31st December

So, a year in the dirt draws to a close – still with jobs outstanding and many lessons to be learnt. Firstly though – has it been a success?

Throughout this journal I have noted when I have bought items and what I have harvested and although I may not have noted exact prices or quantities of harvest, I have kept a tally of receipts and what the produce would have roughly cost me in the shops.

In spending there were many items that will last for a few years, (weed suppressing membrane, hanging baskets and brackets, flowering bulbs, propagator pots and trays and  tools), all of which will be offset not just this year but maybe over a few or more. This includes the strawberry plants which cost £10 and were not expected to be heavy croppers in their first year but will last and reproduce into many plants year after year. It also includes perennial plants. These costs have been start-up costs and will not need repeating in the future except where trays or tools get broken. There is of course the cost of one year-only items, mainly seeds and compost. The overall cost for one year has been £175.86.

What about the costs I have saved though? Well, for a start, if it wasn’t for blight I would have harvested ripe and juicy tomatoes to the tune of 178 average tomatoes and 249 cherries, but that was a saving I did not benefit from. However, I did save on the following: salad leaves £17.88, cucumbers £7.59, garlic £5.95, spinach £6, peppers £8, rocket £2, pumpkins £23.92, crown prince squash £6, rhubarb £6 and for courgettes a whopping £97.66. The definite rounded figures there are conservative estimates. Also bear in mind that the figures are for the equivalent stock from supermarket basic ranges, (not organic) and lacking in the taste and freshness of home grown produce and without the chemicals! So the figure I have (which if I bought fresh organic top-of-the-range produce would be much higher) is . . . £181.00. A profit of £5.14. Now add on the price of buying all those sweet peas, plus the joy of seeing all those plants in bloom and the daffodils and tulips and you are looking at a financial success. Then remember that I did not have any success with cauliflowers, broccoli, sprouts, onions, leeks, carrots, much rocket or strawberries and the aforementioned tomatoes and just think that without all those start up costs how much of an annual saving I would have made. Then remember that a lot of the unused seed can be used next year! Brilliant! It is also imperative to note that the costs included all gardening expenditure – for flowers as well as vegetables, so the savings we made on the vegetables have subsidised the more serious assault on the flower garden!

Still, though, I have learnt many lessons for next year for improvements that need to be made. I will start off onions sets, leeks and garlic bulbs early in modules indoors so that they can have a good head start. Saving money and not buying fences to keep out rabbits and netting to protect brassicas are both a false economy as you waste practically everything you sow so I will have to spend out next year for fencing and netting. I will grow sweetcorn and butternut squash as companion plants.

 I really want to set up some raised beds as the soil type really needs a help. I have some purloined top soil, some leaf mould and loads of manure waiting at the stables to add height, but I must find the wood soon.

I will plant pretty much the same crops with the addition of the sweetcorn and butternut squash. I sowed squash seeds this year from home grown squashes but the seeds did not germinate. I will buy commercial seeds for next year. I found out that squashes are promiscuous cross-pollinators, so as I grow pumpkin, butternut squash, crown prince plus the summer squashes of cucumber and courgette it is safer to get the proper, unadulterated seed to use. I will use the same varieties, as I have lots of seeds left over plus, despite the failures, I don’t think it was the fault of choosing the wrong variety, more the pests who wanted first nibbles. I don’t think I will grow so much salad crops. We don’t really eat that much so I may just have a few containers in the garden for them. Their space will be used by sweet peppers which were a good success in the garden and if I just load up the soil with manure, they should do just fine. I don’t know why the rocket was so hard going and as for carrots I will sow later and prepare the soil better. I will not be growing tomatoes!

To keep the weeds down I will buy more weed suppressing membrane and forget holidays as I never did recover from the advance the weeds made when I went away for one week in early May. (Well, maybe).

In the garden I want to transplant some of the ornamental grass seedlings that have been self sown from the rockery into the front garden. They will look good against the gravel and it will be ideal soil for them. The front garden should be better for bulbs this year, plus I will use the special offer from Gardeners’ World to get some very low cost Poppy and Cornflower seed for the edges of the front and I also have a packet of nigella ‘love in a mist’ that I think will go well. I may also have a container of sweet peas and I might put one of the lavender plants in a large pot out the front too. Mind you, I’ll need to extend the garden if all that is going in!

Out back, a lot of what I did last year will be repeated. I will again plant up the hanging baskets with fuchsias and most probably the petunias as well, or maybe some other plant that will trail out. I will still have the herbs, the shrubs including the roses and fuchsias, the spring bulbs, the new lavenders and more of the same of the sunflowers. This year sweet peas were the runaway success, a great triumph especially as it was my first attempt so I will be growing them again, but I will try different colours. I have so far picked out Blue Danube, Cupani (a duo magenta), White Supreme, Scarlett and Supremo mix. For summer bedding I will have a backdrop plant of silvery foliage called cineraria maritama ‘silverdust’, with some lovely looking blue flowers called ageratums and fiery red Salvias. I will also have another go at growing the nicotianas, because those that did survive into maturity really were good. The rockery will stay the same and I look forward to seeing the lavenders develop there. The strawberries are going well, and I think I will use the large wooden box to grow the ones taken from the runners. Apart from that, there will be a few containers for salad leaves. There, not too much to work on!?

