Monty Don's Trousers

We were lucky enough to be given tickets for the preview day  of the Hamptons Court Palace Flower Show,and  got to see the BBC filming for their coverage later this week. Here's Monty Don and Joe Swift getting ready for a cosy chat.

Monty Don's trousers are an endless source of fascination for me. He always seems to be wearing the same ones. Doubtless organic fairly traded cotton, the creased blue suit has become a kind of uniform, underpinned when demonstrating work in the garden by elastic braces of the kind my grandad used to wear, I notice the braces come off for interviews. Time was, a man taking off his trouser braces in public would be time to make yourself scarce, but Monty doesn't strike me as a fisticuffs type. But I do wonder if he has a huge gothic wardrobe with a line of sinsisterly identical organic blue suits stretching off into the distance... Or maybe it's always the same one, I'm sure I could detect a hole in the knee of one leg...

Anyway, we had to wait for The Organic Monty to finish his interview in the RHS Grow Your Own garden before we could go in, so we were forced to partake of refreshments while we waited. I know, it's a tough job but someone's got to do it. It was well worth the wait though, this was the best part of the show for me, far more than the usual pretend rustic allotment display that you tend to get at shows, this was a really cutting edge grow to eat collection of displays. Herbs, fruits, nuts, edible flowers, there was even a mini vineyard interplanted with edible wild flowers, and olive groves which were quite lovely. The theme of the garden is that everything displayed is edible, so I learned a lot more about what a huge variety of plants are in fact edible as well as ornamental. Including my bete noir, cow parsley, see below.

The Garlic Farm won the award for best exhibit in this section with their gorgeous Garlic Plaiters Cottage, featuring together with lots of garlic of course, large quantities of cow parsley, It was a lovely day, far hotter than I had expected, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.The best day, weather wise of the week I suspect.  We also had the honour of being amongst the peasants to be swept aside at one point by a flurry of suits and uniforms ushering the Duchess of Cornwall around, I wonder that poor old Camilla got to see anything much from inside the battalion of escorts, she'd need to be eight feet tall.

The show gardens were all interesting, with the quest to be different in the concept gardens veering off into the frankly weird, but I was amazed to see that the brilliant garden by Chris Beardshaw, the Stockman's Retreat, was only awarded a silver gilt when it was to my mind the best garden in the show, not just because it was beautiful but it was about gardening and practical skills, and certainly one of the few show gardens bearing much resemblance to reality. Ideas, and concepts are great, but unless you're a millionaire you need practical skills to bring your ideas to life, and to avoid having a huge disconnect between the idea and the reality which I often feel is where show gardens can fall down.

Although I am prepared to suspend disbelief  when viewing show gardens, I was nevertheless disappointed with the upside down garden that I had seen previewed on TV,  Excuse Me While I Kiss The Sky - sounded good  and looked great on tv, but in realityit was just too much scaffolding and didn't work at all for me.  And The World Vision garden for example was lovely to look at but the gardener in me couldn't help wondering how on earth you'd  get a lawn mower into the bowl of grass apparently floating on water!

And lastly I must say I was staggered at the amount of Cow Parsley on show,  or Anthriscus sylvestris as I must now learn to call it. . You can even buy a cultivated form from the RHS Anthriscus sylvestris var Ravenswing, for £7.99 no less. Having spent years strimming it away in the wild areas under the trees (or rather David and James have), I now find that it's fashionable Plant of the Moment! I've always thought that clouds of cow parsley do look lovely in the hegerows in spring, but not in my garden, now I'm thinking maybe I could leave them all and be the height of fashion!

Coverage of the 2011 Hampton Court Palace Flower Show is on BBC2 on Thursday 7th July 8 - 9pm and Friday  8th July 7 - 8pm

Lettuce Lawn

I've heard of a chamomile lawn, indeed I've tried to grow one several times, with limited success it has to be said, but how about a lettuce lawn? This bit of grass is where the Hubbard table chickens lived, and where they consumed many bolted lettuces, and that's possibly the reason for this patch of Green Salad Bown growing in the middle of the grass. Come to think of it, the bolted lettuces were overgrown, but I doubt whether many had had chance to set seed, so maybe it just blew in from the veg patch. I bet I couldn't grow lettuce here if I tried.

