Veggie garden - June 2015

Morning Friends,
I thought I'd share a bit of our progress in the veggie garden today. I've already posted up some pics of our colourful, tangled flower borders, so now for the 'business end' of the garden. It's not nearly as pretty, but is quite productive if we keep at it.

This area provides the main veggie-growing space, with a long bed which we divide into sections, 2 large raised beds built from recycled railway sleepers & a lorry tyre, which was left behind by the previous owners with plenty more of their detritus, but which we pressed into service for courgettes & squash. We like to grow food, so we later extended the veg space into another bed just in front of the clematis arch, & of course, we also use our greenhouse for tender crops. I think we've probably got just under half an allotment in size, as well as 3 mature fruit trees, which we inherited. So here's what we're growing this summer, so far:

Autumn sown broad beans have done well. They did object to the Boxing Day snow, but recovered quickly, & we've been picking these for a week or so.

The lightly cooked beans are lovely tossed with pasta, lots of garlic & a splodge of olive oil. Surprisingly the New Model Army of local slugs & snails seem to have left this crop well alone, so all the more for us!

This bed has courgettes (Gold rush & Black beauty) in the front, a couple of tomatoes, then potatoes (Winston). The courgettes were sulking when I took this pic - they'd sat in pots for too long because of the cold nights, but fruits are starting to set now.

Runner bean  - 'Snowstorm'. Supposed to be a good variety for damp, cool, iffy weather because they self-pollinate. Sounded ideal for East Nottinghamshire, & doing fine so far. The recycled muslin curtain from that well-known Swedish purveyor of household goods is to deter our large population of sparrows. I love supporting them, as they are a sadly declining species, but they are incredibly destructive, so barriers are needed here. They don't eat bean leaves, but peck them & spit out the pieces.

Newly transplanted leeks. Tried Monty Don's method last year & it didn't really work for me, so have reverted back to the old fashioned dibbing. 1 leek per hole, then puddle them in with the hose. I will have to micro-net these later, as we have sadly been hit hard by the allium leaf miner pest this year. It's quite a new pest, but is spreading north. My good friend Helen was only telling me at the weekend about the problems of this pest on her allotment & I said we were lucky not to have it. The very next day, the Big Hairy Half of the Relationship went out to harvest the garlic & we discovered that we not only have it, but that it's had a bit of a rampant spring. The garlic was mostly ok  - big cloves & a decent crop........

....but the shallots were badly affected & had to be lifted as a damage limitation exercise. We've hung up the best ones to dry, but several had already rotted due to the activity of this pest. It's now sadly in the red onion crop too. The plants still look ok & they're not all affected, but we will still have to lift them before they are ready. That's the thing with growing food crops.....you win some, you lose some. It's soul-destroying with the effort put in, but that's nature.

The greenhouse crops seem to be off to a good start.

I've got chillies ('Heatwave'), peppers ('Thor'), as well as cucumbers & aubergines on this side, & 6 tomatoes ('Ferline') on the other.

This is one of the 3 Jalopeno chilli plants I overwintered on a bedroom windowsill. They all survived, so it will be interesting to see what sort of crop they produce.

I always like to see the first cucumber appearing, as it reassures me that I haven't raised dodgy plants. Cucumbers can be so moody - there's no end to things they don't like - too cold, too dry, too wet, not enough humidity, if there's an 'r' in the month, if you look at them funny, etc, but if you get good plants, then homegrown cucumbers are so lovely & juicy compared to shop-bought, plastic shrink-wrapped ones. 

The rest of my tomatoes are grown outdoors - a row of 'Ferline' grown in large pots.......

........always companion planted with a row of Calendula to attract pollinating insects (& because I like making marigold scones).
At this time of year, I always take it as a personal failure if I have to buy a lettuce, so I grow loads of salad - currently lollo rosso & 'Lettony'. We've a bit of a glut at the moment, but it's not a problem, as we do eat a lot of salad & when they start to bolt, I'll make them into pea, lettuce & mint soup for the freezer.

