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.