In the Jungle (A winnow way)

Having sourced, transported & grown my first crop of wheat for an educational project this year, the time has come to separate the wheat from the chaff, literally. A frustrating couple of hours sat in front of the TV and hand-picking out the tiny kernels from two out of the twenty seven cultivars led to an alternative route. A shout out to a Facebook page dedicated to growing veg and allotments led to a top tip for a quick DIY winnower. Social media is just brilliant for a range of good, bad & ugly advice for gardeners. After separating the individual kernels, I poured them from jug to jug in front of a circular fan. The trick seems to be to pour the grains slowly, starting above the fan, so the chaff lifts over the jug. Different cultivars responded better than others, with modern wheat strains separating easily from the chaff. The ancient grains have been far less successful, so an alternative strategy may have to be devised. Perhaps spinning them first in a food processor without blades?

A sting in the tail (28/6/14)

Small tortoiseshell caterpillars (Nymphalidae family) feeding on stinging nettles (Urtica dioica). These nettles don’t just have a sting in the tail, they are a gardener’s friend. As well as being a vital food source for many native British butterflies, they also indicate a particularly nutrient-rich soil. This would explain why I find so many nettle patches in the far corner of gardens, where the compost bin used to be. Whilst I wouldn’t recommend beating yourself with them as the Romans did to alleviate eczema, you may find yourself pleasantly surprised if you pick a few tips & wilt them into soup or a stew. Just remember your thickest gardening gauntlets!

Shed 7

Gardeners are a generous bunch, and one of the reasons I love what I do is sharing information, cuttings & gossip with a myriad of other gardeners, from all walks of life. I was approached to contribute to an article recently on successful vegetable growing, by a local shed manufacturer.  http://www.tigersheds.com/garden-resources/post/2014/06/20/What-causes-measly-veg-yields-We-ask-the-experts.aspx

As well as turning my mind to growing, and the state of the allotment (ahem), I inevitably found myself daydreaming about sheds. We have a range of shedage chez Darwin, that are not without their own controversy. Mr Darwin is rather fond of sheds, and was delighted when we moved in to find we had inherited a classic 8’x6’ Apex. However, along with the house, decrepitude had set in, and we soon realised that the contents of the shed (which hadn’t been cleared out by the estate of the vendor) were holding the structure in place. I knew there was a purpose for hundreds of charity collection bags, that had been stacked in the cavity where a decent lawnmower would reside.

We replaced Shed1 with Son of Shed, a similarly sized Pent with a view to eventually slap a green roof on (again, ahem). With our growing family, I accepted a free chest freezer to store our allotment fruit, emergency milk & reduced price loaves of bread from the Co-op. Mr Darwin was not happy. I had infringed a man law. He bought a bike shed (Shed2). And then moved the children’s bikes into my plastic lean to (Plastic Shed 3). He colonised the stone lean to that had been lined & waterproofed as a general store (Shed 4). He bought a second hand shed for the allotment (Shed5). We were given a wooden chest for recycling & garden toys (Shed6). I mentioned that Shed2 needed a little tlc as it is wobbling. The reply? “I have plans to replace it with something else when it collapses”. Shed7.

Feeling Peachy (29/04/13)

 I was asked this week why apricots haven’t come into blossom. Fruit trees in general have suffered after last years’ poor summer. Pollinators failed to work in the cold wet weather, and any potential blossom was knocked off before any fruit could set. We had moderate success with our apples, but only because the allotment is in a sheltered pocket. There wasn’t a fruit to be seen at home.

As a consequence of this, the fruit trees put all their energy into leafy growth, and extra harsh pruning this winter.

I spoke to RV Rogers, and the Northern Fruit Group at the Harrogate Flower Show for possible reasons why apricots in particular would have suffered from the long harsh spring. The general consensus was that apricots flower early, and if they had put on a lot of whippy green growth last year, the wood wouldn’t be sufficiently ripe to support blossom. They could also be suffering from a lack of potassium in the soil, which would have been washed away with the heavy rains. If both leaf & flower buds have failed to grow, it may have succumbed to bacterial canker. Not so peachy after all...

Harrogate Spring Flower Show (28/04/13)

What a week... I have built my first two show gardens with my day job, which has been an utter baptism of fire. I had guessed at the long hours, non delivery of key kit, and general low level panic as plants struggled to shake off the harsh winter & flowers refused to bloom. I hadn’t anticipated the overwhelming sense of achievement as people pull together & the adrenaline rush of plunging plants into a frame and seeing a garden take shape. My muscles ache & my nose is scorched from the unforgiving winds that whipped across the site throughout the build. After the rush of the build, I made time to go back to the show on Friday as a visitor, to glory in the floral displays and elbow my way to favourite stands with the crowds. Do it again? In a heartbeat.

