Gardening Without Backache -No Dig Gardening

I'm a huge fan of Charles Dowding's method of No Dig Gardening. There are loads of reasons why I'm so keen,  one of the main ones being my state of aged decrepitude which prevents me from doing as much digging as I used to be able to manage. But for the best explanation take a look at  any of Charles many books and articles on the subject. In a nutshell the idea is that you cover the ground that you have, whatever it's like, with a layer of compost and you plant into it. That's about it, and because it's such a simple idea, people tend to think it can't possibly work. Surely you have to dig, trench, rake,kill the weeds, and so on? Well no, what you should really be doing is to attempt to disturb the soil as little as possible,- digging just destroys the soil structure and chops up beneficial earthworms and other soil organisms. So not only do you not need to do it, you positively shouldn't do it.

When I moved here a year ago, we had no real garden to speak of, but lots and lots of lawn. So the first job was to fence off an area of the field to make a vegetable garden. I covered the areas to be planted with cardboard, to help kill the grass, and took delivery of a ten ton pile of compost courtesy of Severn Waste who make the compost from green waste. The compost is very reasonable in price, but unfortunately the delivery costs do add up. It all depends how far you are from your local green waste processor - check out your local depot.

All I had to do was move it to the appointed beds, which took a while I must admit. A few barrowloads every day soon made an impact.

The results have been amazing. Not everything did well, but most of what I planted did ok, considering it's the first year of a new garden. In an indifferent year for tomatoes we had tons, squashes and pumpkins grew like triffids, beans did less well, but salads and herbs were great.  The new asparagus bed is looking fine, although it's too new to harvest until next year, so we will see what next year's growth looks like in due course.

The main disappointment was my raspberry canes, most of which failed, so I will be filling in the gaps during the winter months with some new plants. Strawberrries and brassicas both grew well but were subject to caterpillar and bird attacks respectively so I will need to arrange protection for them for next year.

Anyway that was last year, and I have just availed myself of another ten tons of compost, this time for my new ornamental plantings. Luckily the very helpful lady at Severn Waste managed to find a delivery for me at a good price. So I took delivery of the ten tons on the appointed day courtesy of the lovely Louise, of Louise Ward Haulage based in Evesham, who has been operating her 18 ton tipper truck for nearly twenty years, and did an excellent job at a good price. I have a ready supply of cardboard from our warehouse, so I used it as a base, It's not really vital but it rots down readily and does help a bit to kill the weeds and grass. So it's back to barrowing for the next week or two. Before I get to do the good bit, the planting.

January Gardening

I've been busy doing "January Gardening". That is, not bestirring myself to go out into the actual garden, (brrrr!)  but flicking through seed catalogues, and thinking what I would be doing if only it wasn't so cold and mudddy out there. What a wimp I hear you say, a real gardener would be out there come what may. I bet Toby and Carol aren't sitting by the aga nursing a cup of tea. And to be fair, on the odd decent day, I do go out and flail around a bit. Today I managed a quick sprint down to the greenhouse, where I made a temporary repair to a broken pane of glass with some plastic and sellotape, which helped raise the temperature in there to something slightly  less arctic. I cleared off the propagating bench, last year's new construction, turned on the power, and put a few seeds in a pot. So a start has been made.

Most of the rest of the day has involved hunting high and low for the plastic box I keep my seeds in, and which I was beginning to think I'd thrown out by accident, which would have been disastrous, since like many gardeners I keep seeds for several years, and also save some of my own. This helps to keep costs down,- most seed packets contain many more seeds than you will use in the course of one season, and with certain  exceptions, seeds remain perfectly viable for several years. Following a suggestion on ferris' blog, I have made some trial indoor sowings, particularly those that I have some doubts about, either because they are more than two years old, or are self saved.

I started with this kind of thing, bits of damp kitchen towel, a label, and cling film to cover, and left them by the aga to see whether they would sprout

and rapidly realised that I could get through a lot more if I just numbered the seed packets

 and the bits of kitchen towel (I do have rather a lot of old half used seed packets). I won't be using the seeds as it's far too early in the year for most of them, but I will know which ones are viable and which will have to be replaced, which should save me time and effort later on.

