hanging around

Over the past few years, English houses have become much more colourful in the summer with the fashion of using hanging baskets.

There have been hanging baskets and pots outside houses for many years, but now, they have become very common.

Holidays to Brittany, France, two decades ago were a revelation, with all villages decked out in marvellous red, ivy-leaved geraniums.

Our English tradition is to go for much more diverse planting. Here geraniums, surfinias and a host of other baby plants grow on in the greenhouse.

The advent of the dripping water systems on a timer has made life so much easier too, as have little innovations such as moisture retaining granules.

We have stuck to our principles and used peat free compost. It doesn't retain the water or nutrients as well and so our baskets may struggle as the season goes on.

Already out are patio runner beans and strawberries.

Soon to join them will be tumbling cherry tomatoes.

All we then will need is a little summer warmth. I've got the heating on today!

some like it sweet

Calabrese do well for us, unlike many other members of the brassica family.

Sown in the spring and brought on in the greenhouse, the infant plants go out under netting protection. Rabbits and wood pigeons love 'em!

Less easy to combat are the enemies from down below: the slugs. This year's wheeze is to put crushed eggshells around each plant in the hope that the spikiness will deter the slimy enemy.

Our calabrese have new friends this year. Tasting like the sweetened stems of calabrese are kohlrabi. Mmmm. Feeling hungry? This is what passes for food for us vegetarians! We're giving them a try this year.

Brassicas like their soil sweet, hence the dusting of lime.

fair feather friends

The assistant gardeners got another page in their record of achievement portfolio when we took them to help down at the allotment. Their beady eyes, insatiable appetites and relentless scratching and pecking were harnessed to prepare some of the beds that will be planted with brassicas.

They really are highly effective in removing weed seeds and anything that moves.

They also drew several visitors to see just what whacky exploits we were up to next.

There is a rule that says that livestock cannot be kept at the allotments. I gave our vice chair a bantam egg to keep him sweet!

you're alright jack

English hedgerows in May are accompanied by stands of garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) or Jack-by-the hedge.
It is a member of the brassica family, but as its name suggests, its leaves and flowers have a distinct aroma.
The young leaves and the flowers can be added to salads or used as a garnish.

Our early butterfly, the orange tip (Anthocharis cardamines), seeks out garlic mustard to lay its eggs.

There is some debate between us about their place in the garden. You know I am always looking to use our native plants in the garden and this one is a particular favourite. So, I'm not digging it up!

The flowers of the plant are tiny, but close up you can appreciate them better.

volunteers

Thoroughness. That's a quality I value.

I have a picture of myself as being thorough in the garden. I work systematically and methodically.

The evidence of last year's potato crop always creates waves of self-doubt in me. I carefully sift through the soil in August, lifting every potato tuber and ensuring that nothing is left behind.

Then, in the spring, the veneer peels away, as potatoes begin to grow everywhere they shouldn't.

Potatoes that are left in the soil are quaintly termed 'volunteers'. I can imagine my forbears, as 'Diggers' in the English Civil War cultivating parkland appropriated from the aristocracy, using the same language.

I cleared two raised beds of their overwintering green manure crop of field beans at the weekend and discovered all of these 'volunteers' growing away quite happily. One was slug damaged but the others were fine and eaten roasted when I got home.

So, strangely, the 'volunteers' made me think. We finished our last stored potatoes in February. They were getting wizened and wrinkled in their sacks. But here, in May, their siblings are pretty much as fresh as they were in August.

Perhaps I have to return to the old idea of the potato clamp for storing next time.

tea time

Russian Comfrey (variety Bocking 14) is the plant that is synonymous with the father of the British organic gardening movement: Lawrence Hills.

This sterile hybrid is a perennial plant that sends down a long tap root and provides, in its foliage, a wonderful source of plant food for the organic gardener. Hills lauded the qualities of comfrey 'tea' - a noxious and powerful stew of comfrey leaves steeped in water. An excellent source of potash, diluted the liquid makes a perfect feed for flowering plants.

Hills pointed out that comfrey leaves have the same chemical make up as potato fertiliser and recommended their use to line potato trenches as potatoes are planted.

Hills was my gardening guru, but he was probably a writer rather than a doer. Gardeners who use comfrey will know that potatoes are planted a month before comfrey begins to grow. Comfrey leaves are not available when potatoes are planted.

Our comfrey was standing tall at the weekend and ready to have its first cut. The leaves were chopped off at the base using the serated dataree (or dachti), chopped small and then used as a potato mulch.

Hills did not say that the flowers of this useful plant are subtle and beautiful.

cute chicks

In America they are chickadees. In Britain they are tits.

We are lucky in that we have four species of tit visiting the garden on a regular basis.This group of five great tit (parus major) youngsters was taken in a nest box put up at the allotment. Just over a metre from this box a pair of blue tits (cyanistes caeruleus formerly parus caeruleus) have adopted another box. Both boxes are placed on posts in the fruit area of the garden that includes raspberries, tayberry, blue berries and apples.

For the gardener, birds like the great tit are a huge help. They are insect eaters and a study published in 2007 found that great tits helped to reduce caterpillar damage in apple orchards by 50%. Feeding a nest full of growing chicks gives them ample reason to hunt out every pest under every leaf they can find. Keep up the good work.