Playing Chicken with Potatoes (14/04/13)

Gardeners traditionally planted their potatoes on Good Friday. There appear to be two main reasons for this: one is that Good Friday was a public holiday when gardening could take place (not to be performed on a day of rest), and the second was to do with biodynamics, or planting by the phases of the moon.

Easter is the only Christian festival with a moveable date. Using the phase of the moon, the date is set as the first Sunday following the full moon after the Spring Equinox. Chucking your spuds in the ground then is supposed to give you a more successful crop.

I’m don’t know much about this school of planting, but I’m not sure that biodynamic theories could make allowances for the inches of snow covering the allotment on Good Friday this year. After tenderly nurturing the burgeoning sprouts on my chitting seed potatoes, I wasn’t prepared to lose the lot to a heavy frost (even if I could get down the slope into the site).

I chit my first earlies every year, by standing them in egg boxes on a shelf in the loft. They get some sun & a bit of warmth, but nothing to get them sprouting too soon. This spring, I have been picking off the new sprouts in an attempt to slow down their growth before the ground is warm enough to plant in. If I knock off too many eyes, the growing season (which is already a month behind) will be even more slowed. Playing chicken with potatoes...

Dutch Courage

Being in the hortic trade can lead to such varied and rewarding days. A neighbour dropped off a couple of carrier bags of alpine strawberries to grow in our gravel drive and plant around a Gingko seedling at the boys' school.
I then received this e-photo from a friend in the Netherlands, asking what this zingy plant was that they had seen at the Dutch Open Air Museum. It seems a particularly appropriate choice of plant for a Dutch garden, with fiery orange flowers. It is the tender perennial Geranium 'Vancouver Centennial', which I would probably deadhead to encourage larger stunning leaves, and hold back the eye-bleedingly bright blooms. I might struggle to welcome that clash on my doorstep one misty June morning!

Askham Bryan Plant Fest

A fantastic College Open Day, with plant sales, crafts & tree climbing. The boys skipped around trying a bit of everything, only lamenting they couldn't do double handed axe throwing like the 'big tree boys'.

We set up an area for seed sowing, using recycled containers, and about 50 children sprinkled, plonked and patted vegetable seeds into egg boxes, mini cereal packets, crisp tubes, juice cartons and flat sided water bottles. Debz & I cut the bases of plastic bottles into flowers to attach to lolly sticks to make plant labels, and tiny wooden stick-on ladybirds decorated each confection (& a couple of grown ups' lapels too).

In the lull, I sowed a crafty tray or two or overdue seeds for the allotment (squash, kale, corn, sorrel), using some of the compost floor sweepings. After opening a bag of compost at home to find little more than a mass of chewed sticks, the floor sweepings seem quite a viable prospect.

Meat Eaters

Gardeners are incredible generous, whether sharing seeds, plants or opinions (whether good or bad!). It is always a joy to give a little, as the rewards are many fold. Did I mention the overflowing seed box? That is the result of student seed swaps when I pick up the half opened packets at the end of the session.

I put a couple of carnivorous plant fanatics in contact with each other recently, and one, Steve Walker from Wack's Wicked Plants www.wackswickedplants.co.uk offered the boys a plant each as a thank you. They trotted home delightedly with their plants, named Clarence, Bob & Yogi Bear. Woodlice were rooted out of the paving to give to them as their first meal, and their pots were put into rainwater. Next time, we will try not to leave one in reach of the puppy, who liberated Clarence merrily across the lawn. He is having a short stay at the Plant Doctor's (our sunny bedroom window ledge), in the hope he recovers from Post-Puppy Stress Disorder.

By Royal Appointment

Huge excitement as our middle son has been excited to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show Press day next week to be part of the RHS Campaign for School Gardening stand. He wants to know if he will meet "Mr Titchmarsh or the Queen", my proud mother wants to know if I will buy a new bra...

Wheedling with weeds

Why, when the sun has scarcely burst through the clouds & the rain hasn't thought about falling for weeks, do the weeds beat a military tattoo across the beds?
Whilst I accept the premise that 'nature abhors a vacuum', it still sends my heart plummeting when I make it onto the allotment after a mere 10 days away building show gardens. Where there was weathered, but bare soil, I now find chickweed, dandelion, creeping buttercup, groundsel, perennial ryegrass and annual meadowgrass bursting into flower more successfully than anything I could have squeezed into the cold soil after the snow melted.
An hour coaxing roots out of the dessicated & cracked clay soil results in two bins of weeds, and an extra minute is spent ripping the heads off any remaining dandelion flower that dares show its face. It may not stop their growth, but it will stop seeds blowing into neighbouring plots until I get more time to deal with them properly. Weeds don't respond to wheedling.