And how is it by the way, that you can search the shed for something three times, and it's definitely not there. And then, suddenly on the fourth search - there it is. It was there all the time, and you just didn't see it. Does this happen to anyone else or is it just me? I think strange forces are at work in my shed!

In case anyone is looking for suggestions, these are the veg seeds I've done best with in recent years.

Perpetual spinach - excellent crop. Still standing in the garden now even after all the snow. I no longer bother with the summer spinach  except as baby leaf for salad. Rainbow or Rhubarb Chard is also good, but has not weathered the winter in my garden.

Kale  Redbor. This is also still providing some pickings, and has withstood the winter along with Cavolo Nero.

Garlic Music. This variety always does well for me.

Sweet Corn Lark. This is an F1 hybrid, so you can't save seed, but it's always quick to grow and crops well in my garden.

Onion Kelsae. I only did well with these because my brotherwho is a champion onion grower grows them from seed and gives me the plants. They were whoppers though.

Runner Bean Wisley Magic. Grew this for the first time last year, and will grow it again. Lovely flavour, not stringy.

Tomatoes, many and varied. It was a great year for tomatoes, all my heritage varieties did well, as well as the modern variety Sungold, which never fails and tastes lovely. If you only grow one I'd suggest this.

Failures
Broad Bean, Masterpiece Longpod, made poor plants, wouldn't bother again. Will go back to Bunyards Exhibition this year which has done well in the past for me.
Late crop sweet corn, can't remember the name, was a waste of time, I'll stick to Lark this year.
Brussels Sprouts. I never grow decent sprouts here in Wiltshire, even though I had good plants, they mostly didn't come to much. Nothing wrong with the variety, Trafalgar, it's just me.

Making Order Out Of Chaos

I wish I had greater self discipline.
If I had, my veg garden wouldn't look quite so bad as it does at the moment

because I would have spent a few days in the Autumn tidying up, and generally putting everything to bed for the winter, like a proper gardener.

Of course I do have the very best of intentions as the summer season draws to its end. But come September and I'm snowed under with the harvest of apples and tomatoes and so on that need to be dealt with, and then in November I start to think about Christmas, and then whoof! before you know it, it's December and I've lost all my inclination to go out there until here I am in January surveying the bleak prospect. Again.

Anyway I made a start today by having a good tidy up. One of the benefits of having designated beds rather than traditional rows is that although the ground was still frozen , you can sort things out without needing to walk on the growing areas very much at all, so that compaction and damage to the soil structure is kept to a  minimum. So they're worth having if only for that. There are a few things still soldiering on, a row of perpetual spinach seems unaffected by the weather, but most of my brassicas, not usually great specimens in any case, are looking a bit past it. Some of the kale may be usable and some leeks, but I should really have dug them up before the snow. And of course, Jerusalem Artichokes, which are always around in January.

And that's about it really, so much for my plan of keeping us in salad greens during the winter! I should have grown my chicory in the greenhouse bed as all the outside plants have disappeared. Note for next year.  But the makings of a large compost heap are coming together, and it's amazing how when the old bean sticks and general detritus are cleared away, it does start to look a bit more respectable.

One note I have made to myself for next year, is that I will try to reduce my use of plastic materials in the garden to zero or as close as I can get. Plastic is cheap but doesn't wear very well in the garden environment. Beside my composting pile I have a small dayglo heap consisting of the remains  of some pea and bean netting , along with some bits of lurid green plastic which were once plant trays, all of which will have to go to landfill. So no more of that thanks.

Also I will try to make more use of my Compost Blocker, a natty little device that saves using pots at all, which you can buy from the Organic Gardening Catalogue  or from Blackberry Lane  and possibly make some more paper pots, which I have used with some success in previous years.

And finally now's a good time to go through your seed box and see what you've got leftover and what you need to order. Ferris over at Adventures in a Field reminded me that the best way to check whether your last year's seeds are still viable to to sprout a few indoors as a test. Much better than finding they don't come up and wasting valuable growing time getting fresh supplies.