Of course, their broods are timed to coincide with an abundance of food. Matron shows well-developed chicks in the nest box in her allotment in the south of the country, where the growing season is two weeks ahead of us.

you're beautiful

Ruby Chard is the loveliest plant in the vegetable garden.
And it knows it.

Sown in early summer and then planted as seedlings into the brassica bed, it can be used as spinach is, but with a milder flavour.
Don't forget that the thick stems should not be discarded but may also be eaten. They are removed from the leaves for a slightly longer cooking time and then the leaves are added in the final stages of boiling or steaming.

Splendid looking when it is growing, it keeps its colour after cooking.

rock music

The patio area was missing something. What was it? There are pots of plants aplenty. And lots of room for sitting. A chimeniere is there for burning waste wood and to give us something to contemplate as the stars come out.

Ah, yes ........ the sound of water trickling through stones and rocks.

So .... enter ingenuity.

Take:
an old pond pump
a used builders' bucket
a plastic salad tray thrown away by the greengrocer and turned over
and stones and rocks from the garden.
Sink the bucket so that its top is just above soil level.
Place the pump in the bucket; cut a hole in the salad tray for the pond pump to send its water through; fill the bucket with water; pile the stones and rocks on ........and switch on electricity (from green supplier).
Job done! Trickling water.
Here it is in the process of being made.

come on feel the lemonheads

Sorrel is at its best just now.

Sown in the spring and planted out into the allotment, it grows away quietly until now, when it is at its abundant best. It takes no skill to grow and seems to tolerate a wide range of soils and conditions. Part of the pleasure of growing is the tactile pleasure of picking off the leaves. They snap off the stems very satisfyingly.

The leaves have a tangy, lemony flavour that is quite distinctive. It's great with asparagus in a risotto.

And very few supermarkets sell it.

A further advantage of growing your own vegetables is that you get to eat wonderful things in season that others can't.

Nice one!

in my single bed

This spell of beautiful weather has brought everything on. The salad bed (built last year as part of our garden redesign) is up and running again.
Here, a range of tasty salad crops are coming on well.
The salad bed works well because it is easy to maintain. It is not too wide and it is raised so that one does not have to stoop too much.
It is very close to the water butt and so journeys with a watering can are short.
The dataree, of course, is a boon. It enables beds to be maintained as weed free very easily.
And the whole thing is covered by a cloche, which creates an excellent micro-climate for speeding-up growth.

And finally, the distance from the salad bed to the kitchen is five metres. People talk in food miles, not food metres!

Fresh, seasonal, organic and ultra-local!

oh dahl..ing

Ferns are amongst the oldest of the plants. They occur naturally in Nottinghamshire as they have done for millions of years. They like shaded positions and don't object to our sandy soils at all.

Readers of this blog will know that I am passionate about using native species in the garden and there are many native ferns that are ideal for garden planting.

They can be marvelous architectural plants, bringing form and structure. They are evergreen and tough as old boots . They look good frosted and stand tall during summer droughts.

They also bring these wonderful, primeval shapes to the garden - and language as strange as themselves too.

This curling of the fronds is termed circinate vernation. The kind of phrase Roald Dahl could have coined.

While boys from the secondary modern school were taking their terrier ratting and learning to recognise the calls of our migrant warblers, grammar school girls were preparing their minds for this kind of information. Thank you Jill.

green fingers

It's that time again! The asparagus season has begun!

Asparagus 'Connovers Colossal' really lives up to its name sending up big, thick stems through the soil for harvesting for two months.

Like a still photo of the fingers of the maniacs reaching up through the subterranean grille in the film 'The Music Lovers', the shoots wait. We just need a Tchaikovsky soundtrack. They are cut off just below ground level. They will continue to yield abundantly until midsummer when they are allowed to grow on to be elegant ferns.

This weeks harvest was used immediately in a sorrel, leek and asparagus risotto. Fresh, seasonal, local and tasty!

And, presumably, a diuretic.

some like it hot

Away with lawns! The powered mowing, the weed and feed, the predictability.

In with water conserving mulches and low-maintenance design.

Here's our little patch of front garden. Reused local sandstone separates the garden into two.

The front section is for plants that love it hot and dry. The mulch of builders' pea gravel is inexpensive. In this part, low growing little alpine plants thrive.

The section behind is mulched with bark chippings and is home to pines, conifers and other evergreens. There is a gnarled old lady buddleia davidii who is queen of the street in August. Then the garden is alive with butterflies and bumblebees attracted by the buddleia flowers and the flowers of the marjoram and sage that like to bake in the summer sun.

A honeysuckle has been added this year to grow up the trellis. Cover for birds throughout the year, berries in autumn and winter for overwintering blackcaps. And delicious sweet scent in summer.

if paradise was half as nice........

Phew! A sweltering spring day - and ideal growing conditions.
There was rain overnight and the ground was good and moist this morning. Today, the temperature was predicted to rise to 20C. You can almost hear the plants straining to put on height and leaf.
Under cloche protection we have been steadily planting out batches of early peas 'Feltham First'. Our third and final successive sowing went into the ground today.
Fleece cloches provide protection from frost and wind. They also provide protection from pests that are outside the cloche. The conditions inside are warm and humid. The soil is warmed and ready when the seedlings go in - and they race away.
Don't forget to water plants under cloches - they can become dry.
The picture shows what must be 'pea paradise'.