Pruning the allotment swamp

A quick drizzly trip to the allotment revealed just how far from cultivation things still are - very claggy underfoot, still too wet to dig.  When you get clod-platforms from walking across the paths, you know that you should NOT be venturing into the growing areas...

Dragged down there by my children (interesting role reversal) who wanted to continue their treehouse building exploits, I had my second visit in a week yesterday.

No digging to be done as we squelched around the edges of the plot, so I continued clearing the path down the side, cutting back the hedge and digging out brambles.

Also tackled the list below:

Jobs for February

Cut down autumn fruiting raspberries to the base as they fruit on this year's growth - cut them down to get lots of new fruiting canes.

Prune roses - cut back hybrid teas to 4 or five growing points per stem.  Cut back English shrub roses  by about a third.

Prune blackcurrants - take out older wood (darkest colour) with few sideshoots, keep two year old wood (tea coloured) with plenty of sideshoots as these will bear this year's fruit.

Buy seed potatoes and stand the tubers in egg cartons, or a box, in frost free place to start sprouting those little knobbly shoots (long whizzers mean there's not enough light in the place where you've put them - keep them somewhere cool, frost-free and light).

Still to do this month

Prune apple and pear trees
Prune gooseberries
Prune redcurrants

If (as if!) dry enough, prepare planting areas.


Looks like I'll have to keep my secateurs sharp for the rest of the month and keep on chopping in the absence of other heavy duty tasks.

Have to keep myself busy to resist the urge to sow too many new seeds as it is still a bit too early really - trying to force myself to hang on for another few weeks.

Parsnip bread and winter digging

Had a quick foray down to the allotment yesterday to do a spot of tidying.

If only creeping buttercup was one of my desired crops, I would be reporting a bumper harvest.  It seems to be the main thing I need to clear out of the beds.  It was good to make a start on the long route to pristine planting spaces. Had to make sure I stood on a plank when digging the beds in order to avoid compacting the soil, rather than turning it.  More regular trips like this and the plot might even start to look more presentable.

Uprooted most of the remaining parsnips in order to make parsnip bread, which was, bizarrely, added to my youngest's recent birthday list.  Never fail to deliver vegetables when they are requested by your children!!    The recipe is based on Hugh Fearnley-Whitingstall's and is more like a scone than a bread. It IS completely delicious:


Parsnip Bread.

1 onion, sliced
175g SR Flour
1 tsp thyme leaves
1 tablespoon oil
50g grated strong flavoured cheese (parmesan or cheddar are good)
175g grated parsnip
1 medium egg, beaten
2-3 tablespoons milk
Pepper

Fry the onions gently in the oil for about ten minutes. When they are soft and slightly coloured, remove them from the heat and let them cool a little.

Mix flour, thyme, salt, cheese, parsnip and pepper.  Add the onion, then the egg and milk.  Mix to make a soft dough.  If it is too stiff, add a little extra milk.  Be careful not to over mix.  Shape the loaf and put it on an oiled baking tray.

Bake in oven at 180 deg C/Gas Mk4 for 40-45 minutes until golden. To check if the loaf is cooked, tap the underside - if it sounds hollow, it is ready.

Serve warm with soup and slabs of butter.

Raking time - repeat

It's raking time again as my lawn is once more blanketed in leaves from the surrounding large trees.
Whilst cursing the futility of this task, remember that you are also removing slug hiding places and letting your plants get some fresh air.

Not only that, you are also collecting great material to return to your soil in six months time.  Put the leaves in black plastic bin bags, tie up, stab them with a fork (strangely therapeutic, worryingly) and then leave the bags somewhere out of sight (behind the shed, in the hedge bottom etc) for six months or so.  In late spring, open a bag and see how your leaf mould is progressing.  If it is dark and crumbly, add it to soil before planting. It doesn't contain a lot of nutrients but will help to bulk up your soil and improve the texture. Repeated addition of organic matter (compost, leaf mould, manure etc) will make your soil much easier to work - so keep on doing this year on year.