And if you've been moaning about the weather at all here in the UK, (it's a national pastime) do take a quick look at Grannys blog from Queensland Australia, and think how lucky we actually are!

Glad All Over

Horizontal Glad

The recent much needed rain has caused the usual late summer havoc in my garden, runner beans have fallen over on to the courgettes who must be wondering who turned the lights out, but won't be prevented from growing at a rate of knots even in the dark under the beans. Tall perennials have lurched alarmingly to the side under the weight of both themselves and the additional water, so I will have to set aside some time to go out and resurect some staking and reinforcements as soon as I can. Of course if I had done the job properly in the first place none of this would have happened, - I knew all the time that the first heavy rain would topple those swaying runner bean plants! The wigwam style beans are fine, it's just the ones in a long, insufficiently supported line that are suffering the effects of Gardener's Procrastination Syndrome - or That'll Do For Now, I'll Be Back Later To Finish. Lucky for me that I have about ten times more beans than two normal human beings can be expected to consume, even with the help of willing friends and neighbours. Next year I'll do better, honest I will..

Vertical Glad

The up-side of all the falling over is the unexpected increase in the supply of cut flowers for the house. Fortunately for me most late summer perennials seem to be quite self supporting, things like Rudbeckias, and Heleniums and so on, are rarely affected by bad weather unless it's really extreme, but if you have and of the tall Gladioli they will keel over without support in rain and wind. There are three solutions to this, (four if you count not growing them at all James), you can either be a Proper Gardener like Toby and Alan,(and my son James) and put in support canes early in the season, but see above under Gardener's Procrastination Syndrome. Or you could grow the smaller, more fashionable varieties which require no staking, like Galadiolus nana. Or, like me, you can plant them where you think they will be reasonably protected, hope for the best and use the ones that blow over for the house. I have to point out here  of course, for those of you who have your image to think of, that Glads are deeply deeply unfashionable, and you can only grow them if you're still wearing the same clothes you wore twenty years ago in the hope that they will eventually come back into fashion, or maybe you could grow them ironically, perhaps with three flying ducks on the fence behind them. I'm thinking I could develop this into a whole new style - "The Ironic Gardener", book and TV series to follow.

I only have a few glads, and only white ones, I think the variety is White Prosperity, butI really like them and I think I will get some more for next year. People used to dig up glads after they had flowered, like dahlias, and replant the following spring, but mine have been in the same place for several years and have survived even the hard winter we had last year, so like Dame Edna, and old ladies everywhere they are clearly tougher than they look and will soldier on regardless of whether you like them or not.

http://www.we7.com/song/Eddie-Izzard/Old-Ladies?m=0

Tomatoes

I had intended to show you a mouthwatering array of home grown toms, but I seem to have got the light setting wrong on the camera for this shot and they all look more anaemic than Tesco's offerings. So you must take my word for it that they are lovely -the varieties for gardener's info are top row left to right Black Prince, Mr Stripy, Marmande, and bottom row left to right Sungold, Sweet Million, Costelluto Fiorentina. I would recommend any of them, but I especially liked Black Prince, with it's dark and unusual colouring, but delicious flavour, and Mr Stripy is good too, -I think this is also known as Tigerella in some catalogues.

So far, and I hardly dare say it, there is no trace of the dreaded tomato blight. Not wishing to be slow to award myself the credit for success I am putting this mostly down to my Anti Blight Measures taken earlier in the year, (although I also suspect that the much drier weather this year has helped quite a bit too).  We are getting a steady and manageable supply of ripe tomatoes at the moment, plenty for salads and everyday needs with some to give away, but not a super huge amount for sauce making for the freezer as yet.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the plants keep on producing and stay healthy. Any one else had improvements on blight this year?

A Pot Of Basil

This is the famous Pre Raphaelite painting Isabella And The Pot Of Basil, based on a poem of Keats, and depicts the heroine Isabella draped over a pot of basil in which she has, somewhat gruesomely in my view,  buried the head of her murdered lover. The basil seems to be doing quite well, which is surprising in the circumstances, since basil is a mediteranean herb and prefers quite hot and dry conditions, which would presumably not be found in the humus rich environment of a composted head. But that's artists and poets for you. No horticultural training at all.

