Late Spring borders

Hello Friends,
I had three gardening jobs on my list for today & I've done them all. I've taken up the black plastic from the strip of bed near the greenhouse & dug it over ready for my outdoor tomatoes, I've planted out two trays of pot marigolds & I've taken another bucket of duckweed out of the pond. This took longer than I'd planned because of having to rescue tadpoles as I went along. Our taddies are colossal this year......I don't think I've ever seen such humongous ones. Goodness knows what they're eating......certainly not duck weed! Nobody wants to look at buckets of pond-clearings, so I'm sharing some photos of my flower borders instead This is a lovely time for late Spring colour. The many aquilegias are coming to an end but other stuff is starting to do its thing:

Sweet rocket, centaurea, sweet pea obelisk & a self-seeded foxglove right in the front. 

Sweet rocket was grown from a packet of free seeds. The insects are enjoying it & it's quite tall, so it' a good one for the back of the border.....& very easy.

I had several blue aquilegias, but this is the only one left. They're very promiscuous plants & cross-breed all over the place. I quite like this, actually, as it means I never really know what colour the flowers will be until the buds open.

More aquilegias with alchemilla mollis just beginning to flower.

Not sure what this geum is, but it's one Mum gave me years ago which I brought with me from my previous little garden. It's easy to grow, can be easily divided up to make new plants & looks nice with pretty much anything.

Geranium ibericum jubatum in full flower......I couldn't get the colour right as the sunshine was so strong. It's actually a much more vivid mauve than this. Another easy grower & divides easily to make new free plants (my favourite gardening word again!)

And punctuating the borders, the alliums are just getting going. These are bog standard 'Purple Sensation', but they are well worth growing because I find with these, the fancier the variety, the less reliable they are. These come up without fail every year & we'll still be enjoying the amazing 3-D star shaped seed-heads long after the flowers have finished.
So I know I ramble on about the veg garden, but there's plenty going on in the flower borders too. Everything's woken up & now just needs to get into its prime.

Something else that's just woken up is Albert Whiskers.........

.........and true to form, he's managed to stagger indoors (from my deckchair) to suck some more jelly off his meat before refusing to touch it at all & deciding it's biscuits only.......which is business as usual where he's concerned at the moment. When you think he was living rough on the streets of Eastwood & most likely eating out of bins, he's turned into a very naughty picky eater. Whatever pouches of food are bought for him, the first one that's opened is officially the Best Food in the World. For the remaining 11 pouches, he will only eat the jelly. The chunks are left to turn into leather, while he mopes around giving us the sad-eye, nibbling our jeans & trying to blag a bit of whatever's going into somebody's sandwiches. NOT GOOD ENOUGH, Albert Whiskers!!

Hope you've all seen at least a bit of sunshine today.

C x

Guatemalan blue squash

Hello Friends,
Well, surprisingly after the incessant rain of last week, not only have I achieved my 10,000 steps around Clumber Park (so much easier when there are baby goslings & manic squirrels to look at, instead of pavements & dog poo), but the sun was STILL SHINING when we got home, so I have potted up my Guatemalan Blue Squash plants.

I've never grown these before. The seeds were a gift from a gardening friend, saved from her crop last year. 

I sowed 4 seeds & all of them germinated, unlike this year's wretched courgettes, which have done nothing but snivel & mess about since the moment the first seeds went into the compost. Guatemalan Blue would appear to be a storable autumn/winter squash, & they apparently look like this!
Pretty aren't they? Am hoping I can raise at least a couple to try out stuffed or roasted this autumn, & if they come true, I'll be sure to save some seed to pass on to other gardening friends - I don't think I know any gardeners who don't love to swap things. I think our favourite horticultural word is 'free!'
Till tomorrow,
C x

Hailstones! (Loads of 'em)

Hello Friends,
Well, you remember that 'chilly veg' I was moaning about last time? They are now officially sub-arctic veg. I have just been down to the greenhouse to cover them for the night. Not that they have actually been properly uncovered this last couple of days. I mean 'cover' as in putting a tablecloth & a sheet over the two lengths of bubblewrap & enormous piece of polythene that is currently covering them in the daytime. Oh, & I should add that the chillies & peppers are also under bottle cloches. Three tiny basil plants succumbed to the cold in the night, despite being wrapped like 'Pass the parcel'. Others look to be considering it. Boo to such cold April nights!
Is it Spring? I try not to make banal utterances about the weather, as we all know it can snow in April. I can remember building a snowman with my friend on Good Friday when I was a child. I've also stood on a Suffolk beach on May Day in freezing sleet (in my new sandals, naturally!) watching a man & his girlfriend fall over at the water's edge & fail to get up in time for the next icy wave. I was hugging my chips for warmth!

