squashes – Garden Gate Flowers

Veronica or Veronicastrum Virginicum?*

I read a good article by James Wong in the Grauniad this weekend in which he gave his four top tips for beginners in the garden. I never feel like I have a great well of knowledge about gardening, although I have friends who see me as the expert in gardening, in relative terms that is, because I actually plant stuff, grow stuff and harvest or cut other stuff at the end of the process. Although I still regard myself as a beginner in this big green-fingered world, reading James Wong’s article made me think that perhaps, in the horticultural educational ladder, I would most probably be in a position to now graduate from beginners’ to improvers classes.

James Wong says persistence is key – to not be put off by things dying on you. Well, I think I do that. There have been times when growing veg this summer has felt like a Sisyphean task – as successive batches of chard and peas have perished on the raised bed killing fields like ranks of yeomanry heading over the top to be mown down by slugs, sparrows or simple drought. But I have rolled that metaphorical rock back up the hill and actually made it stick on occasion to reap the benefits in plentiful courgettes and beans, amongst other things.

Second piece of advice is to avoid worrying about weeds, which are simply flowers int the wrong place. Using new raised beds has been a real treat this summer, especially with the dry weather so there has been little or no weeding to be done, but I have taken James’s idea to one extreme by allowing some of the random seedlings that emerged from the mudslide of the great greenhouse disaster to flourish in the warm indoor beds. So I now have a sprinkling of zinnias and Ammi poking through the sweet peppers and tomatoes. Why not?

Tip number three is simply to plant stuff in the ground and not bother with pots too much. This is something I could take heed of as I am the worst helicopter parent when it comes to germinating and growing seeds. I put them in lovingly sieved compost in individual seed trays and then check on them everyday – perhaps every hour – until they are poking through. Then fuss over them even more watering and watching until they are bursting out of the trays and need to be potted on or planted out. Then – to my amazement – when let loose from their molly coddled world of shop-bought compost and careful watering, planted out in the naked earth, they flourish. Like grumpy teenagers living away from home for the first time they suddenly take flight, get on with growing up properly and become sensible members of the community. So why not sow more seeds direct into the earth? It might be what they really want. Perhaps I’ll try that…

And finally Mr Wong advises using Latin names for everything. Just get out and learn them he says: no one really knows how Latin – a dead language – should be pronounced so no worries there. And by using the correct Latin name you can be sure of what you are buying rather than vaguely describing the blue one of this or that flower, you can be pedantically specific. But as someone whose school coerced him into taking Latin O-Level (My fault: I was one of only a few who actually revised for the exam in the second form) and subsequently scraped a C grade at sixteen (a “4” in today’s exciting GCSE grading), I have never been keen on the language even in horticultural use. Until recently I would have assumed that streptocarpus was a fish flavoured throat lozenge. But I will perhaps try the Latin way more often. Does that include more gesticulation when I speak, suffering wild swings of emotion and using the horn on my car with impunity? If it makes the broad beans grow, I’ll give it a shot.

I may not have been happy with being made to do latin as a schoolboy, but if things don’t go as planned, it is better to laugh than to cry. As a latin student might have said of my designated superiors at the last educational establishment I left:

“Eos si iocus non possint pedicabo…”

“What a Good Year for the Courgettes…”

Peas in our Time?

The Other Side of Summer

Indoor Zinnias…

…Accidents will Happen

This Year’s Models

Pump it up…Jersey Devil

Tamp the Dirt Down

*With apologies to Elvis Costello

“Oh The Summertime is Coming..”

What a difference a month makes. In the space of what feels like a few brief days we have gone from a cold spring to the heat of midsummer. The Beast from the East has departed, with last month’s snowy downfall trailing in its wake, leaving us basking in warm sun this past weekend. The grass is greening up and the trees are gently blooming, with Amelanchier blossom been and gone. Mind you, the speed with which the flowers went was mostly down to the impressive thunder-storm we had on Saturday evening which decimated the delicate blooms in one evening downpour. But the thunder was timely as it meant I did not have to water in the veg patch that I had put together that afternoon.

Of course we know it will not last so I took the opportunity to take a significant step forward in the development of the new garden as I tried to get a lot of “done”. On Friday the rotavator was delivered back to our place. In a neat trick to avoid requesting favours of friends with trailers I asked the good mower man to collect the machine from one address, service it, then return it to another.

The Howard 350 Rotavator was one of the first things the parents bought when the Old Garden was being cultivated. It is a legendary piece of equipment and still gets the job done over forty years later. As a teenager I struggled to keep control of the beast and I was never too happy using it as TOM or my siblings were always likely to cast a critical eye over my efforts. Maturity should lend some confidence to how I go about things now, but I was still a little self-conscious about trying to control the machine as I drove it onto the front garden. Saying I drove it suggests I was in charge. It still feels to me as if it has a mind of its own, moving along like an old prop forward mindlessly trundling forward with little awareness of me trying to steer it. It certainly draws attention to itself, sounding like a large tractor, and the clutch has a tendency to whine and slip. And I had also forgotten how the prongs make the machine lurch alarmingly forward if they hit hard ground – and there was plenty of that underneath the lawn I was digging up. I eventually crisscrossed the proposed potato bed six times trying to break up the clay soil, ending up with a collection of hashed lawn, earth and clay marbles.

