Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments

Results!

2012-01-30T10:27:00.000Z

Well it seems that this year the birds couldn't resist visiting the bistro even though it was the RSPB bird count.

Most of the usual clientele turned up and some unexpected ones.

Starlings often have a bad press - they're not the most polite diners but their dinner jackets glow in the sunshine!

The feathers seem to change colour depending on how the light catches them - this is called iridescence. Apparently the word comes from the Greek word for rainbow. If you look below at the starling's breast feather you can see why!

The starlings make short work of the fatty coconuts and often a bit of a squabble ensues.

While I was busy with the stills camera, Martyn caught them on the video he posted on his blog

So what turned up?

4 blackbirds - they eyed one another up but seemed to tolerate each other's presence which won't last.

1 wood pigeon - no problem with them in the garden but they make short work of brassicas and are less welcome on the plot

8 starlings -they've even learned how to cling to the feeders even though with feet like theirs they shouldn't be able to.

8 goldfinches - our record number is 18 but this fell well short

12 sparrows - probably more than this really but they are not easy to count especially scattered all over the garden and constantly on the move!

2 dunnocks - so easily overlooked and counted as sparrows

2 blue tits - they even looked to be checking out nest boxes

1 magpie - another bird with iridescent feathers

2 collared doves - they tend to always arrive in pairs

1 robin - cheekily looking in through the window at us.

1 chaffinch - a female again easily mistaken for a sparrow

1 coal tit generally just a flying visit - it doesn't hang around

1 great tit - we usually have more

1 bullfinch - a female delicately pecking at the mahonia flowers - she didn't devastate them so I wondered whether she was looking for nectar - hope she and her mate don't find our peach blossom - if we have any this year that is.

And then something that surprised us and the rest of the birds:

1 sparrowhawk which looped under our magnolia tree at top speed and fortunately for the other birds missed catching a meal - it did manage to put an end to our counting though!

Just spotted these ...

2012-01-28T15:53:00.001Z

I've just noticed in our front garden bed that that our very first crocus is open and another is on its way so I just had to post a quickie.

The crocuses (croci - which is it?) are from a mixed species pack that I planted last year so it's their first appearance. I know the one that is open is Cream Beauty as we have some of those elsewhere in the garden. Thanks to Mark's post I think the other must be Gipsy Girl.

Not brilliant photos as I couldn't get near enough due to muddy soil by I just wanted to mark the occasion!

You may be interested in ...

2012-01-26T11:34:00.002Z

There are a couple of things coming up that you may be interested in joining in with.
The first is this weekend's Big Garden Bird Watch.

This is hosted by the RSPB every year and we have taken part for quite a few years now.

Our birds seem to know that it is going on and as a result keep their heads down and mutter "You're not counting mean" I'd say twitter but nowadays that conjures up a completely different idea. I think the general bird brain idea is that if we don't count many we'll all worry that numbers are falling and we'll put them on a at danger list and pop out far more food. Clever things these birds. We had a female bull finch eyeing up out new mahonia flowers yesterday but I doubt that she'll show her beak this weekend!

I know that you are thinking it's our imagination but why do the feeders not go down as quickly? It isn't that we are more in evidence, we just watch from the same place as we always do - inside the house.

By the way if you live in the USA they have a bird counting event too which this year is February 17 - 20. I guess other countries also have something similar.

There's also a version for schools to take part in

It's already been going on for a few days but there's still time to have a go. I know of some schools who take part every year. When the results had to be emailed in I know of one headteachers who used to complain that his school's email filtering made it fairly difficult to send in his information and had to resort to listing blue thingies and great thingies to get round it!

If you do work with children or are a parent of a primary age child you may also be interested in a competition being launched by Spotty Green Frog a company that supply primary schools with amongst other things starter kits of gardening tools. They are offering £100 prize to spend on equipment for schools - visit my School Vegetable Patch blog to read more. You don't have to enter as a school, children can enter as individuals too with a prize for the winning child as well as the prize for the school.

... and now for the good news.

2012-01-25T07:00:00.000Z

After what was a brilliant harvest last year our apples just have exceeded expectation!

We picked lots of apples last year some eaten fresh from the tree - and it doesn't get better than that!

Some were blemished and so were either used up as soon as possible or stewed (some with blackberries) and popped in the freezer for use in pies, tarts and to accompany yoghurt or porridge throughout the rest of the year.

We don't have enough freezer space to store all our apples in this way and no space for more freezer space either. It's also good to have some unfrozen apples for cooking and eating. The problem is that each year we have wasted apples as the skins have dried out and gone wrinkly as many things do as they get older!

Anyway I'd read somewhere - can't remember where - that the best place to store apples was in the fridge. Now we just happen to have an old fridge freezer - the freezer part being full but the fridge part having plenty of space so we popped as many apples as we could into the salad drawers. We didn't do anything special like wrapping each apple in paper - we literally just piled them into the drawers.

Once the drawers were full we were left with the largest and best apples which we gave a little more attention - we did wrap these individually in paper, just to hedge our bets - and then they were spread out on the wire shelves.

And it has really worked! We are still using the apples and there is no sign of rotting or shrivelling up. In case you are wondering the dark mark on the apple at the front is a shadow and not a bruise! The only thing is some of the skins have gone a bit tough so some apples to be eaten fresh (well fresh from the fridge) have to be peeled. No hardship as they still taste better than many of the ones available in the supermarket. We had a 'fresh' Egremont Russet apple today and it was perfect no tough skin and really sweet and juicy!

There's good news and bad news in store!

2012-01-22T11:07:00.000Z

Let's deal with the bad news first ... After what was a brilliant harvest last year our onions just haven't lived up to expectation!

I gave them more tender loving care than I have ever done in the past. I diligently weeded between them so they didn't have any competition from weeds and it seemed to have paid off. They swelled up and looked just great. We lifted them and I discarded any that had any signs of softness. We let them dry off and then I cleaned them up and almost polished them. Not with actual polish but they looked really smart. (It took two half days!)

Again I discarded any bulbs that hadn't seemed to dry off properly and looked as though they may rot off in storage. I say discarded but any that were usable were used up rather than storing them. But all my efforts have been in vain - we have constantly been throwing away onions that have started to rot - the race has been to use them before they went bad. Even some that looked perfect showed their true colours when cut into - and often that true colour was brown! Don't get me wrong we have had enough onions for us and my sister to use up until now, and maybe a little longer, but it's been disappointing to see them developing mould.

So what has gone wrong? - Maybe we were wrong to take them in before they had dried off properly but after the long dry season it was set to be wet so we gathered them and popped them on the greenhouse floor to dry. They seemed to dry OK but maybe they didn't cure properly. And maybe the conditions in the greenhouse were too damp to store over winter but if so where can we store them next year? - We haven't room anywhere else.

We don't seem to be the only ones who have suffered though and other sufferers haven't lifted their onions too early. Browsing the Internet - as you do when things go wrong - one tip I picked up is to cut off the tops of the onions 3 - 5cm from the bulb (trouble was it didn't say when - is it whist the tops are still green?) and turn the bulbs root plate facing upwards onto wire netting. This should be done under cover such as inside a greenhouse so any moisture drains. It said the bulbs should be given as much warmth as possible but that can't be right can it - wouldn't they cook?. Apparently it helps to blow cool air under the netting for a week or two if the weather is damp. The idea is to dry the tops as quickly as possible.

Interestingly, last week, I had a surreptitious squeeze of a supermarket onion and the top was slightly soft. Just like the onions go when they are starting to rot. So maybe the problem was the season turning damp just when the onions needed to have it dry! Maybe it wasn't our fault after all!

And to crown it all - some of our perfect onions have been nibbled by mice! I'm on the look-out for any mice with oniony breath. If I catch you mouse - watch out!

I was going to give you the good news now but I think I've gone on long enough - be patient and I'll give the good news in my next post!

I bet they wished they'd kept their heads down.

2012-01-19T10:21:00.001Z

Mahonia

These hellebores are the first ones on flower in the garden - although one has flowered since about November - still lots more to start flowering.

Below the bulbs are pushing through but why do the tulip leaves always get nibbled?

The ones below were photographed in my sister's garden which is very sheltered - ours are just showing the first signs of the white buds but as last year I was about the last to post a snowdrop photo I decided to cheat a little.

Snowdrops not quite open but close

Camellia in bud again in my sister's garden - we were quite excited to see this as it's the first time it has flowered - other than when we first bought it several years ago.

We have a couple of camellias in our garden one of which I'm afraid was subjected to Martyn's pruning tools. It had become immense and so he was fairly brutal - I am hoping some of it survives but they'll be no flowers this year either way.

Another camellia is becoming too large for its allocated spot. Just wondered has anyone ever moved a fairly mature camellia?

The photo above was taken last year - the problem is that if it gets and larger we won't be able to walk past it.

Ice crystals

2012-01-16T10:13:00.000Z

Spurred on by Mark and Jenni, and the fact that we had our first real frost overnight, I thought I should try and get up close and personal with some plants in the garden.

So here goes:

A leaf of ophiopogon planiscapus nigrescens

Acanthus seed head

Fern

Lawn - grass has kept on growing!

Heuchera leaf

To be honest I'm a bit disappointed as the photos aren't as sharp as I wanted but I decided to show them anyway - warts and all. I found the structure of the ice crystals fascinating.

Maybe I should try using a tripod - do you Mark, Jenni? The trouble is it was a bit cold to be staying still for long. Any tips will be appreciated.

Not close-up really but just because I like it!

Trachycarpus wagneriana (or Tracky Waggy as we call it)

It isn't just about vegetables

2012-01-14T07:00:00.001Z

It's not only vegetable seeds that we have been pondering over as we sow quite a few flower seeds too.

Some flower plants raised end up on the plot and others in the garden and some even end up in both. Not the same actual plant of course!

I'm hoping for a better flower year this year as many of our annual sowings didn't thrive due to the extremely dry conditions - when it came to watering the food crops had to take priority.

We have grown sweet peas for ages - it is a flower that just seems to 'go' with the idea of allotments. This year I'm going to try growing more than usual to go for the wow effect! As far as I'm concerned a sweet pea has to have perfume so I'm sticking with the varieties grown last year (Kings - Perfume Delight and Spencer Mixed) - and adding Sweet Dreams from T&M. I ordered some low growing sweet peas - Snoopea last year but they were substituted with a tall growing variety (not a good substitute when size mattered) so I'm trying to get some seed again this year.

I usually grow some French marigolds and tagetes along the edges of the fruit tree beds. Last year I was amazed to find lots of French marigolds had self -seeded even after last winter. Amazed as they are supposed to be only half hardy and in theory shouldn't have survived but survive they did and lots of them. Obviously they didn't spring up in the places that I want so I just transplanted them.

This got me thinking - usually the marigolds take quite a lot of space in the greenhouse so this year I am toying with the idea of trying to raise them in a seed bed on the plot - maybe under some sort of cloche if necessary - what do you think?

Another addition to my flower list are antirrhinums. I did once try growing these but the germination was poor - I've since learned that they need sowing in a John Innes type compost but the early failure put me off. Then last year some self sown plants popped up in our front garden bed and looked good there so I'm, going to have another try and use them to fill gaps between perennials. I've chosen Snap Happy from Kings which shouldn't grow too tall.

Dahlias are another common allotment flower. I grew some from seed last year, they were quite slow to grow into decent sized plants and the flowers were a bit of a disappointment - lovely colour range but the flower shapes were a bit ragged. I guess this again could have been the conditions - anyway we have saved the tubers and will plant them to give them another chance but I've ordered a packet of a variety called Pompone to add to them. As the name suggests this is a pompom type which I like for cut flowers.

I also tried growing Osteospernum from seed last year - I chose a cheap variety as I wasn't sure how easy they were to grow so I wanted plenty of seed. They were fairly easy so this year I'm trying a different more expensive variety. The ones I planted last year were oranges and yellows so this year I'm going for the purples and whites of a variety called Passion Mixed. The colours are more in keeping with what I expect from osteospernums. I've still lots of last year's seed left so will grow some of them too - there are only 8 seeds of the more expensive variety.