Yesterday we had a snow shower. Today has been the turn of sleet - 5 big showers of it, building up in piles along the garden wall, making the grass crunchy, barely melting before the next lot. So there are good signs of mid-Spring in the garden, but all have taken a bit of a battering today:

The hydrangea petiolaris is covered in buds, but the layer of hailstones has hardly thawed today.

Snowy....or rather haily bluebells and........

......our lovely clematis was looking distinctly soggy. It's usually such a herald of springtime. I hadn't realised how far it has escaped up the greengage tree.......no matter, it will help to cover up the dead bits.

The dark strip behind the wildlife pond has been like this most of the afternoon. No frogs popping up to sun themselves......though I have a horrible feeling this may have more to do with our naughty heron. More about him next time. I love herons - one of my favourite birds, actually, but this one's a bit of a crim.
Such dark photos, but all I could manage as we were underneath a bank of black cloud at the time. Albert Whiskers got caught in the first hailstorm. He wasn't impressed. Dried himself off on the sofa throw, watched some TV, lorded it up on the bedroom window for a while then started the Tummy Time Pester. As the Bigger Hairier Half of the Relationship is busy slapping eggshell onto dado rails, I caved in & applied a pouch of Chicken & Kidney Stink to bowl...........where most of it was left. With Albert Whiskers, anticipation of what he MIGHT get, is always much more exciting than what he actually gets. Tiring task eating 3 mouthfuls of meat......he's had to drag himself upstairs to recouperate on the bed. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.
PLEASE can there be some warmer weather soon? 
C x

Greenhouse cucumbers (& other chilly veg)

Hello Friends,
It was one of those days today where I really needed to sort my head out, & as usual, the best place for that was outside, throwing myself into seasonal veg-growing jobs. I have recently discovered a task-planning method in which only 3 tasks can be added to the list at a time. I was keen to try this, as I am known for the epic nature of my job lists.......& then the equally epic sense of deflation when only 29 of the 50 tasks are actually completed, the list having been unrealistic & self-defeating in the first place. With the 3-tasks only method, you can add as many additional jobs as you like, but there must only be 3 outstanding ones on the list at a time so that it doesn't become overwhelming. So on today's list:
1) Plant cucumbers out.
2) Pot up baby pepper plants.
3) Sow climbing beans

Mission accomplished! Cucumber frame put together using canes & 2 strange lengths of white plastic plumber's pipe (not a clue where that came from - it's one of those strange things that just happen to 'live in the shed'). This cucumber variety is 'Carmen'.....which makes me think it should be grown on a rampart in Seville rather than a corner of the grey chilly East Midlands. To be fair, the greyness had lifted in time for me to pot up the peppers, which I will grow on before transplanting to their final pots. And then onto Task 3 - I punched holes in the base of my stash of wombled 'disposable' coffee cups & sowed my climbing beans:

These are now sitting in a wheelbarrow under a sheet of heavy-duty polythene. The nights are still way too cold here to risk putting tender veg out unprotected. These will be polythened until they germinate, then uncovered in the daytime, until it's finally time to get them planted out at the end of May.
That's the problem with this time of year. If we don't get our veggies started off, many of the more tropical stuff like chillies, aubergines, peppers, tomatoes, etc, won't have a sufficiently long season to produce good crops but the April temperatures are really unstable. This afternoon, my greenhouse was cheeringly warm, but tonight, frost is forecast, & it can nip the edges of soft exposed leaves
So it's currently all about protection for chilly veg here. I'm using bottle cloches on cold days, as they can easily be removed if the sun deigns to make an appearance........

......but at around 5pm (today with Albert Whiskers around my heels mithering for his dinner), I am still popping back out to the greenhouse to add an extra layer of protection.