Park Life

A couple of hours spent in the local park checking ties, stakes & guards around the native saplings planted over two years ago reaped plenty of rewards. The trees have held up well, with only a couple of losses. We cleared a 30cm circle of nettles and grass around each base to help rain water to access the roots (when it finally comes).

It's incredible that such a quick & simple job is so often ignored - motorway embankments are the worst, but it is amazing how often domestic plantings have young trees straining against guards that have fused with the bark. Removing them is risky, as it exposes young, weak bark which can then be vulnerable to rabbit or deer attack, but after an original outlay in guards, ties, stakes & decent well-sourced trees, surely a moment to check them each year is a worthwhile onward investment.

Tussling with the trees almost drowned out the plaintive squeals from the overflowing seeds waiting to be sown in my seedbox at home...

Looking for the Rainbow

Although it has been really tough to find many positives with the long wet summer last year & the extended cold winter, I finally found the rainbow when I walked the boys to school this morning. Because of the delayed start to the blossom, blackthorn is bursting at the same time as its leaves, softening the stark white blooms in the hedgerows. Hawthorn is following closer behind than usual, so they may even cross over, filling the boundaries with blooms.
And for the first time in over 10 years, the magnolia flowers are perfect delicate white and pink goblets: not scarred and scorched around the edges from an evening kiss of frost.

29/04/2013 Feeling Peachy

I was asked this week why apricots haven’t come into blossom. Fruit trees in general have suffered after last years’ poor summer. Pollinators failed to work in the cold wet weather, and any potential blossom was knocked off before any fruit could set. We had moderate success with our apples, but only because the allotment is in a sheltered pocket. There wasn’t a fruit to be seen at home.

As a consequence of this, the fruit trees put all their energy into leafy growth, and extra harsh pruning this winter.

I spoke to RV Rogers, and the Northern Fruit Group at the Harrogate Flower Show for possible reasons why apricots in particular would have suffered from the long harsh spring. The general consensus was that apricots flower early, and if they had put on a lot of whippy green growth last year, the wood wouldn’t be sufficiently ripe to support blossom. They could also be suffering from a lack of potassium in the soil, which would have been washed away with the heavy rains. If both leaf & flower buds have failed to grow, it may have succumbed to bacterial canker. Not so peachy after all...

28/04/2013 Harrogate Spring Flower Show

What a week... I have built my first two show gardens with my day job, which has been an utter baptism of fire. I had guessed at the long hours, non delivery of key kit, and general low level panic as plants struggled to shake off the harsh winter & flowers refused to bloom. I hadn’t anticipated the overwhelming sense of achievement as people pull together & the adrenaline rush of plunging plants into a frame and seeing a garden take shape. My muscles ache & my nose is scorched from the unforgiving winds that whipped across the site throughout the build. After the rush of the build, I made time to go back to the show on Friday as a visitor, to glory in the floral displays and elbow my way to favourite stands with the crowds. Do it again? In a heartbeat.

14/04/2013 Playing Chicken with Potatoes

Gardeners traditionally planted their potatoes on Good Friday. There appear to be two main reasons for this: one is that Good Friday was a public holiday when gardening could take place (not to be performed on a day of rest), and the second was to do with biodynamics, or planting by the phases of the moon.

Easter is the only Christian festival with a moveable date. Using the phase of the moon, the date is set as the first Sunday following the full moon after the Spring Equinox. Chucking your spuds in the ground then is supposed to give you a more successful crop.

I’m don’t know much about this school of planting, but I’m not sure that biodynamic theories could make allowances for the inches of snow covering the allotment on Good Friday this year. After tenderly nurturing the burgeoning sprouts on my chitting seed potatoes, I wasn’t prepared to lose the lot to a heavy frost (even if I could get down the slope into the site).

I chit my first earlies every year, by standing them in egg boxes on a shelf in the loft. They get some sun & a bit of warmth, but nothing to get them sprouting too soon. This spring, I have been picking off the new sprouts in an attempt to slow down their growth before the ground is warm enough to plant in. If I knock off too many eyes, the growing season (which is already a month behind) will be even more slowed. Playing chicken with potatoes...