Making leaf-mould separately from your compost is better if you have large quantities of leaves because they tend to rot down more slowly than other stuff due to the tannins in them.  If you have the space, you can bash four wooden posts into the ground to form a square and then tie a length of chicken wire fencing around them.  My cubic metre holds an amazing amount of leaves both from my own garden and the school ground I tend - and there are plenty of leaves from both at this time of year. Mine is tucked away behind tall plants at the bottom of the garden, with a little brick path (just bricks laid on top of compacted soil, so it is easily moved/changed/relaid) leading to it. The dog leg path also makes this  wide border more accessible for working and provides a focal point when you get to the bottom of the garden as you want to know where it leads.

Groundworks continue

Finished paths (or should I be less grand and say 'filled in the gaps'?) around my raised bed this weekend.  Next phase is to fill it with the tulips I've just had delivered from Parkers Wholesale (http://www.dutchbulbs.co.uk/).  This could be a dangerously addictive new find of a website!

Nicked the idea of paviours and bricks from my sister's garden - very pleased with my new addition. It's also a great way of using up just a few of the blue bricks which I dug up when putting down slabs to unify/level the paved area around the side of the house.

So many jobs still to do - and the days are getting shorter...

Pricked out my dianthus 'Sooty' seedlings in the greenhouse today, so hopefully they will overwinter successfully in a cold greenhouse or in the coldframe.

Revamping the border

Time to get to work on the newly emptied border.

October is a great time to think about what works and what doesn't, and what you want to achieve next year.  Getting in there with a spade and the contents of a compost bin will help your soil get a boost for next year, and will give the inevitable frosts time to break up any heavy soil over the winter.

I'm going to set to work in a moment to dig out more ground elder and other weeds and really get my 'new' thorn free border ready for planting.  I've been looking at smaller, repeat flowering roses to put into it on t'internet and have earmarked a few possibilities on www.cants roses.co.uk - 'Susan', a white rose which is reputed to repeat well and have a really good vase life and also the beautiful pink Queen of Sweden rose.

The only thing to remember with roses is not to plant them in soil which has previously been home to roses or they will not thrive due to 'rose replant' problems, so will have to put them in a slightly different patch.

Am very excited about my new area though, so better get to it while the rain holds off.

Being brutal...

I've finally done it - chopped down the huge, vicious rambling rose which took up most of a border.  Thorny work.  (The man who helped me with the prunings at the recycling centre doubtless still bears the scars).

Not only have I regained the vast space it took up, I'll now be able to pick my damsons without getting stabbed by its thorns, and also my eyes are no longer at risk of a spiky poking when putting compost in the bin. There's a lot more light getting in to the whole area so should be able to grow a whole new array of plant in that patch and extend my cutting flower area.

Whilst I had my loppers and pruning saw out, I took out the viburnum tinus which thought it was a tree rather than a shrub.  I inherited it with the house, and have let it be til now, but now that the damson tree at the end of the hedge is much taller, I don't really need it as a privacy screen, so off with its head!
Finished off cutting the hawthorn hedge and reduced its height a bit as well, so all in all, a very good (but prickly) day.  When I took my jeans off last night, my legs looked like they'd had a run in with a fleet of hedgehogs.

A bit sparse now, but I've rediscovered my dogwoods!  Looking forward to my 'new' planting space next spring.

Raised, filled and ready for action.

A sludgy day of wheelbarrowing is now complete and my raised bed sits proudly on what used to be a concrete desert.  Am looking forward to planting it up but will leave it to settle for a a week or so before doing so.  Had fun making a soil, bonemeal and compost layer cake effect when filling it.

Still have enough free topsoil left to create another bed, but have no other space earmarked at present, so the soil heap will just have to wait for spaces to arrive in the border.  I'm sure it can all be used - the soil in the greenhouse border can be renewed for starters - if the wild rocket ever stops providing me with salad that is...

Most of my September sown seeds in the greenhouse are now sprouting, so have a fuzzy little crop of Ammi majus, dianthus 'Sooty' (thanks for the seeds Cheng Jing!)  and hollyhocks are also starting to sprout.  Very excited to see the scabious seeds starting to push through - a scabious was the first containerised plant I ever bought as an adult, so its partially responsible for my gardening obsession...  I have a real soft spot for it in all its wild and cultivated forms.  Roll on next year!!