And another thing about temperatures - my courgettes are being r-e-a-l-l-y slow this year. Again I think this is down to the cold nights. First signs of the soil surface breaking today, so I'll hopefully soon be adding nithering courgette plants to the rest of my chilly veg. 
Oh.....& because I achieved all three tasks on my list, I was able to add another three, so I also pricked out some antirrhinums & rudbeckia, and sowed a small trough of wasabi rocket.
Until next time,
Cheers all,
C x

Strawberry tower, rocket & the Evil Weevil!

Afternoon Campers!
I am feeling sooooo behind with my seasonal gardening tasks, especially on the veggie front. I have to make serious inroads  this week. Today's been a great start, as the sunshine, blossom & a virtuoso blackbird lured me outside by 9 a.m and I've finished my new strawberry tower. 

Well, in all honesty, 'tower' is stretching it a bit. It's more sort of Soviet-era municipal block, but it has hit both my targets a) It was easy....& b) It was free. I have grown strawberries for years in a plastic strawberry barrel which held two dozen plants................& the East Midlands collection of vine weevil larvae. Did you know that vine weevils don't even need one of each to breed? No wonder there's so many of the damn things. Every year's strawberry growing went something like this: Plant up barrel. Water & feed plants. Pick delicious but decidedly stingy crop of about 2 ramekins for each of us during fruiting season. Observe blackbird commando crawling under my carefully applied blackbird-proof netting to hoover remaining berries. Keep watering plants so as to pay froward the hopes of a better crop next year. Spot that plants are starting to look rather limp & tubercular. Investigate. Discover that the Evil Weevil has visited & the entire barrel is alive with its horrible little grubs....which is the only thing it's alive with, seeing as how any last vestiges of actual strawberry plants are now dead! 

OK, enough of this sorry process. Last year, I pegged down as many strawberry runners as possible so as to save some plants from Weevilly Armageddon. They almost all rooted & I transferred them to the greenhouse for overwintering while I pondered what container to use - preferably one that doesn't emit such welcoming vibes to horrid weevils. I had thought to purchase 4 large coloured plastic pots in in different sizes to stack & plant as a tower, but I didn't really want to buy yet more plastic, or indeed part with any cashola, so I decided to use some big plastic troughs which I usually use for salads.

I put crocks in the base of each trough & filled with a mixture of our home-made garden compost & bagged stuff, adding a good handful of chicken manure pellets to each one, and built up the troughs into a stable structure. A good dousing with the hose & they were ready to plant up. 

I've managed to fit 45 plants in here & will have netting at the ready against naughty beaks when the time comes. If properly fed & watered, these plants & compost should be good for 3 years, so I will research use of anti-vine weevil nematodes to make sure we're in with a chance. Our tame robin will be gutted as he loves weevil larvae, but he'll have to put up with peanut nibs same as everyone else!

Still thinking about moving forward on the veggies, I cut the last of our over-wintered rocket today. I always sow a crop in the greenhouse in the autumn, re-using a growbag. 

I've been cutting this rocket for several weeks & it's been a welcome addition to salads. I like the variety 'Wildfire', as it's easy & a nice spicy one, with quite large, lush leaves. The leaves are much smaller now, as it's time to bolt & set seed, so this is the last of it & a new growbag will be taking its place ready for this year's cucumbers.

No help in the garden from Albert Whiskers today. After yesterday's run-in with a staffie, he is nursing his sore paws, keeping his head down & staying out of trouble indoors. I think having such a narrow escape was a big shock for him. Doubtless he'll be back to lording it on our front wall, but at the moment he's showing little interest in venturing outside.

Hope some of you have managed to enjoy this lovely sunshine today,
Till next time,
C x

Free plants time!!

Hi Friends,
Well, even waking up with tonsils like razor blades (I surely cannot be lergyfied again?!), has not stopped me getting out into this fabulous Spring sunshine today. I've been round the whole garden with the wheelbarrow & 'grabber' collecting up detritus that had blown in, stray brassica collars, cane toppers, plant ties, etc, & generally having a damn good tidy-up. It reminded me a bit of being sent to litter-pick as a punishment for forgetting my PE kit at school. Actually, I always saw that as a result, as I much preferred picking up litter to the utter time-waste of pretending to play netball! It didn't do to try this too often though, or one could find oneself NOT on litter-picking, but instead, having to wear some hideous BO-impregnated PE outfit from the 'spare kit' box <shudders>.....