Hard Drive

Come June, I always start to feel that the garden is running away from me; so with only a couple of frantic weeks of lecturing left, I treated myself to a few minutes trying to restore some order in the front garden.
This is the first impression that anyone makes of us as a family, and of me as a designer, so where I am prepared to allow yellow plastic diggers & bald patches on the back lawn, I am more particular with 'my' garden.
When we moved here 10 years ago, we ripped out the tarmac drive (which was peeling back from another tarmac layer), and laid Indian sandstone wheel tracks infilled with slate chippings. This was to reduce the harshness of a paved drive, to allow for water run-off from the sloping back garden, and to squeeze in a few more pockets for planting.
It has been easy to maintain, with a lick of a flame gun (weed wand) every few weeks keeping to worst of the weeds down. However, this summer (ha!), there has been too much rain and wind to be able to scorch the weeds, and nature has taken over.
Kneeling down & lifting rogue roots with a daisy grubber is immensely satifying. I can now spot Thymus serphyllum and am delighted it has finally started to colonise the gravel, releasing a slight herbal scent underfoot (or underwheel). I sowed a packet of thyme a few weeks ago, holding little hope for its' germination rate as I left it outside by the car, but every one has come up & I will be transferring these into the gaps left by the moss & grass once the seedlings are big enough to move. I am keeping the self-seeded Verbena bonariensis in situ for a couple more weeks before transplanting it into the beds for some later summer colour. I fancy experimenting with some more adventurous dwarf herbs along the gaps in the pointing: French Sorrel (Rumex scutatus), Lemon Basil (Ocimum citriodorum), Heartsease (Viola tricolore) & Oregano (Origanum vulgare 'Aureum'), but will be sprinkling seed rather than failing at establishing pot specimens as previous experience has shown. I must remember to sow a few seeds in pots first, so I don't grub them up in a few weeks' time...

Ordered Chaos?

Usually, by the beginning of June, the front garden would be in a horticultural no-man's land: weeds would be rigorously pulled (along with one or two plants put in the previous Autumn, and forgotten about...); the herbaceous perennials hacked back with a Chelsea short, back & sides; and the dwarf lilac (Syringa pubescens subsp. microphylla 'Superba' AGM) shaking itself with shock after a swift prune to remove the dead flowerheads & regain its' rounded pillow shape. It usually takes a couple of weeks for the plants to forgive me & grow on, but they reward me with a longer flowering season deep into the Autumn.

This year, because of the relentless wet Spring, this hasn't happened. Everything is in bloom a touch later than usual, and the initial weeding rout hasn't happened. We have just had a fantastic 10 days of sun & heat leading up to the Diamond Jubilee weekend, and there has been a riot. Neighbours & passers-by have commented on the lush fullness of the planting, and the surprising textural combinations that have sprung up. I am relishing the contrast between a red corkscrew hazel (Corylus avellana contorta 'Red Majestic' and a white masterwort (Astrantia major - no idea which, but it has lime green edging). Another fabulous accident is Chocolate Mint (Mentha piperita) that I had forgotten was in a pot with a coastal daisy (Erigeron karvinskianus), but the finest planting combinations are proving problematic.

Another square metal pot is crammed full of mints, and is looking stunning combined with a small flowered pink cranesbill. Unfortunately, the cranesbill is herb Robert - Geranium robertianum,and I am in two minds whether to treat it as a weed, as I normally do.

My final conflict, which I will have to resolve in spite of the visual impact, is between a blue iris (Iris sibirica), Geranium robertianum, Anemone huphensis 'Honorine Jobert' (not flowering yet), and Aegopodium podagraria... Ground Elder. The celebrations for the Queen may have to be deferred until this interloper is eradicated.

Totally Mintal

I have been on a fantastic foraging course with Chris Bax from Taste the Wild & I just know that the things I learned from him & Rose will continue to reverberate through my gardening life.

I was thinking of this as I pulled handfuls of goosegrass (Galium aparine) from the bank at the back of the garden today. The tips are edible, and have a faint taste of grassy peas, but the texture is a bit challenging, as the sticky, furry buds roll around your mouth.

I contemplated saving a handful to add to tonights’ salad, but decided they would be happier contributing to the green bin.

I cropped back my mint collection instead. The sudden sunshine has caused an explosion of mint, which has only been really successful here since I planted it in old compost in pots in the front garden last year. It has been covered in mildew during previous years, so a judicious pruning during Chelsea week will hopefully prevent this. I have hung a huge bunch of garden, chocolate, pepper & spearmints in the pantry that have already been used in tea & a quinoa salad. I am hoping to dry the rest for more tea, unless I can think of another forager’s use for it.

Totally Saffy

In amongst the bulbs I planted a couple of weeks ago were one or two Crocus sativus. They were already starting to flower, so I didn't have high hopes for their survival.
This is the saffron producing Autumn flowering crocus, which produces pretty, if short-lived, lilac striped flowers punctuated with crimson stigma.

As always, I stuffed them into a pot & let them be. It has still been so exciting to see them bloom. We carefully extracted the three saffron stigma from each flower, and put them to one side to dry out. I had in mind a recipe for St Lucia cakes (Saffron Buns) that a Swedish friend made for me many years ago, and just had enough saffron without having to cheat with turmeric.

The recipe looks more complicated than I remembered, but I set an afternoon aside to get baking with the boys.

The result? We'll have to wait to next year. 'Someone' tidied the saffron strands into the bin...