I will, of course, endeavour to tidy the garden and keep it tidier, now that we have the playhouse for the toys. I will attempt to keep the shed in order, and I plan to grub up the lilac on the left and plant those 3 silver birches, underplanted with snowdrops and bluebells.

My greatest lesson this year has been to learn the difference between beginner and intermediate. At the start of this year I knew the basics and was confident with them. I had seen success in the growing of a few plants and crops. I thought I was at the beginning of the intermediate level, but the majority of my experience was theoretical. Not in the sense that nobody had proved it, but that it had not been borne out in my experience. Yes, I could give out the information, but that was from books and radio programmes and the like, it had not gone through my personal experience of putting it into practice, of learning through doing. There were occasions, for example in growing courgettes and sweet peas, that I simply did what I knew to do and it worked a treat, but there has been so much more that I have learnt from doing it and it going wrong, even though I did it by the book. For instance, next year I will start off onions earlier, but inside, and I will begin sowing carrots later.

I have enjoyed this first year of serious gardening and I am glad I kept a detailed journal of my experiences. It has certainly been helpful to look back and see what I have done. I’ve found it to be such a beneficial exercise that I intend to repeat it next year as well as I hope to have greater success to be able to record. I would now term myself as a late beginner with no pretence to anything greater. In terms of non-fruit and vegetable plants I have kept my learning and experience narrow – the small amount I can grow in my garden whilst still having space for children to run around. If I had a huge garden with a great variety of plants it might spur me on to learning more, but then it might also be too much to succeed at. I hope this year I will succeed in all my fruit and vegetable growing, that I will get bumper harvests from all 9 sections of the allotment, not just 2, that I will be able to grow nicotianas and have a good year of summer bedding plants – different to the ones I had success with this year, that I will be able to repeat the success of sweet peas with other varieties. If I can do all that and be on top of the game and do it in my stride, then I may feel like a lower rung intermediate – in my limited area of gardening practice. Of course, sometimes you can do everything right, even after years of previous success and you can still fall foul to pests, diseases, and of course, the Great British weather. With those 3 and particularly that last one, no gardener in this lush isle can really boast of a promising year to come. As the Good Book says ‘let not he who puts on his armour boast like he who takes it off’.

30th December

A plan to visit the allotment and plant garlic was put on hold, as was a plan to revisit the garden to continue what I started yesterday.

On a sad front I heard today of the passing of a friend who was my first and only employer in horticulture. Yes, an older lady for whom I did some gardening work as a teenager. At that time I wasn’t into gardening in any way like I am now, I just enjoyed working in the garden and helping out, and I think I must have spent as much time inside round a cuppa and a plate of biscuits having a good chin-wag as I did in the garden. The lady in question – Renee, left her house and beloved garden just over 4 years ago and moved into a residential home, and today, 2 days after her 89^th birthday, came to the end of her long flowering season. She was a lady who gave fragrance and pleasure to many as she was one of those all too rare people who do not speak ill of others and are grateful for everything they have in life, even when I know that life was at times less pleasant to her. I never heard her complain about anything.

Her last illness was short lived, less than 2 weeks: she simply faded as a flower that had a good long run and could not take the rapidly advancing winter.

A few weeks ago, ironically, I heard of another friend’s passing, whom my sister and I knew as Uncle George, though no relation. For many years we lived 2 doors away and saw the fruits of his work in a decent sized allotment in his own garden. We ate his produce and marvelled at his lack of weeds. My Dad joked that there was an alarm system that rang in the house as soon as a weed poked its first leaf above the ground, and Uncle George would race out and deal with it. He too, was a kindly man whom I never heard complain, always had time for others and was happy and generous, in tune with life and content and grateful. Both of these people were of similarly wonderful character and keen gardeners – is there a link here? Uncle George began itching and then had a fall and was hospitalised where they discovered his itching was kidney failure, and he was gone in a week. It all happened so fast that coupled with a missing communication link, I didn’t hear about it until after the funeral. He too, had a long, productive season, reaching well into the winter time of life, going strong until just before the end and faded out swiftly and peacefully without struggle.

 

On both counts, I am grateful that these dear people had long and happy lives, gave joy to others and only when both had moved into homes or sheltered accommodation, did they later come to a point where they went quickly and without much suffering. I think that is how many of us would like it – passing quickly after many happy years have themselves passed. Is gardening a key to this? Years working in tune and in time with nature – not trying to reduce it to our timetable, like so much of modern life. Time spent in the open air, in healthy pursuit, eating good produce and all the while being attentive to the small details – the smallest change in weather, the first shoots or buds, patiently awaiting the harvest – again, at nature’s time not ours. Taking joy in what some think of as dull activities and landmarks of the calendar, seeing a garden take shape over years, seeing a tree reach maturity over decades, or seeing an acorn develop into an oak that will not mature until long after you yourself have returned to the soil. Maybe gardening, in teaching you the way of nature and creation, in showing you that there is so much out of your control, in always giving you something to learn, to practice, to improve upon, and in giving you such delight at the little things, is a pursuit that teaches you patience, gratefulness, an allowance of letting things be, and contentment, and thus a pursuit that can go a long way in giving you the life that so many desire.