It's growing really well though, so as I said before, if things just come up I like to leave them, extra pickings of salad for free. Watch out for Mr Wilkinson coming along on his lawn mower though!

Unexpected Item In The Potting Area

If you share the rather relaxed attitude to the garden that I have, you can often come across unexpected lovely, and sometimes not so lovely things, small pleasures which tidier gardens may miss out on. 

There are weeds. I know there are weeds.

In fact there are quite a lot of "arisings" which have not yet made their way to the "unplaisance". But lots of things come up in the garden which can turn out to have  beneficial effects. Now I'm obviously not talking about horrors like Couch Grass and Bindweed here, and I do my gardeners best to keep such things at bay, but I do allow many things to self seed, and if I like the look of them when they grow I just leave them. Even if it looks to someone else like I have just failed to weed properly.

So the little bit of apple mint by the strawberry bed has turned into a bit of a hedge, and likewisethe odd comfrey plant in the path. But passing the apple mint yesterday on my way to the greenhouse, I noticed this eye catching chap

so I had a closer look, decided I didn't know what it was, and had to nip indoors and check it out online. Turns out it's a Scarlet Tiger Moth (Callimorpha dominula), -the scarlet bit's on the underside so you see it when it flies off - and it loves to feed on comfrey! So that's my bit for wildlife, and a good excuse for leaving the comfrey growing in the path. Bees also love comfrey flowers, so it's useful for the "June gap" when early flowers are over and high summer ones not yet out.

So anyway,when I eventually got to the greenhouse, the first seed tray I lifted revealed this somewhat warty gentleman having a nice after lunch siesta. We seem to have a healthy population of frogs and toads, despite the presence of grass snakes, I guess it's all a question of balance. One thing we don't have a major problem with is slugs though, this rather fat toad looks as though he's been enjoying regular slug banquets.

It was all he could manage to do to waddle off (toads tend to walk rather than hop like frogs) in a huff to find a quieter spot where no one would come along poking about with trowels and generally ruining the ambiance of the restaurant.

Rhubarb, The Colonel Gaddafi of the Allotment

Well rhubarb time seems to be drawing to a close. Thank heavens. It (the rhubarb patch) never seems to get any smaller, though goodness knows I've done my best - I've given lots away, - visitors are seen staggering off down the lane, two bowed legs tottering along beneath the mountain of red stems and green leaves. I've even dug some up in an effort to reduce the Occupied Area, but rhubarb clings to its power base in the allotment with a tenacity reminiscent of a middle eastern despot. I'm expecting Tony Blair to be popping round any time now.

And worse still,  much to Mr Wilkinson's consternation, Rhubarb Crumble is off the menu as I'm still on the diet.  Sort of.  So casting around for ways in which I could  usefully put this earliest of the year's fruit crop on the menu, I came upon Jamie's idea of Rhubarb Bellinis which I rather fancy.

Or possibly this reasonably healthy idea from one of my favourite cooking blogs Smitten Kitchen

neither are stricly in the diet regime though....Ah well, the things one has to endure for International Diplomacy.

It's been a while....

I can't believe how long it is since I last posted. Shameful. But you'll be relieved to know that the weeds in the veg garden are as prolific as ever, so plus ca change, as they say....

The lack of rainfall here has meant a great deal of time moving the hosepipe around the garden just to stop things dying of thirst. And the blog isn't the only thing I've neglected either - the tomato plants have only just gone out,

 and other tender things like peppers and aubergines are still in pots!

Also shameful. So now that I've given myself a good ticking off, I can at least say that the long border is looking pretty good.