We like to have pansies in tubs for a bit of winter early spring colour and usually I have bought these as plants. This year I'm going to try growing my own from seed and have ordered a couple of varieties - I just hope that they don't all end up the same colour!

I'm also trying to grow a perennial poppy Fruit Punch - We always get a massive amount of annual poppies coming up all over the plot from goodness knows where - we've haven't planted them! What's the betting that the ones that I try to grow are less eager to please?

On plant I didn't order but it looks as though I'm going to end up growing is nemophila - Total eclipse. It was a free packet from Plants of Distinction. It sounds as though it's habit is similar to that of limnanthes - poached egg plants so it will be one for the plot. We started off with just six limnanthes plants and now just look .

It tool the above photo last week - the limnanthes form a dense carpet under the roses but fortunately do no harm. They look great when the are flowering and can even be spotted in an aerial photo.

If you're interested in the full list of my flower choices it's here.

Garlic update

2012-01-11T07:00:00.000Z

Now this post will either interest or bore you silly. If it is the latter I'm sorry - I'll try not to write too many garlic update posts - honestly I will try!

The garlic is continuing to grow well in the greenhouse and is needing very little watering as with the damp conditions the compost is remaining moist enough. On the plot the garlic planted directly in the soil is basically standing in mud so it will be interesting to see how it copes!

Now you have my permission to sign out as here follows a variety by variety update.

Lautrec Wight

Lautrec Wight and Germidour continue to be the furthest on with all the cloves in both pots and tub well grown. Lautrec Wight is also growing well on the plot. Germidour is growing on the plot although not quite as well

Germidour

Edenrose is only slightly behind the two leaders due to one of the cloves planted in a small pot displaying twisted growth. It is also growing well on the plot but again some shoots are twisted.

Edenrose

Close behind is Early Purple Wight - again the cloves in the tub are growing well but in the small pots two of the cloves are showing twisted growth. It's also growing well on the plot.

Early Purple Wight

Next comes Iberian Wight - all the cloves in the tub are growing well and although making slower progress all the clove is the small pots are also growing. One clove seems to have developed two shoots and it was definitely a single clove that I planted. It is slower on the plot though.

Iberian Wight

Just slight behind that comes Albigensian Wight - this time it is the cloves in the small pots that are growing strongest. One clove in the tub is quick a way ahead of the two other cloves that just have small shoots. It's growing fairly well on the plot

Albigensian Wight

The Messidrome cloves growing in the pots are at a similar stage to the variety above as are the cloves growing in the large tub. On the plot I almost missed the one clove that is sprouting as I mistook it for a blade of grass.

Messidrome

Chesnok Red comes next - al the cloves are growing and are all at a similar stage - although I think one shoot in the tub has been nibbled or broken in some way and one of the cloves in the small pot looks as though it is going to grow twisted. On the plot just small shoots.

Chesnok Red

At a similar stage is Wight Christo (excuse the misspelling on the label but I always have to stop myself from writing White instead on Wight and this time I failed). Again all the cloves are growing although one of the ones in the tub is only just starting. Wight Christo is about the same stage on the plot.

Wight Christo

A bringing up the rear is the elephant garlic although each of the three cloves planted are beginning to produce a shoot even the one at the front which doesn't look to have a shoot from the photo - but there is signs of growth there. Just the odd shoot beginning on the plot

Elephant

Spud-u-like?

2012-01-08T07:00:00.000Z

We order our seed potatoes from Alan Romans and have done for a few years now.

Even if you don't want to buy your seed potatoes form here the website is worth a browse. He offers over 120 different varieties of potatoes and this year he has started selling seed potatoes by the number of tubers in a bag (10, 20 or 60) which is really useful when trying to decide how many to buy.

Also there is a page for each variety with information and cooking properties which certainly helps make an informed choice.

The downside is that potatoes are heavy so post and packaging does add a considerable amount to the cost £7.30 for up to 24kg. If you only want a few tubers then it does make them expensive but if you join up with a friend like we do it does cut the cost.

So which varieties have we chosen? We always have a range of varieties as this way whether it is too hot, dry, cold or wet something usually comes through for us. This year despite the really dry conditions and hardly any top growth out potatoes produced a really remarkable crop. We are more or less sticking to the same varieties but as always adding some newbies.

Sothe list is as follows:

Two all time favourites Charlotte (second early) & Nicola (early maincrop).
Juliette (early maincrop) which we have grown most years but not last year.
We tried Winston (first early) for the first time last year and it performed well both in bags and outside so shall get the same treatment again.
New for this year is Swift (first early) which will be mainly grown in bags - it's claimed to be one of the best varieties for growing in pots
Premiere (first early)another new variety for us which is supposed to have some blight resistance

As usual we only grow early varieties as then if blight strikes the tubers have usually still put on enough growth to produce a decent crop. That's what has happened in the past but this year - well who know?

A welcome sight - in more ways than one!

2012-01-07T11:24:00.001Z

We visited the plot yesterday to gather some vegetables as our stocks were getting low. We actually were quite pleased with our haul that Martyn posted a photo of on his blog here and were relieved to see that despite the gales we had suffered no damage.

One sight to uplift the spirits and tease me into thinking spring may just be around the corner was this.

A really wild start!

2012-01-05T15:03:00.000Z

Well the New Year has been off to a wild start and not in the party sense. If you have read Martyn's blog you will know that we have been kept busy righting bird tables and collecting other people's rubbish from our garden.

The wind has been worse during the night which has meant a lack of sleep resulting in bleary eyes and a foggy head in the morning but I'm not complaining too loudly as compared to some areas we have got off lightly! I hope all of you in the UK and your possessions are still in one piece. Just hope the plot has survived!

Being confined to indoors has at least meant we have managed to complete our 2012 seed order and send it off.

We are more or less confining ourselves to four seed companies, Kings (because as NSALG members we get a large discount), Thompson & Morgan, Plants of Distinction - Simply Vegetables and Marshalls. Kings don't have all the varieties that we want!

Lots of seeds ordered are the same varieties as last year - any that didn't do well are being given a second chance as last year was hardly a fair test. Our Carouby de Maussane mangetouts were a disaster but it was a poor pea year for us generally so it is on this year's list too.

A new vegetable for this year is Lettuce - Little Gem Dazzle which has red tinged leaves. Another is cabbage - Candissa which can also be used as a mini vegetable but grows to about 1kg in weight when fully mature.

We are adding to our pepper varieties (no not chillies Mark!). The varieties are Planet which is a long pepper, that is supposedly very sweet and easy to grow, and Palladio which is said to be the yellow counterpart to Planet

Two new (to us) tomatoes are Jakarta - a beefsteak variety and San Marzano a variety we acquired as a magazine freebie which will be a tester for growing tomatoes outdoors next year - no doubt blight will see them off but who knows? We also have a free packet of carrot - St. Valery which is supposed to be an exhibition carrot - we'd just like it to produce some edible carrots! We'll leave exhibiting to Damo.

We are also going to try yet again to grow celery and celeriac. Success with both of these has so far alluded us so any tips (are you there Kelli?) will be most welcome! We're trying celery - Victoria, a self blanching variety reputed to grow in places that are 'traditionally' difficult and celeriac - Giant Prague - the catalogue says celeriac is easy to grow as long as it is sown early and kept constantly moist. We will see if either or both these claims are born out.

We are also growing aubergines which we don't usually, they haven't really been fruitful for us, but a friend has a packet of seeds - Black Beauty - that he doesn't want so we may as well give it another go.

After last year's disappointment with the winter vegetable plants we are going to grow from seed this year and have chosen, broccoli - White Sprouting early and Red Arrow, cauliflower - Aalsmeer.

I was going to add the potatoes and flowers to this post but I think it's gone on for long enough so I'll keep these for later.

Our full vegetable seed list can be viewed here

New Year - New Challenge

2012-01-01T10:24:00.003Z

I've have had a clivia growing in a pot in the house for years now.

It's a bit temperamental in that some years it will produce a flower and other years it won't. Generally it doesn't really get any special treatment and is left to do it's own thing. I often forget to even water it.

Then last year I noticed that when the flower heads dropped a couple of green seed pods were left behind. I decided to leave these on the plant to see what happened. I expected that the seed pod would probably dry or do something to let me know that the seeds were ripe.

Well after what seemed like ages - well it was ages apparently the seed pod takes up to 10 months to ripen - last month the seed pods decided to turn a seasonal reddish orange.

Then the weekend before Christmas one of the seed pods fell off which I took to be a sign that if there were any seeds inside they ought to be ripe.

I opened up the seed pod to find three very large fat seeds.

I took the seeds out of the pod and cleaned up all the soft membrane from around them, rinsed them and left them to dry and then I popped them into a pot of compost.

I then decided, a bit belatedly, to try and look up on the Internet how to grow clivias from seed. Oh dear I'd done something - well in fact two or three things wrong.

Apparently it is really important which way the seed is planted - there is a brownish area on one side of the seed and this has to be pointing sideways. I'd never noticed any brown patch so I went upstairs to where I had left the seeds and promptly removed the seeds from the compost. Sure enough there was a brown area on each seed.

I also read that the seeds had to be just pressed into the compost and left uncovered - I'd previously pushed them into the soil and covered them - I thought being large seeds that would be necessary - so now they are just pushed level with the top of the soil as instructed.

Now apparently I have to pop them in a plastic bag in a shady, warm place - (and I was going to pop them under the growing light) and wait up to three weeks or maybe far longer (information varies considerably on this) to see whether they will germinate and if they do I'll be amazed.

If in the unlikely event that they do germinate, it can take up to four years for a new plant to flower! If I'm still blogging then I'll let you know how things turn out.

There is another smaller seed pod on the plant so if that seems to contain viable seeds I may even plant them correctly the first time round or I may try one of the other methods suggested - yes just to make life even more difficult different people seem to have different ideas as to how the seeds should be started off!

I thought growing cyclamen was a challenge but now this is in another league!

And to finish - a really Happy New Year to Everyone - here's hoping for a season that is not too wet but not too dry, not too hot but not too cold and not too windy and ...

Blogs that I like to read!

2011-12-30T12:41:00.002Z

Diana at Kebun Malay- Kadazan Girls kindly awarded me this award.

It's always good to be chosen to receive awards but this one is a bit different - it doesn't ask you to reveal any dark secrets about yourself but was set up to spotlight up and coming bloggers who currently have less than 200 followers.

Strange to be considered up and coming when my blog has been going since 2006 but who knows there may still be a chance that I'll arrive at some time in the future. Arrive must mean to have over 200 followers - still about 50 to go then.

I don't know about you but as well as keeping up with long standing favourites it's good to meet new Bloggers and so I set about trying to fulfil the rules for accepting the award which are as follows:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.

2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.

4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.

5. And most of all - have fun!

First rule - easy !

Second rule - not so easy - there are plenty of blogs out there that I enjoy reading regularly but some have already reached the heady heights of over 200 followers, others have already been given the award by someone else and others I have no idea how many followers they have as they don't have a followers gadget! How do I pick just 5 - I don't want to upset anyone by not choosing them! Anyway I have finally settled on five that had less than 100 followers and deserve to have more than that.

As they say - in no particular order my selections are: pause for effect -------------------

Jenni at Rainy Day Gardener who at the moment is gardening in Oregon but is shortly to move home. It will be really interesting to see how her new garden progresses. Jenni's life is changing in other ways too as she enters the world of full time housewife and mum after re-evaluating what she wants out of life. Good Luck Jenni.

Kelli at My Garden Diary by Kelli Boyles. Kelli gardens an acre of land in Country Antrim Northern Ireland. Not only does Kelli have a garden that I would like where she grows fruit, vegetables and flowers but it's surrounded by beautiful countryside.

Phoebe at Ballynoe Cottage in Melbourne- Australia who has a way of making use of things many people would just throw away. Not only does she use this stuff but she uses it with style. She also has the elements of nature to work with or against as recently her garden came under attack from large hailstones and the worst flash flooding that her area has ever seen.

