How has your growing season gone this year?

Mine?
Well the fruit has been slow, but we've had some, just not as much as in other years.
The blackberries returned this year, after clearing the bushes out last year, not as many but better in size.

Plums: Put in a new tree with supports (to stop the dog chewing it to pieces) was surprised that even though it was a young sapling, it still put out some fruit.
Fed with grass cuttings and rhubarb leaves, then left alone, it did well.

Pears: The well established pear tree (around 6 years) that had never given us any fruit was looked at.
When it was put in, the dog chewed it away, but the main stem seamed to survive.
We weren't sure if the chewing had gone below the grafting joint, but it appeared it had on closer inspection.
After a huge effort (and plenty of wood for the burner) we finally pulled it up.
A new sapling was put in with a protective cage around it, fed on grass cuttings and rhubarb leaves, watered in and left.
Late in August it flowered!
No fruit, but signs of growth followed, so we'll see next year once it's more established.

Apples: Another victim that when first put in, fell foul of the dog chewing the main stem, but has been left for three years now, spreading it's branches out.
Again fed on grass cuttings and rhubarb leaves, this year brought us three apples!
It's about time to cut it down a bit (more wood for burner or brown for compost) as it has spread out and is almost 8 foot tall and wide now.

Cherries: The cherry tree goes from strength to strength.
Plenty of fruit this year, which the birds loved heh.
Solid trunk and more growth, ready for pruning down. Main stump looks very solid and seems to like growing with strawberries around it.
A bit of black fly killed off one growth shoot, but overall has grown well.

Strawberries: Not many this year, in the bed that's been in place for 5 years.
I know, I know, it should be moved every three years or so, which is long overdue.
I've been concentrating on growing the off-shoots for new plants though, so a clear autumn day I will get to it.

To the front garden... 

We have real problems with local cats, forever digging up anything planted.
Chicken wire all around doesn't stop them, netting is a pain, it's on - it's off etc.
So when a friend moved out of an allotment and offered me their old greenhouse for free, I jumped at it.
Five days, a lot of pulling it down, then bricking the base and rebuilding it was worth the effort.

It's what I'd call a ground greenhouse, no pots, just a small short stone path and the rest is all natural ground to plant in.
Home made and potting compost put in on top of cardboard (no-dig method) then seed planting and watering with rain water.

Started with cucumbers, peas, tomatoes and two varieties of lettuce (little gem and the leafy normal)

Lettuce: These were first to show and set off like a rocket, every week we had both leafy and little gems to pick fresh and eat.
Money saving - £2 per week
This lasted for about 8 weeks, although I'd planted too many at once, lesson learned, next year - put them in a few at a time and stagger them over about 4 weeks.
After 8 weeks or so, they started going to seed.

Cucumbers: Should really set them off in the back greenhouse in pots, then put them in ground to grow.
They were slow to start, but once one or two came through, I had a jungle of them and they were HUGE!
Some were long and standard, others as wide as small marrows.
I learned that this maybe due to the soil being too acidic? (Need more brown in the compost next year)

Tomatoes: These did nothing planted in the ground from seed.
So I potted some more in the back green house and brought them on.
They flew after putting them in the ground in the front greenhouse, but the fruit was sparse and stayed green. They were also solid.
Again, this appears to be due to too much compost (acidic?) which meant they produce too much chlorophyll in their fruit (keeping them green)
Lesson learned for next time.
Tomatoes in the back greenhouse in pots didn't do much either, fruit wise, maybe it was the potting compost?
Normally they fly back there.

Peas: I've grown peapods for years, they grow anywhere, but I will grow them outdoors next year I think.

Outside the front greenhouse, I've a little side piece of soil adjacent to it.
I made a copper frame base, got some plastic tubing and covered it with netting for the external seed planting.
The copper base seems to keep the slugs and snails down (something to do with electric shocks?)
The netting to stop birds and cats.

Carrots: Grown really well from seed in the soil, but I planted too many in the rows, so many of them, while great in size, have split, some have still been usable though (saving money)

Brussel sprouts: Every Christmas we buy a brussel sprout stalk, so I thought I'd try growing them this year.
They've come up really well, some butterfly damage to leaves when I took the netting off, but they still look ok and seem to be growing, let's see if they manage to fruit when the temperature drops?

The compost heap!

This is a real up and down thing every year, each year I think I've learned something, the next year it changes again!
I have a basic heap covered by a piece of carpet and weighted down with some empty tubs.
Huge amount of worms, but always very wet and always short of brown compost.
I cut buddleia down each year, chop up the wood into tiny pieces and add that in, it takes about two years to start rotting away though.
I can get some cardboard and put that in plus ash from the burner, but it never seems enough.
I bought a mini dustbin type compost bin, only about two foot tall, so I can put in the fruit and veg waste, then I don't have to keep unpacking the compost heap everytime I have some waste to put in there.

It's temperature never seems to be high enough, but it is very acidic most of the time, so I suspect more brown and keeping it a bit drier will help.

Savings: I buy fresh fruit and veg from a market wholesaler every week, never from supermarkets.
My growing has helped me save the following this year;

Tomatoes - no saving
Carrots - £3 to £4
Cucumber - Around £15 (£1 a time from the market)
Lettuce - Easily over £20

Growing bonus... I also have seeds for next years planting out.

Hope you've had more success with your growing this year.

We have three different coloured buddleja bushes, dotted around the front yard and no dig garden.

They grow freely, so much so that the two in the front yarded area where we keep the logs, left me with a front room full of butterflies one day, as the heat on the logs caused all the ones I'd missed, to hatch out!

Anyways, I let them grow wild, cutting them down after flowering every September. I chop all the wood into small sticks and place them in an old 25kg dog food bag, which is more of a sack. This then gets put into the recycled greenhouse and left.