 The roses are just coming out,and the peonies and delphiniums are inadequately staked but really lovely for all that, albeit  with a slightly inebriated Saturday night at 2am sway.

These are my favourite kinds of plants, early summer cottage garden reliables - a bit blowsy for some but perfect for me!

Life in the chicken run is pretty quiet at the moment. My two new Goldtops have gone broody already, which is just what I hoped for, and they are installed in two separate runs with six each of Lavender Auracana, and Rhode Island Red eggs to sit on. In fact three of the Lavender Auracanas have hatched this morning.

Not a very good picture I'm afraid, but you have to be a bit quick around grumpy mother hens with new chicks. But then I suppose I'd be a bit grumpy if I'd been sitting on my own in a box for three weeks....

 The three Cuckoo Marans that I hatched in the incubator earlier in the year are now in the run, but I have the suspicion that two of them are cockerels. It's too early to tell definitively, but it looks like at least one roast dinner in prospect! We will have to see.

One of the reasons for my lack of posting recently is we've been busy looking around at houses, as we are thinking of moving to somewhere with a bit more land, not just so that I can grow more weeds, though no doubt I will, but so that I can keep some livestock. I've had quite a bit of experience now with chickens, ducks, and bees, but as I said to the estate agents, I'd like to branch out into something without wings. Like say, pigs, or sheep. Or a lovely Jersey cow. I think I'm probably getting carried away to smallholding heaven - pigs might fly, oh no not wings again.....

Two New Recruits

I picked up these two new recruits to my increasingly fortress like hen run the other day. I think I'll call it the Henitentiary.

Anyway, these two are what's known as Goldtops. They are a cross produced by a white silkie cockerel and a light sussex hen. They really are a lovely golden colour, and are very pretty. I bought them because I was looking for a hen who might go broody fairly easily and hatch out some chicks for me, as I've found the trio of Marans chicksI've been looking after to be quite a lot of trouble, though I'm sure they'll be worth the effort in the end. At the moment the chicks are in the garden during the day, and brought back into the house in their large cardboard carton overnight. They will go outside permanently as soon as they are fully feathered, probably in about a week from now.

My Goldtops came from my new friend Niall Jones who has a lovely smallholding down near Marlborough, not too far from here, where he raises chickens, pigs, sheep and other lovely stuff, on a smallholder scale. What he doesn't need for himself he sells to help support the smallholding. More or less what I'd like to do if I had the space.....

When released from the Henitentiary, the birds have been having a great time sifting through this old compost heap, that I dug out last week. The remaining bits and bobs are just full of bugs and worms, and the chickens love it. I think I will let them clear the area of any pests and then maybe plant it up with some maincrop potatoes. It should be a lovely fertile area. 

Raising Your Own Chicks

With all the attention I've been giving to the Robin family, the arrival of these three little chaps, or rather  chapesses, let's hope, has gone fairly unremarked. They're about three weeks old now, and looking a bit less adorable than they did when they arrived, as they are starting to lose all their soft down and grow proper feathers, which makes them look a bit tatty for a week or two. I did take a pic of them at their downy best..

- note  I gave them a pretend Mum as they were hatched in the incubator so didn't have a proper mum. I kept them under a heat lamp for the first week or so, but they seem fine in a large cardboard box by the Aga now, where they will stay until they are fully feathered, hopefully at about five weeks or so. Then they can go outside and start exploring the big wide world. 

Sadly I only managed to deliver three of the six eggs I had, - I always find incubators more problematic than a broody hen, - there was nothing wrong with the eggs I had, two of the three had died in shell and one had failed to develop. Hopefully the next lot I do I will have a broody for, and won't have the same problems. But for now I have three lovely English Cuckoo Maran chicks, let's hope they're hens not cockerels.

..

What with the chicks, and the Robincam it's just babies. babies, babies round here these days....

Birth Announcement

Mr and Mrs Robin are pleased to announce the birth of several of the really ugliest little scraps you can imagine today, around lunch time, weight I imagine about half a nanogram.
I expect Mother loves them though! Click on the live link on the right of the page to see what's happening.

