autumn – Garden Gate Flowers

Flower Power

Mrs B bought some Russet apples last week, which brought to mind a picture I have of my mother sorting russet apples on the lawn at the old place, around 1984. Crops of fruit were always impressive with my parents in charge and normally ended in vast quantities cooked, frozen or bottled.

I was thinking of those harvests as I sat down to review my own efforts in the garden this past summer. Fruit was not a great success, although we got a few apples, and enough raspberries to keep us going for a while with no danger of having to deal with any surplus.

Vegetables were not great, apart from the runners and French beans and some awesome aubergines in the greenhouse. The suggestion from Paddi and Richard to plant the aubergines in the partial shade of the tomatoes really seemed to work. Elsewhere squashes were poor and we only harvested two courgettes in total. An unwanted record, that one.

But there’s a good reason for the poor crop of veg, as the priority this year was flowers. These were an undoubted success, inasmuch as we got enough to bloom on the 13^th July for THE WEDDING OF THE YEAR.

But looking ahead we need to get more flowers for longer through the season. So now comes the important planning bit, seeking out early bloomers, like tulips, ranunculus, and sweet Williams and other biennials. And then, perhaps, something that could still be flowering into October. Which brings us to dahlias, flowers I once regarded as too blowsy and flash, but which I now realise could create an absolute bonanza of cut flowers.

It will require some investment in seeds, corms and bulbs, but the rewards should be there from April through to October.

It is the planning for a new season and new plants that keeps me going through the shortening days, and If I can apply myself to cultivating blooms like my parents produced crops of fruit, this time next year I could be looking back on a summer of flower power in the Midlife Garden.

Planting to the Music of Time

The rhythm of the seasons is changing its beat as summer segues into autumn. In the past, it was a time of year I would associate with final harvests of the summer and then closing down for the winter. I would clear the veg patch and cover it over to suppress weeds, allowing only space for Brussels, leeks and broccoli to battle the winter. I would uproot the deceased annuals in the borders and tidy the beds to wait till the warm weather returned. This year I have even managed to pick some mushrooms from a local field.

But these days I have started the autumnal season with a sense of anticipation for the spring. Like a tight rope walker looking straight ahead rather than down in order to make it successfully to the other side, I am planting stuff for harvesting and flowering in the spring. If I keep my eyes on the early summer of next year, perhaps I won’t even notice winter.

So over the past few weeks I have been nurturing and planting out my own self-grown flowers, like Honesty, Foxgloves, Lupins, and Echinacea, as well as Sweet Williams. I have sown Nigella and Phaecellia in the new bed out front. Instead of a fallow time, it is a season to plant and nurture. And to sit back and see everything shoot and take root in the still warm autumn.

In the raised beds I have planted a Curly Kale, garlic, shallots and broad beans. Broad Beans were something The Old Man never planted in the autumn as he claimed the flavour was not as good as spring planted. But considering the disastrous crop of spring grown Broadies I had this year, any kind of broad beans in 2019 would be an improvement – whatever the flavour. But, to improve my chances I have sown two types: Aquadulce and The Sutton. The first in the raised bed, the second (dwarf variety) in pots.

So now, with any luck, I will have the benefit of watching stuff growing – even in the dead of winter – which is what this whole gardening lark is about, isn’t it?

Picked these from the fields nearby

Foxgloves and Honesty in trays

Curly Kale

Broad Beans and Garlic either side of the rows of leeks n Khol Rabi

A Walk with A View #4

Storm Angus has just ripped through the West Country and dumped a large quantity of rain as well as ripping most of the remaining leaves from the trees. Up till this weekend it has been – by common consent – one of the most beautiful autumns for many years with still days and blue skies highlighting the glorious leaves.

There has even been just a hint of frost to give us justification to pick the brussels – which have been the best that I can remember growing myself, and therefore the best since the night of the cows which prompted this whole adventure in gardening to start.

Herewith a few pics from a morning walk a couple of weeks ago, when the sun was shining, the leaves were on the trees and life was apparently in harmony.

Eat, Sleep, Retrieve, Repeat

161102-5 — Gathering the leaves – and possibly the walnuts

Ella is a retriever / lab cross. There’s probably a posh name for this – like a labtrine or something. I guess someone somewhere has already thought of crossing the shitsu with a poodle (how much for a shitapoo?) but the key feature of our dog’s genetic inheritance is an overweening desire to bring back anything that is dead. Like rigor mortis rabbits (with which she nearly took Mrs B off at the knees the other day) or pigeons that have been half eaten by sparrowhawks. But she will also attempt to retrieve stuff which has not actually been shot or died of starvation.