29th December

Wow, I actually got out into the garden today. I wrapped up warm, with thick hiking socks, woolly hat down around my ears and about 4 layers of clothes on my upper body and got to work. I began a skim of the top few centimetres of soil on the borders to get twigs and leaves off and to reduce the height of the soil for a mulch of compost to be put down. In sieving the compost I found it to be rather sodden and difficult, so I spent a lot of time cleaning off the sieve which was becoming blocked all too frequently.

As dusk was drawing in and the temperature was falling I moved on to tasks I could complete. I tidied up the strawberry plants – a job that is about 2-3 months overdue, cutting off yellowing leaves and runners, and in so doing finding I have twice as many plants as I started with – all the more for next year!

As the light failed I quickly turned my attention to emptying the hanging baskets and potting up the 3 fuchsias for overwintering in the conservatory – another job that is overdue, this time by 2 months. I then retired inside for a nice cup of Earl Grey tea.

24th December

Thinking back to the start of the year, I mentioned that on the previous Christmas day there were crocus shoots poking up through the ground. Just this morning I was thinking how this year it must be colder as that was not happening, but on my way to the compost bin I noticed some!

I am off work now until January 5^th and it makes a change to see the garden in good daylight, and thus be able to spot the shoots. Time has flown by the last 2 months with only a few speedy excursions in the garden. I’ve been busy in all facets of life and it is just as well I’m not one of these people who have to have colour and interest in the garden every month of the year. I have nothing against that philosophy – why shouldn’t you enjoy gardening all year round? The only thing is, to do that you need to be changing plants or have certain areas for certain seasons, or have a mix of different seasonal plants in the same area – something that is tricky in a small garden with not much storage space. I hear of some people who have out-of-the-way ground to hold unseasonal plants – if only I had such space! Also, you can only see most of our garden from 2 windows – that of our third bedroom and the kitchen, neither of which is a seating area, so it is not like we sit in the lounge or dinning room and gaze out to be able to see winter colour from a nice warm comfy sofa -  a major drawback to our house.

As it happens, there is something nice and restful in not having to have colour all the time, to allow the garden a time of dormancy, to let things die down and have a winter, but maybe more so for this gardener to have his dormancy. Maybe it is just as well that there is not a whole heap of work to be forcing me outside right now as it is freezing! There are enough left-over jobs outstanding without urgent work dragging me out in off-putting weather. When you go out at all hours and in extreme cold or wet when you have a young family snug and warm inside, it is then that you are starting a new religion – of worshipping gardening or being a slave to the soil, and you run the risk of being worn out or driven mad. It is good to sit down and spend what would have been gardening time planning for the new year. I have drawn up a rough plan of what will be grown where on the allotment – more of that later. I have browsed those seed catalogues and decided what I would like to plant at home next year – again, more details to follow, and I have a shelving unit to put up in the conservatory to better organise my seedlings. My dear wife has also raised the possibility of a mini greenhouse – one of those shelf units with a plastic zip-up covering for simply raising seeds and hardening off plants. So there is much to look forward to. I think the planning, looking forward, getting excited and the anticipation of a new gardening calendar is a good thing. The dormant period gives you a well earned rest; you can draw a line under any failures, learn from mistakes and look forward. The combination of stopping to rest and planning ahead is a real battery recharger, making you ready to start again with gusto.

 

For now though, my attention is turned to Christmas and particularly my eldest son’s new bike!

6-8th December

After breakfast I sat down with a coffee and a couple of seed catalogues and went through deciding what flowers I would seek to grow next year, but more of that later.

 

 

8^th December
Recently the weather has been quite chilly – not the sort to welcome you as you poke your nose outside, thus I have been taking the lazy option and doing nothing. I peer out the window and see a garden that longs to be tidied up, and those toys that still need cleaning and putting away! The nicotianas have finished, as too have the sweet peas, although the stems on some are still as green as a few months ago. Today I tackled the front garden and planted 8 red and yellow tulip bulbs in a circle around the central fuchsia. That left 2 more which I planted either end of the bay window wall. I dug around a bit and found some other bulbs planted by friends who rented our house a few years ago. They had not planted them very deeply and so have not flowered much, so I replanted them between the two tulips in a line parallel to the wall.

25th November

Autumn colours from Kew Gardens

Next post: 6th Dec

20th November

These are from a walk in the New Forest

Next post: 25th November

15th November

Some seasonal photos:

Next post: 20th November

10th November

Well, things are pretty slow in the garden now, and also pretty wet. We have had some serious rain with some local flooding that has caused a nearby crossroads to be closed after a car became stuck in the water. I was diverted coming home by the police and fire brigade who were there to rescue the car. This sounds huge but I could still see the car's tyres so it wasn’t like the real floods you see on the news.

