29th January

Today’s job was to finally plant the bulbs I had left over from the autumn planting. I had bought quite a few and dug up quite a few, and many had split and multiplied. Basically I had too many, even after throwing out some mouldy ones. I acquired more bulbs at a Hilliers event last October when you could take your children with a pot and get free bulbs and compost for it. I should clarify that bulbs for children were free, adults paid for theirs. Our eldest did his little pot and I did my two large ones and we had bulbs left over from the packets I bought – some fancy tulips and some lovely deep purple crocuses. They have been in the shed ever since and I was wondering if they would still be alright to plant. Gardeners’ Question Time to the rescue. Today I was listening to the programme I taped on Sunday and one of the topical tips was to buy up any spring bulbs that garden centres were still selling off and plant them now as they should still grow for spring. What timing that piece of advice was. So I used soil and proprietary compost to fill two largish pots for outside and three small ones for inside. The ones for indoors have the fancy bulbs I had left over – one with 4 tulips, one with just crocuses and one with 1 tulip surrounded by crocuses. The outdoor ones were all the left over tulip bulbs that were dug up, with a few crocuses and 1 random daffodil.

Next journal post: 19th Feb, but check in the meantime for some photo editions!

28th January

I went to Hilliers and bought quite a few seed packets with the  20% reduction, and the shop price was the same as the online price so I bought what was available from the shop. There are some varieties that I can only get online so there is still more to acquire. I also bought a packet of sweet pea seeds for garden colour and if there are enough, or maybe I will buy more, they are good for the allotment as they attract bees that will pollinate the vegetables as well. I also bought some general purpose compost for tomorrows’ job (container bulb planting). The price for the lot was £20, my first expenditure of the year for the garden. As far as vegetable seed goes, when you take your first and maybe second pickings of vegetables, you have got your money back already, especially as food prices have gone up quite noticeably lately and are predicted to go up even more.

Next post: 29th Jan

25th January

I have, at long last, pruned the fuchsia in the front garden. The mother plant now is only a stump which means, unlike last year, we should see some good growth, and if the cutting doesn’t take, we will just have a bare patch, and not a few twigs poking up. The best thing was that I got to use my new secateurs for the first time. These were a present from my eldest (now 4) for Christmas and the day he and Diane bought them, he came running in and shouted to me that he had got me a pair of pliers. I thought I knew what they really were but as they were meant to be a surprise I said that it sounded nice but he should keep the details to himself until Christmas. How cute.

On the way back from work today I stopped off at Hilliers Garden centre in Romsey to look at seed prices for the vegetables. I can get a 10% discount from Suttons due to my Gardeners’ World Magazine subscription, but I wanted to see if it is worth paying postage if the seeds on the shelf are the same price. What a joy to notice that there was a special offer of 20% off all seeds. So later in the evening I went online and trawled through all the vegetable seeds that I was after (there were loads on offer) and I think they are a similar price to the shop. I would have thought that the shop would be noticeably dearer as they have to pay for delivery, it takes up space on their shelves, and they have their overheads to pay for. I guess they just have a good contract or buy in great bulk, or maybe Suttons don’t mind who buys their seeds – commercial outlets or individual customers buying from shops or direct, and there is no price difference to who they sell to. Maybe the shops buy online just like I can – who knows? The point is that I took note of the prices of the types and varieties I am interested in, and I will go back to the garden centre and compare. Any the same price or only slightly above I can buy there and any significantly lower I will purchase online (it looks like only 95p for postage).

 I went to bed excited and dreaming of seeds, and vegetable plants thriving on the allotment.

 

Next post: 28th Jan

22nd January

A success to report is the spring bulbs. We now have the promising multiple leaves of bluebells coming through in various places, a number of crocuses, and even a few early tulips are showing, and lots of daffodils. For a while they looked like little green duck bills pointing to the sky but now they are about 2-3 inches high and looking like they will open up. They have a way to go yet though and they always seem to take longer than their early start would suggest. Some of the narcissi have flower buds at the top, but surely they can’t come out quite yet can they? Well, they can. There are a few sights around the place with daffodils in bloom, I just hope they are not killed off by more frosts. You can see how the soil is warmer nearer the house as it is that end of the border that has the higher and denser growth. It really fades away as you go from the house.