This is my own somewhat less romantic pot of basil.

I've never thought, even on a difficult day, of burying David's head in it, it's far too small for a start, and come to think of it, if you look at the painting, Isabella's other half must have had a remarkably small head to have been accommodated in that pot, allowing as you must, for the roots of the plant and a reasonable amount of John Innes No 3.

Anyway, my basil has done remarkably well this year. I've often found that I had much less basil than I would like so this year I sowed a line of seeds alongside my tomato plants when I planted them out, and the ones in the greenhouse have done very well. The ones outside have fared less well, they do have fleshier leaves but far fewer of them.

But it's always feast or famine in the garden and my plants were starting to produce flowers before I could use them all, so I cut them all off at about four leaves from the base (so they can sprout again for a second cut) and brought a great armful into the kitchen.  I have made a pot of classic basil pesto (basil leaves, garlic, olive oil, parmesan, pine nuts, seasoning in proportions to suit you all whizzed together in the blender). Float a layer of oil on the top to prevent discolouration. Keep it in the fridge. You will notice I have very efficiently dated the pot so that I will remember not to keep it too long. Low acid food in airless conditions like this has a very slight chance of playing host to botulism, and that's not something we want to be trifling with is it. It's the reason commercially made sauces like this are always acidified and therefore taste terrible. The risk is extremely slight, so I don't suggest you worry too much about it, but  I always think that knowing about and understanding the "science bits" makes us better consumers. So all the more reason to stuff yourself and your family with as much as you can manage to eat for a few days, and keep the rest in the freezer.

 Basil isn't the easiest herb to store, but if you have a surfeit freezing is the way to go. I wouldn't add the nuts and cheese before freezing as they won't keep as well, and you can add them later if you wish. Just whizz up the basil leaves with some olive oil and you can either freeze it in ice cube trays, or as I do, just freeze it in a flat sheet in a plastic bag and break it up when it's frozen to make pesto or add to soups, sauces or pasta. Disembodied heads are entirely optional.

The Luscious Pea

FORBIDDEN FRUIT

Forbidden fruit a flavor has

That lawful orchards mocks;

How luscious lies the pea within

The pod that Duty locks!

Emily Dickinson

I've had more luscious peas this year than even Emily Dickinson could have dealt with. Some have even made it to the dinner table. Usually they never get that far, and to be honest, having had a few servings of cooked peas, we have decided that we like them best raw, and so I serve them in the pod as a kind of starter before we eat. It reminds me of a trip to Italy, a couple of years ago, when we ordered broad beans in a restaurant, and were presented with an enormous plate of raw beans, not only were they raw, but also still in their pods! I later learned that this is a local speciality in Puglia, and although I couldn't finish the whole plateful, I did enjoy them as they were young and tender, if a little inelegant!

As you can see my peas are tall, the variety is they very old variety Telephone, and they require staking. I think it's worth the extra bit of effort, since you get far more pea per square foot of row than with the short varieties, which  have mostly been developed for the convenience of  Messrs Birds Eye, who require peas that grow uniformly, mature all at once, and can be harvested mechanically. And you can't harvest six foot tall plants with a machine. The peas aren't all ready at once, which is what we as gardeners are looking for, and can be picked over a period a week or two. The only problem is that there's such an abundance of them that it's difficult to keep up with the picking, and it 's looking like pea soup will be on the menu pretty soon for the older cannonballs that I've missed.

I've also grown "Alderman" another tall pea, whose seed is more generally available, and whilst it's perfectly fine I would still recommend Telephone for its stronger growth, and bigger pods containing up to nine finely flavoured peas. Seed can be obtained from Real Seeds, who warn that the pods tend to swell up before the peas have developed so don't be fooled into picking too early. Seeds Of Italy also supply the seed under the name "Telefono".