Brenda at Gardeningbren in Nova Scotia I'm only just 'getting to know' Brenda but I'm really enjoying her style of writing and look forward to finding more out about her and her garden. I do know that like me she loves to see wildlife in her garden - especially birds. She is also trying to extend her growing season by growing under cover.

I now have a problem as the one I was going to give my final award to has already been given it by someone else!! After quite a bit of umming and arring I'm going to give the last award to:

Martyn at A Gardener's Weather Diary OK hands up it is very close to home - couldn't be closer - but it isn't my blog and I haven't come across another blogger who has written a post almost every day this year. If you enjoy reading about the weather and its effects on gardening then pay him a visit.

And while you are at it don't stop there as there are some fantastic blogs in my blogrolls why not have a browse of them too. Now I have to complete rule two by telling the people they have received awards - I hope I get in before someone else gives them the same award!

I hope I can find some suggestions for new blogs to check out too - if you know of any that you think I would like then post a comment to let me and everyone else know about them.

Winter salad leaves and micro-herbs

2011-12-28T13:23:00.000Z

In November I decided to use our Indoor Grow Garden to try and grow some salad leaves and micro-herbs over winter. I posted about it here

Within a couple of days the salad leaves/lettuce had germinated and they are now at the stage where we can use them.

I decided to sow some more seeds so that I had some leaves to follow on from these once they are used and decided just to sow a few of all the types of lettuce that we have left over from last season namely Saladin, Red Iceberg, Great Lakes, Little Gem and Rougette du Midi. Some quickly germinated so it will be interesting to see how these varieties perform.

As for the micro-herbs; we have used the coriander. I waited until it had grown its first true leaves. Unfortunately at this stage the seed leaves had turned a little yellow. We used the herbs as a garnish to a curry and there was a distinct coriander flavour so it was a success. The one problem was that I had sown the seed as though they were going to produce full size plants - rather thinly and so we didn't really have much to pick. I've sown some more which has already germinated and this time have been a bit more generous. I'll have to start saving coriander seed as there isn't a huge amount in the seed packets for using in this way.

The purple basil is also growing well - not sure where the odd green leaves have come from. Again I didn't really sow enough seed. We haven't used any yet as I am waiting for the first pair of true leaves to grow.

All is safely gathered in!

2011-12-23T11:07:00.001Z

We had a trip to the plot yesterday to gather vegetables to keep us going over the Christmas period. Despite our relative failure with carrots we did manage to find some and three cheers for club root resistant sprouts!

Can you spot the tiny green cauliflower in the top right corner? - If not here's a closer look.

This is one of our coloured cauliflowers that was attacked by pigeons earlier in the year. It's rallied a little and so we decided after all the effort that it has made it would be churlish to turn up our noses at it.

The red cabbage makes up for it - just hope I have enough pans to manage to

braise it all - some for Christmas dinner and the rest to freeze. We already had some parsnips, beetroot and leeks gathered in so along with the stored potatoes, onions and shallots we should be OK for vegetables and we still have some apples to use in the braised red cabbage.

A much more enjoyable way to gather food than a frantic expedition to the supermarket.

Happy Christmas

2011-12-20T07:00:00.000Z

Garlic Report

2011-12-17T07:00:00.005Z

In this post dated 21 November, I mentioned how the garlic that I had planted directly on the plot was faring. The varieties of garlic that were furthest on a that point were Lautrec Wight, Edenrose, Germidour and Purple Wight. Albigensian Wight was just beginning to produce shoots but there were no signs of the other varieties. I haven't checked on the garlic on the plot since but said I would update on how the garlic that is being started off in the garden greenhouse was coming along.

You may remember I planted three cloves of each variety in small pots to be transplanted outside later and I planted three cloves of each variety except elephant garlic into large tubs where they will grow to maturity.

This week I decided to check how things were going and the results were as follows.

So far the quickest off the mark are Germidour (on the left) and Lautrec Wight (on the right) all the cloves both in small pots and the tubs are growing well.

Early Purple Wight (top) and and Edenrose (bottom) both are growing well in the large tub but only one clove of each is at the same stage in the small pots.

Two of the three cloves of Iberian Wight are growing well in the tub but the cloves are just beginning to shoot in the pots. One of the cloves in a pot is producing two shoots.

Albigensian Wight on the left and Chesnok Red are performing slightly better in the small pots than in the tub.

Messidrome is just beginning to shoot with one clove in a small pot being ahead of the rest.

Wight Christo is just beginning to shoot in both situations.

And the elephant garlic hasn't really moved at all. I didn't plant any elephant garlic in the tubs as I thought that as it should grow much larger than the 'real' garlic that it would need to be planted out in the ground rather than trying to grow it to maturity in the tub.

Four of the five varieties that were most advanced on the plot are the same as are most advanced in the greenhouse. I'm guessing that the variation is more likely to be due to the fact that different varieties are earlier maturing than the others so at the moment I'm not drawing any conclusions about which are the better perfomers.

Germidour was one of the smallest bulbs in the collection but is one of the first off the mark so size obviously isn't an issue.

On Thursday I checked on the progress of garlic on the plot and so far the same varieties as mentioned before are the only ones showing any growth. There was a dusty of icy snow covering the ground when we visited though so it's possible that some small shoots were covered.

The post showing the size of the bulbs/clove received and planting methods is here

Sumo-pheasant.

2011-12-15T11:44:00.001Z

On Monday we decided to have the afternoon out at a nearby RSPB reserve and as usual my camera was really busy. I only took about 190 photos so I thought that I'd share them all here! Don't worry - only kidding! I've just selected a few.

I really couldn't resist sharing this one - not the sharpest photo in the world but definitely a female pheasant with attitude.

It's only fair to show her a little more composed.

Like all sensible males this one knows when to keep his head down.

The proof that birds of a feather really do flock together or rather nibble fat balls. There are at least 8 long tailed tits feeding together.

Again it's not brilliantly sharp but it was a fair distance away and pretty gloomy.

Until we looked at the photos and video we didn't know what the female great spotted woodpecker was tucking into.

Dried mealworms in a basket - we'd already got the mealworms so Martyn went out and bought a basket - maybe we can tempt our own woodpecker visitor! We have had them in the garden previously so who knows!

A bit of a mystery bird here:

I don't think it's a wood pigeon and I know there are stock doves visit this sight but this doesn't look like the ones I can find pictures of - any ideas?

Then there is always an opportunist about isn't there.

After a bit of an absence the birds are flocking back to the garden - not all last year's species have returned yet but we have quite a large flock of beautiful goldfinches and if you haven't had enough birds, Martyn took a lovely bit of video of two love doves which is here on his blog

Green shoots.

2011-12-12T11:33:00.001Z

The sun was shining this morning which tempted me out into the garden with my camera.

I could see from our house windows that some of the bulbs have begun to push through the soil which is always a welcome sight at this time of year so I decided to have a closer look. I don't actually know whether the bulbs are shooting earlier than last year as snow covers the ground in many of my December 2010 photos or it was too cold to venture out to take photos.

I do have photos showing bulb growth last year as early as 2 January though so maybe last year's shoots were hiding under a white blanket in December.

This morning I spotted miniature and large daffodils, crocus and snowdrops shoots. There may be some muscari as there were shoots that seemed different to the ones named above.

After two years of failure and then ...

2011-12-06T07:00:00.000Z

For the last couple of years we have bemoaned the fact that we have been complete failures when it comes to growing sprouts.

Having club root in our soil we have always sown seeds in pots and planted the young plants out. They were always given a good start in life but couldn't seem to maintain the capacity to thrive.

We read everything we could on sprout growing - we firmed the soil, we fed and watered the plants, we tended them with loving care - nothing worked!

Other bloggers teased us with photos of their newly harvested buttons while all we had to show were tatty remnants of buttonless sprout plants.

It hadn't always been like this but suddenly we had become a sprout free zone. Now for some people I know this could only be a good thing but we like sprouts and missed them.

Last year browsing seed catalogues we came across a variety - Crispus - that it was claimed was club root resistant so we decided as a last ditch attempt we would give it a try.

Now this year wasn't the very best of seasons for making sure sprout plants had adequate water so we seemed doomed to yet more failure, however, I am delighted to announce that this year we have sprouts!

We are guessing that club root had affected the plants badly enough to prevent them taking up the nutrients and moisture that they needed.

The roots on this year's plants certainly look as though they have weathered the club root problem.

There is one other factor that could have helped which was the much lower numbers of whitefly on the plot last year during summer. These have been a big problem on brassicas most years - in fact they've been a problem on most things, so we may not yet be on the road to sprout filled years ahead.

We'll enjoy this year's sprout-fest and look forward to a repeat next year. Crispus is going to be top of our seed list along with a few other club root resistant varieties of brassicas. Let's hope this year wasn't just a flash in the pan!

Plot in the gloom

2011-12-04T07:00:00.003Z

We needed to replenish our vegetable stock and so despite the gloomy weather on Friday we needed to pay a visit to the plot.

The photos in this album show just how gloomy things were but fail to show just how cold it was. It actually felt much colder than the temperature showed - maybe we have become soft what with the lack of frost so far.

I did think of lightening the photos so you wouldn't have to try peering through the darkness but that's how things were - not an ideal day for taking photos or in fact doing anything else.

A full list of what we managed to harvest is here

Green Roof?

2011-12-01T10:50:00.000Z

I just wish that the bird weren't such messy eaters. We are forever cleaning up the floor around the bird tables and sunflowers sprout in the most unlikely of places.

Now though our birds seem to have been reading up on green living and have started to create a green roof on the top of one of the bird tables.

I can't see the sunflowers surviving - maybe the birds will have their own supply of fresh greens.

Short digression:
If you remember I started a new project designing greetings cards - well just to mention that one of my designs has been chosen to include in a charity collection for Help the Heroes. If you're interested in taking a peep click here

Skilled lace maker?

2011-11-28T16:00:00.002Z

We came across a couple of spider webs on the plot the weekend before last. ( Just hadn't got round to posting the photos).

One was on the soil and the other was in the compost heap.

The water droplets caught in the web twinkled in the sunlight

I'm not sure what type of spider is responsible for this lace-work but it's beautiful!

Isn't it satisfying when things work out!

2011-11-26T12:43:00.002Z

You may remember that I challenged myself to grow some cyclamen from seed this year.

I was prepared to have wasted my money on this seed but what is life without a challenge!

In October I posted that I had eight small cyclamen plants and one was even flowering.

Well the latest is that now all eight plants are flowering.

Despite only being eight seeds in the packet the potential colour range was for nine different colours. Obviously I knew that I wouldn't have all nine! I did wonder whether I would end up with all the plants the same colour but despite having some duplication I think I have ended up with a good mix of colours. Now it's a matter of keeping them as cool as possible - not easy with central heating - so I manage to get as long a flowering season as possible.

Another fungi or is it something else?

2011-11-24T07:00:00.001Z

Wandering round the plot at the weekend I noticed some strange white substance on some of the blades of grass under the plum trees.

I couldn’t really decide whether this was animal or vegetable so as I always do on such occasions, I took some photos.

You can always get a much better look at something when you zoom in to take a photo.

I’ve discounted my first thought which was that the white coating was some sort of woolly aphid and think that we have yet another type of fungus or lichen.

From searching the Internet I think it’s some sort of slime mould. Not a very appealing name and one that conjures all sorts of sinister science fiction type scenarios!

Anyone got any better ideas?

Don’t you just love a proper nursery.

2011-11-22T07:00:00.000Z

I’ve been looking for plants to grow in one of our redesigned borders. As this is under a crab apple tree I decided to have a blue and white colour theme to try and lighten things up a little.

I must admit to straying from the colour constraints a little by planting an acer as it’s a plant we have both always fancied having in our garden and until now didn’t really have a good position for one.

I also wanted another shrub to balance the acer and add a bit of structure. Browsing the Internet I came across what I thought would be an ideal plant - hydrangea quercifolia. Like the acer it is supposed to have striking autumn colour and also white flowers in late summer. After hearing Janet at Plantilicious praising the one she has in her garden I made up my mind to have one.