Afterwards I drove it towards the entrance to the back garden, knocking through the latch as the clutch slipped and the beast nearly took the gate off its hinges. But the job was done.

The next morning Richard arrived with a trailer load of compost. A ton of compost does not go far, but it is a start. And I was finally able to spend my Saturday afternoon planting onions, shallots and potatoes.

Just in time to be watered in by the cacophanous downpour.

Potatoes in

The Beast resting after its work

Sweet Peas

Squashes

First Courgettes

“Salad Days are coming…”

Cav Nero already potted with Toms, Basil et al, behind

Magpies – the ruination of many small birds’ nests

Late news from late summer

It was a wet end to the summer and I never really got the garden under the level of control I might in other years have demanded. I wrote this piece back in October, before a lot of other stuff happened so I will simply post this and update my loyal readership (both of you) about some of the goings on in my life in the next few posts. Here’s what I had to say in October:

I have continued to reap whatever I have sown, so we are, despite a certain lack of motivation, still harvesting a fine range of autumnal produce.

Some of the squashes are looking good, although I should probably have pruned them a little more: they have produced an abundance of green foliage drawing on the rich soil in the pig pen, but there have not been a great many fruit. The butternuts all failed to ripen properly, and I am seriously thinking about never growing them again. The Uchiki Kuri have been pretty good (the ones that have survived the mice, that is) and the Crown Prince have produced some excellent candidates. The plants grew up and over the fence and lelandii hedge and I discovered a couple of fruit on top of it this morning.

But looking ahead, I am increasingly like The Old Man: just grow the reliable Crown Prince – stick to what you know. They produce large, well ripened fruit that store well and so far as I am concerned, taste just as good as butternut.

It is a constant surprise to me that I can go into a pretty tangled mess of a plot and still come back with a trug full of vegetable joy. Parsnips, beans, beetroot, tomatoes, green peppers (best ever) all complement the stored items such as potatoes, onions, garlic and shallots. Our food bills are minimal at the moment.

I have taken steps to use what we have. I plan to dry some chillis, but have this year actually made some green tomato chutney. But will it be as good Mrs Chippington’s green tomato chutney which my flatmate would bring back at the beginning of each term at university? I doubt it – Mrs Chips’s chutney was legendary.

End of Term report

161009-21 — Sunflower in the cutting patch

It’s that time of the year again when the evening chill sharpens, the leaves start to turn and we spend a fruitless Sunday morning trying to purchase Glastonbury tickets. And it has been months since I delivered any sort of news on this blog.

Some acquaintances cannot understand the reasons for writing the rubbish I do on this page, but I find a certain sense of unburdening happening when I write. Essentially this is no more than an open diary – in which I record what I am doing in the garden, as well as describing the antics of dogs and other companions as they illuminate my life. If people want to read it, so be it, but having a readership of sorts does give me another reason to do it. So as each year wheels around into another I am able to look back and build on my experiences to ensure that the next garden season will be better than the last.

So what has gone well this summer and what lessons have I learnt in the last couple of months?

My peas and beans were excellent, albeit briefly. Next year I am promising myself I will really get the hang of succession planting. A fortnight’s glut is not the sensible way to harvest these things.

The winter leeks were left too long and ultimately ended up like a small petrified forest with the texture of fossilised wood. But the pigs seemed to appreciate them as they munched their way through the lot.

Elsewhere the purple sprouting, cabbages and brussels look absolutely fabulous, which is because of this year’s other wonder crop. I had read about nasturtiums as a “sacrificial” plant to keep the cabbage white butterflies off the Brassicas and I could not believe the effect that they had. While the nasturtiums were being lacerated, the cabbages, PSB and brussels went unscathed. If I had been trying to cultivate a good crop of nasturtiums I might have been peeved at the shredding of the leaves, but there were still enough flowers to adorn the regular green salads – which were another success this year (an area in which I did manage to achieve some sort of succession, with salad still flourishing in greenhouse and garden).

Experience has helped me grow a good batch of onions – where the return of the Red Barron brought a good crop, that is storing well too. The same goes for garlic – with enough to see us through the next year – and shallots, which I have not only harvested, but have also learnt to use in cookery to good effect, and not be too precious with them.

The decision to plant early or late came under scrutiny once again this year. The OM would warn against being too preciptate with my planting (“Too early for runner beans”) and – weirdly – this year there seemed some truth in his seemingly inflexible ways with regard to the tomatoes. The early Shirley plants suffered from the extremities of cold nights and warm days and never recovered while the later Sweet Millions were excellent and we will still have a few more to harvest this week before they finally succumb to the colder nights and shorter days. (Mrs B’s pressure to plant early tomatoes to keep up with our horticultural neghbours should, perhaps, be resisted). The beans all did well but are another which could do with a second crop of late planters

The cutting patch for flowers proved to be abundant this year and next season, with a decent marketing strategy, we might actually sell jam jar posies and other bunches of proper British Flowers.

More recently I harvested the squashes which were a mixued bunch – but again, probably enough to see us through the winter with plenty of heart soups! But teh stand out crop of the moment are the chillis which are still growing adn ripening in the greenhouse in abundance.

So next season will be so much better, but like a really good round of golf it is never perfect. We will continue to practice and strive for perfection.

Red Barron Onions

Garlic

Shallots

Small crop of squashes

Pigs consuming greenery

Chillis: Hungarian Hot Wax, Bolivian Rainbow and Joe’s Super Long

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).