Calabrese

On a more successful note than the broad beans, I'm very pleased with my summer brocolli, or calabrese, as it should properly be called. I've never managed to grow good calabrese before, although I've often had  success with the winter purple sprouting kind. I've tended to think of it as "difficult" but I think I was mistaken. This variety is Corvet and has been very quick and surprisingly easy. Sowed in modules and planted out at about six inches high, about a foot and a half apart. Firm in well, water generously. It makes a large central head and after you've cut that, the side shoots make a second crop of spears to cut a little later. Highly recommended, give it a go.

 I have to cover all brassicas in my garden against pigeons, and it helps to keep the cabbage white butterfly at bay. Note the rogue "volunteer" potato plant coming through on the left!

Just Before That Cold Beer

Just a quick reminder to all you rhubarb growers out there, if you have any of these

which are flowering stems, then, pretty as they are, you need to snap them off as soon as you notice them and put them on the compost heap, so that the plant can concentrate all its energies on making more rhubarb leaves,and not seed.

Delicious.

And also, in this hot spell we're having just now, if you're finding it too hot to do any proper gardening, then just do the watering. If you do nothing else, water any plants that you've put in recently. It's all too easy to water them in when you plant, you think you've got them off to a good start and they can fend for themselves, but new plants have small root systems, and need watering during dry spells, indeed shrubs and trees need help for the whole of the first season. So do the watering and then find a shady spot, for a well deserved cold beer. You've earned it.

No Wonder The Neighbours Think I'm Bonkers

Can you  spot anything odd at the end of my veg garden?

It may just look like a load of bin liners tied to a cherry tree, but, in fact, it's a load of bin liners tied to a cherry tree for bird protection purposes

Once again, it's  time for this year's instalment of Will Kathy Get Any Cherries Or Not. Last year it was definitely Birds one Kathy nil. At the moment the fruits are no more than hard green marbles, but already they are being stripped from the trees. It does seem early even for the birds, and I am suspicious of squirrel activity. I have been experimenting with live catch squirrel traps, so far without success, but my brother in Wales has had great success with his , so I'm going to persevere, and will let you know how I get on.

But to deter the birds I am using the plastic bag technique as in previous years but I will be keeping a careful watch on them too. I have tied bin liners on the branches with the heaviest crop - I have to admit they do look a bit odd, to say the least, but I am determined to get at least some cherries this year.  

I am also trialling a new product (at least it's new to me) made by Agralan products, who are a local company based near here in Ashton Keynes. They sell quite a few green gardening products, so I was quite keen to give them a try. The product is, Buzz Off  and the idea is to stretch a thin plastic line tautly between two points and when the wind catches it, it makes a noise that birds can't stand, and they fly away, hopefully cherry-less. At first I couldn't get it to make any noise at all, but I soon realised you have to have quite long lengths, around 5 yards/metres for it to work, and eventually I was able to detect a kind of whirring noise a bit like distant helicopters. Presumably birds don't like helicopters.

So having set up the lines last night I went out to check the situation this morning, expecting to feel like an extra on the set of Mash (helicopter background, do keep up...) but surprise surprise, there was no wind, not a breath. Boiling hot day, no wind. The plastic bags seem to be ok so far, and when the wind did eventually blow a bit, the lines did work too. In fact it takes very little breeze to set them going. It would be great if this simple measure really made a measurable difference. I wonder if it would work on the strawberry patch?

 I will report back on how effective these measures are. I really would like to get a few cherries this year...

Outdoor Salad At Last

I picked my first outdoor grown salad yesterday. We've had some leaves from the greenhouse, and they were ok, but I always find them a bit flabby and insipid compared with the outdoor grown ones. And winter salad, always a hit and miss project for me, was totally non existent in this year's extreme winter.  So it tasted all the better for being a novelty, but that should, if I'm properly organised, be the end of packets of supermarket  leaves for this year.