 

 

My brother-in-law has taken out some fir trees in his garden and is trying to clear soil away and a few weeks ago he left 10 bags of soil for me which I took down the allotment where they are still sitting. Last week, my wife passed a local house outside of which are a fair number of bags of soil with ‘free garden soil’ written on each. Last Friday I took 2 bags – it was all I had space for, but today I took 4, and I will have more space tomorrow. So the allotment looks like a building site – various bits of wood and plastic sacks, and not much of use growing except spinach and some leeks which are still small.

 

Some allotmenteers are hanging up their gloves for the year!

 

I came across a sign for a local reclamation firm that was advertising railway sleepers so I phoned them to see if they sold scaffolding planks – the ideal raised border fencing. They did! The cost is £10 for a 10 foot plank. I was keen to get to the allotment and measure the width of the plot – 20 feet. So for 9 sections I would need 36 planks – two each side of each section, bringing the cost to £360 and that would be just for the long sides of each section, not the end pieces. So my hopes raised and dashed once more. I was foolishly thinking I could do this for around £60, silly me.

 

What I have done is planted the new bag of 10 purple tulips in the back garden, and harvested a couple of handfuls of carrots from the tub.

Next post: 15th November
 

5th November

Some more summer colour to hopefully warm you up.

This and the following photo are from Houghton Lodge near Romsey

A sunflower in the garden

A bee busy at work in the back garden - I know how he feels!

Next post: 10th November

1st November

As we move into later autumn, let's review some summer colour.

Michaelmas daisies in the garden



sunflower at the allotment



This and the one following are from Hillier's Gardens near Romsey

Next post: 5th November



22nd - 29th October

I raked up more leaves and now I have 3 large black plastic sacks of ready-to-rot leaves, plus some more yet to fall. I also know of a few places that have leaves that would appreciate me collecting them. I started planting out the purple tulip bulbs in the back garden border but dinner was called after 2, and it gets too dark after dinner and washing up, so I marked the spots with small twigs and went in.

There is one sweet pea bloom out at the moment, but the plants look healthy enough still. The nicotianas are doing fine, and the fuchsias, although showing signs of succumbing to the cold, are showing blooms and looking good.

25^th October

We went to Hilliers for what may well be an annual event – the bulb planting workshop. This is where you bring containers and choose bulbs, and they provide you with compost and a work space and advise on types and colour schemes and help you beaver away making little pots of winter joy, then clean away the mess you leave. The boys each had a pot which they underplanted with crocus bulbs then top planted with lilac violas for the youngest and yellow and brown pansies for the eldest who obviously is not yet showing signs of any inherited colour scheme thinking from his father. They also were given 2 free small pots with daffodil bulbs to plant – a good little bonus as it is all free and we get to keep the pots. I went for a slightly grander theme in our blue hanging basket. Earlier this morning I had been out in the garden liberating a diminishing fuchsia from the soil and calling an abrupt end to the red petunias which, although their stems were withering, were still green stemmed and flowering somewhat at the other end. Following an idea from Gardener’s World Magazine, I planted a bright green coloured ornamental grass as a backdrop, a red cyclamen and an ornamental oregano plant for its brighter green leaves and trailing nature. It is now an attractive display by the front door, and the only one of its kind in the street.

 

 

26^th October
Well, we are now out of summer, British Summer Time that is, and back into good old Greenwich Mean Time. It’s always puzzled me that there is a lobby to one day go forward into Summer Time, not go an hour back in the autumn, then go a further hour forward the next spring and back one hour in the autumn so that winter will be the old BST and the summer will be BST +1. That would mean Greenwich would never be on Greenwich Mean Time which strikes me as rather odd. Why not just get up earlier or later or adjust the times we all start work or school, you know, stop pretending we are controlling the light and just work with it. It takes about a week to break in children to the new sleep times which also goes for animals too, and yet the farmers say it’s important for them! Well, I obviously don’t know all the ins and outs, and neither am I inclined to fight a revolution on this front, so I’ll let the matter go by. The only reason I mention it is to say that now the clocks have gone back an hour and Greenwich is on its’ own Mean Time once more, we are, undeniably, in autumn. So would someone please point this out to my plants? The nicotianas are still flowering, the fuchsias don’t look like they are ready to hibernate, and I have about 4 or 5 sweet pea blooms out. Don’t get me wrong though, I am fully enjoying the fact that either I have looked after my plants so well that they are healthy and living to a ripe old age, or at the very least I have not been brown fingered enough to kill them off after whimpering through a British summer. This is enough to give one a warm glow inside on these chilly days, not to mention a smug grin.

27^th October

We are now in the annual event I call something like ‘a week of frost and cold before it gets warmer for a mild winter’. Admittedly it is not a very catchy title and will not be repeated oft by anyone else. It’s just that I have noticed that towards the end of October or the beginning of November we get about a week of suddenly very chilly weather but then it gets milder, sometimes all the way up to Christmas and beyond into the new year, although the temperature probably gets progressively and subtlety colder before you really begin to notice you are in winter. This means that coupled with the fact not much is happening in the garden, you can avoid the nasty nip in the air and stay inside where you can begin to pour over the seed catalogues. Just my luck then, that I am off work all this week and don’t feel like being out in the garden much. As it is half term, we are going out and about as a family, so it’s just as well I’m not pining for the garden. Today we spent a shivery day at an activity farm an hours drive away, but on my return I harvested the fennel, sage and oregano. I’ll leave them to dry a little in the conservatory and process them more later in the week.