Don't be tidy - leave your seedheads for the  birds and the frosts... Better than a bald garden, any day.

School term starts and my new gardening  regime begins....

The plan -

• Finish off hard landscaping.
• Pick up cheap annual seeds from garden centre to start September sowing
• Cut back lavender to old wood and save dried flower heads
• Take cuttings of new penstemons to have some more for next year
• Clear out the green house
• Wage war on ground elder
• Have a general tidy up around the garden - get rid of all the stagnant buckets of rain-stewed weeds which have been sitting around for ages....
• Take all the remaining patio rubble to the recycling centre
• Do my first fencing project - replace the section of front fence between us and the neighbours.
• Meet with school to discuss their gardens and a work schedule...  (Yippeee - I've got the infant school garden back!)
• Make regular weekly visits to the allotment.

That should be enough for starters.... (that's without all the house painting jobs which are also on the list).

Summer seems to have arrived in September this year, with a whole week of sunny weather forecast for the Midlands at last.  It's come a bit late for my garden, but at least the roses in the main flower bed are putting on a good second flush of flowers.  The yellow rose, 'Absolutely Fabulous' is living up to its name as has been covered in new blooms and they just seem to keep going and going.  My beloved dark red/purple 'Falstaff' has also been having its best year yet, but it's always a race to get its blooms to open fully before the rain clobbers them and turns them into brown dough balls.  The current flower heads seem to be winning the race so am hoping to have a splendiferous show by the weekend.

I'm also delighted to see the herbaceous clematis (c. heracleifolia 'Wyevale') doing so well - it seems to be sprouting new bits every year and as it is the nearest scent to that of Indonesian frangipani blossom (my all time favourite flower smell), I am always happy to see it spread a bit further.  Combines well with the yellow rose (below) at this time of year, don't you think?

Hacked at the hawthorn hedge which is trying to turn into a collection of 20ft hawthorn trees earlier this week - layered a few bits by lacerating my arms and bending springy branches down and threading them into the framework of the hedge, but the really tall escapees just had to be cut down.  Now comes the fun bit of disposing of the malevolent prunings.

Right - back to work IN THE SUNSHINE!

Today's weather will be.....

Spring is on the way

Sweet Peas toughening up in the unheated greenhouse.

Signs of stirring everywhere - allium bulbs now poking up through the borders and I'm always amazed at the rate at which they grow away each day.  Globe artichokes are sprouting nicely so I separated some offshoots from an established plant today to try and increase stocks.  Potted them up using fairly gritty compost with added perlite for drainage, so hope that will be enough to avoid any rotting problems.

The staging in the greenhouse is filling up nicely and is host to early sowings of sweet peas, lupins which have been booted off the top of the piano indoors, window boxes of lettuce sowings...

As well as the artichoke offshoots, today's additions were a couple of lengths of guttering into which I sowed some peas - either to go into the allotment or to eat as pea shoots in salads.   Also lifted and divided heucheras which where starting to get a bit straggly, along with eryngiums (sea holly) which I'm hoping to use to pad out the new patio border.  The satisfaction of getting plants for free definitely rivals the pleasures of plant shopping at shows.

Got a flyer through the post about the Malvern Spring Show today - debating whether to risk my wallet or not this year...

Death to ground elder!

Astrantia (pink) and Lysimachia (purple leaf)

Hardy Geranium with euphorbia
(green foliage and bracts)

Spent my afternoon doing battle with the creeping roots of ground elder - I can tell I've been too busy to garden properly over the past 18 months as the evil weed is now firmly re-established in one of the borders.

One happy side effect of ferreting out the insidious roots is that it has encouraged me to review which plants merit a place in the affected border and which ones are just too woody, straggly and generally over the hill. No mercy has been shown to anything falling into the latter category - green recycling bags now await collection stuffed with scruffy purple sage (have another clump which I'll take cuttings from later to replenish my stocks), invasive lumps of lysimachia (which has great purple foliage, but is a real thug) and endless seedlings of hardy geranium which are making a bid for world domination.