This is picked from a row of loose leaf mixed lettuce, raised in modules in the greenhouse, and planted out a few weeks ago. I didn't protect it from the late frosts, and luckily it seemed not be have been affected in the way that my early French Beans were. There's loads of mixtures to choose from I recommend the Italian seed companies partly because they are so generous with the seed, Franchi, or Seeds of Italy, but I've tried lots and they're all good. I always like some red coloured lettuce mixed in with the green, partly for the taste but also I just like the look of the dark red and purple leaves in the salad bowl. a row of Lollo Rosso lasts most of the summer and looks decorative edging a raised bed of another crop.

I picked a handful of pea shoots as well to go in my salad, it's a good idea to pinch out the tops of pea plants when they're a few inches tall, it makes them produce side shoots, so you get more peas per plant, and at this early season you get a taste of fresh pea in your salad, that's if there are any left in your basket by the time you get back to the kitchen of course. This helps keep me going until there are real peas to be stolen later in the year, can't wait.

Coldest May Night For Fifteen Years

We've just had the coldest May night for fifteen years, according to the Met Office, but hopefully we should be moving into a warmer spell soon, even if it means some rain. Personally I blame Daniel Corbett, he never forecasts normal weather. I put some dwarf French Beans out last week and they don't look too happy,

 so I'm going to quickly sow a few replacements in modules in case they don't pick up.

I'm also going to put my runner and climbing french beans out tomorrow, I've been taking them in and out of the greenhouse for the last week or more, trying to harden them off a bit, and at the same time avoid the freezing temperatures we've been having at night. I don't mind the odd late frost, I can work round that but the bean modules have been in and out like pints of beer this last week, and I've had enough of it. The evening gavotte in and out of the greenhouse door with armfuls of pots is a pain. So they're going out tomorrow and hope for the best. And the first squashes and courgettes will be following soon after. So I hope you've got that Daniel, no more frost please!!
Fingers crossed.

I Have A Cunning Plan..

I'm fed up with tomato blight, It's been a real problem in the last few years and I've formulated a cunning plan to try to keep it at bay this year. It's a miserable disease, once you have it, it's almost impossible to do anything but pull the plants up and take what crop there is. If  you leave it, it will all rot.

Since I know the spores of blight are in the ground, and are splashed up on to the leaves by watering, or by rain, I decided that I would make a raised bed for my outdoor tomatoes this year. I have a long high stone wall at the back of the veg plot, and it always irks me that I can't grow anything against this, the warmest most sheltered spot, because some bright spark, years before we came here, thought it was a good place to put a concrete path. So I have cut up a few old pallets, and used them to make a raised bed, filled with my Warrior Compost, which should be clean to start with.

I'll be running a leaky hose along the top, and covering that with a sheet of black weed suppressing fabric, which I'll make slits in to plant through, so there'll be no soil splashing up on to the plants, and the watering should be even and regular.  I suppose it's the same sort of principle as a grow bag, but on a much bigger scale.  I'll let you know how I get on.

Late Spring Frosts - Belt and Braces

"When the wind is in the East, 'Tis neither good for man nor beast"
I've just read in the paper that there has been longer periods of East winds this Spring than we would normally expect. This partly explains why, even though recent days have looked nice and sunny, the wind still nips, and when the sun goes behind a cloud it feels like January. Winds that blow across the North Sea before arriving in the UK tend to bring cold damp weather, and traditionally were said to make people depressed. Voltaire said the  " le vent d'est" blew in England in March and November and that during his visit in 1727 it affected everyone so much that suicides were commonplace, and in fact the entire country became miserable and grumpy. Must have felt like home from home for Monsieur V then.

Anyway, back in the veg garden, and for once the Met Office got it right yesterday and, as predicted, the the remains of a ground frost was in evidence as I peered out of the bedroom curtains this morning. So I was glad that I had taken a few minutes to cover my new plantings of salad leaves and peas with  horticultural fleece held down with a few stones. And as another cold night is likely tonight, I'd suggest keeping an eye on the weather forecast and investing in a bit of fleece, or plastic or whatever you have that will just keep the frost away from the new and tender leaves, if you've planted anything out.  Not that I'm alway so careful, mind you, but I always think it's worth taking a gamble with early plantings, as long as you adopt a belt and braces attitude - putting a few out early and saving the rest for later - if the worst happens and frost (or slugs/chickens/rabbits) get your plants you've still got some left for a second go, but if you get away with it, you've got nice early pickings. Go on, live dangerously.

