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...