161103 — One pheasant – dead or only resting?

Autumn around these parts brings out the birds and beasts that are trying desperately to fatten up for the winter months. The pheasant is one such bird trying to fatten up for winter though it has not idea that all it has been successively bred for is to be shot by posh boys in tweed before being collected by their soft-mouthed coated canine companions. It might explain why they have the aerial ability an early Wright Brothers prototype, making them tempting bait for anything that will chase – thus cutting out the gun-toting middle man. The other morning our over-keen gun dog disappeared down the lane after a pheasant. It seems the bird’s idea to try to out-run the labrador failed as two minutes later – much to Mrs B’s dismay – the dog returned with bird in mouth (is that worth two in the bush?) and placed it Mrs B’s feet.

However, as Mrs B tried to move the corpse out of the road, the pheasant jumped up and ran into the ditch. Miracle? Maybe. The chances are that the Lazarus-like recovery of the bird was just the “headless chicken” response of a bird that was pretty much dead. But Mrs B retains the notion that the pheasant is still out there wandering the hedges and ditches. Aaaah.

Elsewhere Ella has less success chasing the squirrels that pilfer the walnuts. Looking from the Labrador’s eye view, how hard can it be? Squirrels are small, slow-moving, can’t fly, and appear to be such easy targets to chase down and destroy. And yet….. Ella spends many a long hour gazing into the branches working out how she can climb the tree to snag the rat. Fudge did climb the tree once – having chased a squirrel at such pace towards the walnut she actually ran up the trunk almost to the bottom branches ten feet up before, like Wile E Coyote, she noticed gravity was about to take effect. It was long way down.

The constant chasing is symptomatic of the turf war between dogs and squirrels over who owns the walnuts. Ella retrieves them (naturally) and it is a subtle observation game to tell when the lab has a nut in her mouth. But Fudge has taught her how to crack them open and eat them. So seeing the squirrels tucking into them will only annoy the territorially jealous dogs.

Elsewhere Ella employs her jumping skills indoors as aprt of the self-appointed dance police. She won’t allow any dancing at any time and attacks any offenders. On he whole she is a very quiet dog and the only time she barks is in her sleep. A Fat Boy Slim gig (which we went to at Pilton Party in September) would be her worst nightmare, but I suspect what really makes her howl in her sleep are those pesky squirrel varmint.

Season of Lists

I’ve rewritten this post about three times as I have tried to get the tone right. Autumn has always been to me a time for reflection though in my younger years it was enlivened by my birthday in October which would be closely followed by Guy Fawkes night and then on to Christmas. These days another birthday is of little consequence – although the arrival home of Verity for my birthday was a wonderful surprise. This, sadly, was tempered by the premature passing of my cousin Dave at the age of 55, which put me back into reflective mode. Attending a funeral of one of our peers reminds us that there is no point in hanging about – life is out there and it is not waiting for you so it was apt that two days later Mrs B was running 10 miles in the Great South Run to celebrate her own good health three years on since Lymphoma and stem cell transplant.

Squashes - not too large — Squashes – not too large

So as the clocks go back and the nights draw in one must be thankful for one’s blessings and to look forward, which is exactly what one does in the garden, as we start planning for next year. We have been designing a new border, planting out Sweet Williams and other perennials, and planting garlic. We have also cleared the last of the squashes (much smaller than last year for some reason) and harvested the last of the green peppers and aubergines – which were also disappointing in size and number. So we will be looking to rectify what might not have gone right this year and trying to add new and different aspects to the garden.

Halving the irises in the Silver Wedding

So, as I had a couple of spare days at half term I took time to make the extension to the Boomerang bed. Not sure what to call this…the didgeridoo? I shuffled plants in the Boomerang and the Silver Wedding, putting the Veronicas together in the former and splitting the irises in the latter (hard work, that one). I surprised myself by how many plants I had for stocking the bed: as well as the Rudbeckia Marmalade and leftover Sweet Williams that we had grown from seed, there were a whole bunch of perennials that I had acquired as a bargain plug plant offer last year, and a lot of them have been doing nicely up by the top greenhouse over the summer and look ready for planting out now. It’s almost like a planned it all along. It was potentially back-breaking work, but immensely satisfying.

The great summer of 2016 starts here (or at least the planning does).