29^th October

I had a quiet afternoon as the boys have been taken by my wife for a play afternoon with a school friend. I could have wrapped up and worked in the garden but there is nothing really urgent that needs sorting out, and I had a few indoor things to be doing. Still, I harvested 2 peppers and some thyme.

 

Next post: 1st Nov

16th October

Today there was an horrendous accident on a main road into town that caused tailbacks pretty much everywhere. To save burning petrol, I pulled off into the garden centre and bought 2 bags of 10 tulip bulbs. Some purple ones for a space in the back garden border, and some red and yellow for the front garden – they will circle the fuchsia – which will not be growing when the tulips pop up. The garden tidy up continues with the job of raking up the fallen leaves. The holly leaves that drop throughout the year are put into council recycling bags as they are very waxy and take years to break down in a home composter. The deciduous leaves from the lilac tree and the sycamore tree are raked up with gratefulness and sprinkled with water and placed into black plastic bags, poked with a fork to give aeration and drainage holes and stored behind the shed to breakdown and be used as leaf mould the spring after next.

17^th October

I went to the allotment to see if there were any last courgettes. This morning when I got into the car and switched on the windscreen wipers to clear the condensation, it was a thin layer of ice that was swept off. This must have spelt the end for summer fruiting squash plants. I picked 7 very thin and short courgettes – just enough to add to other dishes as a small enhancement. I picked the last cucumber too, as the 3 plants were obviously now past it, along with the courgettes, squash and pumpkin plants – good feed for the compost bin though! As I went to clear a pumpkin plant, I found, hidden by weeds, a small pumpkin, which I later weighed at 400g. So the pumpkin harvest totals one more at the last post. I like those sorts of surprises.

Next post: 22nd Oct

10th & 13th October

I cut all the sweet pea flowers today for 2 vases in the house, and we had loads on our hands, although the stems of many were very short. I don’t know how much longer they will last so it will be interesting to see how many flowers we get after this complete harvest of all that is there. Some of the plants have a lush green top half but a light brown withered lower half, others just look good all over.

 Today and another day previously this week, I have been weeding and clearing the borders. The weeds, died-back bedding petunias, and sweet peas that were planted around the bamboo wigwams were all tidied up, but I still have a bit to do. Just think, this was all part of my agenda for a few Saturdays ago when I was sick instead.

 

13^th October

Today was the final harvest for pumpkins. The remaining 3 in the front garden were picked by myself and my 2 young assistants, the largest one being just under 4kg (the pumpkin, not the assistant!). The haul from the front garden including that one the other Saturday is a total of 10.3kg making a total of just under 20kg for 10 pumpkins. My wife said that the supermarket was selling their pumpkins for £2.99 each last week. Size wise, 4 of my pumpkins are equivalent to 2 shop sized ones, and if I ignore the probability that my larger ones could well be larger than most shop ones, that is the equivalent of 8 pumpkins, so that is £23.92 worth of fresh, home grown organic veg. I love the winter squashes. I have 3 recipes for soups, we can roast them, make pumpkin bread and my wife makes a great pumpkin pie. A previous years’ pie was made for a Thanksgiving party held for some American friends and one guest said it was better than the ones her mother makes (or is that ‘Mom’?). Better than a home baked American pumpkin pie – what an honour!

 

Anyway, back to my garden. I cleared away the pumpkin plants for the compost bin, and in the back garden, finished my clearance of the borders. They look really good now, and the compost bin is grateful for a large quantity of fresh material. I was out today for about an hour until 5.20 just in a polo shirt. The days are just great at the moment and indoors, even later in the evening I’ve often turned off the heating. The leaves on the lawn and scattered around the borders let you know it is autumn, and some fuchsias are looking pretty bare, but temperature-wise you wouldn’t really know we are in mid October, it’s wonderful.

Next post: 16th October

3rd - 4th October

Well, we are definitely into an autumn month. We have been really blessed with a good end to September. If it had continued how it started I think that most plants would have been washed away or would have simply rotted in the damp, but thanks to warm and dry conditions we have had our Indian summer, albeit a short and late one. In the daytime, these conditions continue, but early morning and after sunset, you know it is early autumn. The other night we had winds that brought down quite a few leaves, ones which were dead and dry but still in the trees. Last night, as we went to bed with feet like blocks of ice and moving quickly due to the chill, we admitted that we would probably put on the central heating today, and indeed we did. I try to put it off for as long as possible, especially this year with higher prices for gas, but we do have a one year old to consider who sleeps in the back, draughty room and soon throws off his covers. The heating will be for a few hours in the evening just to take off the going to bed chill, and maybe an hour in the morning as we get up. It is now only a matter of time before the last of the fuchsias, petunias and sweet peas will meet their end and it could all change suddenly or indeed continue for another week or so.