Also lifted and divided clumps of herbaceous perennials like astrantia, anemone levellei, primroses and aquilegias, so hopefully the denuded border should fill up again over the coming months and show a bit more vigour.  That's the theory anyhow - hope we don't get a prolonged cold snap or another dry spring like last year...

Shifted some of the hellebore seedlings which were clustered at the feet of the parent plant - Old Mother hellebore is just coming into flower, so I know that the growing season is imminent.  Lungworts are also starting to add a welcome splash of blue and pink in addition to the snowdrops which are putting on a great display this year.

It feels good to be doing some proper gardening again - it's definitely addictive, and I get very grumpy if I can't get out there and do something.

Tip trips and salad boxes

Started off some new salad boxes today - put drainage crocks and compost in old wooden wine crate and sowed mixed salad seeds in it.   Must get some more of old fruit trays from the local greengrocers as well - lined with an old newspaper, they do the trick too.   I've found that growing lettuce in trays is much more successful than growing it in the garden as it seems to survive slug and cat attacks more successfully - also I can keep it by the back door for a quick snip when I need some green stuff for my sandwiches!

Also set some summer bulbs (freesias - never tried these before) in the old dolly tub.  As these will not sprout fully for a while, also chucked some lettuce and mustard seeds in there too - might as well get a double benefit from it while waiting for the bulbs to colour things up!

Finally got round to taking the big bulk bags of tree prunings to the tip and also reduced the rubble mountain from our concrete bashing session at the weekend - clearing out the cracked old surface at the side of the house and hoping to (eventually) match it in with all the paving on the patio - already looks much bigger just because it no longer has 4 different sections of materials sloping in multiple directions. I'm determined to get it finished before seed planting time takes over entirely!

Fencing job to sort out next - would love to get a hedge in, but not sure if there's enough soil to do it as
it edges right onto the concrete bit which we are in the process of bashing out.  I'll have to see what can be done there.  Feel another jumbo bag of topsoil coming on.....

Out with the old

Alchemilla Mollis - Lady's Mantle

A spot of pre-spring cleaning in the borders today.  Cleared away old stems, leaves etc from last year's perennials so things are already starting to look a bit more business like in the borders.  Also moved plants around in the new patio border I've made - all the stuff which used to spill out onto the hard-surfacing, like alchemilla mollis,  now finds itself at the back of a very deep border, so I've had to hoick it forward into a new position at the front so that it doesn't get completely lost when I finish planting up.   Also moved small herbaceous plants like knapweed and snapdragons further forward - want to get the benefit of their colours for impact near the front, and also want to get them repeating through the border  so that it doesn't look bitty.  Amazing how many plants you can get from one sowing of snapdragon seeds last year!  Have to say my planting out last year was of the 'stick them in before they die' variety, but they seem to have survived and flourished - just that the clumps of now respectable sized plants now need thinning out and the tops pinching out to encourage them to plump up a bit.

The lethal blade of grandma's old spade inflicted its divisive blows on a few chunks of hardy geraniums and irises.   Dotted them together in groups in empty patches.  Enjoyed yanking out congested clumps of michaelmas daisies as well - they're lovely in autumn, but real bruisers that will take over swathes of flower border if left to their own creeping devices.  Out out creepy roots....

The first seeds of the year

The propagator now hosts its first sproutings of the year, so things are improving in my gardening world.  Knobbly little lupin nuggets are poking above the surface of the seed tray, so whilst my outdoor garden activities are still limited to relaying the patio, I share the propagator's warm fug of delight at actually seeing things start to grow.

Sprouting potatoes are lurking in the porch, and the 'March' section of my seed shoebox is tempting me to get more things going.  I've got to rein in the urge to sow too many seeds though - as the snow last Saturday reminded me - must try to be patient, hold on and wait for things to warm a few more degrees to give things the best chance of surviving the unheated greenhouse which awaits them...

Itching to get going....