There were some for sale on the Internet but when you just want one plant postage is quite expensive in relation to the cost of the plant. I decided that would be my fall back option if I couldn’t find a plant locally. Searching garden centres over summer I did come across a batch but they looked very drawn and straggly so they were left on the shelf!

As a last resort before I bought one online I asked at a local nursery whether they ever had any for sale. Now bear in mind this is a ‘proper’ nursery than just sells plants and gardening stuff not a garden centre that is more like a department store with plants! I call it a local nursery which isn’t very true but it is local to where I was brought up and we have been visiting for years.

Anyway back to the hydrangea - the answer was that they didn’t usually get hydrangea quercifolia in, but they would ask their supplier if they could get one for me. They took my phone number and promised to be in touch if they managed to source one for me.

Time passed and I didn’t hear and wondered whether the note made on a little pad had been lost so when I visited the nursery I asked whether they had forgotten me. They hadn’t and my request was taped to the till with the message that a plant would be available in November. Then I had a call to say a plant was ready for me to collect. When we arrived we had a choice of four plants and I was even given a discount as they hadn’t had time to pot on the plants before I arrived.

The plant is now in its permanent planting position so I hope it realises the trouble we went to to find it and that it repays us by growing well.

As for Swillington Nurseries thank you for remaining a ‘proper’ nursery when most of the ones around you have been seduced by the desire to become all things to all people.

Overdue plot visit!

2011-11-21T07:00:00.003Z

It’s almost a fortnight since we visited the plot. The gloomy weather hasn’t encouraged us, we’ve also had lots to do in the garden and seem to have busy doing other things too.

Encouraged by the appearance of the sun and the need to replenish our fresh vegetable stocks we decided to go allotmenting this weekend.

As always the first thing that has to be done when visiting the plot - that is after donning waterproof boots, a necessity at this time of year if we are to avoid soggy socks - is to wander around checking on what is growing or in need of most urgent attention.

The peas that we sowed in October have now germinated well - much better than they did earlier in the year. Now it’s just a matter of waiting to see whether they make it through the winter. We’re not going to give them any special protection, just leaving them to fend for themselves to find out just how hardy late sown peas are!

The winter onions are growing well and some of the garlic is shooting. The varieties of garlic that are furthest on are Lautrec Wight, Edenrose, Germidour and Purple Wight. Albigensian Wight is just beginning to produce shoots but as yet there is no sign of the other varieties. I’ll update on how each variety is performing in the greenhouse in a later post. All was not completely well in the onion bed though as it wasn’t only the onions and garlic that were growing. Chickweed was beginning to stake a claim for soil domination. As onions don’t really enjoy competing with weeds I decided my priority task was to do a bit of weeding.

It hasn’t taken long for our soil to go from as dry as a desert to wet and sticky. We haven’t had a great amount of rain but enough to make weeding out chickweed a very yukky task as the state of my gardening gloves will prove. Anyway the job is done and the bed looks better for it.

While I was weeding Martyn was tidying up the plum tree that cracked under the weight of so many plums during summer. He's posted about it on his blog here.

There should no longer be any white butterflies about trying to find a suitable place to lay their eggs and the wood pigeons only tend to attack young plants so we also decided to take the insect netting off our brassicas. Last year we think that the damage to overwintering brassicas was down to the snow building up on the net which eventually collapsed onto the plants. If the snow had covered the plants naturally it would have built up gradually but we think the collapse of the netting meant the plants were in effect squashed by the sudden weight that dropped on top of them. Hopefully if it does snow heavily again this year the plants will have a better chance.

Our harvesting list is here but one rather amazing mini harvest was a handful of autumn raspberries. Very strange to pick fresh raspberries in the last half of November.

If you want to know what we harvested - including our first parsnips and sprouts of the year the list is here

It is likely to get worse before it gets better.

2011-11-19T07:00:00.000Z

In January I took part in a blog carnival hosted by Fer at My little garden in Japan.

The subject of the carnival was to write about garden plans for 2011. Our plans were described in this post.

Surprisingly we have made quite a lot of progress with respect to our plans. I’ll write a complete update at the end of the year.

Our attention has now turned to the area alongside the pond. As is usual with us what is planned seems to escalate into something far more major than we had first intended. This is what the pond area that needed improvement used to look like.

And this is what it looks like now.

Martyn has been let loose with a lump hammer, cold chisel and saw and has created a scene of absolute devastation.

What’s more it is likely to get worse before it gets better. As you can see it has turned into a major work.

Martyn (or as Jenni, The Rainy Day Gardener, calls him - Walter) has set up a web diary of what we are trying to achieve here so if I have tweaked your curiosity then take a look!

Shaggy Umbrellas

2011-11-17T07:00:00.001Z

Just thought I’d post a few more photos of our shaggy parasols. I think after the gloom and damp of the last week or so I’m going to rename them shaggy umbrellas!

I've popped my hand in this photos so you can get some idea of scale.

And now we have another one too.

Winter salad leaves and micro herbs

2011-11-16T07:00:00.002Z

If you have been visiting my blog for a while you may remember that at the beginning of the year we bought an indoor light garden.

It was great for raising seedlings in and preventing them from becoming leggy and we also grew some early salad leaves under the light. Now it’s time to find out whether the grow light can earn its keep through winter.

I've decided to start off by sowing a couple of troughs with mixed lettuce leaves - four troughs came with the garden but we seem to have mislaid a couple.

I've sown a couple of varieties one was a freebie from one of our garden magazines - it just says Mixed Lettuce Leaves on the packet from D T Brown. The other was Mixed Lettuce from Kings.

I didn't have much success over summer growing basil and coriander so I was interested when I heard that you could grow micro herbs. These are herbs used at a very immature stage.

The herbs are picked when they have grown their first true leaves. You can pick at the seed leaf stage too which is when the very first two leaves are formed. It’s a bit like growing cress. The claim is that lots of flavour is concentrated into the tender leaves of the young seedlings. The micro herbs are supposed to be ready to harvest after 10 - 25 days.

You can grow all sorts of herbs and vegetables in this way but to start with I’ve decided to try coriander - Calypso and basil - Purple Ruffles. If I am successful I’ll try other things too maybe using up some of the seeds left over from this season.

I’m growing the herbs in trays that supermarkets use to sell apricots. The top of the tray acts as a sort of mini propagator. I’ve placed a sheet of kitchen paper in the bottom of the tray to cover the holes in the bottom and I've covered this with a thin layer of compost. As the herbs will be cut early they shouldn’t need much compost. The seeds were sown on the top of the compost and covered with vermiculite.

I’ll let you know if it all works out - is anyone else trying something similar?

Do it yourself mulching

2011-11-15T12:17:00.000Z

The branches of our large magnolia tree spread across an area that we call our spring or woodland garden. At the moment, after being clothed in golden yellow leaves that looked lovely on the few occasions that we actually had some sunshine, the magnolia is almost bare - the leaves that have been shed are creating a blanket on what we could call the woodland floor. Well we could call it that if it was much, much bigger - as it stands we can’t even call it the copse floor! The term woodland garden more describes the idea of the planting rather than anything else. The idea being to grow plants that are happy in the summer shade and make the most of the early spring sunlight before the magnolia is fully in leaf!

The magnolia flowers before the leaves form but they don’t cast as much shade - the flower buds are already forming and are protected over winter by furry looking sepals.

In a ‘real’ woodland the leaves that fall from the trees provide a natural mulch that enriches the soil and so we leaves the magnolia leaves where they fall to achieve something like the same effect.

The leaves provide a great foraging ground for birds in winter and also provide shelter for any hedgehogs that have set up winter camp. Birds such as dunnocks, blackbirds and robins love sifting through the leaves for something tasty.

We do sometimes do a little bit of strategic tidying when the leaves are obviously interfering with plant growth or fall on top of small shrubs and also we sweep the leaves from the pathway alongside the house. All these leaves are put back under the shrubs where they can decompose over winter.

The 'woodland' area is planted up with lots of hellebores. These should flower in early spring around the time of Lent, which is why they are sometimes called Lenten roses, but at least one plant has other ideas and is flowering now!

I wonder if anyone can come up with a name for a teeny weeny woodland patch - maybe we should call it a woodette or a copsette?

Shaggy Parasols?

2011-11-11T07:00:00.000Z

When I was mooching around the garden last weekend I came across a group of really large fungi lurking amongst the undergrowth.

I think they are Shaggy Parasol fungi which are classified as a mushrooms.

If my identification is correct then according to Wikipedia it is a choice edible fungi. I have to admit though I'd never be convinced enough that either my identification was correct, or that the Wikipedia information was accurate enough to try eating any.

Even though it is supposedly edible - according again to Wiki - it can cause tummy upsets if it is undercooked or eaten raw and some people are even allergic to cooked specimens.

Anyway Shaggy Parasol or not I will never find out whether I am one of those who it causes to suffer an allergic reaction. I'll let it stay in the garden but there's no way it is ending up on my plate!

No garlic showing on the plot but ...

2011-11-10T07:00:00.000Z

When we went to the plot at the weekend one thing I was curious to find out was - was there any sign of the garlic sprouting? Well as you will have guessed from the title of the post - there wasn't. It was planted a day after the cloves in the greenhouse but obviously hasn't had as comfortable a start in life.

A couple of things were sprouting though - the winter onions are doing really well.

I tried to take the photo at slug eye level and it hasn't quite come off as the nearest shoot is really blurry - sorry about that! Also please shut your eyes to the weed seedlings I will pull them out promise.

Also at slug eye level the peas have germinated.

I just hope the slugs leave them alone and the wire mesh deters anything else that may fancy a juicy pea shoot. Now why didn't they come up like that in spring?

Recycling?

2011-11-08T07:00:00.001Z

If you read Martyn's blog you will know that we had a bit of a mishap with our greenhouse. A pear fell from a branch overhanging our garden greenhouse and smashed one of the very large panes of glass.

Replacing glass with glass on the greenhouse roof is just about impossible - no let me rephrase that - IS impossible and so we - the Royal we that is - sent for a large sheet of acrylic sheeting. It was cut to size and wrapped in lots and lots of bubblewrap.

Now, I was worrying about how our peach tree - that started life as a nectarine - would fare over winter. It did make it through last winter but having sampled its fruits I would be really upset if it was damaged or even killed during the coming - it must come mustn't it? - bad weather.

I'd decided that I was going to wrap the pot in bubblewrap to give it some extra protection and so the packaging material from the acrylic sheet was just the job.

The peach pot has now been wrapped in about four layers and I had plenty left over to also wrap up the pot in which the mini kiwi is planted - although that has been popped in the greenhouse for winter.

After all that wrapping I still have some left which I will be able to throw over the perennial cuttings once the weather turns frosty!

The wrapping is folded over the top of the compost but can be opened up if we think the tree needs some water. The pot does have little feet that raise it off the ground but we have also popped it up on some bricks so that if we have lots of rain and it finds its way into the pot it will hopefully drain out easier.

So that's the best we can do for the plants - now we just need to sort out some lagged piping for our central heating boilers condensate pipe to avoid a repeat of it freezing up as happened last year only a week after being installed. Hopefully British Gas will sort that out for us this week!

Not to be outdone

2011-11-07T07:00:00.000Z

We went to the plot for more harvesting and tidying but the first thing I did was pop around with my camera. Seeing as I posted a collage of the flowers still giving some colour on the plot it seemed only fair that I should do the same for the plot so here it is:

Lots of the annuals have taken quite a while to get going this year. The cosmos are very short but have decided that it's not too late to send out a few flowers.

The pink stocks and calendula were sent to me be from Australia by Diana - the Malay Kadazan Girl and the candytuft came from Bilbo Waggins. They sent me other seeds too but these are the ones still flowering. (I'm afraid the snake beans didn't like this summer's weather, Diana!)

Does this one look sad to you?

2011-11-06T07:00:00.000Z

As usual the tubs in our garden that have been cleared of summer plants have now been planted up with pansies. One of my favourite nurseries always has trays and trays of pansies at this time of year.