Next post: 25th Jan

18th January

The last few days have been wet and dreary and therefore I have been unable to really do anything of any worth in the garden. Yesterday I was just pulling in to a parking space outside our home and was thinking of a few things I could do (I was home and keen to get out and potter around), when there appeared a few spots of rain on the windscreen. Talk about timing. By the time I got inside and then wanted to empty the compost container into the bin, I had to get a raincoat out to wear to go to the end of the garden.

Next post: 22nd Jan

10th and 12th January

10^th January
I finally called it a day on my 3 Apache chilli peppers that were home grown from seed and after the warm autumn, have been residing on the kitchen windowsill. I harvested 2 last chillies a few days ago and there seems no more hope of further crops although the plants look healthy.

12^th January

I finally managed to plant the garlic bulbs. I have been off work the last 2 days with some virus that has plagued me mildly since the 2^nd Jan then turned up the heat on Tuesday. Wednesday I went further downhill and Thursday and Friday I was in bed most of the time, lying on the sofa much of the remainder of the time. I had a thumping headache, cough, pressure pain behind the eyes and a bit of muscle ache and shivers. Today was my first day out and I wanted to push myself a little bit because I want to be stronger for work on Monday even though now my cough is worse and my chest hurts more. We went on a family day trip to just get out a bit and were on our way to the Memorial Park in the town where my eldest likes playing, and the allotment is on the way. So we stopped off and whilst my wife sat leisurely in the car with our youngest (just over 1 year old) snoozing in the back, his big brother and I attacked the heavy clayey, rain-drenched soil, or was it loose, wet cement? It was hard to tell by feel alone; it was so heavy and it certainly stuck to my trowel better than any cement I’ve ever mixed. Bending over with my head down, I quickly came to the conclusion that blood rushing to my brain was not a good idea for a first activity following 2 days of being pretty much horizontal. Still, for some reason, probably plain stubbornness (I have been known for it in the past) I stuck to my task with a tackiness equal to that of the mud on my trowel. Whilst I dug 4 inch holes, separated the garlic cloves, planted them and filled them in, my young helper assisted with finding some poles that were laid out with their ends on my plot and my neighbours’. I don’t know if they just came to rest there or if they are meant for me. Anyway, my son and heir picked up the poles one by one and stood it up in the soil/mud/cement and proceeded to inquire as to whether the stakes were taller than a) him and b) me. To be honest, this pole assessment was not helping me to any great degree. In the end I planted 20 cloves, all along the length of one section. This should be plenty. Last year I planted 6 cloves and we are still trying to consume the first bulb, with the other 5 still hanging in the conservatory. It’s a good job they keep well.

 

Later in the park, I was walking along the path unable to keep up with a 3 year and 363 day old boy. I forgave myself for thinking I was my granddad in his latter years. Hopefully this rotten virus will be out of my system soon. It was good to be out though.

Next post: 18th Jan

6-7th Jan - first jobs of the year

6^th January
Today my eldest boy wanted to play out in the back garden so off we went and whilst he rode his trike and scooter around, I decided that as I was there, I would weed the border, so now it looks wonderful. My first horticultural job of the year accomplished.

 

7^th January
Our front garden is a small pea shingle affair with one fuchsia near the door. It is a resilient, hardy variety which gives beautiful red flowers. Today, as well as weeding the shingle and stepping in some deposit left by a cat, I separated the fuchsia and planted the other half at the other side of our bay window. The separating didn’t look too good. Rather than pulling up a mass of roots, I ended up with a torn-off lump of main stem root. Still, I planted it. I imagined the soil underneath to be, well, soil, but it is just dirty gravel, so I imported two large plant pots of home grown compost and some horse manure to make a decent organic medium-filled hole for the torn off fuchsia to be planted into. I will hold my breath and see what happens. Both plants need pruning though.

