Sindy's Blue Garden Cottage - suburban homesteading and self-reliance content

By Sindy Wakeham You can't grow food plants during the winter in the UK, can you?    Yes, you can!  You've probably got to have all sorts of expensive equipment and lots of space to compensate for the climate.  NO. You can start right where you are and with what you might already have.  In this blog, we will see just how simple and affordable it can be. You will see how you can still grow nutritionally dense food indoors. Of course you could also go all in and get technical if you want. You have the choice. I like to keep it simple myself. It takes some clever hacks, maybe technology (not necessary) and remembering the four general rules. Rethink what you call veggies and change your ideas about gardening indoors, and how to grow vegetables to harvest during the winter and early spring.  How Can You Grow Food Indoors? Greenhouses, summerhouses, conservatories and windowsills all   make very good spaces for growing plants for harvest during the colder m...

  Living By the Seasons  By Sindy Wakeham With the weather changed to blustery, cold and more often than not, very wet, being outside and gardening is not where you want to be. It’s our natural cycle to respond to the patterns of the seasons and perform applicable activities. We're normally indoors processing and storing our harvests from the garden and preparing for letting the garden sleep over winter ready for the next growing season while we 'hibernate' from the cold. Modern understanding and growing methods has shortened that ‘hibernation’ period for those of us who cannot bear to be away from the soil for a whole winter, which in the UK can feel like 6 months! For those of us who simply HAVE to be able to garden all year round, there’s always a way. Year Round Gardening We can make hot beds like the Victorians and now we can even grow indoors with grow towers designed for indoor gardening. We can make tunnel cloches over vegetable beds or cover them in plastic and ...

  This Season's Woe and Wonder By Sindy Wakeham In the UK, just looking out of the window or standing outside, autumn has arrived and it doesn’t care about the human calendar. Nature decides what season comes when. The main season for almost two years has been autumn with days of normal seasons interspersed. Proper autumn is wonderful! I love all seasons in their place, but I’m not ready for autumn yet! My garden is nowhere near as fruitful as it used to be with lower light levels, cooler and wetter weather and fewer hot sunny days than normal. The garden’s far behind and only beginning to set fruit that should be ripening already. Urgency and Worry The main harvest season is upon us for all our fruit and annual veg which we normally put up for the winter and early spring. Even so, I have only been harvesting carrots, parsnips and garlic along with herbs. Summer harvests are done but there are still tomatoes to ripen. This time of year I’m normally already jamming (frui...

    This year in particular in the UK (I’m not sure about other places), the evidence of way too much rain over a long time is obvious to the eyes with one glance around the garden. Even if you normally have fertile wonderful soil, this last almost two years have taken their toll. Even farmers have warned for two seasons of shortages and price hikes due to the availability or quality of food due to the weather even without all the other national and global contributing factors. Evidence in the yellowing leaves, some spotted, others yellow between the veins, some are reddish purple and its nowhere near autumn (the so called summer has been mostly autumnal and we are only a month or two away from what we normally call autumn). Some leaves are curled, dry and brown and it’s not been dry weather and there’re no signs of pest or disease. Along with the prolonged rainy season lasting for months, comes the lack of sunshine and warmth. At least there is light even if a grey hue. ...

  What Does Closed Loop Mean and is it Possible in Suburbia? By Sindy Wakeham What is a closed loop? I’m not talking about going ‘around the bend’ in a never ending circle. Though, we could go around the bend in a never ending cycle of guilt feelings and beating ourselves up for not being more ‘eco’ in our lives. The purpose of this article is to let you relax about your situation and be ok with making choices that best suit your own needs without punishing yourself for not having a perfectly ‘closed loop’ as far as resources go. As far as a home and garden are concerned, a closed loop is where nothing is brought in from outside and nothing leaves when we are talking about resources but it also applies to other things. It’s one of many principles in self-sufficiency. For example, I can now make all the compost for my garden from my garden without having to buy any in so I’m not letting any waste leave my property into landfill, either garden ‘waste’ or the bags compost c...

To keep or not to keep animals on a suburban homestead ...I’m pondering a few questions about keeping animals in a small suburban homestead in the UK. There’s too much information on the subject to mention here so this is meant to be an overview to point you in the right direction and give you an opportunity to check that it’s right for your homestead. This article is going deeper into the choice as to whether you want animals as a part of your homestead or not which is particularly important if you are a suburban or an urban homesteader.     Is homesteading without animals even homesteading? I have already explained what HOMESTEAD actually means and where the word comes from in my blog no.2.   Homesteading isn’t determined by whether there are animals on or in it anyway. There are many homesteads that DON’T include stock animals because it’s not suitable for them and I have seen a few vegan homesteads that do keep animals just because they love them and ...