They are usually really good plants and are sold in trays that hold of 15 plants each in their own pot. The trays and pots are really useful too for growing on vegetable plants for the plot.

I bought a tray for us and one for my sister. Don't you think the colour range in each tray is brilliant. It should be as I spent ages moving plants from one tray to another until I got a tray where no two pansies were alike. There's always lots of yellow pansies so anyone late buying their plants probably end up with a tray full of yellow flowers.

The pansies are now planted up in their tubs.

But look at the one at the front of the tub on the top left - this one:

Don't you think that it looks sad? Maybe it is thinking of all that cold snow that could well cover it up just like it did its cousins last year. Let's hope it doesn't happen!

November colour isn't just from fireworks!

2011-11-05T10:33:00.000Z

We haven't really had any frost yet this year and so the flowers in the garden are hanging on. Much of the colour is in the bed at the front of our house where the choice of plants was based on the length of time they would keep flowering - it seems I made some fairly good choices.

And it's up!

2011-11-04T15:08:00.000Z

I've just looked back to see when I planted the garlic in the tubs and pots in the greenhouse and it was 14 October. So why the sudden urge to check?

Well - I don't go into the greenhouse every day now so the last time that I checked on the garlic was 30 October and some cloves had just begun to sprout and were looking like this.

But today there are lots of shoots and some are quite tall.

I don't expect the garlic growing on the plot is so far advanced but I do hope this isn't sending up shoots too soon!

So what's been happening on the plot?

2011-11-02T07:00:00.001Z

It's that time of year when the main purpose of visiting the plot - other than to harvest some fresh vegetables - is to clear, tidy and dig.

The approaching winter plot takes on a whole new look with many beds empty - they don't stay empty for long as now that we have had some rain the weed seeds that have been waiting for the chance to germinate are doing just that. This means we can't just sit back and relax once the beds are cleared, there is still weeding to be kept up with and grass to be kept tidy.

It's not all clearing though as we still have crops providing a harvest. It's now that the winter brassicas, leeks and parsnip move to centre stage. We've even been picking fresh strawberries and raspberries at the end of October!

Despite a disappointing year on the carrot front we have harvested some decent sized carrots but this year they'll be more of a treat than a staple food.

Our winter onions are beginning to shoot but soon all growth will be frozen - probably literally - until next spring.

In the garden greenhouse the garlic in pots and tubs is also beginning to shoot

This year - after a hopeless pea harvest - we decided to sow some pea seeds now. If this works, and the mice don't feast on the seeds, we may be able to achieve an early crop. We have covered the sowing area with chicken wire 'cloches' to try and stop any passing creature from digging them up but I don't suppose chicken wire is any protection against a determined rodent. If it doesn't work - well we have only wasted the cost of a packet of seeds!

If you are interested in a bit more detail then:

My complete October diary is here

Our full list of planting and sowing is here

Our full list of October harvesting is here

Plant lives up to its name

2011-10-30T17:24:00.000Z

Our afternoon's visit to the plot was shorter - due to our silly tradition of moving the clocks back.

I don't know about you but I hate it when it is dark at what in summer still seems to be late afternoon. I don't think winter would be half as bad if it stayed light a bit longer. It's pitch black now and it's only just after 5 o' clock!

Anyway back to the point - the afternoon was shorter but definitely sweet - the sun was shining and as I weeded I was serenaded by the buzzing of busy bees - both bumblebees and honey bees. Now that was a surprise so late in October when I expect the bees to be tucked up in a nest or hive.

The objects of their desires were the borage plants that I grew from some seed kindly sent to me by Bilbowaggins from Bag End.

Borage is often called bee's borage as bees just love it and for them to be able to browse the small but beautiful blue flowers so late in the year is a real bonus - so Bilbo my bees thank you.

The bees were whizzing from flower to flower and the only way I managed to get a photo was to shoot a piece of video and grab a frame. Even then most of the video clips were beeless. The photo below was really all I managed.

Technically borage is an annual herb with edible flowers. I haven't really got into eating flowers so I can't tell you what it tastes like but apparently oil extracted from the flower seeds have the same properties as evening primrose oil.

Despite it being an annual I won't be without borage next year as already some of the self sown seeds have germinated and grown into young plants. The bees will be happy about that and so am I.

So will the dahlia tubers survive this winter?

2011-10-27T07:00:00.000+01:00

For several years we had left our dahlia tubers to over-winter in the ground. Our method of over-wintering is explained on my website here. Despite gardening on a heavy clay soil our storage method had been successful with hardly any loss of tubers at all. That is until last winter.

Last winter was exceptional and resulted in us losing most of our dahlias. I’m not too sure that we would have had any more success if we had lifted the tubers as other gardeners reported losses despite lifting and storing.

Anyway I decided rather than buying new tubers I would attempt growing some new plants from seed. I bought a packet of Giant Hybrids Mixed and ended up with 30 young dahlia plants.

These were planted out on the plot in June but were very slow to grow - another victim of the really dry conditions.

In July the first of the flowers opened but the rest followed very slowly. Eventually all except for a couple grew into decent sized plants and flowered.

I was a bit disappointed that although there was a lovely colour range the flowers didn’t really look as I had expected.. I’m not sure whether this was down to the dry weather or not.

Anyway we have decided to lift the tubers this year just in case we have a repeat of last winter. The tubers have been placed in the plot greenhouse onto some wire ‘shelves’. This allows air to circulate around them. The tubers have also been placed stems pointing down so that moisture doesn’t accumulate in the hollow stems.

Whether the tubers survive of not is in the lap of the gods but either way I think I’ll probably buy some different seeds to grow next year - maybe some pom-pom varieties which are really good as cut flowers - not too large.

Sorry Flamenco

2011-10-24T07:00:00.006+01:00

I need to make a public apology to Flamenco - one of our newly planted strawberry varieties.

One variety of strawberry has produced most of our strawberry harvest this year - being newly planted this was more than expected. I have mistakenly attributed this harvest to Marshmello but this wasn’t the case.

To those of you who keep telling us we are very organised this just goes to prove all is not what it seems. The error was noted as I was tidying the strawberry bed. I’d left labels by each plant which as the leaves grew had been hidden in the foliage. This revealed that what I thought was Marshmello was Flamenco and vice versa meaning our main cropper was in fact the ever bearing variety Flamenco. This does make more sense.

Our total cropping was Flamenco 8.5kg, Amelia (late cropper) 0.5kg and Marshmarvel (an early cropper that seemed to produce a few fruits late on) 0.75kg. Marshmello (mid season) didn’t produce any fruits but we know that this is usually a good cropper and the late planting of the new plants would be the reason for this failure - I’m sure it will redeem itself next year.

We’d also mixed up Amelia with Marshmarvel. The reason for the mix up was that I had drawn the rough plan from one side of the bed and Martyn had copied this onto the computer from another side. This also means that we had joint ownership for the mistake which is best all round. In case you're wondering I've also remembered to change the labels round on the potted on runners in our cold frame.

If you remember we used a black porous biodegradable mulching fabric on the new strawberry bed. This was covered with straw and the entire bed netted to protect from birds. You can read about all that here.

I removed all the netting in spite of Flamenco still having lots of unripe strawberries. I doubt whether these will make it to the table as most are being spoiled by the cool, damp conditions. I’m happy to donate any that do turn reddish to any hungry birds.

Once the netting was removed, all the straw was scraped off and consigned to the compost heap.

I then tidied up each plant by removing any runners, that had managed to hang on despite my best efforts to cut them off, and any old or dead leaves. Normally I would cut off most of the leaves immediately after fruiting but this year I’ve been a little kinder to these young plants. Next year they’ll get the full treatment!

The black mulch appears to have worked at keeping down the weeds - there were very few weeds managing to grow amongst the plants - just the odd bit of chickweed, speedwell or spurge pushing up through the holes alongside the plants and they could be easily pulled out. There has also been relatively little slug damage - I thought that the mulch may encourage slugs. I guess both lack of weeds and slugs could be put down to the dry conditions so maybe I need to give it another year before I draw any conclusions.

The mulch is said to last up to 16 weeks - so far it has been down 19 weeks and is still in one piece - we laid it in mid July which was probably later than ideal. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of weeks. I wonder whether covering the fabric with straw could have protected it causing it to last longer.

I’m also a bit concerned that seeds from the straw have been left behind on the mulching fabric. I can’t really sweep these up so I wonder whether they’ll manage to grow in spite our best efforts at prevention. I’ll just need to try and keep on top of any that do.

Oh, and I really ought to give a special mention to our alpine strawberries which have been providing us with tiny fruits for months now. I don’t want the plants to sulk and refuse to fruit next year!

Unexpected success

2011-10-22T10:27:00.000+01:00

You may remember that this year I decided to try growing some cyclamen from seed. If not I posted about it here.

You may also remember that at first I didn’t really expect any success and then as the seeds began to germinate my hopes were raised. In the end all eight of the cyclamen Lazer seeds germinated and five of the cyclamen Coum.

Lazer is a miniature variety that can be used as a pot plant or in theory planted outside in the garden.. It’s the sort that is on sale at the moment in garden centres. The sort that I bought last year after being assured it was winter hardy, the sort that fleetingly looked beautiful in a tub. There’s a photo of them in all their glory on this post. The beautiful display lasted short of a month as last December’s snow put paid to them.

Well back to my project to raise some plants from seed. The eight Lazer seedlings continued to grow and now all eight have produced sturdy little plants. Some have flower buds and others are on flower. There is one little niggle which is that some of the leaves have curled back and look distorted. I’m not really sure what has caused this to happen. I can’t see any mites on the leaves so I’ll ease up on watering. Anyway curling leaves or not I’m really pleased with the results and will try to keep these plants going so I can see whether they produce more flowers next year.

After my success with these cyclamen I have to admit being slightly disappointed with the cyclamen coum. I have managed to get five seedlings from these plants and they are very slow to grow. I am not too concerned about the slow growth as these are hardy perennials and I had expected this but I sowed far more of these seeds and had expected them to germinate more easily.

I based this reasoning on the fact that another hardy cyclamen - hederifolium self seeds all over our garden. I comes up in between paving and in any tiny cracks. See this post. Hederifolium produces flowers in autumn - around this time.

The leaves come after the flowers. Flowers are produced over a few weeks. Once the cyclamen have been pollinated, the flower stem curls into a spring and sits on the ground amongst the leaves. The seed pods splits as the seeds ripen. Ants and other insects are attracted to the seeds as they are in effect sugar coated. They carry the seeds away and so scatter the seeds all over the garden.

The original hederifolium plants in our garden were planted a long time ago and have often been dug up and moved around. Some of the tubers are now as big as dinner plates. I wondered whether our little cyclamen coum plants will ever achieve the same.

Now what challenge shall I take on for next year? What about you?

New project and a digression

2011-10-20T12:00:00.000+01:00

The bad weather and short days will soon descend on us. This means that those of us who spend lots of our spare time outside in the garden or on an allotment plot will need something else to distract us.

Like many of you, as well as gardening I love to take photographs, and I have accumulated quite a library of photos, so when I received an email from a lady called Julia asking whether I would be interested in submitting some images and designs to an online printing company called CreateToday I thought that I’d have a look.

The company produces greetings cards and wall art products. There are lots of such companies out there and in the past I’ve acquired canvas wall art prints produced from a couple of my photos. The difference is that this company collects images from what they call artists but which basically means anyone who would like to submit images to an online portfolio.

In return for using the images each ‘artist’ is given commission on any products bought that use their work.

Anyway to cut a long story short I decided to give it a go. I enjoy messing about with photos and images and this project seemed to be an ideal way to give my 'messing about' a purpose (and I get to be called an artist!) If I actually manage to sell any of my images it will be the icing on the cake but is certainly not my main reason for this new project.

I’ve set up another blog and website basically because this is another thing that I enjoy doing to link up with this new ‘hobby’’; have a look if you have a few minutes and are interested.

