Midlife Gardener

Always help on hand

Half term gave me time to spend in the fresh air without a whistle in my hand or too many teenagers in tow. It was a time for solitude and seed selection.

My lovely in-laws gave me a subscription to Gardeners World magazine for Christmas and I have gleefully leafed through the glossy pages of garden porn throughout January. Amongst the lush photos of blooming shrubs and crisp bulbs I was drawn to the recommendations for vegetable seeds which come from all the high profile gardeners who set the standards in our horticultural wish lists.  Like a fawning schoolboy I was chuffed to see a large number of my “favourite” veg being recommended by the great and the good.  So I spent a happy few days browsing the internet switching to select my perfect line up of reliable heavy croppers for the spring planting.

Out in the garden I have been clearing the Silver Wedding and the Boomerang beds looking to make space for some new perennials which I hope to establish for flowers both in the garden and for cutting.  So I’ve taken up the blowsy gladioli bulbs from the boomerang as well as moving the penstemons from the Silver Wedding.  It all looks bare and tidy – ready for planting.  Another flurry of internet activity has resulted in more boxes and envelopes with seeds and bare roots plopping through the letter box at regular intervals and I have hastily stuffed some of the bare root plants into pots in the greenhouse (after I had mended a pane of glass that had blown out of the roof).   So they are sitting comfortably waiting for the first warm days of spring, which I am sure are just around the corner.

Clouds over greenhouse

The autumn is always a time of mixed emotions in the garden, with the last of the summer veg being harvested and the root crops only beginning to get on their way to producing the much relished bounty for the bleak midwinter.  The fall this year was that much more of a time of transition and change for me, spending a large part of my time residing in a boarding house, helping to take charge of a bunch of teenagers.  It has been enjoyable in its way, but as soon as I am home and in my garden I wonder why I chose to be away.  Each time I’m home I take the obligatory stroll down to the veg patch, retracing the steps that my father would always take with my mother on the warm summer evenings when he would come home from the office and they would review and plan the horticultural programme of work.  It was daily ritual, as I recall,  (with a G&T or glass of wine in hand) but something to which I have been restricted these past months to no more than a once weekly viewing at best.  (the walk down the garden, that is, not the glass of wine or G&T).

So what have we achieved in that time – in the final third of the 2014?

Landfill

Well, with a little help from Josh I was able to clear the main veg patches.  In the interests of low maintenance I have this year put a large amount of cardboard over the open areas to keep the weeds down.  On top of this I spread compost  from the field .  It all looks reasonably tidy now although getting enough cardboard was the main challenge.  But passing the electrical store in Cary just before recycling I was able to collect several TVs’ worth of packing which did the job.  I also unpacked a couple of box loads of promotional shopping bags from the bookshop which had been water damaged when they arrived some months ago and had been sitting in the garage ever since.  (It’s funny how “stuff” just accumulates isn’t it?).  So the garden now resembles a landfill site with the “Books Are My Bag” legend dotted around the edge in some bizarre sponsorship deal.  But there ain’t too many weeds.

In terms of what is actually growing at the moment, top of the class this term has got to be the leeks which are standing tall and proud and thick.  They are going down well in soups and other meals, such as my own recipe of leek and squash gratin. The butternut squashes did not store too well, but we have eaten them all before they went  off too badly.  The Crown Prince squashes are storing excellently and we have just started on our first of the season.  While the butternuts were small but perfectly formed for a single meal, each Crown Prince provides enough for several feasts.  I have no doubt there will be a lot of squash stew and soups consumed – or frozen – over the coming months.

Garlic making an appearance

The garlic is still looking good in its plaits, though a lot of the onions have rotted.  It seems as if red is better than white in storage terms, so must make a note to stick with the coloured rather than the white next year. I did remember to get some garlic planted in time for the end of November and just before Christmas we saw the first green shoots coming through.  It is mightily encouraging to see new growth in December and gives the garden a lift during the darkest days.

The brassicas are not looking too good – although we’ve had one or two excellent cabbages and the purple sprouting looks reasonable, if not cropping heavily at the moment.  I’m not sure how much it – along with the Brussels – might have been affected by the plague of caterpillars that had their fill during August.  The Brussels certainly have not amounted to much this year – again – and we only had shop-bought Brussels on Christmas Day – with one or two sorry examples from the garden.

Never mind:  it is not all about the crop, the end product:  the mere process of planting, nurturing and just pottering provides its own rewards in relieving stress and work-related problems.  And anyway, in terms of getting things right in the garden, there’s always next year isn’t there?

Webs in the mists

It has been a long time since I last wrote.  The summer sped by with a mad term at school followed by a large proportion of the summer break spent in the southern hemisphere, first on a two week school hockey tour, then three week vacation in Australia.