Next post: 10th Jan

Over to the allotment

When my father retired, he began renting an allotment in a delightful market town near him (he lives in a village between the city and the town). The allotment is not a full size one (25m x 10m) but one that is about 18m x 6m. He likes his redcurrants and raspberries which take up some space so when an elderly chap was unable to keep up with his plot, just 2 plots along, my Dad and another plot-holder took half each. This plot is divided into 9 sections cut cross-ways and last year Dad offered me one. I grew many courgettes and a few squashes and some tomatoes in grow bags on the edge, and 6 garlics. Toward the end of the year the other plot-holder, a great chap named Alfie (name changed), approached me and said that he was finding an extra half plot too much work and wanted to know if I would like his half. I jumped at the chance, and started dreaming. Within a week, my Dad said the same thing and I jumped at that chance too, so I now have all 9 sections and the things I don’t plan to grow are nobody’s business.

The tidiest my allotment ever looked

 The soil is very heavy clay which means it stays wet and cold for a long time so you must sow later than on lighter soils, but it also means that it retains moisture longer in the summer, as well as retaining nutrients. There is a plague of bindweed as well as couch grass. Rabbits are also a problem.

 

When I only had the one section, I did think that if I ever had a whole plot I wouldn’t cut it up into sections and waste growing space, but now I think they are a great idea. You can keep more to the grassed paths and keep off the soil, a good thing when wet if you don’t want your boots accumulating an extra 2 inches of mud, and good for the soil as you don’t compact it. It also aids with accurate crop rotation; you know that each section has its own plants and they are clearly demarcated.

 

As far as gardening work goes, I was trying to get round to planting some garlic bulbs in the allotment. Ideally these should have been planted way back in the autumn as they need a dose of cold, but it is possible to plant them as late as February/early March as I did last year and still have a small harvest. I planted 6 cloves and they all grew and when I harvested them the bulbs were small but with many cloves. I have read that garlic will adapt to your particular soil type over the years if you replant the cloves you grow so that you end up with your own variety. This year I opted for some shop bought bulbs as they were bigger, with the aim of getting them into the ground quick!

Next post: 6th Jan

How the garden is looking

The borders are neat and tidy. In October I pruned back the shrubs and roses and fuchsias and dug a bit of rotted manure around them. The rest of the space I dug to 4-5 inches and laid down some bulb compost and planted as many spring bulbs as I could fit in. I went for the standard tulips and daffodils with a few clumps of crocuses. I put some crocuses around the shrubs with the idea that they would spring up into life while the shrub is dormant and die off before the shrub starts sprouting. As I had some blue hyacinth bulbs already in the ground, I replanted them around a shrub as well. I’m hoping that all the bulbs will grow and provide us with a wonderful colourful display in the spring. There are also loads of bluebell bulbs in the soil that we inherited when we bought the house, both blue and white petalled ones. Now here’s a question – are white petalled bluebells called whitebells or are they called white bluebells?

 So much for the spring display; it’s early summer and beyond that is always the challenge for me to provide colour for. I had a few sunflowers last summer but they lasted far less a time than anyone else’s seemed to. I tried growing cosmos but the slugs ate all 30-odd of them. My plan for this year is that once the bulbs have died down, because they are at a good depth, I can put other plants in the soil that won’t disturb them. I am perusing the catalogues to see what to buy.

 Even on Christmas day, there were the top shoots of crocuses poking through the ground, and now a few daffodil shoots are starting to appear. This goes for the containers as well as the border. It is encouraging to see the brave little things poking up – an early sign that there is life there, although it always seems ages before the flowers come despite the head start.

 

When I had completed planting the bulbs, the borders looked great as they were freshly dug over and had the dark earth-coloured appearance, but the late autumn and winter rains have washed soils off the stones that were there and now the borders look rather grave. Apparently this has something to do with worms taking soil downwards as well, but I think it’s mostly the rain. Now, however, there are masses of tiny, two-leafed weed shoots that are plaguing the border that I need to deal with before they all get established.

