Tips on eco-watering a thirsty garden

Sorry for the infrequent posting, we're having a busy time, socially, at the moment! I'm as surprised as you are, believe me. The calendar's pretty chocka for June too! May post more about a particularly stressful children's birthday party soon. But the subject tonight is the scorching weather that has seen me get overly paranoid about hats and suncream (not just Boy, but redheaded HID and freckly me too), have to search through vacuum bags for summer clothes, and eventually need a trip to Asda for short-sleeved vests, t-shirts and shorts for my Boy.

But as well as that, I've been worrying about my juvenile vegetable garden, which seems to need watering at least twice a day. I hate using water straight out of the tap for the garden, and we don't have a rain-butt as there is no room in our small garden (it was either that or a compost bin, we opted for the bin). So here are my tips for recycling water around the house.

• if you have a fish tank, like us, do a water change, and use the dirty water on the garden.
• keep a bucket in the bathroom and use old bathwater in the garden. In Lush Times this month, it recommends warm soapy water to discourage greenfly on plants.
• we have a dripping tap that is on the "to-do" list, so I keep a jug under it when the sink isn't in use.
  
• keep a watering can in the kitchen and fill it with the following things:
  
• water used to boil or steam vegetables, eggs, fish etc.
• when you rinse out a dish cloth or sponge, squeeze it into the watering can/plants on your kitchen windowsill.
• when you rinse out tins/bottles etc for recycling, pour the second rinse into the watering can.
• my Boy has water with his meals, and he often has messy hands/mouth when using the cup, so it can't always be re-used, even if it's still half full of water, so I pour the remainder into the watering can, and pop the cup in the dishwasher. (which has an eco setting! Don't worry!)

Anyone got any other ideas?

Batch Cook-a-thon

Yesterday, during nap times (as my Boy is NOT the sort of child to allow me to do this while he is awake), I prepared all the vegetables I would need to make vast quantities for our evening meal, so I could freeze and extra grown-up portion for HID and I, and a few for the Boy too. But HID called and pleaded "library" (his dissertation is in in a week), and I didn't feel right eating a lovely meal without him. Annabel Karmel got the ratios wrong,and I ended up with double the amount of mince to mash for shepherd's pie, so I chucked in some leftover passata and oregano and called it bolognese. After my Boy was in bed for the night, I set to baking as well, having organised a picnic for Sunday for mums I've met locally. So I also made cheese straws and fruity oat biscuits. The kitchen floor is still a flour-bath, and baking trays are piled teeteringly high by the sink, but the cleaner comes today,so hey-ho.

At 9.30pm last night, I realised the last thing I'd eaten was cheese on biscuits at 5pm while the Boy shared, and decided I had better make some tea. Not being able to face more cooking, I opted for beans on toast. After staring blankly and defeatedly into the cupboard at beans for thirty seconds, I changed my mind....cereal it is.

In the Garden

Today, Boy and I spent "winge o'clock" (i.e. that horrible time between teatime and bedtime, when you've run out of ideas and your child is impossible to entertain anyway) in the garden.

My boy delighted in running through the vests hanging low on the washing line, squealing with pleasure when the wind blew his hair off his forehead, and pushing a toy truck, painstakingly hand loaded with stones chucked in one by one.

Whereas I delighted in digging at the bottom of our compost bin for sumptuous, perfect compost for the first time ever, to go into our huge, jelly-mould-esq vegetable planters, see above. I am ridiculously proud of our homemade mud, and find it slightly amazing that such nourishing soil is the result of persistently nagging HID (and MIL, when she was living here full time) to please, not put banana skins, tea bags and egg shells in the kitchen bin!! Not only have we reduced our rubbish by god only knows how much, but we have ooodles of free compost to show for it. I really am quite chuffed, and hope that activities such as composting will be second nature to my Boy, as I grew up reminding my parents "that can be recycled,you know..." and that was only as I got older.

Also pictured above: can't be bothered with gorgeous, yet over-priced strawberry planters? Make your own out of what you have, like I did! (Idea blatantly nicked from a book). Plus, my pumpkin plants in the new mini greenhouse, and plum tomato seedlings doing well.

Beginner Gardener

I'm ridiculously excited about my seedlings! Here they are, all doing well (see how they grow??). I'm not very green fingered, but I'm having a go at some tomatoes (Boy loves them) and pumpkins (I love Halloween, in a very over-the-top American way), and sunflowers (HID's favorite flowers.) They came in handy, child-friendly pots with explicitly simple instructions, great when you're child-like and simple when it comes to gardening. Strangely, I was very surprised to find ordinary pumpkin, tomato and sunflower seeds when I opened the packet, exactly the same as the ones you would buy to eat. I'm not sure quite what I expected,but perhaps something more complicated? I needn't have bought any, could have just saved the seeds from the veg!

I bought the same set of three pots for my almost-eight-year-old goddaughter for Easter, her mother doesn't like her having too much chocolate (here, here!). I had hoped she'd be rather pleased, but vegetables can't get much further than chocolate I suppose, and it was a bit much for a seven year old to expect faked enthusiasm for a disappointing present. "Oh." She said flatly. "Thanks."