Another reason for this post is that I know lots of you take wonderful photos and I thought you may be interested in having a new winter project too! Just click on the link on the sidebar if you want to have a look

A three pronged approach to planting garlic.

2011-10-18T07:00:00.001+01:00

Our attempts at growing garlic suffered a crop failure last year. The cloves were started in pots in the cold greenhouse and were doing well until they were planted out and then it was downhill all the way. I’ve since read that garlic needs plenty of water so I suppose the really dry spring and summer could have caused some of our problems. Whatever the reason next season we are going for broke and have bought a garlic collection.

The number and size of the cloves of each variety vary considerably .

We bought one bulb each of the following:

Albigensian Wight – hardneck variety (12 coves)
Chesnok Red - hardneck variety (9 cloves)
Early Purple Wight - hardneck variety (17 cloves)
Edenrose – hardneck variety (15 cloves)
Germidour - softneck variety (12 cloves)
Iberian Wight’ – softneck variety (8 huge cloves)
Lautrec Wight - hardneck variety (12 cloves)
Messidrome – softneck variety (8 cloves)
Wight Cristo – softneck variety (15 cloves)
and
Elephant Garlic - technically not a garlic at all (5 cloves)

We have both hard and soft neck varieties. The softneck don’t flower and are supposed to be better for storing. The hardneck varieties do flower - in fact when I split the bulbs there was the remains of a flower stalk in the middle of some of the bulbs - you need to pinch out any flower stems that develop so all the energy goes into bulb production.

I’m going to try a three pronged approach to see which method of growing will work best for us.

The first prong was to plant up 3 cloves of each variety into pots using multipurpose compost. Although garlic needs moisture it doesn’t like to be waterlogged so I’ve placed the garlic trays across the trays on the greenhouse staging to allow for drainage. Unlike onions the cloves are pushed beneath the surface of the compost. In spring the young garlic plants will be planted out on the plot to grow on.

For the second prong I planted three of each variety, except the elephant garlic, into a tub. Garlic apparently are hungry feeders and these plants will stay in tubs until they - hopefully - are ready to harvest. For this reason I mixed together John Innes number 3, multi purpose compost and grit. The John Innes is to provide better nutrition and the grit to help with better drainage. I thought the elephant garlic needed more space to grow to maturity which is why I haven’t planted any cloves in the tubs. The tubs will stay in the greenhouse overwinter and be moved outside in spring. Garlic needs a period of cold temperatures in order to grow cloves otherwise it can grow just one fat bulb. Life in our greenhouse will be cold enough but being under cover will prevent waterlogging.

The third and final prong was to plant some cloves straight into the ground. The cloves were planted in a shallow trench. Chicken manure pellets will provide some nutrients.

Now I just have to hope one prong actually works and produces a harvest. If all the prongs work then all I can say is that the whole of Yorkshire (including Whitby) will be a vampire free zone!

Not for Halloween

2011-10-16T07:00:00.000+01:00

Once we are in October the chances are that a frost could descend on us at anytime and so I decided that I’d better gather in the squash fruits.

Even discounting the possibility of squash being ruined by frost, October is a dangerous time for any squash or pumpkin fruits growing on allotments. Many fall victim to those who think pumpkins growing on someone’s plot is fair game. Many will end their days as footballs or have been ‘acquired’ for Halloween, carved and hollowed out.

We grew two varieties of squash this year. We’ve grown Crown Prince for a few years and have always been pleased with our crop so that tends to be a staple. To this we added Autumn Crown which is a new variety bred especially for growing in the UK. It’s supposed to be a cross between Crown Prince and a butternut squash and is described as having a melony taste - we can’t confirm this as we haven’t tasted one yet.

This year conditions have been far drier than squash like and even our Crown Prince vines have produced smaller fruits than normal. Some vines have not produced a fruit at all and others have only managed a single squash.

The Autumn Crown fruits are much smaller than we expected - the name meant we expected something similar to Crown Prince. I’m not sure whether the smaller size is due to lack of rain or that this variety is naturally smaller.

The vines that have produced the largest fruit were either growing under our sweet pea frame where the ground didn’t dry out as quickly. I supposed it was a sort of ‘two sisters’ set-up!

I always cut the squash leaving them attached to a section of vine which not only acts as a sort of handle for carrying the fruit about but it is also supposed to make them less likely of rotting.

Anyway all our squash are now safely gathered in and being stored in our garden greenhouse where they will hopefully manage to survive Halloween - that is unless one ends up in the pot!

Rescuing arums.

2011-10-15T01:00:00.000+01:00

A while ago we planted an arum lily in one of our borders which hasn’t really been happy. This year it only started producing any leaves in late September and then nothing like it should. The leaves were very small nothing like the statement they should be

The plant loves damp conditions so in many ways it was hardly surprising that it wasn't happy this year but to be honest it hasn't really performed for ages.

Anyway I decided it was time to dig it up and see if it would enjoy life better in a pot that could be overwintered in the greenhouse.

No wonder it was struggling the ground was like dust but despite this lots of small white shoots were trying their best to grow. In fact there were so many shoots crowding each other that the plant needed dividing into several clumps of varying sizes which were each potted into pots of varying sizes.

After planting the pots were given a good soaking - you could almost hear the sigh of ecstasy from the plants.

Some if not all the pots will be popped in the greenhouse over winter. I am also wondering whether to try popping at least one of them into the pond as a marginal - does anyone grow arums like this?

Remember our fuzzy nectarines?

2011-10-11T01:00:00.000+01:00

Well ever since we picked the fruits we’ve been mulling over why our nectarines looked more like peaches. I checked the photo of Fantasia on Thompson and Morgan’s website and our ‘nectarines’ looked nothing like the ones shown.

I checked the photos of nectarine flowers on the Internet and they sort of looked like the ones we had on our tree - but then again so did the photos of peach flowers.

I thought maybe the photo on T&Ms web site wasn’t accurate but looking again our fruits did look very much more like the photos of the peaches on the same web page.

Now don’t get me wrong if our nectarine turned out to be a peach then I’d be perfectly happy - we like both fruit but it just seemed that a nectarine would be a bit easier to grow in our part of the country.

In the end I decided to email and send photos T&M to ask what they thought. Could the trees have been mixed up and if so what variety of peach had I ended up with? I didn’t complain just asked for their comments.

A reply came straight back saying that it looked as though the tree that we were sent is a peach called Avalon Pride and what’s more they are going to send me a replacement nectarine next year. That’s without me asking or complaining so all in all I’m very happy and must give T&M a pat on the back for such good after sales service.

I’d really like to try growing an apricot too but we need to think where we will put all these trees. They really must stay in the garden and in large pots where we can protect them from frost and also I think the fruit would just be too big a temptation to risk at the allotment.

T&M have an apricot called called Flavourcot which sound good and one called Champion that only grows 1m tall, and supposed to be good for growing in a pot. Has anyone grown either?

A Taste of Honey

2011-10-09T01:00:00.006+01:00

Regular visitors will be only too aware that we like to try growing something different - sometimes just to see if we can! In March last year (2010) we planted a quince tree, The variety was Meeches Prolific which we chose as it was advertised to be a reliable cropper. We had never eaten quince or even seen an edible fruiting quince growing so we didn’t really know what to expect. The only thing I really knew about quinces was that they were one of the foods eaten by The Owl and the Pussycat.

The tree arrived in January so was planted in a large pot and kept in our cold greenhouse until conditions improved. In mid-March it was planted out and by the end of April it had produced very attractive felt leaves and a few flowers.

By the end of the season it had produced three fruits. Not knowing how or when to pick the fruits or how to tell if they were ripe the short story was that we didn’t actually get a taste.

The tree over-wintered successfully and this April produced more flowers. The flowers are really lovely. So much so that when we had to choose a photograph to print on canvas we chose a photo of a quince flower.

In May it became obvious that quite a few fruits had set. The lovely leaves had been torn ragged by the wind and the tree and we had hardly any rain for three months so we were not counting our chickens.

By June the tree carried several small fruits. These were pear shaped and had a pale green felty covering similar to that of a peach.

Through July the fruits continued to swell - they were beginning to be heavy enough to make the branches weep - despite now only being given an occasional can full of water which could have hardly made up for the lack of any decent rain for five months.

In August some fruits began to loose their felty covering although some fruits still had felty patches. The fruits were then turning a apple shade of green.

By September the fruits were the size of medium sized pears and turning yellow. This year we had read everything we could find about when to pick the fruits. Advice was to leave the fruits on the tree for as long as possible at least until October and to pick before the first frosts. Now that’s not as easy as it sounds - we had to try and judge when enough was enough. When was the risk of frost too great to leave the fruits on the tree.

By early October some of the fruits were completely smooth and yellow which is a sign that they are ripe so we decided to pick a couple to try.

Quinces are really hard fruits and can’t be eaten raw. So what do you do with quince other than making quince jelly which not really being jam eaters we wanted to avoid? A trawl of the Internet later we decided on an apple and quince crumble. We decided not to flavour with any spices so we could experience the true flavour of the quince.

Everything I have read states that ripe quinces are fragrant and can taint any food stored alongside them so I was expecting some sort of perfume smell. As the quinces cooked they smelled of honey (not something reminiscent of a Dior concoction) and the cooked fruit tasted of honey too - well that’s as near a description as I can give. We loved it so the race was on to pick the rest of the fruits before the frosts ruined them. In all the tree produced fourteen fruits but I'm left with a huge problem. Does anyone know how to free my head from that stupid poem?

I've posted an article about quince on my website here if you are interested.

Planting cycles.

2011-10-07T01:00:00.001+01:00

A few days ago I spent two days tidying up the onions and shallots that had been drying in our greenhouses - not ideal places to dry onions but with rain forecast (which didn’t really materialise), we didn’t have anywhere else where we could spread them to mature before preparing for storage.

Anyway ideal or not what remained of the foliage had dried out and the outer skins of the onions had loosened so I set to removing all the loose foliage, snipping off the roots with a pair of scissors and trimming the tops. As each of the onions completed their beauty treatment they were graded into ones which had started to rot and needed throwing away, ones that were a little soft in places and needed using reasonably first and those that hopefully would store.

The bulbs were then arranged in those boxes that supermarkets use to transport fruit. The boxes were then laid out in a single layer in the garden greenhouse. This way the air can circulate and also any onions that start to rot should be easily spotted. If things go according to plan they should keep us well supplied.

After all that, you would think that I had seen enough onions for a while but no! Immediately after I’d finished with this year’s harvest, the over-wintering onion sets arrived. We’d ordered four varieties, Electric (a red variety), Shakespeare, Senshyu Yellow and Autumn Champion. We are sharing the sets with a friend so we are each planting four different varieties instead of the usual two.

As the sets had arrived we decided we ought to get them planted. The bed earmarked for them had a few small weeds so these were turned over using our mini tiller.

Onion sets are notorious for jumping out of the soil. Birds are usually blamed for this but to be honest I’m not sure. I could understand that the birds may see the tiny dry neck of the onion set as possible nesting material in spring time but why would they bother pulling at a tiny bit of dry material at this time of year when they have more pressing needs - like food and water. I can’t imagine that any bird thinks of onions as a possible food source! I think it is more likely that if the onion sets are pushed into the soil that this creates a more solid area directly under the set. Then as the roots start to develop the set is pushed up out of the ground.

So with this in mind, to plant the sets I dragged out four shallow trenches, one for each variety. A row of onion sets was placed in each trench and the soil pulled back into the trench just so a tiny bit of the set was peeking out.

The soil was like dust and so if we don’t get any rain within the next few days we’ll have to water.

Our garlic arrived at the same time so will need planting soon but that’s for another post!

What do you do when you have enough pickled beetroot?

2011-10-06T01:00:00.000+01:00

There’s only so much beetroot that you can use in pickles and chutneys so at the moment I’m trying out recipes that make more use of beetroot as a vegetable or as a cookery ingredient.

I’m not too keen on the earthy taste of beetroot - it can be a bit boring so I didn’t just want to bake the roots. I wanted to try something that would make the flavour more interesting.