 

I love the smell of autumn. Although I hate to see the end of a productive growing season, but I get huge satisfaction from clearing away the spent plants and tidying up, with that autumnal scent and crisper air providing a sensory backdrop. Often the skies are a crisp blue and there are vivid reddish brown colours everywhere you look.

 

This afternoon I stopped by the allotment and picked 10 courgettes. I could hardly believe the size of one of them considering the temperature and lateness of the season. Seven of the courgettes were really very thin but I still count them as the size of previous ones more than compensate. It’s the yellow ones that are the small ones, the green ones are still going well. Last year, the green ones were rather slow in producing fruit but the variety I chose this year has been great. I also picked another bags’ worth of spinach and I harvested the crown prince squashes – 3 of them weighing a total of just over 8kg, the largest one being 3.6kg, the smallest 1.75kg. I just hope the taste lives up to the hype.

 

Back home, I made finishing touches to the concrete base for the playhouse which should go up tomorrow. I can’t wait to get the boys’ toys inside that thing.

 

4^th October

Well, the playhouse is up. My wife's brother and his father-in-law (the man who built it originally) came to put it together. It needed a new fold of roofing felt over the apex but apart from that, all is well. The boys are very excited about it and I am keen to make it into a house that hordes all their garden toys. Earlier in the day I was doing a bit of tidying up and generally pottering around the garden. As I went to move the playhouse’s garage from the front garden where it has been sheltering our recycling bin, much to my neighbours’ dislike – mind you, he dislikes the fact we keep our bins in the front garden as he thinks it far better to have to move them from round the back every week – I stumbled on a small, fourth pumpkin weighing 1 kg. I picked it as the stem looked as though it had well and truly had it – so 4 pumpkins in the front garden!

Next Post: 10th Oct

26th September

I harvested 3 more courgettes today but they are getting small. They could have grown bigger but if I pick them now, there is a greater chance of any others developing to a half decent size. Back at home I folded down the swing that had become filthy with green mould and put that behind the shed. Both boys have grown out of it so it is semi-retired, on standby should we ever have another child and if we do, I hope they come armed with some good cleaning products.

 

I’ve had a few thoughts about the front garden, just planning for next year. I’m sure the transplanted fuchsias grew well and looked lovely, it’s just that we couldn’t see them for the huge saucepan lid leaves of the pumpkins. I’m thinking of a raised bed against the dividing wall with next doors’ garden and growing sweet peas, an acer in a tub, like the wooden one I’ve grown the salad leaves in this year, and some spring and maybe summer bulbs – maybe rings of different colours around the central fuchsia, with a line around the bay window wall. Perhaps some climbing plant in the far corner behind where I would put the acer in a tub. Just thoughts at the moment.

 

More than just thoughts are my thoughts for the back garden. Past the holly tree and sand pit is the lilac tree which needs continual pruning and is quite a congested area, although it does provide a dollop of shade in the summer once the sun has swung round past the holly, meaning we can still eat out without wilting. I was thinking that I could clear the ground of the lilac and plant a few young silver birch trees, and the area around can be sown with grass and under planted with bluebells. I see on ebay there is a private nursery offering 6ft birch trees for £7.99 each, or 3 for £14.99, sold as bare rooted tress, shipped out in early October. I wouldn’t want just one as it would be too bare, and the experts always say go with odd numbers when you are repeating features along a line of sight, so I would go for the 3. It would bring more light onto the lawn and help the grass to fare better where it gets the most trampling, give a feeling of more space as at person height there would just be trunks, and basically look great as I love birch trees. The only downside is the lack of shade for a year or 2 or maybe more depending on how fast they grow. Given the fact that should I buy them, they will be delivered soon, and I will have to do some major grounds clearance before that, I’ll have to make a decision fast.

 

27^th September
It was a beautifully hot day and we went to our 4 year old’s pre-school fete, although he is now at ‘big school’. After coming home mid afternoon, we had no further plans to be out and about, so it was on with the clear-up of the garden. I got a good deal of weeding done but a lot of the time was me playing with the boys and making a pretend fire with a contraption we made to dangle a cooking pot over said fire and the eldest boy cooking me an imaginary delightful and varied menu, all from one pot!

 

29^th September
The sweet peas were, I thought, trailing off in their rate of production but today I picked a good bunch for 2 vases for us, plus some for a small vase for my parents as part of a welcome home gift as they come back from nearly a month in the USA. So much for the impending autumn chill killing off the blooms. The bedding petunias have stopped, but the ones in the hanging baskets are still producing well, and not anywhere near a point where I am thinking whether to just get on and clear them. I have discovered there are actually 3 pumpkins in the front garden – it just gets better!