Allotment Recycling Syndrome

I like to think I do my bit on the recycling front. Green as the next woman, that's me. I keep a compost bucket in the kitchen, diligently sort all the bottles, tins, and newspapers for collection, and all that. But when it comes to the garden I find I have developed a disease. In medical circles it's known as Allotment Recycling Syndrome, and you can see common symptoms of it on any local allotments you might care to walk through, ie  you will see all manner of bits and pieces of flotsam pressed into service long after they would otherwise have ended up in the bin. There must be somthing about gardening that makes you not want to waste things, and to put old things to a new use wherever possible. This is great, but it does rather lead to an accumulation of stuff that might just be of some use at some undefined future time.... I'm thinking of  the tin labelled "Pieces of String Too Short To Be Of Any Possible Use" kind of thing.

Anyway, the other day I spotted some fruit trees in Tescos. Yes, I know they're not known for the choicest varieties, but they were selling them off for £3.50 each, and as they seemed to be still alive I couldn't resist. There's no indication of the rootstock, but an estimation of the eventual expected height makes it look like a  fairly dwarfing rootstock, and the varietal name is given, so it seemed like worth a go. I will probably put them in the chicken run/mini orchard. There is an Egremont Russet apple, a Williams Bon Chretian pear, a Sunburst cherry, an Oullin's Golden Gage, and an Arthur Turner apple (what a lovely name for an apple tree, sounds like a northern bloke in a flat cap ay-up). Of course being a supermarket everything has to be packed in plastic, (it's the law you know) and as I was un packing them, I realised if I kept the plastic sleeving it would be perfect for sliding onto the branches of my existing Stella cherry tree to protect the ripening fruit from birds, later on in the summer.  So as I say, stuff that would have gone to waste is now cluttering up the shed waiting to be put to good use in June. I hope it works this year, last year I got no cherries at all, because the birds were quicker than I was. Sounds like a result to me, so far anyway.

Greenhouse Seed Sowing, update

Just a note about what I'm sowing in the greenhouse. It's the busiest time for seed sowing, and this year I feel I'm quite late with everything because the weather has been so poor, and after the recent spell of reasonably warm days, as I speak it's back to freezing cold nights and stormy days again. Let's hope we get some more decent weather next week, so we gardeners can get on with outdoor preparations, but for now, in the shelter of my greenhouse I have sown lots of things in modules, this Rhubarb Chard, for example.

And a few globe artichokes, these are small ones designed to be eaten young and whole, Violetto Precoce.

A supply of baby salad leaves grown in modules, to make little plug plants which I will put out when they're big enough

and several drain pipes full of peas.

I like tall peas, because you get more peas per square foot of garden, and last year I grew Alderman and Telephone. One of them was ok and the other was superb in both flavour and production. Trouble is I lost the labels so I couldn't tell which was the good one so I'm having to grow both again this year. I will make doubly sure I don't lose the labels this time. If anyone has any experience of these varieties and can make recommendations  I'd be grateful for any guidance.

And some first early potatoes, ready to be planted out this weekend, varieties Rocket, and International Kidney

So plenty to be going on with then.

See I Told You Winter Was Over

The first leaf has unfurled on my rhubarb patch.Hurrah! So have several leaves of ground elder you may observe.  I know forced rhubarb has been in the shops for a while, and you can cover it with an upturned dustbin, or an expensive terracotta cover, and so on, but I rarely bother prefering to just let it arrive when it's ready.

I grew up in Yorkshire, which is probably why I'm not all that enthusiastic about rhubarb, I probably had rather too much of it as a child. I well remember my dad digging up a large root of rhubarb and keeping it under his bed for several weeks in the spring (for forcing purposes), so keen was he on getting an early crop. But it's very much more fashionable nowadays, (eating it, not keeping it under the bed) and I usually get a generous enough crop. So it's good to see the first leaf. Maybe I should look around for some more imaginative recipes this year? Maybe I'll try a nice preserve if I can find a good recipe. Recommendations welcome.