Looking through some recipes on the Internet it seemed that beetroot was often cooked with apples and onions. As we have plenty of both I decided to try create something that used these three ingredients and also stole some ingredients that I usually use in a recipe for braised red cabbage. The final recipe can be found here on my website - we liked it and will certainly cook it again.

Just a small step in the right direction

2011-10-05T01:00:00.002+01:00

If you pop by my blog on a regular basis you will know that our back garden in going through a major upheaval and that at the moment there is very little happening on the creative side. The balance is unevenly tipped towards the digging up, chopping down and generally destructive side of things.

The border that initially was just going to have the addition of a focal feature was just about completely cleared - just a couple of bamboos survived and only after me pleading their case. I last updated on how this area was progressing here.

The crab apple which casts shade over this border has had branches removed - and is set to have even more taken out but other than the border is now ready to be replanted.

We had already planted an acer and some clematis and now a start has been made by permanently siting the bird bath and planting around its base.

I thought that the black leaved ophiopogon would provide a contrast to the white of the bird bath and so I have planted them at the front around the base. In front of them is planted laminum White Nancy which works well with the ophiopogon. I’ve taken a few cuttings so I can plant a carpet around the front of the bird bath as at the moment it is more to just one side. This was where it was originally planted and I didn’t want to disturb it.

Nearer the back of the bird bath I have planted a couple of aspleniums which should love the damp conditions caused by splashing birds.

In amongst the ophiopogon I intend to plant some miniature irises - Kathleen Hodgkins.

The heucherella that can be seen on the left will be moved.

The border still is rather bare with just one or two plants in temporary positions. Hopefully some of the plants will grow enough so that I can split them next year as I want more than one of each in the border to avoid it ending up looking dotty.

Anyway at least I think I’ve made a start and one casualty of the big chop - a choisya is now sprouting really healthy new leaves - I wonder whether the camellia - just visible at the far end - will do the same?

Plants for free

2011-10-03T01:00:00.001+01:00

After having found out rather belatedly that my newly planted salvias may not over winter I decided to take some cuttings.

For the cuttings I used a mix of half grit and half multipurpose compost. Unlike many cuttings that are taken below a leaf joint, salvia cuttings root best when you cut between two leaf joints; they are called internodal cuttings.

As seems to be the currently preferred technique I placed the cuttings around the edge of the pot and then popped them under a propagator lid just to stop them drying out too quickly until they rooted.

In no time at all, the Amistad salvia cuttings rooted and the roots quickly began to push through the holes in the bottom of the plant pot. These cuttings have now been potted up and the tops nipped out to encourage them to become bushy. They are growing away so now I just have to decide where to keep them overwinter.

I’m not sure if the other salvias have rooted yet. There are no roots visible at the bottom of the pot and I don’t want to tip out the pot to see if any roots are beginning to form. I’ll just have to wait patiently and hope. These are a different type of salvia so I suppose they may take longer to form roots.

Taking the salvia cuttings made me wonder what else I could try. I wanted more lavender to complete the edging around some of our fruit beds. I’ve successfully taken lavender cuttings in the past and so these were added to my list of cutting material.

I’m also trying a few Michalemas daisy cuttings and some perennial nemesia which, if they are successful, along with some of the salvias will be used to fill in some gaps in one of our flower beds.

I was going to take some rudbeckia cuttings but noticed a few young plants growing around the base of our established clump and so have potted these instead.

I’d like a sambucus nigra in the garden but don’t want it to grow as large as the ones on the plot so I decided to grow one in a tub and have taken some cuttings from the plants on the plot. I’ve been successful taking cuttings from this plant in the past - in fact our existing plants started life as cuttings. I’ve given away quite a few young plants so here’s hoping all goes well again. No doubt I’ll either end up with no rooted plants or too many!

Another plant that I want to increase is Laminum - White Nancy. This didn’t look as though it would respond to the same method so instead I have pinned down some of the long stems to see it they will root in the ground so I can then detach them and pot them up.

My last lot of plants for free are the potted runners taken from our new strawberry plants. I’ve taken 15 from each variety which is more than I bought originally. I intended to cut off all the runners produced in case they weakened the plants in their first year of growth. The plants, however had other ideas and I couldn’t keep up with the runner production. Some runners managed the start to root in spite of my best efforts and so it seemed a shame not to pot them on. At least I’ll have some young plants to replace any winter casualties and if the main plants make it through winter? Well you can’t have too many strawberries can you? It will just be a case of finding somewhere to plant them!

The Pictorial Guide to Seeds of the World

2011-10-01T12:27:00.004+01:00

What a coincidence that Mark from Mark’s Veg Plot has just posted a book review as just like him I have been approached to review a book too!

The book that I was sent was The Pictorial Guide to Seeds of the World. It’s a newly published book by Terry Woodger. Terry is a professional horticulturalist and botanist based in Australia who for ten years had his own seed collection business.

I know lots of you regularly collect your own seed so this could well be a book for you. I must admit that I have never really got into collecting in a serious way but having browsed this book then I think I may be missing a trick and am inspired to have a go.

My first impression of the book was that it looked inviting. The cover is attractive and appropriately represents the content. The content is clearly presented, it is uncluttered and the print large enough to read comfortably but not so large that it has the look of a school reading book.

The book doesn’t claim to cover every seed in the world - this would be impossible - but it does cover a very significant number, most of which are illustrated by scaled photographs. I do like to have plenty of photos in this type of book.

Although the book doesn’t go above your head by being too scientific the introduction includes an outline of the types of fruit (seed cases) that you may come across. I now can impress people by knowing that a drupelet is one of the tiny cluster of berries that make up a raspberry

Chapter One covers methods that can be used to collect seeds including use of a tennis racquet or a small vacuum cleaner.

The main reference section is divided into chapters covering vegetables, herb & spices, garden flowers, fruit & trees, shrubs and vines. Within each section seeds are grouped according to plant family and referred to by both their common and botanical names.

Are any of these the beans you are looking for Tanya?

Finally is a section on how to clean and store seeds including descriptions of pests and fungus that can affect seed storage and suggestions for how to combat them.

Although Terry does mention professional seed collection and preparation equipment most of the equipment suggested is either home made or uses items readily available in the home so there is no need to go out spending a fortune on ‘proper’ kit.

So to sum up the book is reader-friendly. As I already mentioned, it doesn’t complicate matters by being too scientific but neither is it too basic.

This isn’t a book to read from cover to cover - after reading sections relating to collection, cleaning and storage of seeds, the main sections which describes each seed is more for dipping in and out of for reference purposes.

Although on the face of it this is quite expensive for a paperback, I can understand why. I know from experience how difficult it is to get photographs of seeds of a good quality and then to add a scale to each and gather together all the information must have taken years.

It may even encourage me to be adventurous and have a go at growing new plants from collected seed, If I do then you will be sure to hear about it.

A generous section of the contents can be viewed here

If you're interested the book can be bought at Amazon UK

The Pictorial Guide to Seeds of the World: An Introduction into the Collection, Cleaning, and Storage of Seeds

or Amazon US

The Pictorial Guide to Seeds of the World: An Introduction into the Collection, Cleaning, and Storage of Seeds

and no doubt other Amazons too!

Dead or alive?

2011-09-28T01:00:00.000+01:00

In 2006 we planted a couple of figs in large tubs. One was placed in the garden and the other on the allotment and until this year all was well and they were growing strongly.

They stayed outside each winter and each summer new growth appeared.

They didn’t produce any useable figs but we could wait and the plants looked great anyway.

All seemed well until this spring when it seemed that both figs had been casualties of last winter’s big freeze.

We waited ‘just in case’ but there was no sign of any regrowth on either plant and so I decided to give up waiting and put something alive in the pot in the garden. If anything was going to happen and the plant wasn't completely dead, I guessed that by early summer there should be some sign of life

Before emptying the pot I decided to cut down the stems but as I started cutting I noticed that the stems were green under the bark and the twigs that I'd started to cut back didn’t seem brittle or dead in the centre.

Deciding to give the plant a bit more time I trimmed back the branches to what seemed to be viable wood. I scraped some of the old compost from the top of the pot and freshened it up with new compost, just to give it an added incentive to grow. So was it dead or alive?

Nothing happened so we figured that maybe it was dead after all. Then, on September 9, as we were sitting by the plant having a coffee, I noticed some tiny green blobs on the ends of some of the branches.

Looking more closely it seemed that some tiny figs were developing on the ‘dead’ branches, which indicated that the plant wasn't yet completely dead.

Well yesterday the fig looked like this:

Some of the tiny figs have grown bigger and some leaf buds have developed. So the plant is definitely alive. Now I guess we will just have to wait and see what happens next spring but we'll be popping the plant into the greenhouse over winter to give it a better chance - it deserves it.

This plant seems to have been in aestivation* - wonder if it was the drought conditions and the fact that we had given up on it and not given it any water. Maybe the rain broke the dormancy. Anyway the will to live was obviously strong!

As for the plant at the allotment - well that is definitely dead - I think - but maybe I shouldn’t throw it on the compost heap just yet. Well you never know do you?

*opposite of hibernation i.e. sleep through summer

September Strawberries

2011-09-27T09:57:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was our first visit to the plot after our week away in Wales. Our main intentions were to do some tidying up and harvesting of anything that was ready and waiting.

You may remember that we created a new strawberry bed this year using four different varieties to try and extend our strawberry picking season.

Well this has sort of worked - we have been picking strawberries from our Marshmello plants for quite a while now - no real glut just a steady supply. We even had some lovely ripe fruits ready for picking yesterday.

The only thing is that Marshmello is a mid-season variety and so shouldn’t really be fruiting now!- - and fruiting well! We have missed some of the fruits which have gone soft and mouldy in our absence but still have a good sized punnet to take home.

Marshmello

We have had a few fruits from our late season variety - Amelia although some of these plants don’t seem to be thriving (lucky I rooted some runners) - but we haven’t had any fruits from Flamenco our everbearing variety and only one or two fruits from the early variety Marshmarvel.

Amelia

I know we haven’t mixed up the plants as we were really careful this time to keep the plants separated.

I don’t really know what to make of this other than it is just the plants settling down to their first growing season - a season that has been unusual to say the least.

We also picked a punnet of raspberries, a cucumber, which is likely to be the last, and some carrots - yes we have managed to get some carrots but they are rather small and nothing like the amount we have come to expect!

Back at the reins.

2011-09-24T19:11:00.001+01:00

Blogger has been flying solo for a few days as we spent last week 'out of the country' - in Wales. We had never been to Wales before other than a quick tiptoe over the border to buy some streptocarpus plants from Dibleys. Earlier in the year we watched the Michael Portillo series on Great British Railways. He visited Snowdonia and we liked the look of it so, as Wales was an unexplored area of Britain, we decided to spend a holiday there.

This was our holiday cottage in Llanuwchllyn (fortunately we didn't have to be able to pronounce that).

The gate was to keep out our neighbours.

I got the distinct impression that our neighbours were talking about us!

To get to the cottage we had to drive across a couple of fields of sheep which meant jumping in and out of the car to open and close gates.

From the cottage were views of the Cambrian mountains and the nearby lake at Bala (you can only spot a tiny bit of it from this photo).

Other than the gossipy neighbours the only other sound to disturb the peace was the call of the buzzards. This bird was quite a distance away so the photo isn't as sharp as we would have liked.

We also managed to add three new birds to our photo collection. Again these aren't the most brilliant of photos but our excuse this time was that they were not only very fast moving birds but the photos were taken through very dirty windows of a hide in the RSPB reserve at Lake Vyrnwy and some were taken off video.

Nuthatch

Coal Tit

Willow Tit which we didn't notice 'til we looked at the video - we thought at first it was another coal tit!

To sum up our holiday in Wales picturesque, peaceful, mountains, lakes and lots and lots of greenery. We've already decided that we will be back.

To read more and see more photos of our holiday in Wales visit Martyn's web page here

Get up close!

2011-09-23T01:00:00.001+01:00

The shrub roses on the plot are still flowering although although the wind has tattered petals there is still some beauty there if you look closely enough.