Naturally the garden was affected quite dramatically by my absence – or perhaps I should say unaffected.  With Josh and Verity in charge of the garden while I was away, in between their own personal breaks, the garden was pretty much left to its own devices and thrived in the warm weather.

I believe we had a great crop of beans, purple sprouting, and Kholrabi, though by the time I saw them in September they were mostly shot to seed.  It was wild: the veg patch had run away with itself, and I have spent much of the past month simply clearing and putting it to bed for the winter.  This takes place over a longer period of time than previously this year, as I am now resident at school for most of the week, attending to the pastoral needs of a bunch of teenagers.

Cosmos

But each time I get into the garden (only once or twice a week) it is such a breath of fresh air literally and metaphorically.  Today, as I cleared the nettles and weeds as well as the dead dwarf beans, every sense was alive.  The feel of the gardening glove – reassuring protection against the nettles.  The damp earthy smell of the leaf mould.  The sound of bird song and the sight of the robin flitting in behind me as I rake over some soil or dig out the dead cosmos.  Autumn is all around us, in the misty mornings – walking dogs in the fields – and non more so than in the taste of the last autumn bliss raspberries: the sharp astringent sweetness of the fruit – caught at the point of maximum ripeness before mold and rot takes over.

So we will see what comes of the garden over the winter and into the spring.  there will have to be some revision of planting with a lot less produce – particularly with fewer mouths to feed at home.  And of course everything will need to be able to be maintained on one day a week.  But one day a week which acts as my garden therapy.

This time of year is when gardening is just so much fun.  Seeds have been planted and now the seedlings have come through and I can do what Claire calls my “Marjory” bit – sitting in the greenhouse potting up or just generally pottering.  There is still plenty of weeding, digging and hoe-ing to do, but the seedlings need tending to in the greenhouse and one can lose many a contemplative hour in there.

The weather has been good so the weeds have kept down in the garden.  I have managed to plant out the broad beans and the mangetout (thanks to Duncan for pointing out to me that the plants I labelled as runners in a previous post were – actually – broad beans.  Knows his beans, does farmer Palmer).  Well, whatever name I give ’em they still seem to do OK.

Proper corrugations

The potatoes came up fast and have flourished before I could even think of earthing them up again.  I had a conversation with Jim yesterday who, like me, compulsively earths up his spuds as soon as they poke through, whether or not frost is likely.  But, as we both noted, they don’t do anything like that when planted commercially, although commercial planting does seem to be a week or two later than we do in the garden.  The field down the road has been planted with potatoes and what a fabulous sight that is.  When I was young and wanted to build my own toy farm I dreamt of getting hold of enough corrugated cardboard to make nicely ploughed fields.  There are a hell of a lot of corrugations in the potato field down the road.

Potatoes now

So the planting and potting up stage is in fully swing – probably nearing its end.  And so the transition to the planting out.  Two years ago I would be checking the internet to know exactly how far apart plants and rows needed to be and precisely how much fertilizer of compost need to be in the soil.  I did all that for the spuds this year.reminding myself how far apart earlies and mains needed to be.

Then probably go it wrong.

But for the rest I just do a best guess.  With regard to the purple sprouting and the red kale I’m glad I did not bother too much with measuring, as every plant has been eaten.  By what, I don’t know.  I put netting over them, but to no avail.  Mice? Slugs?  At least I kept the left overs in the greenhouse so I went back to my potting up…

And so to the next phase:  getting the plants to maturity.  Or the War on Pests, which, like the War on Drugs, we’re never likely to win.  It’s all a matter of accommodating everyone to an extent.

Pond or Puddle

So what shall we talk about this week?  Well, let’s not start with the weather.  That is frankly dull.  Yes, there has been more rain, but just occasionally there has been some sunshine.  Unfortunately this has mostly tended to coincide with our travels (travails?) to family gatherings across the southern UK, but there have still been enough dry interludes to allow me to actually do STUFF in the garden.

Having said that, the fallout from the Atlantic frontal attack has managed to keep me amused on our regular dog walking route, with the presence of the man-made duck pond along the lane.  At the planning and drawn out construction stage, this was touted as a lake, but in post-production it has been rather overshadowed by the flooding in the next field which is a far more impressive stretch of water.  The former is a mere puddle next to the latter on which one could be tempted to conduct an attempt on the world speed record.

Rubbish Walk in the Country?

This duck pond took an age to build – and involved the use of a long list of building materials to construct the embankments: including dead trees and whole drums from broken concrete mixers to any amount of builders’ waste and broken drainage pipes.  I never realised you needed such an array of building materials to make the perfect swan lake.  But it turns out you don’t need all that – unless, of course, you are just looking for a place to dump a load of waste.  No, all you really need is a slight depression in your field, and the wettest winter on record, and your lake is as good as done.