Winter is Officially Over, Isn't It?

It's around about now that I start to think that Winter Is Officially Over, and I should start eating lovely things like baby leaf salad, asparagus tips, and baby broad beans bursting from the pods. Unfortunately, as you can see from this my broad beans are far from bursting forth a leaf, let alone a pod.

 So I will have quite a wait for my primavera salad, unless it comes courtesy of Waitrose. I always germinate broad beans, (and most other things too) indoors, to help protect them from the wildlife (mice mostly). If you can pick a favourable day to transplant already germinated seeds, I think it gets them off to a really good start. I just keep them in the greenhouse, or anywhere indoors would do fine, in a tray of compost or modules, and as soon as they show signs of germination I tip them gently out

and transplant them to the open ground, if conditions are favourable. Do be careful not to damage the newly emerged root, - the white pointy thing is a root so should be pointing downwards, the shoot comes from the same place a few days later but in an upward direction, obviously.

Broad beans are pretty hardy but if conditions are not favourable for transplanting, if it's freezing or waterlogged, you can certainly grow them on into proper little plants, but for this you will need to have them in 3 inch pots in a good light position. And I would want to get them out into the ground as soon as you reasonably can.

What They Don't Show You On Gardener's World

My husband always wonders why I insist on watching Gardener's World on BBC tv, since I spend  the whole programme moaning about it! Well of course, it's a must view prog for gardeners, but I do wish they could manage to be a bit more, well, normal. Normal gardens have weeds, you never see buttercups or dandelions on Gardeners World, and the soil is like a bag of potting compost, nothing like the claggy lumps of earth most of us have to deal with in the real world. Last year when Joe Swift took on a new allotment, it was miraculously "dug over" in the blink of an eye,which allowed dear old Joe to concentrate on designing the peculiar triangle shape of his veg beds. I know they have to show "progress" but they could have kept at least a part of it hand cultivated if only to show how it works in reality

.

There are always bits of the garden that get neglected and weedy. Well at least in my garden there is. Last year for example, I used weed suppressing fabric on the pathways in the veg garden, topped with wood chippings, but I found that although this is very useful for keeping down annual weeds in the summer, the tough perennial weeds like couch grass, mare's tail, and bindweed seem to just run along under the fabric and sprout up in the beds. When I lifted the fabric this week, I found a veritable spaghetti of roots underneath, so I may re think my use of this method of weed suppression this year.  These are the kinds of things real gardeners are interested in, - I think the programme spends too much time trying to entice novice gardeners, when in reality, most of their core viewers are keen gardeners already, and don't need or appreciate the "this is how to open a seed packet" approach.

My son and I were discussing our ideal Gardeners World "dream team" recently - he wanted Rachel de Thame for eye candy, and Alan Titchmarsh for the main presenter. I would bring back the spririt of Geoff Hamilton as a proper gardener, Alan for eye candy, and Carol Klein as the mad old woman, just to make me feel at home!

I apologize to people who don't get BBCtv  by the way,as this whole item will be of pretty much no interest whatsoever.

Getting organised in the veg garden

Just a quick look at the developments in the veg garden. The weather's been excellent for the past week, and I've taken the opportunity to get on with a bit of digging, well quite a lot of digging in fact. So I thought I'd just show you a picture of how it's going. You're probably thinking it all looks a bit higgledy piggledy, but there is a Plan, no really there is, and I'm quite pleased with progress so far. I've got most of the beds organised, and have dug out a ton of perennial weeds, couch grass, bindweed, and buttercups to name but three.

Note the grey plastic bins I have reclaimed from a local sausage skin manufacturer which will serve as water butts, - the green thing that looks like an overweight Dalek is a compost bin. The greenhouse looks quite clean and sparkly  from this distance, - unfortunately it isn't, and I will have to get on with that job pretty soon too. It's quite a lot of glass to clean Oh it's all go in the garden in March and April.