The dying flowers will be left to form hips.

The bees are making the most of any remaining pollen and nectar supplies.

Take an autumnal tour of our plot

2011-09-20T01:00:00.000+01:00

We are fruitaholics

2011-09-17T01:00:00.000+01:00

We have to admit that we are fruitaholics. As well as the masses of fruits that we grow on the allotment we also have some fruit growing in the garden.

Some is intentionally and some are just happy bonuses.

The newcomers

I’ve already mentioned our success with nectarines/peaches. Half a dozen fruits may not rate as a success for some but for us it was fantastic. The tree was kept in a pot in the garden as we wanted to cosset it and also such fruit grown on the plot would be likely to attract unwelcome attention.

We also have a few strawberry plants - Finesses growing in a tub. These really ended up in the garden as we had set out the new strawberry bed when our main strawberry order arrived and so when Finesse arrived the plants were homeless. The idea of a few in the garden was appealing and so they stayed.

The kiwi Issai that was also planted in a tub in the garden doesn’t really seem very happy. It was off to a great start and has produced lots of fruit but these just aren’t getting any larger. It hasn’t had idea conditions this year but we are also wondering whether it is happy growing in a pot.

The long standing residents

We’ve had a grapevine - Himrod - that has lived in our greenhouse for years. There was a point where it took over completely and had to be severely put in it’s place. Now it is subject to hard pruning every year. It doesn’t hold this against us and produces masses of small seedless sweet green grapes every year. After pruning it is left to just get on with it except for a little cutting back once bunches of fruit have set.

Behind our greenhouse are a couple of apple trees and a pear tree. These are not really trees in the true sense more delinquent cordons. They shouldn’t really be there as we cut down all our cordon trees years ago when we just couldn’t control the woolly aphids that infested them each year. The roots were difficult to remove and so were left and new growth just cut back until it eventually gave up trying. These three, however, just sneakily continued to grow behind the greenhouse until one day we noticed that they were loaded with fruit.

We know the pear is a Conference and that one of the apples is a Bramley but are unsure what the other apple is - maybe Peasgood Nonsuch.

We sort of remember which trees we planted but not really where each one was. One thing I am sure of is that they produce fantastic apples.

There are grapes growing on one of the vines planted outdoors on the plot but these are still currant sized even though the photo makes them look fairly mature I doubt whether any will swell and ripen and be fit for picking. Well there's always another year!

Not what they seem!

2011-09-14T01:00:00.005+01:00

For a few years we struggled to grow peppers. The plants managed a meagre crop but these often failed to fully ripen and really weren’t worth the effort. Last year we decided to abandon the idea of bell peppers try growing the long thin or carrot shaped varieties.

We grew two varieties - Jimmy Nardello and Tequila Sunrise. Last year both did well with enough fruit being produced for freezing.

This year the plants have grow well and set plenty of fruit but it is slow to ripen. Jimmy Nardello is now making an effort to run red but I think Tequila Sunrise - a yellow-orange variety would have liked a bit more sunshine as it is determined to stay green.

Jimmy Nardello

Tequila Sunrise

The peppers look very much like large chillies and I must admit to being a bit concerned about that. The seed catalogue - Plants of Distinction - grouped all their peppers together but described Jimmy as a sweet pepper and confirmed this with a heat rating of zero.

Although the Tequila Sunrise fruit seem to be conforming to the expected shape some of the Jimmy Nardello fruits haven’t read their brief closely enough and are showing their creative side.

Progress on one front at least

2011-09-11T10:06:00.000+01:00

Just thought I’d let you have a quick update about how things are progressing in the new front flower bed. It's good to see something actually coming together as our other plans have suffered from what Mark from Mark's Veg Plot describes as the domino effect.

The plants that I bought from Beth Chatto, Unwins and Hayloft are growing really well. (See here for a photo taken 13 June) I’ve been really pleased with them and wouldn’t hesitate to buy from any of these companies again although for larger and more advanced plants I’ll use Beth Chatto.

Photo taken July 5 2011

The number of plants that I estimated I would need was about right.

The poppy alongside the dreadful fence shouldn’t be there - it’s a self sown seedling but as it was doing no harm where it was, I left it - many of it’s brothers and sisters were less fortunate. I pulled it up once the flowers had died before it sent thousands of poppy seeds everywhere.

The perennials are growing well - the Michaelmas daisy at the back has been flowering since sometime in April before I planted it and is still going strong. It should flower in late summer - early autumn. When first planted I hadn't set up any plant supports but have added some since.

My allotment plot neighbour gave me a white campanula which split in two, cut back and planted. It had already flowered and so I didn't expect any more flowers or growth from it this year. Surprisingly though the small piece has flowered.

Photo taken 8 August 2011

I've planted some of the aquilegias that I grew from seed. These are in three groups of three near to the front of the bed and should provide a different leaf and flower shape. Again I don’t really expect them to do much this year but maybe next.

Photo taken 13 August 2011

One blow to my plans has been the revelation that the salvias that I planted may not survive winter. I was hoping that this bed would fill up more next year but if the salvias fail then this will leave large gaps. I've taken some cuttings as an insurance policy. The ones from the large purple salvia - Amistad - at the back have already developed strong roots and been potted up.

I bought lots of spring bulbs - miniature daffodil, crocuses and tulips - and planted them in gaps between the perennials. The tulips were a sort of pick and mix so I haven't any photos but I bought Czar Peter, Fashion Show Winner. This should ensure that the bed isn't just a summer feature.

I've also order some Katherine Hodgkin irises.. It's a shame really as I had assumed our local nursery wouldn't have them - but they did and now I have to wait for a delivery when I could have got them planted.

An added bonus was the appearance of a couple of self sown antirrhinums - no idea where they originated from as we have never grown them but they fit in well so maybe I'll grow some next year or I could just let them self seed again.

I've also brought three achilleas and some heucheras (Plum Pudding) back from the plot and planted these in some gaps. The heuchera should spill over onto the paving to soften the edge - well that's the theory. I may have planted too many but they can always be taken out later.

Photo taken 3 September 2011

A problem is that fence - it’s not ours - our neighbour erected it - we look at the back of it and it's not really a pretty sight. It’s only about a metre (three feet high) and so not really high enough for climbers. Maybe once the plants thicken up they will hide it but that will only be effective during the summer months.

What would you do? Bear in mind we can't actually change the fence!

Well done the reds!

2011-09-07T17:06:00.000+01:00

For a few years now we have grown two lots of autumn fruiting raspberries. Allgold - a yellow fruiting variety and Joan J which produces the more usual red fruit. Last year we had considered digging up Joan J and consigning her to the compost heap. The canes never grew very strongly and only produced few fruits.

This year all that has changed - why? Well we decided to give Joan one more chance to prove her worth and she certainly has!

The two varieties of raspberries were growing in the same bed but Allgold seemed to be dominating so we decided to move a few canes of Joan J to see if when she was in a bed of her own she did better.

The result has been much stronger growing plants with a good amount of large lovely flavoured berries and this in just their first year after the move.

Berries are larger and firmer than Allgold. Allgold does produce lots of raspberries but these don’t stand up too well to wind and rain. The berries turn mushy.

This week has been really windy and although we haven’t had torrential rain it has been fairly wet. Allgold just hasn’t liked it. Up until this week we were harvesting lots of the yellow berries but this week few were worth picking.

On the other hand the red raspberries being produced by Joan J are still firm and perfect.

The Joan J canes that are still sharing a bed with Allgold will be moved next year. So well done the reds!

Losing their spots

2011-09-06T10:18:00.000+01:00

There was a time when goldfinches were rarely seen in our garden. We would hear them flying over but our garden didn’t seem to interest them.

It’s a different matter now as there is hardly a day goes by that that we don’t spot at least a couple on one of the feeders. Recently though we have counted record numbers. Last week we counted at least eighteen feeding at the same time either on the ground or from hanging feeders.

There were only a couple of adults - the rest being young - surely it wasn’t a family group! The young were at various stages in the development of their adult plumage, some just beginning to grow the red face feathers.

We first saw an increase in the number of goldfinch visitors during last winter when they seemed to take up permanent residence on our feeders. Since then they have become a regular feature.

The video clip blow shows just some of the ‘flock’. The ground table is placed below a hanging feeder so that the sunflower hearts that drop from the feeder aren’t wasted. The young goldfinches are joined by a young greenfinch which is also in the process of acquiring its adult feathers.

All the blue and great tits now seem to have matured and most of the robins have acquired their red breasts but some sparrows are still in the transition stage like this young male.

Let there be light

2011-09-03T11:43:00.000+01:00

We had a surprise when we visited the allotment this week. I wonder if you can guess a major difference in these two photos.

Photo taken in June this year

Photo taken this week

It's not really anything to do with our plot try looking beyond. For help scroll down.

Does this help?

We wondered what all the noise was about when we arrived at the plot.

It was the sound of chain saws. The conifers along one side of our site were alive with men in orange jackets. Apparently the conifers had become a problem and were affected the electricity supply so they had to have some of the height taken out.

The photo below taken in February 2007 shows how much shade was cast especially during the winter months.

Plots directly under the shade of the conifers had 'permafrost' until the sun rose high enough in the sky to cast some light over the tops of the trees. Even then half of these plots were more or less in permanent shade. Hopefully they will benefit from the work of the chain saw gang!

It's not quite back to the view in the 1980's though!

Another blogiversary

2011-08-30T01:00:00.003+01:00

Starting a blog is a bit like taking on a new allotment plot! It starts out as just an idea. For some people they find that the idea was far better than the reality and will write one or two posts (or dig one or two beds) and then disappear.

Others decide that it is something that they can only devote a limited amount of time to - unlike at the allotment the weeds don’t take over if you are away for a while although when you do switch on your computer after a break it may seem that lots of things have happened in your absence. There’s usually lots of catching up to do!

Then there is the variety of ways blogs are set out and what bloggers choose to write about.

There is also the way a community develops around a common interest and how this community can support one another with advice, tips and inspiration.

I started this blog on 30 August 2006 which makes today it's 5th blogiversay hence the reason that this post is about blogging and not gardening - I hope you’ll just indulge me a little.

It does seem a bit incredible that I started blogging 5 years, and over 870 posts ago over which time the blog has evolved into something completely different to how it started out - just like our allotment and our garden.

I've always enjoyed writing my blog but it's also good to know that there are people out there who regularly read what I've written. I'm always excited to achieve a new follower and wonder what has gone wrong when the number of followers goes down meaning someone has dumped me!

I love reading the comments and would like to thank all of you who regularly make comments and help make the blog come alive. It's good to get to know some of my readers better through this interaction and also benefit from the tips, suggestions and advice offered. I'm always happy when someone new comments too. I know from experience that it can sometimes feel as though you are gatecrashing a party where everyone knows everyone else but we all like to meet new friends as well as keep up with older ones.

Of course blogging is very much a two way thing and I also enjoy visiting lots of other blogs, most of which are featured in my blogrolls. Who needs gardening books when there is a team of knowledgeable people out there always teaching some new tricks, reminding us of old ones, inspiring us to try new things and giving us an insight into how they garden in other areas of the world?

As a ‘thank you’ for reading I’d love to be able to share a piece of one of my sister's fabulous chocolate cakes with you but as that isn't practical maybe you will be satisfied with a photo instead.

I'd also like to thank Craig, Mark and Carrie for the awards they gave me this year.

Craig only took on his allotment plot in July 2010 but his blog Dykes Edge Allotments describes how in such a short time he has transformed an overgrown area into a show plot.

Mark combines his love of growing vegetables (especially chillies) with his love of cooking and his blog Mark's Veg Plot is full of information about his growing techniques accompanied by his favourite recipes.

Carrie's blog Grow Our Own describes how her brand new garden in Northern Ireland is taking shape as well as taking us for regular visits to her allotment plot. She's a firm believe in what she calls allotmentherapy and also has a lovely way with words.

I know lots of my regular visitors have already found these blogs - if you haven't pop over and take a look.