it was National Children’s Gardening week last week. Our lilies are also starting to flower, the yellow looks fantastic!”
Update 21st June
“With all the lovely weather we had and mix of rain over the last week our chilies and tomatoes have grown so much! Albi and I are really proud that we have grown these ourselves from seed and can’t wait to try them. Our herbs indoors are also doing well, I can start to add them to my cooking soon.
Not only have our vegetables been doing well but the flowers have started to bloom all over the garden. Our sunflowers are beautiful with their yellow petals, they have grown so big!
I find the best time to take a garden photo is in the evening with all my twinkly string lights.
Below is a very interesting plant, it’s called a Gunnera or dinosaur food. It can get absolutely huge and it takes gallons of water to keep it looking so green and lush however, I’m committed to it and I can’t wait for it to grow. I’ve just bought a new pot for it from Perrywood which is hopefully going to be its forever home. It’s so big I managed to fit in it myself (just for a laugh)!”
Update 27th July
“We now have tomatoes and Albi is really chuffed with them. Our strawberries and peppers are starting to show as well. The garden is looking amazing, everything is in full bloom especially the sunflowers. Our Dahlia’s from seed are getting big and we are just waiting for them to flower.”
Click here to see Carly’s strawberry plants
Click here to see the tomato and pepper plants
Update 15th September
“This is my final update for my get growing project this year in my garden. Albi and I are glad we grew our tomatoes from seed as we have had so many lovely tomatoes throughout the whole summer. We still have some more growing now.
We were successful with our seed grown chilies as well as our grafted. The Trinidad Scorpion Chili was extremely hot that it literally took my breath away! The jalapenos were amazing as well, I actually made garlic and jalapenos olive oil. Also, we ended up making about 10 scotch bonnets which my brother-in-law made into a jerk paste which we put on meats for the barbecue.
All of my garden borders have filled in nicely with this year’s growth. I’m excited to see all the foliage change colours ready to move into autumn and winter.
Albi and I are now super excited for our next adventure as we have just been given our first allotment.”
You can follow Carly’s allotment journey HERE! Also, look out for more projects from other members of our team.