Bloody Big Pony

Mind you, our dog walk still traverses an awful lot of detritus on the fringes of the field, so perhaps there is another pond in the pipe line, as it were.  There is an increasing amount of horse manure.  It reminds me of the joke (apparently one of Ronald Reagan’s favourites) about the eternally optimistic son who is so pleased about being given barrow loads of horse shit, he excitedly digs into it saying “there must be a pony in here somewhere”.  Even when you are in a pile of the proverbial, there could still be a positive outcome.

And even on a dank walk one can look at the bright side.

So, with a slight lifting of the winter rains I have actually been in the garden.  I finally managed to move the snake bark maple from next to the oil tank to the part of the Boomerang Bed vacated by the heather.  It seemed a simple task, but it’ll probably cost me another wedge of osteopath’s fees as I put my back out again digging the darned thing out.  But I’m pleased with the result.  And Ella hasn’t dug it up.

Yet.

White (actually) Sprouting

And talking of pulling things up, I have to report that Claire has been removing some of the unwanted veggies in the garden and feeding them to the voracious hens.  So the old Calabrese have gone and a few cauliflowers which never produced.  And some of the white sprouting – which had also not produced, although in their case that is simply because Claire has not given them time.  I managed to save the last four plants from a death by a thousand pecks – and am pleased to report we will actually have some white sprouting soon.  Shame about the rest.  I hope the hens appreciated them…

Elsewhere we went to Potato Day at the Consti Club and picked up our little chitters.  Belle De Fontenay, Cherie, King Edwards, and Sarpo Mira to repeat last year’s.  Plus Arran Pilot (as a nod to Nick’s residence there).  So all looking set, and I finally got around to ordering some garlic, which I have decided (due to my slothfulness) to plant in the spring.  Theoretically I could plant it now, I think, but the ground is still too wet.  Which makes me think if I had planted it in the autumn it would probably have just rotted away by now – thus justifying the decision to plant in the spring.

With the ground still sodden, I have transported twenty barrow loads of manure from the field.  Looking at the garden now, I really do feel there must be a metaphorical pony.

Things are looking up.

Ten tons of good stuff

A day of comings and goings on Wednesday started with the OM expecting me to share the experience of going to order ten tons of manure from Dimmer.  I told him I was waiting in for the heating engineers to come and replace our Alpha Cooker, which had him nonplussed and he had to revise his plans.  After a long pause he concluded that he would be able to deliver the cheque himself to the manure-mongers.  An hour later we were the proud recipients of a large pile of well-rotted compost.

Next up was a lunch date at the Stag’s Head where we were joining Claire’s Dad’s 90th birthday celebrations.  With no sign of heating engineers, or our new stove, we  left a note for them to call us when they arrived.  Arriving at the pub to find no mobile reception, I was despatched home to change the note for the engineers to call the pub.

As I pulled out, the oil man arrived to fill our tank – which always pisses off car drivers who are looking to take a short cut along a our lane – it becomes a very long cut as they wait fro the tanker to finish.  We love it.  So, manure and oil in – just the cooker to come.

But still no Alpha  men.

Stan and Olly debating how to get it in

Just after I had finished my attempt on some lasagne at the Stag’s Head (nicely defrosted and warmed through, though with such a lot of cheese on the top I thought they had left part of the packaging on), the Laurel and Hardy of the plumbing and heating world called.  I returned to make sure they had not been dismembered by our rampant guard dogs.  They were fine – and admitted that they had thought of calling us to say they were running late, but it slipped their minds.  With that piece of customer service to boost my confidence in their skills, it was back to the Stag’s to wade through my creme brulee – served in a chipped pot and, in proper mock gastro-pub style, completely ruined by chucking some raspberries in the bottom.

I picked the pips out of my teeth as Richard gave a thoughtful speech reflecting on his father’s principled approach to life (based on the cub scouts handbook), while the 90-year-old birthday boy addressed the throng in typically teasing fashion, thanking his whole family before – belatedly – acknowledging the support, selflessness and kindness of his wife (to ironic laughter).  I rushed back to find Stan and Olly trying to manhandle the ½ ton cast iron replacement cooker into the kitchen.  It was not easy.  Indeed, as Stan said to me “there’s been a bit of collateral damage” as he looked around a room that could have been a scene from the Syrian Government bombardment of Homs.

Not surprisingly they did not complete the job on Wednesday, and had to come back yesterday.  Of course they did not arrive till midday, as they had to get another job done first (Why, one might ask, is our job, the one you were supposed to finish yesterday, not your priority?).  Give them their due, when they finally finished the job, they kindly put back one of the kitchen units alongside the stove.  Shame they managed to rip three legs off it in doing so, which I had to extract, replace and put back in myself.  Farcical.

Anyway, it’s all better now.  Apart from the wall which had a round hole punched in it where they managed to push the door handle through it.  This was extended by Ella the lab who decided she would try to get as much insulation out of it.  But we do have a new (used) cooker, a full tank of oil and ten tons of high-grade compost waiting to be spread over the garden.