Come October time, they are dried out and I have weeks of kindling, for free!

Compost heaps are essential for your garden, whether that's a no-dig garden or a regular garden, the benefits are enormous!
I have two compost heaps, one a frame I built out of an old cot, with a piece of old carpet on the top, kept in the front garden, adjacent to the no-dig area.
The other compost heap is the trusty, back garden & black plastic composter, which provides compost for the fruit trees and tubs in the recycled greenhouse. Think tomato and pepper plants.

First off, compost to buy, is shooting up in price. Most of the time, it's rubbish.
Secondly, I need a way of disposing of uncooked waste, including fruit and veg that's not been used. My plan for say, a couple of old bananas is to bake more, but while the kitchen's all over the place, composting is a way of reusing the waste.
Grass cuttings feed the fruit trees. When the tub is full, then that's where they go.

In the no-dig front garden, a similar story.
Laughing neighbours when I built the rectangle shaped compost heap, weighed down by carpet and bricks, is a bit fiddly to uncover, but is proving to be a much needed booster to feeding the no-dig garden.
I left the front compost heap back in March, moving to the back garden compost.
In June, after laying a huge cardboard box flat, under the covers, I opened it all up to try and put something back into the bed.
I shoveled out one side of the semi-black, garden and food waste compost pile, across on to the no-dig bed.
I got easily approaching a tonne of compost from just one half of the compost heap!

I raked it level, then recovered it over, ready for next year. Loads of worms and ready for just after frost seeds, once it has rotted some more.
Some people say I should bury the waste directly in the ground?
I now know that this is good for unused eggs that are starting to turn.

The remaining half of the no-dig bay now has the onion seedlings I started off in the composted seed trays out the back garden.
I learned that onions are frost resistant. Put month old seedlings into the ground in October and next spring you'll have onions and salad onions (spring onions to you and me.)

The amount of waste now, combined with the log burner to incinerate the packaging, is cutting our waste going to landfill by over half a wheelie bin per week.
The compost is feeding the growing and beds, for free!

I've heard so much about "Climate change" recently and with the upcoming conference, probably will, a lot more yet!

I'm seeing it in sprog2's homework, it's on all the social media feeds, the news and where I work, etc.
I'm also seeing it in my household bills. £130 increase in electricity and £80 a year extra on the gas bill. Petrol is also on the up.

Now I'm not really interested in "Climate" at all.
I don't see how a single household can affect the Earth spinning on it's axis, sunspots from our nearest star and the Earth moving poles. But many do, each to their own.
Climate has and will always change. It's more about adapting to those changes, whether you believe the changes are mostly natural or not.
Where I have long been concerned, is in the area of waste!

I have a low paid job, refuse to fork out over the top prices for things, don't believe in fashion items (this is probably an age thing).
I recycle more than most. I recycle around the house, I recycle food waste (there's not much) I use our log burner more than central heating where ever possible, I recycle old appliances when I can get away with it.
The driving factor for stingy old me and my poor family, is the need to keep costs down as much as possible.

The reason I started this website years ago, was to reference what I could do to reduce my outgoings. I didn't change things from day one, all changes are gradual. Small changes, going without the latest phone, eating home cooked food, keeping waste and energy use down as much as is physically possible. Reducing my family's costs.

Anyway I've strayed off the theme a bit.

So I was thinking.
Following on from using food and garden waste in my compost and around my plants (fruit & veg), what about my plastic?

Well all this goes into landfill, there probably can be something done about it, even old stingy careful me has plastic in their waste, but the odds of my household plastic waste going into landfill are pretty nailed on I'd guess.

So I started a small experiment.
I took a large cardboard box, put in all the old paperwork as per, threw in teabag outers (over 400 a month from my composting experiment), all the crisp packets, outer wrappers, inserts, milk tubs and lids and various old clothing that's full of holes and not even good for scraps, etc. You get the picture.

I saved up three weeks worth, I have to say, there was a lot!
Even as careful and buying fresh as we do, even old meat went into a tub at the bottom of the fridge, the amount of rubbish was huge!
So, alongside the logs, into the burner it all went over three days, even the old out of date meat and waste fat.
The result?
About a fifth of a black bin liner of ash.
Straight on to the compost heap!
Amount of waste going into the general waste wheelie bin?
Almost nothing!
Our general waste bin wasn't even half full after two weeks.

Reduced the landfill - reduced our contribution to gas leaving the landfill - reduced our waste further (improving our compost heap in the process) - heated the home without using gas (saved on bills).
Happy days!

Using just one single 240 bag of teabags, I recycled them in my compost heap.
Over two weeks, I've used the teabags to make brews, left them on a tray to dry out a bit (usually a couple of days), then ripped them open and tipped the internal contents into the empty packet (re-sealed).

Then I've put the empty teabag "rappers" into a paper towel and burnt them along with wood on the log burner.

The sheer weight of the used tea is staggering, all spread on the compost.
Why burn the teabag outer wrappers?
This is because most teabag wrappings/outside, contain plastic.
If you put used teabags on your compost heap, they go mouldy and take ages to break down.
If you burn them (along with wood) then the ash can be put on the compost heap also.

Loose tea (so to speak) breaks down much quicker, the ash also helps and the empty packet that you can reseal can be used as a mini compost collector in the kitchen, time and time again.

Total waste = nil, nothing, zilch, nowt.

Ash of bags and loose tea = great.

I wondered then, as I noticed the sheer weight of loose tea and we use two packs per month, this is 24 packs of teabags per year, that enriches my compost heap and doesn't go into landfill.
Better compost for my garden next year, better for the environment, heat from burning, which breaks down the plastics in the wrappers.

Now imagine how many households use teabags every week, month and year?
That's some saving of landfill on one product line!