Next post: 3rd Oct

21st September

Well, I have done something the last week – picked a few courgettes and 2 batches of spinach, but admittedly, not a great deal. Yesterday was going to be different. I had great plans for tidying up the back garden. During the week I have been working on the concrete base for the play house and I finished it on Wednesday. Spurred on by the thought of future tidiness once the house is up and the toys are inside, I wanted to spruce up the garden and yesterday was going to be the day. My plans were a jolly good lawn mow as it has had none since we came back from holiday, a good weeding session all along the borders, a washing of the large containers, especially the ones that have had blight-ridden tomatoes growing in them, a washing of the toys that have laid out through a wet summer and are now sporting a slight green tinge of mould, a folding up and putting away (hidden behind the shed) of the children’s swing that both boys have now grown out of and various other tidy and clean-up jobs.

 

So what went wrong? Diarrhoea and vomiting. Oh wonderful. The eldest boy had it on Tuesday and went back to school on Friday just a few hours after my wife had it which in turn was 24 hours before it hit me. Saturday was spent remaining very still and lifeless with a throbbing headache and muscular aches and stiffness, adding to the ache of wanting to be out in the garden on a lovely warm, sunny and dry September day. So today, incidentally after the youngest was up 4 times in the night, not with the expected D&V but with a raging fever, I was bursting to do something outside so as said youngest got some fresh air. I cut down the Ailsa Craig tomato plant which has blight and counted 33 tomatoes that I had to throw away. Then I cut down the even more blighted cherry tomato plant with 249 tomatoes, again, all destined for the bin. On the plus side, I potted up 3 of the 4 fuchsia cuttings I took a few months ago that have rooted very well (the fourth one died), gave the pepper plants a good feed of the last of my home made nettle tea and then was able to put the nettles on the compost. I also cut a handful of sweet peas. They are still doing well, but you can tell by the amount I bring in that they are declining. I picked 3 more red peppers, but 2 of the yellow ones had rotted on the stem before ripening – perhaps I should have picked them much earlier and allowed them to ripen on the window sill.

 

 

In the front garden, the rogue tomatoes also have blight so that is absolutely nil fruit on the tomato front this year (the 1 saved from the last gathering became blighted), but I have found 2 decent sized pumpkins to add to the 6 growing at the allotment.

22^nd September

I gave the lawn a well overdue mow and a decent rake which produced a huge clump of dead grass and moss, and so I have begun the major tidy-up of the back garden.

 

23^rd September

I took the 4 year old to the allotment to harvest the pumpkins. He was quite excited by it all, especially when a train rolled past with lots of wagons. We also picked a cucumber which looks like being the last and 4 courgettes, likewise, probably the last although I live in hope. Of the pumpkins, the largest 2 were from the rogue plant from the compost whereas the others were shop bought seeds of the F1 type which should mean better yield. The 2 rogue pumpkins were 3.5 and 2 kg in weight, the rest being 1.3, 1.15, 0.8 and 0.65 kg so in all a 9.4 kg harvest, although still awaiting the 2 from the front garden. A lot of that weight will be rind and seeds though, but still, a good amount of pumpkin for roasting, pie and soup.

 

25^th September
I painted the concrete base for the playhouse with a sealant that will make it waterproof. I wouldn’t have bothered but my neighbour passed a huge can of sealant over the fence for me to use (well, as much as I needed anyway). Most of the concrete will be under cover once the house goes up.

Next post: 26th Sept

13th Sept

Well, I haven’t recorded much lately, because not much has happened, but also I have been waiting and watching the tomato plants. It became obvious a few days ago that all the turbo tomato plants had blight and the speed of withering has been surprising. Due to other things and heavy rain, it was not until this morning that I went out to fully assess the damage. One fruit was not blighted so I have put that to one side to see if it comes out. Today I counted 134 blighted tomatoes, most of them a really good size too, so that is 145 in total. Think what I could have done with 145 decent tomatoes (apart from eating them!). It is most disheartening. This is now 2 years running that I have suffered this – well, the plants suffered the blight, not me, but I trust my meaning is clear.

 
I put last year down to a one off bad summer, but the so-called climate experts say that we should expect warm wet summers as more of the norm, and shelling out £10 for 3 plants and seeing their complete harvest literally rot away on the vine is not my idea of time and money well spent. I have been thinking about the possibility of blight and what I would do in the future for a while now and have come to the conclusion that I will not bother with tomatoes next year. Without a greenhouse to protect them, it is not worth the risk. I may grow a cherry tomato plant in a hanging basket as my wife likes them, and I could just buy 1 plant from a nursery. If the summers do get drier again, and these last 2 years turn out to be a wet blip, then I will go for it again.

 
It is hardly horticulture, but I will mention that I spent a fair bit of time beginning to prepare the ground for putting a base down for a play house that the boys’ cousins have handed down to them. Although it will be a big lump in the garden, it will be a place where all their toys can be thrown into thus keeping the garden itself clear and tidy!

 
Later on I weeded the rockery and planted 2 of my lavender plants. I planted out Lavender ‘Blue Star’ towards the back on the right, and Lavender Augustifolia near the front. These two give the usual bush appearance that you see in Provence (or postcards from it in my case).

