Planning the new season in our garden

The quiet of the post Christmas/Festive season and the snowfall we’ve had recently add up to create a perfect moment to sit down by the fire and look through the seed catalogues and choose some lovely seeds to grow this coming season. As the kids build their snowmen and soak up the sunshine (!) I look back at the year gone and choose which plant varieties I will definitely grow again and what new to try. Every year I try and save more of my own seeds. Last year I managed to produce parsnip seed for the first time. I still haven’t managed to get my head around the squash/courgette seed saving shenanigans but as I grow as a gardener I hope to achieve it one day.

My two favourite places for buying seeds are the wonderful Real Seeds based in Wales and Tamar Organics from Cornwall. The Real Seeds are my go to for beautiful heritage tomato varieties and winter squashes, two of my favourite crops! Tamar Organics is the place for bigger quantities of seed such as carrots, beetroot and beautiful mixes of salad leaves.

This is my 2025 squash harvest. I am still working on finding the best way to store them as thus far I’ve had quite a few losses. My self-suffiiciency books recommend hanging each squash in a mesh bag. I haven’t been able to collect this many bags yet! 🙂

And here are the three favourite tomato varieties from last year: Purple Ukrainian, Pink Beauty and Beefheart. Pink Beauty is the tastiest but it’s lovely to have different colours in your salad so the stunning Purple Ukrainian adds that to the mix. And Beefheart… what a beauty… 🙂

This year I’m planning to add more flowers to the mix. I’ve saved hundreds of sunflower seeds and will try to spread them around the veg growing area to add colour to the place. French marigold did well last year too so will definitely grow it this year. And another find from Real Seeds – liquorice mint… favourite with the bumble bees. I love the purple flowers and kids, who are fans of liquorice root, love eating it’s leaves. It self seeds happily so each year there’s more of it.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Drws Melyn Iwrt/Yellow Doors Yurt Is Now Ready!

We have finally finished setting up our second holiday yurt… Took us a while but we had to iron out all the creases and believe it’s now ready and can welcome first guests to it. Along with our first yurt we can now host two groups or families. It features an outdoor kitchen equipped with all the essential crockery, a picnic table and a sun umbrella. There is a gravity water filter so drinking water is readily available. Inside the yurt we have installed a little log burner that doubles up as an oven and in the process of testing it out we discovered you can easily bake bread in it! There are solar lights and a small battery bank for charging phones/tables on a usb cable.

There is a compost toilet and a hot shower with toiletries provided. We have filled the yurt with lost of comfortable furniture and beautiful fabrics from all over the world. All the cushion covers are made from antique Indian Kantha fabric, Afghan kilim rugs cover the wooden floor and Vietnamese weaved fabrics add character to the walls.

Hello!

Well, here we go! This is our very first blog post from our brand new website, so please bear with us while we get our heads around what we need to do! The content on the website is still in development and we’ll be adding more over the coming weeks and months.

One of the main things we want to use this blog for is to provide details of the fruit and veg that we have available at the moment. So here is what’s available this week:

  • Cabbage
  • Cauliflower
  • French beans
  • Runner beans
  • Garlic (enough to ward off a plague of vampires 🧛🏼‍♂️ 😀)
  • Tomatoes
  • Cucumbers
  • Courgettes
  • Potatoes
  • Carrots
  • Onions
  • Chard
  • Baby Beetroot
  • Apples
  • Bananas
  • Blueberries

So, plenty there to help you create some lovely meals 🍽️ 🥗 Take a look at our Market Garden page for more information.

The weather hasn’t been fantastic here so far this summer, but the gorgeous landscape of Wales is here come rain or shine. We had some lovely guests in our two Mongolian yurts last weekend enjoying the simple peace and beauty of this place. Check out our Yurt Holidays page if you’d like the opportunity to spend some real quality time in nature.

Well, that’s it for now. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions

Until next time.

Alistair & Gosia