Other edibles? Well, I've got the beetroot planted out, a few cabbages, 2 troughs of spring onions, 1 of radishes & a carrot box, also watercress, a thriving strawberry tub & a fussy butternut squash plant. The herb garden is also nicely productive at the moment. The main crop rhubarb is doing well, even though I've forced it 3 years running, & fruits have set on our apple, pear & grapevine. As we had to lift the shallots early, we now have a decent sized raised bed to get something else in this month. I'm thinking maybe a couple of pumpkins, so as not to waste valuable potential food-growing space. No time to grow from seed, but will pay our village garden centre a visit & buy a couple of plants to grow on. I hope fellow veggie growers are having a good year so far. My sympathies to anyone else afflicted by crappy allium leaf miner. I'm not aware of any natural control methods for it.......or any chemical ones for that matter........I think enviromesh will have to be purchased to ensure future crops here at the People & Cats Republic. Grrr.

Till next time, which will be a celebration (?) of 1 whole year of Albert Whiskers, the worst behaved cat we've ever had..........
C x

Cheap & cheerful, not Chelsea!

Hello Friends,
It's a month or so since the Chelsea Flower Show, but I've been thinking about it quite a lot. I watch at least some of the TV coverage each year. I don't follow any sport, so it's sort of 'my' seasonal thing before the endless ping, pong, 'come on, Andy' (or whoever it is these days) of Wimbledon. As for footie, I couldn't even tell you when there's any going on, until the St George flags start appearing, of course. 

I always look forward to Chelsea. I've never actually been in person. I suspect the mere fact that it is Part of the Social Calendar & thus a Place to be Seen, plus rumours of £100 tickets puts me off. I enjoy the TV coverage of the plants & gardens, but not the 'celebrity' interviews. Over the years, there have been some fab gardens. I can't hope to reproduce them at home - I just don't have that kind of budget, but I do get ideas & sometimes I see a plant which is new to me, so there are always things to learn. One thing I don't like, is that the whole show garden concept seems very artificial. Most people don't go to the garden centre or nursery & buy in everything at full size & already in flower. The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that the only personal thing about these show gardens is the design itself. I would truly miss the joy of growing my own plants from seed or giving pride of place to a plant which is special to me, if not to anybody else. My garden is often tangled, in need of deadheading, full of weeds & it was 'designed' (& believe me, that's stretching it....) by me on a piece of A4 scrap paper with a tin of old felt-tips. One of the things that makes our garden special to me is that I have actually bought very few of the plants that are growing in it. This means it will always look like a muddly cottage garden instead of a 'Chelsea' garden, but it is worth it to look at so many of my plants & think about where they came from.........gifts, swaps, cuttings from friends, 'guerilla rescues', home-grown from free packets of seed, not to mention those stray seed heads which 'accidentally' shed a few naughty seeds into my handbag on a day out.

So here's a selection which have made their way to my garden for free......my favourite 4-letter word when it comes to gardening, & very easy to achieve.......otherwise my life would be pretty expensive.

This is a Hebe 'Heartbreaker' in front of a Heucherella 'Solar power'. I promise that this heucherella will be the only plant featured in this blog-post for which I actually parted with hard cash. It was worth it. The acid green sets off pink & purple plants perfectly. The hebe was a birthday gift this year.

More gifts - my nephews gave me this pelagonium at Easter a couple of years ago, the pink verbascum was among a planty birthday gift from my Mum, & the huge-flowered fuchsia from my sister. It looks thoroughly skankrous every winter, then miraculously reappears!

This emerging alium christophii was also a gift - I usually find these don't like the East Midlands soggy winters, but am hoping it will deign to survive - as was the cornflower-blue centaurea, bought for me on a family day out to celebrate my Dad's 70th birthday. It self-seeds easily, so my borders are now dotted with this lovely blue, in memory of a good day.

As soon as fellow gardeners know that you like plants (& I LOVE plants!), then the swaps, cuttings, saved seeds & random potfuls start arriving. Turn nothing away.......it could be something good. I love that I have plants from ex-colleagues & friends I no longer (or only rarely) see. An ex-colleague gave me this huge yellow scabious jobber, which flowers reliably every year at the back of a border, & also this purple aquilegia (she swapped them for a borage & a pink aquilegia, which was a better deal for me than her, as borage carks it at the end of the summer).