 
The sweet peas are still providing fantastic flowers. The lower leaves look worse for wear and have powdery mildew, but you wouldn’t believe that looking upwards (7 feet high in some instances), and looking at the higher leaves and the blooms you would not think that it is mid September and time to wind down. The rest of the garden is doing just that. The phlox is more powdery mildew than bloom and is ready to say ‘blow this for a game of soldiers’, the bedding petunias just look tired though not ill, and for some reason the chard which should over-winter with ease, look like annuals. The sweet peppers are still doing fine – I harvested another 3 the other day and 1 a few days before that.

 
I’m not saying that the plants in general look as though they have had a few weeks of autumn, but it just seems to me that they are on the point of turning. Maybe it is my interpretation of what I see. I feel I have come to the end of the productive part of the year. Even though I had high hopes for a good September, the rain of August has just continued on – until today when it felt like June again, so part of me is feeling like it is time to clear the ground and put down a winter mulch. I’m not willing on autumn – particularly with the increased heating costs we’ll have this year – it is simply that after seeing cauliflowers come to nothing, calabrese bolting before harvest, rocket unable to clear the launch pad, and caterpillars faring far more sumptuously on my brassicas than I will, I feel it is time to say ‘enough’, stop fighting the pests that I never had the equipment for, and clear up ready to try again next year, forewarned from having been there and suffered that, and thus being forearmed. I would love to see a swift end to the growing season of weeds so that I can clear the allotment, find enough wood to make raised beds, find money for poles and decent netting as well as a good wire mesh against the rabbits, and spend the winter in unhurried preparation for greater things next year. Raised beds will stop the surrounding weeds encroaching onto the plot, and I have a small supply of top soil from digging out the playhouse foundation, as well as from my brother-in-law who has cleared some land for a summer house.

 

This is not to say all has been lost. I have a good number of crown prince squashes and pumpkins ripening up, I am still harvesting courgettes – another 7 this week, as well as spinach, and the onions, although few and small, have been a good quality, and our 4 year olds’ cucumber plants have done him proud, and the peppers at home have been encouraging. Next year I will concentrate more on peppers than tomatoes. I also have some winter harvests to look forward to. There will be some leeks, a few Brussels sprout plants are doing OK, and I’m hoping that the sprouting broccoli will fight back a bit. So still there is hope, and I remain optimistic and know that I have learnt so much from doing and failing somewhat. Yesterday a seed catalogue came through the post with promises of great produce to work towards next year, and all of a sudden, one is thrust into a time of dreaming and planning and aspiring to succeed. Winter for the gardener is such a time.

 

Next post: 21st Sept

30th Aug - 4th Sept

The Pond at Hilliers Gardens

We returned home from a great holiday where we had good weather all week, unlike the rain and misery that the garden and allotment apparently had to endure. In a way, that was good for my plants as I feared they would have wilted. The garden looks good, the grass has grown well while we’ve been away, but the sweet peas are still flourishing, more roses are out, and more red peppers have ripened. The front garden is still a mass of pumpkin leaves but I have not seen much fruit. There is a noticeable difference in the basil plants, some stems seem gearing up to set seed, and they look jaded.

 

1^st September

I went to the allotment and harvested 13 courgettes, and a batch of spinach and 2 good sized cucumbers. Unfortunately the sprouting broccoli was much the worse for wear, either from slug or caterpillar damage. It really has been a false economy to do without a decent netting system, although after all the other expenses, it would have been pushing finances to buy netting.

 

2^nd September

I thinned out the chardonnay carrots growing in the tub in the garden. Most are really small but I ended up with a double handful of carrots ideal for putting in a stew or casserole. In the time left, I doubt if I will get many large carrots, but there will be at least the same again, and almost definitely more.

I examined the turbo tomato plants, and sadly, one definitely has blight. To be honest, the 4-5 weeks of weather ranging from damp to wet told me that it was nigh-on impossible to resist it. Although there was a large degree of inevitability in it, it still is a kick in the teeth, especially considering these plants cost £10 for 3. I harvested the tomatoes, one vine being destined for the fire contained 11 fruits – of a good size too. Three other vines do not yet show signs of blight but you must allow time to see if it will develop so that you know if it is safe to eat. That is what I did last year and quite a few tomatoes came out blighted, but a good proportion ripened and showed no ill effects and we ate them without us developing any ill effects.

 

3^rd September
Two more courgettes from the allotment, plus some spinach and calabrese. Don’t get excited. The calabrese that a few weeks ago showed good promise, had bolted while we were away, and so I now had many, many small clumps of calabrese on the ends of many, many stalks. I set to with a pair of scissors and harvested a bowlful. Hardly the sort of thing to boil or steam and serve with a roast but at least it could be included in a stew or soup. I probably had about 3 clumps of it. At last I was able to pick some rocket. Only about a thick handful from all the plants combined, but a good taste.

For dinner, as a side dish, we had spinach, washed and torn up, cooked with butter and garlic in a covered saucepan for a few minutes – wonderful.

 

4^th September
No gardening work today but my wife made a beef casserole that included basil, onions, courgettes, carrots and red peppers, all home grown – great!

Next post: 13th Sept

25th August - Celebration of Summer

Time to sit back and enjoy the garden

(some pics from Hilliers Gardens)

 

 

Next post: 30th Aug