The New Year

A new year begins and hopefully one to further my horticultural knowledge, experience and success. I’ve not been terrible in the past, I’ve plodded along and learnt a few things, and last year I saw good results in the things I attempted. This year however, I am far more prepared. I have been a keen listener to BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time and am now a subscriber to Gardeners’ World Magazine. I have also made copious notes from a book my father has about allotments including a month by month guide as to what jobs to be doing, and what plants to be sowing, planting out, pruning etc.

 

So in what condition do I start? I won’t go into too much detail about my condition – 6 ft 3 in height, 107 kg at the last weigh-in, 36 years old, getting a bit thin on top and lacking any serious exercise for a few years. No, I mean the condition of my garden. I live in a city in southern England and have a house that was built in the early 1900’s – not even the deeds record exactly when; needless to say it’s over a hundred years old. When certain types come knocking the door offering me a free survey of the exterior of my house to see how it is faring against the elements, I proudly point out that it has stood for over a century, survived the blitz (a bomb fell just up the road) and will survive a few more years of rain, thank you very much for your concern! The house is typical for its era; a mid terrace with a long, thin garden - 24 metres long and a little less than 5 metres wide. When my wife and I bought the house as newlyweds, it had been dormant for a few years, the previous resident having moved out at 98 years of age to live in a care home. Someone had been in to cut back the bushes and mow the lawn so it was not a jungle, but it did have seriously high and dense weeds along the borders. I remember my first job was to tear down the old shed and burn off the wood, and the wood that was stored in it, and the wood that was stored in a corrugated iron shed the shape of an outside toilet building. That fire severely damaged the lawn so I dug and raked and sifted and attempted to flatten the soil and sowed a new one.

 

Way back then, it was my intent to make a garden that children could enjoy without parents having to worry about what they were going to fall on, get pricked by or stung by, so the stinging nettles had to go. 11 years after that pledge I think I finally got rid of them. Now I learn that nettles make an extremely good accelerator for compost bins and rot down to a dark, peaty and fibrous mass. I’ll have to import some! In order to provide land that children could run around in, I decided to devote most of the space to lawn. Looking back that has paid off when considering the allusion of space. My neighbours have gone for a bushy garden with a longer area of patio and when I was watering plants for them last year, I could not believe how much smaller their garden was than mine – it isn’t, it is just that I have a larger open area. The sense of green space, indeed simply space, is very important to me. I couldn’t stand looking out of my back window and seeing my garden fence only 5-10 metres away, and the house behind us therefore 10-20 metres away. With our house, the neighbours in the next street are a good 48 metres from us and separated by our crowning glory, a 12m (over 39ft) tall sycamore tree. I may live a short walk from the High Street, and the front of our house may only be a few steps from the pavement, but come to my back garden and I see green - a good green lawn, a tree at the end, and privet to the right and holly to the left. In the middle of town it is my little oasis and I can imagine myself in the country. This illusion saves what sanity I have left as I hate the city, but have come to accept it. Surprisingly this part of town is very quite and that helps the allusion. If one looks over the fence one can see quite a few mature trees around the place which is comforting.

 

The plan of my back garden is quite simple. There is a small space of concrete, and I mean small! Then the lawn starts. On the left of the lawn, which is the shady side due to the fence, there is a border for a few metres which grows very little. What does thrive there is a holly tree, from which a few years ago I had to lop off the 3 highest boughs (all taller than me when I stood next to them back at ground level) which were all headed straight to the sky, and yet is still 5.5m (18ft) tall. At the foot of the holly grows a bush that my eldest yet little boy calls a bee hive (because he saw a bee on one of the flowers – once) and which reminds me of a rhododendron but isn’t. Further on from the holly is a very small fir tree then a large lilac tree which, again, I cut shorter over 2 seasons. I had noticed that the leaves were few and far between on the higher reaches so I trimmed down half the taller ones 2 springs ago and the rest at the end of last summer. It paid off as the tree is much healthier looking now and still provides good shade. Mind you, the suckers it shoots out are nobody’s business! Lilacs do this when pruned. Between the holly and the lilac is a sandpit. After the lilac, the border ends and there is grass up to the fence until you reach the rockery near the end. The rockery is small and is a curious mixture of heathers, violets, carnations, 2 ornamental grasses and spring bulbs (I had so many I had to put them somewhere or throw them out).