When keen gardeners know you are setting up a garden, especially a fair-sized one, as we're lucky to have here, the planty offerings start arriving. I've had some clumps of great stuff from my Mum (very keen plantswoman), including this pink hardy geranium & blue-tinged penstemen.

Similarly, my good friend Helen has provided me with some fab bits & pieces including this lovely purple iris, aquilegia 'William Guinness' (aka 'Magpie') & Poppy 'Tangerine gem', the orange buggers' I can't even get to germinate. When they appear each year, I think of her growing them for me in yoghurt pots on her kitchen windowsill & it's just a whole lot more personal than buying it all in fully grown.                                                           

 Then there's seed swapping.....endless possibilities here. These maroon coloured aquilegias came from seed a friend swapped me - she was fed up with these & wanted some of my pale pink ones. I lost the seed she gave me for several weeks & became convinced I'd accidentally fed it to Steve by using the seed bag to wrap a sandwich! I hadn't, & they still grew for me..........                                                                                                            

........& the bright yellow flash here is a poppy grown from seed from another ex-colleague, given to me when I left some time ago now, but they still pop up to remind me of times past, & I like that. It's what makes a garden personal.                                                                                                          

                                                                                                          

   

                                                                                                    

Don't forget there are often lots of free seed packets around - whether offers, or I've occasionally known garden centres give away surplus or out of date stock, & I never feel shy about asking people for a seed pod or cutting of plants I'd like to grow. My biggest supply of free seed packets comes from my Mum's penchant for buying gardening magazines. They give away more free seed than she can ever possibly grow, so much of it heads north up the A1 to the People & Cats Republic. My fab white foxgloves & huge scarlet poppies were grown from 2 such free packets.    

                                                                                   

                                                  

                                    
Another great source of free plants is, of course, saving your own seed. I always save calendula seed & so the flowers I get are real mixture of yellows, oranges, different shapes & sizes, including some double ones........

                                                                 

.....there's nothing to lose except a little tray of seed compost if your saved seed doesn't germinate. Sometimes, you will find an unexpected invasion of your garden (I mean other than bindweed, brambles & Albert Whiskers' enemies).......a few years ago, I spotted what looked like a stem of honeysuckle poking through the hedge from next door. One careful tug, & since then, we've had an annual show of fab flowers, which are just coming out of bud now..............................

   

........& will bloom for ages. When they're finished, it will almost be time for my annual blackberry crop, acquired in exactly the same slightly nefarious way.

I don't think I'll watch as much Chelsea next year. I do like it for ideas & the clever garden designs, but it just isn't how I (& I suspect most people) garden. A garden is a living thing which grows & evolves with us. It isn't something which is bought in already perfect. The most important ingredient isn't money. I think we are proof that it's possible to create a natural-looking, meaningful garden using time, basic skills & all the many freebies which are out there just waiting to be discovered. For the price of a stamp, a little pinch of flower seed goes a long way, so spread some planty joy to your friends & family...........FREE PLANTS.......now't like 'em!!

Coming up: Veggie garden tour/Tadpole Armageddon/Albert Whiskers' anniversary

Till next time,

C x

Whoo-hoo! Home-made reed diffuser

Hello Friends,
Yes, alright, alright, I know I promised that my next blog-post would be a tour of the veggie garden, but it isn't. Why isn't it? Because I am still way behind & it's most likely going to be at least another week before I feel like showing it off. Herb garden nicely productive though.......

.....so I decided on a little bit of herbal activity to try out an idea I spotted in the Guardian recently, namely instructions on how to make a reed diffuser. This is the sort of 'room fragrance device' often received as a gift. Refills are available, which for me, was all very fine & laudable until, halfway to the counter, I noticed the price. HOW MUCH?? A modest 250ml bottle of the fragrance liquid costs between £11.50 & £14.00........which, litre for litre, is pretty much comparable with a single malt! What exactly is in this elixir? Well, I would imagine it's water, artificial parfum, a dash of preservative industrial-type alcohol & a side-helping of assorted chemicals. I could be wrong, but somehow I doubt it. In lieu of my veggie garden photos being ready to share, & because people have asked me, here are the instructions for making your own reed diffuser using recycled materials & no nasties.