Young Farmers New Recruit

Thought I'd just post a picture of the youngest prospective recruit to the West Country Young Farmers - this is our grandson Brown with his two new friends. As you can see he's already got the green wellies, and the tractor - just needs a few acres now (bit like his Granny Kathy...) 

Still Sitting Here.....

You  know what it's like at the end of a pregnancy, waiting and waiting, gets a bit boring just sitting around. I feel for Mrs Robin, not even a Hello magazine to flick through, though she does still get out and about a bit each day. My daughter says she saw Mr Robin pop in with a snack for her, but I missed that. Nice to know he's an attentive partner though.

With a somewhat vague 10 -14 day sitting period, the young robins' EDA should be somewhere from Monday onwards, so do check back when you can to see how things are going in the delivery room. I feel a bit like one of those over enthusiastic 70s hippy dads with a video camera, but in this case I feel assured that the expectant mother isn't being distracted in any way by the presence of the camera. I hardly dare say it, as it will surely bring down Sod's Law down on my head with a vengeance, but the video link seems to be working well now and is pretty stable most of the time. There's a box at the top right of the page with a play button that should link live to the nestbox camera. If you find it's saying "off air" it probably means my network adaptor has gone offline, but I try to keep an eye on it and reset when necessary.

My New Swedish Garden Assistant

Allow me to introduce Johanna, my new Hot Composter from Sweden.

Not tall blonde and willowy, but rather short dumpy and green, the Green Johanna is my new compost bin. She represents the latest enclosed, and therefore rat proof, composting system. Rat proof is quite important to me as I live near the Cotswold water park it doesn't take much to encourage Mr and Mrs Ratty and their many offspring to make a holiday home in the compost heap.   I do quite a bit of composting, indeed I am a trained, card carrying Compost Ambassador for the local council, and find the subject fascinating, (I know, I never thought I'd hear myself say that either).

 As a friend of mine said the other day, rats are the elephant in the room in composting circles. Everyone is being encourged these days to compost their household waste, but no one likes to mention the R word in polite society  in case it might put newcomers  off. Which of course it would. Who wants to let their children play in the garden which is also home to a nest of rats? Obviously, no one. I've heard no end of ways you are supposed to "discourage" rats from your compost - kicking the bin everytime you walk past is the favourite - I heard it on Gardeners Question Time again recently. Take it from me it's a waste of time. Not putting cooked food waste in the compost is another, - but I've even had rats in compost made entirely from garden waste, it's such a warm cosy place to make a nest.  

And lest people think I'm being excessive about it, remember that rats carry disease. People still die, albeit not in large numbers any more, from Weil's Disease, which is a kind of leptospirosis caught from contact with animal, notably rats', urine. And so I have tended to be wary of encouraging people to have garden compost containers other than enclosed wormeries,  until now.

The Green Johanna could be the answer. I've had her for a few weeks now and she's doing a good job. She arrives in bits, and is quite simple to put together. The main difference is that the bottom is not open to the ground as most compost containers are, but has small holes in it, to allow for the entry of worms, which are so necessary to the composting process, but are too small for rats to gain entry. The lid screws on quite firmly and the access doors at the bottom fit quite snugly and can even be screwed down for extra rat proofing. And because it's enclosed you can put all your household waste , including meat, fish and bones into it quite safely. You can even buy a winter jacket for Johanna so that she works faster in the cold weather.

Well that's the good news, the bad news is that price -see  the north american site and even the European one . But since good old Wiltshire council are offering them at a subsidised price of £24, I thought it worth a try, and so far I'm quite glad I did. If you live in the UK you may find your local council running a similar scheme. 

 It occured to me though, as I was assembling Johanna, that I could probably achieve a similar kind of enclosed decomposition in one of these second hand plastic drums that I bought  last year to use as water butts. If I just drilled some holes in the bottom? Might give that a try too.