 

On the right hand side of the garden there is a narrow paved path at the edge of the lawn with a narrow border between it and the fence. The first part is a strawberry patch which has had 2 very successful years. It had been fairly dormant but I dug up all the plants, dug in loads of horse manure, trimmed the plants of the yellow leaves and runners, and replanted them. The yield the summer before last was tremendous but we were away on holiday when the glut of strawberries was ripe. Last year it worked out much better, and there were even strawberries ripening in early November! They hadn’t been going all that time, but had ceased and started up again. After the strawberries, there is a gap for the large manhole cover – the main one for our group of houses – over which I have placed a large paving slab propped up on wooden beams, which holds a large pot for my wife’s fuchsia. This is her one part of the garden, and I look after it! Also on the slab, is where I placed 2 shop-bought chilli plants and a pot of basil. Farther on from this is the privet hedge which replaces the fence and a wider border in front with the path running a rather attractive chicane around it. In this part of the border are 2 rose plants and what I think may be a 1-year old apple tree, from a pip that was thrown out after I ate the apple. I have no idea what type it is but it is likely to be a royal gala. This bed will hold the largest area of spring bulbs. As the path turns back towards the fence, the border narrows to about 2-3 feet and there are dotted along it a few shrubs, roses, fuchsias, and at the end, a stretch where I grow herbs, a few spinach and sorrel plants, and where I place the grow bags for my tomatoes. The border goes past the level of the rockery which does not come right across the end of the lawn from the left, the lawn going to the right of it. The border ends with a very large pampas grass that I bought for 50p at a car boot sale and was a thin, less than 1 foot high shoot at the time. I planted it along the border but then had to move it to where the border widens slightly at the end. The border ends past the end of the rockery, and we enter the working area of the garden.

 

There is a space behind the rockery where my eldest boy (who is very nearly 4) keeps his pile of dirt for digging and poking sticks into, then the shed. This was a father-and-son project when we first moved in. My wife would be sat upstairs studying for her first round of accountancy finals, so I would stay out of her way sorting out the garden and building the shed with my Dad. The shed is over to the left, so the right entails a wood pile for a fire I don’t have (I like camp fires but don’t have them enough to warrant the amount of wood that I have acquired), a small pile of rotting horse manure, and my 2 compost bins – the dalek-like ones bought from the council, thankfully hidden behind that pampas grass – another reason for replacing it there. Immediately to the right of the shed is a panel of wood (to hide the pile of wood), in front of which is our anniversary present from last year from my parents – a willow tree, currently standing at about 3 feet and is the type that will not grow much larger. At the end of this working area is another lilac tree and the sycamore tree, which leaves a small space behind the shed where I store my black plastic bags of leaves being left to break down to make a soil improver. That space is hard to get to if I haven’t pruned the lilac for a while, and I’m convinced will be a great den for my eldest before too long.

Introduction

I sincerely hope I am an above average father and husband respectively (don’t we all?). In income I am decidedly below average, but I won't  start on a downer. In all other respects I am average, standard, normal, boring even. If I have anything to say about gardening that is instructive it is because I am recycling information from others. I am certainly no expert or authority. This journal is not an instruction manual. It simply started by me keeping a diary of what I was doing in the garden. I was embarking on a year in which I was going to be serious about gardening – in my own limited sphere -  and I began to write down what I was doing. As I began to write I thought that this is the kind of thing that I would be interested to read from others and so I started to write as if others might read it. The result is what you see before you and I merely hope it is as interesting as I thought it would be for other likeminded folk. It is not a record of what is correct, just a record of what I did, mistakes and all. On some matters I realised my mistakes later on, other times I may not have, so please do not read this as a manual, just sit back and enjoy my attempts and failures and a few non-average opinions along the way. My garden and allotment will hardly win awards or justify an entrance fee and you won’t see them on the cover of a magazine. They are simply my spaces and I get excited about them. So this volume is the honest, average account of one bloke tending his patch and trying to make the most of it. The fact that I can write so much about my exploits is testament to the depth and passion of the subject of gardening.