You need an empty glass jar (clean & dry), a few bamboo skewers (the cheapo BBQ variety are fine), essential oil/oils of your choice and vegetable oil........

.....also a handful of fresh herbs & a ribbon or similar if you want to go a bit lah-di-dah fancypants.
OK, so this is such simplicity, even Albert Whiskers could do it (if he wanted to, of course, which he doesn't because the ten minutes it takes would intrude far too drastically into his valuable sleeping & eating time). Stuff the herbs into the glass jar. Cover them with vegetable oil. Add 20 drops of essential oil. Stand the bamboo skewers (we're calling them 'reeds' now, cos we've gone posh) in the oil. Finish with a ribbon bow, or whatever you fancy, or leave it plain if you prefer things minimal......tho' if you fall into the latter camp, you're unlikely to be farting about making one of these.......

The carrier oil does need to be unscented, as you don't want a back note of eau de chip fat. The essential oil can be anything you like - I used lavender. Ditto the fresh herbs. I picked sprigs of lavender leaves, lavender mint & lemon balm. A more floral oil such as neroli or ylang-ylang would work well, as would citrus, such as lime or grapefruit. For winter, I plan to try a green-smelling oil such as juniper with cloves, orange peel & surreptitiously acquired sprigs of pine tree. As with a bought diffuser, remember to turn the reeds regularly to keep the fragrance strong. 

So there you are. Very easy & with the added satisfaction of not having squandered £14 on a titchy bottle of chemical fragrance. If room fragrance is not your thing, then you have the satisfaction of never having wasted your time making one either. It's a win win.

Here at the People & Cats' Republic, we are still recovering from the post-election blues, but we are feeling stronger this week & proud to be one (well, three) of the 63.1%. Actually, make that two, as Albert Whiskers doesn't have a vote. As a cat-loving past MP of a Nottinghamshire constituency once told me 'if only cats could be enfranchised, my life-long position as MP would be assured'. 
So chins up, friends, & onwards. 'We are many, they are few'...........
Have a good week, all,
C x

Sharing some garden therapy after grim night of the soul....

Hello Friends,
Well, I know that I & so many of my family & friends, were hoping for a very different political result on Thursday - one which brought some kind of progressive left alliance to our increasingly right-wing, insular-feeling country. Yet, in a scenario horribly reminiscent of 1992, we ended up with a Tory majority. I can only hope that the 36.9% who crossed that particular box are looking forward to the draconian austerity cuts which are now coming......because it won't just be those idle shirkers you read about in some or other 'Daily Mail' spewing who will be on the sharp ends of the cuts, it will also be every one of us who wants to live in a country which values those markers of  a civilized society  - a health service which puts people before profit, care for the most vulnerable, decent social housing, police, fire & ambulance services with sufficient numbers of officers to function effectively, properly funded schools with qualified teachers who feel valued, public libraries, the arts & our much-loved country parks. Just 1 day after the election, we are already reading that teaching assistants may disappear from schools. I'm sure parents of children with learning difficulties will be particularly appreciative of that one, Mr Gove. As an active Labour Party member, I know the election post-mortem will surely follow, but today, I needed to rid my head of it, to enjoy some simple pleasures. Decided to take a walk around our garden & share some pictures of calming green loveliness. It was a S-L-O-W walk......a bit like the slow canal trip shown on TV recently..........

.....so try to imagine you are walking around with me & we are not talking about horrible election results at all.

We're on the courtyard here. Why don't I call it a 'patio?' Because it's a dark, dank space where not much thrives (except Steve & the BBQ). This is a climbing hydrangea, which just about manages to stay this side of deceased. I like the green shiny leaves against the brickwork, & it does flower, albeit grudgingly.

Nobody really bothers about witch hazels unless it's their flowering season (winter), but they do fill out with lush lime-hued leaves in spring. The veining & the fact that I never remember to prune it makes it quite a textured tree.....more so in summer, when most years, our leaf-cutter bees arrive to chomp out, roll up & carry away little tubes of leaf for their nests. Love watching them in action.....that really is life in the slow lane as they return countless times, each visit leaving behind a perfect crescent shape in the leaf. 