After a good tidy-up this morning, I got down to one of my favourite Spring jobs - Looking for FREE PLANTS!! As someone who used to spend really quite eye-watering amounts of money in garden centres across the East Midlands, these are now my favourite kind! And here is today's haul:

Theyr'e not all here, as I've already transplanted some, but in total, my free plant hunt yielded these self-seeded lovelies: 1 buddleja, 6 aquilegias, 1 alchemilla mollis, 4 primroses, 3 clumps of forget-me-nots, 2 mauve poppies (well, I think they will be mauve, but that's the beauty of the free plant hunt, they could be anything, including a new colour), 2 golden feverfew, 5 foxgloves, 2 tellima, 1 lemon balm & an oregano. Not bad for Round 1. There will be more as I continue to clear the rest of my big flower beds over the next couple of weeks.

I also have another 'treasure' this Spring. I have never been able to grow any hellebores except the native stinking kind (Hellebore foetida). While I quite like its lime green flowers among other early Spring colour, I get a bit of a grump on when I visit gardens for Snowdrop Walks & see all the other lovely hellebore varieties. In 2010, I tried for a final time. I bought a hellebore from the market stall of a local nurseryman. My thinking was that if it's been gown & raised here in the locality, it will do fine in my soil. Yeah, right! Here was the result of my clever thinking.....
2010 - Didn't flower, but the grower said it wouldn't the 1st year, so that was ok.
2011 - 3 leaves.
2012 - 2 leaves
2013 - 2 leaves
2014 - 2 leaves
Are you getting the picture?
2015 - Nothing!
2016 - 2 leaves
2017 - Oooooooooh! Look!!

Finally my patience (for 'patience', read lots of sweary moaning!) has been rewarded with 3 lovely dark red blooms. My photo doesn't really do them justice, but you get the idea. 
So that was today.......lots of planty freebies & at last, a non-stinking hellebore to enjoy.
Hope you're all enjoying at least a bit of this sunshine.
Till next time,
C x

Spicy chickpea burgers - nom nom nommety nom......

Hello Friends,
I've been meaning to share the link to this recipe for the longest time, but seed-sowing time just seems to have taken over and I'm spending lots of time in the greenhouse & not much on the laptop.
I promised one or two people the details of this recipe, so here goes.

I love making these.....& eating them. They are really tasty & filling in a home baked bread roll & I like a dollop of my pineapple chutney & an enormous salad with mine. It's a Delia recipe - I first came across it in her vegetarian cook book which my parents bought for the Big Hairy Half of the Relationship before he fell off the veggie waggon & started walking around town with his nose pressed to butchers' shop windows, dreaming of humoungous rib-eyes.

The recipe appears on her website here . These burgers are really easy to make. You just need to remember to put the dried chickpeas in water the day before, so they can soak overnight. Then you start by bringing them to the boil & simmering until tender, before draining them. They don't take as long as you think, maybe about 40-45 mins or so. 

In the meantime, you can be getting the rest of the ingredients together. The onions, garlic, green pepper & spices are cooked together & smell fab, as the spices are first toasted a little in a non-stick pan to bring out the flavour.

When everything's ready, pretty much all that needs doing is plopping it all into a food processor with the remaining ingredients such as lemon zest, 3 tbsp yoghurt & a bit of seasoning , then blending it together. You want a consistency that will form into burgers, but to leave a bit of texture in the chickpeas.....no need to blend the living daylights out of it. 

Then it's simply sleeves up time, & forming the spicy mixture into 8 burgers. I just do them with my hands as I don't own any sort of la-di-dah burger press. Next 2 plates....one with a beaten egg on it & one with some wholemeal flour, & you just dunk each burger first in the egg, then in the flour to coat........

......at which point they look like this. I pack them into containers at this stage & freeze them. They freeze really well, but as they cook best from frozen, remember to freeze them so that they're not touching. I just fry them in a little oil when they go a lovely golden colour & smell yum. Sorry I haven't got a pretty picture of one sitting in a hand-shaped bun artistically garnished with rocket & red onion rings - that was my intention but we had scoffed them before I remembered!

This is the book we have, but I think the chickpea burgers may feature in others of Delia's books too. They hit all the buttons for me....easy, nutritious, tasty & cheap! Could eat one now......shame it's an 800 calorie day today.........Booooooo! How DO people doing the 5:2 Diet manage on 500? I would be so hungry I'd be dipping into Albert Whisker's biscuits, I'm sure!
Anyway, that's it. Recipe shared!
Cheers,
C x