What a Chaos! 😲 | Kitchen Garden Transformation
Hello everyone and welcome back. This one is recorded on the first weekend of July, just after we got home from holiday, and my kitchen garden had turned into an absolute jungle while we were away. Before I picked up the secateurs I had a few things to share, and then it was time to face the chaos and transform this overgrown mess back into something the plants and I can actually work with.
A few announcements first
On the very first day of our holiday, as we were driving out of the UK, the channel hit 500 subscribers. That is the first little milestone for any new creator, and it means I am now part of the YouTube Partner Programme. Thank you so much to everyone who has subscribed, it genuinely means a lot.
I also want to mention that I have started a separate sister channel called My Windy Travels. This is and always will be a gardening channel, so I did not want to clutter it with holiday videos or confuse anyone who only comes here for the garden. If you fancy following our travel adventures, the link is in the description. Nothing changes here.
The holiday, and a dramatic welcome home
We did a road trip around the Alps as a family of three, through France, Italy where we stayed the longest, and Switzerland. Some of you know our seven year old daughter is a wheelchair user, so the whole trip was planned around her needs and it was honestly the best holiday we have ever had. I will share more on the travel channel, including the accessibility side of things, because that part of holidaying so often gets pushed aside.
The welcome home was less gentle. As we drove back into the UK, a huge branch fell from a tree in the middle of a village and hit our car. Luckily it landed on the roof and not the windscreen, or it could have been tragic. We were left with a dent and a big scratch, and I needed a few days to settle back in. That is probably why my tomatoes were allowed to go quite so feral.
A quick tour of the flowers
Before the hard work, I wanted to show you what had come good while we were away. The dahlias are putting on a show: a salmon runner already in flower, Labyrinth (the label at the base), and Port Sunlight with stems taller than my thumb and covered in buds. The gladioli I planted late have flowered after all, which I am thrilled about.
There is a lily nearly as tall as the apple tree beside it, and you can smell it the moment you step into the garden. The echinacea is flowering more than ever this year, the hydrangea is going a little crispy in the warmth, and the verbena has gone completely nuts. At around 27 degrees this is not a heatwave to me, just a lovely summer, so I am not complaining.
Fumigating the greenhouse and moving the tomatoes
My potted tomatoes needed to go into the greenhouse, but first I dealt with the pests. I used one of those greenhouse smoke bombs that you light to release a gas which kills off the crawling creatures without harming the plants. It is very toxic to breathe, so I kept well clear and wore single use gloves to remove the spent one afterwards.
My greenhouse is far from sealed, so a lot of the smoke escaped through the gaps, but I am hopeful it saw off most of the spiders and slugs in there. With that done, I cleaned the pots of any hitchhiking spiders and slugs and moved the tomatoes inside, ready to sort out proper supports for them later.
Taming the mutant tomatoes
This was the main job, and it was a real labour of love. Three weeks unattended had turned my Rubilicious cherry tomatoes into a tangle of side shoots growing their own side shoots. I usually remove all the suckers and let a single main stem grow, so seeing this many stems, some already carrying little tomatoes, felt genuinely painful to cut away.
It had to be done though, because the peppers and cucumbers were being smothered underneath and my salads had been so shaded they started to bolt, far too early in the season. I broke the odd pepper in the process, which is always the risk, but bit by bit I worked through it. By the end I had ten neat, tied up main stems with room to grow, and the ground level was finally clear.
Cucumbers on string and rescuing pumpkins
This is the first time I have grown cucumbers up a string rather than over an arch, and I will admit the arch method is far easier. The tendrils get everywhere and the twirling is fiddly, and of course one stem snapped. Sellotape to the rescue: I have wrapped broken cucumber and tomato stems before like a plaster on a bone and it has healed, so fingers crossed.
The pumpkins are the Small Sugar variety, and the main stem had sprawled right across the bed and tangled with the cucumbers. I have grown this exact variety up a fence before with a lot of string, so I carefully lifted and tied the stems up, trying hard not to snap them. I am so pleased to see a tiny pumpkin and a bigger one already forming.
In this video
- The channel hits 500 subscribers and joins the YouTube Partner Programme
- Launching a sister channel, My Windy Travels, for the holiday videos
- A family road trip around the Alps and a branch that hit the car on the way home
- A flower tour: dahlias, gladioli, a giant scented lily and rampant verbina
- Fumigating the greenhouse before moving the potted tomatoes in
- Removing endless side shoots from overgrown Rubilicious cherry tomatoes
- Growing cucumbers up string and tying up Small Sugar pumpkins
It was a big day and, honestly, a bit heartbreaking to cut away so much growth that was already fruiting, but the garden can breathe again and the plants have room and light. The soil now needs a good water and some feed, and then I can enjoy it. One thing I would love your thoughts on: the potatoes will be lifted soon and that whole section will be empty, so what would you grow there? Let me know in the comments, and thank you so much for spending the day with me.
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