Remember our Christmas Tree? It can't be too unhappy in its pot, as it's producing fir-cones. Lots of them. These are just the ones I could reach to photograph. I expect the 5'11" half of the relationship will produce some sort of  fancy-pants photographic fir-cone study before long!

It's aquilegia time here at 'Hagstones'. They are a hugely promiscuous plant. Seedlings pop up everywhere, sometimes purple, occasionally white or yellow, but mostly shades of pink.

This one insists on coming up each year in the tiny space between my herb bed & gravel path of the veggie garden & is such a strong vigorous specimen, I don't think I could pull it out if I wanted to.

Another self-seeded one - Years ago, a colleague gave me some seeds from a maroon-coloured aquilegia she was sick of, in return for some seeds from my pink ones. I still find traces of the maroon ancestry each year, like this one with dark red bonnets & white undercarriages. I find so many self-sown aquilegia seedlings in my borders, I should really be potting them up & giving them away to spread the planty love!

The hardy geraniums are just starting to flower. If dead-headed & given the 'Chelsea chop', they'll flower for ages. The one on the right grows like a weed here. If I need to fill any odd spaces, I just break off a piece of root, shove it in the ground, aim a watering can in its general direction & it romps away. Free = Definitely my absolute best kind of plant!

Some general shots of stuff in my borders now. The colour combination of this acid- yellow euphorbia & purple-leaved ligularia happened by accident, but I like it.

A carefully nurtured lammium - yes, I know it looks like a nettle, but it's actually a lovely domesticated member of the nettle family I bought at Cragside when we were up in Northumbria one year. It was a proper fussy sod about where it wanted to be planted & spent the first few years trying its utmost to cark it, but has now decided to do the decent thing & earn its keep. The bright blue petals in the background are dyer's alkanet - a native wildflower which looks fab in borders this time but reproduces like mad. It has deep thick taproots. Husbands generally break spades when called upon to dig them out. 

Pleased with the clematis over our arch this year. Mum knows this variety as 'Mile-a-minute' because it is a really speedy grower & virtually indestructable. This is our second one (!). The first defied its nickname, withered & met an untimely end on the compost heap.

This poppy is 'Tangerine Gem' or 'Those Orange Buggers'. I sowed 3 packs of these seeds in successive years & not a single one germinated. When I was given another pack of seed, I gave it to my very green-fingered friend, Helen, saying, 'See if you can get these to do anything'. A few months later, she appeared with some plants for me & said it was 'those orange buggers you gave me'. The orange buggers are now thriving perennials & if deadheaded & not too icy, will still be flowering as late as November.

One of the last bluebells in the wild area under our apple tree, which is now coming into blossom.

Oooh, & look what I've spotted, another freebie - a self-sown hellebore, the native 'stinking' variety.....

......I know it looks a bit like a plant of much more.......er.......recreational use, but it really isn't!

And walking back towards the house, the blossom on the ornamental cherry is looking good.....

......and the under plantings change regularly with the seasons......

........so that's a slow leisurely walk around our garden. It did me good to commune with lots of green stuff after Thursday's long dark night of the soul .......& when I got inside, I found the ever-entertaining Albert Whiskers just starting to wake himself up in case there might have been any danger of his dinner appearing (there wasn't!)

I'm not happy about Thursday.How could I be? 63.1% of people who voted did not want this result. But one thing I do know. The Tories are mostly defeated not by other parties, but by themselves. They have some intensely difficult & emotive stuff to deal with surrounding the Scots & Europe. They also have a whole lot of rabidly right-wing back benchers (remember John Major referring to his particular cohort of these lovelies as 'the bastards'?) who will surely be planning a resurgence of their game-play now that they are no longer in coalition. I fear life will sadly worsen for the poorest & most vulnerable in our society & we must all help them fight their corner when we can. However, I have absolutely no doubt that the Tories will be the architects of their own downfall, so bring it on!

Peace.....& every respect to the people of Scotland who were brave enough to vote for change.
Yours until next time,
C x