What's it like to be a flower grower in winter?

Brrrrr…….. Luckily this is not the scene just yet….

I was recently asked by Modern Mint, a Essex-based landscape gardening company and curators of garden writing, to contribute a guest post to their blog on this topic.

So for this week's blog entry, we need to wander over to their site…. (click here)

Signs of life

It may be soggy, but the first signs that things are still living in the cold, damp world outdoors are now visible in the garden.  A relief to the prowling gardener, desperate for seasons to turn and for the next year of plants to begin.

I suppose an enforced hiatus in the gardening calendar affords opportunities to do other things.

Lots of cake stands have been made, and teacups drilled in readiness for spring bulbs and violas.  Also lots of fellow flower folk were met in Devon, and tips and experiences exchanged.  It also gave me the perfect excuse to visit a friend whose path, it transpires, I haven't crossed for 5 years.  Indeed, her once-child has now morphed into a very large adult since he was last sighted as a 12 year old….  Which just goes to show how quickly time flies. And soon it will be spring again, so I shouldn't wish time away.

But perhaps the most important outcome of the British Flowers meet was that I was bossed into writing a letter enquiring about the abandoned walled garden which still dominates my gardening imagination.
Those who told me that if I didn't follow up on it, I'd regret it or always wonder "what if…" were right, I think.  So on my return, google was searched and a letter was sent.  What next? Hmmm.

However, without taking on any further land, I've still managed to increase my growing space, having spent the last few dry days digging over the viburnum-vacated patch and grubbing out the ground elder.  I was moaning in a previous post that the black plastic had failed to make an impact on this pernicious weed, but now have to revise my opinion.  Once a fork is jabbed into the snaky rooted mass to dislodge it,  the ground elder can be teased out of the beautifully friable compost layer that has accumulated on top of the plastic. And when the elder is removed, the plastic can be dragged back to reveal dry, diggable soil (a contrast to the adjoining soggy mass) and this can then be stripped of the somewhat desiccated roots which snake across its surface in their quest for light and moisture. Sadly, I've learned through bitter experience, that without a chemical blitz, ground elder is for life, not just for Christmas, but at least this way I get to remove a lot of it in one big purge.  Enough to have a new 10 foot square growing space at any rate.

Newly vacated

Death to the dominators...

I can tell, just by my quest for a photo of this spot in its previous state, that it was a fairly nondescript, unproductive area, as there is barely any record of it for the last couple of years.  Look forward to planting it up in a few months time and letting my seedlings get their roots into this fantastically compost enriched soil.

Hipplecrips towards the future

"What's a hipplecrip?" you may ask.  In Derbyshire it's a tiny step made by putting one foot in front of the other, touching the heel of your leading foot against the toe of your back foot.  And these are what have been taken today.

The exciting news was getting my first farmer's market stall confirmed and discovering #britishflowers on Twitter.   

The feelings of delight on getting my stall have been followed by mild panic, wondering what will be ready in April and whether it will be enough - May onwards will be abundant, but the weather is such a tricky beast in the meantime it could have a real bearing on what is ready for the first stall.

So with new resolve, today I followed my newly drawn hosepipe line and chopped out more border space for future planting. Very satisfying.  Large pile of cut turf now stacked, grass side down, underneath the pear tree, waiting to be recycled as top soil in 6 months time.  I always seem to have one of these heaps accumulating somewhere in the garden...

 Here's the path, where are the primroses?

Gone is the annoying patch of grass behind the tree. Revealed are the patches of rubble and old cherry tree root underlying bits of this border.  Tomorrow, the tackling  of these will be added to my jobs list. Along with getting serious compost, leaf mould and muck into the new border areas.  And getting to the allotment to do some proper work next week. (Why are good intentions always so frequent where that place is concerned?)

In the garden at home, I can see  glimmerings of white sheathed snowdrop buds appearing in the borders and the first tentacles of hellebore flower shoots are slowly probing their way out of the mud. But spring still seems such a way off with this muddy drabness all around.  Hard to believe this will all change in the next six to eight weeks (an undending source of annual satisfaction).  This is what I have to keep telling myself when I gulp at the thought of actually producing flowers to sell - things seem impossibly dead at the moment, but will not always be so.

I'm starting small, with one stall a month, just to see how things go and although my mind gets ahead of me with multiple markets and major flower undertakings, the reality is, thankfully, more modest.  So I'll just have to bear this in mind, take deep breaths, pull on my boots, pray for good weather and set to work...

Indoor gardening with Pinterest

Within my own Apple product-besotted family, I am renowned as something of a luddite.  It has come as a surprise to all (including me) that since I've started blogging, I've started joining bits of the virtual puzzle together via Facebook, Twitter, and now... Pinterest.  Except that Pinterest is the most fun because it's all about bookmarking things you like via images.  It's a really useful way to re-find great ideas which you spot on various trawls through the internet,  but always struggle to locate when you want to show them to someone else, two months later.

Also, quite by accident, I've found Pinterest to be a virtual way of seeing which flowers people really seem to go for.  Every day my email gives me multiple messages saying that people have re-pinned pictures of  Tithonia rotundifolia ' Torch', Cleome hassleriana 'Helen Campbell' and Campanula glomerata var. 'Superba' into their own scrapbooks.  A great indicator of which blooms might have impact on a cut flower stall  (not sure if the campanula will cut well, but the other two certainly will), so have ordered seeds of cleome and tithonia on the strength of this very positive response!

The internet is like browsing seed catalogues, gardening, craft and DIY books all in one place.  It's a great time fritterer, but sometimes the minutes or hours spent plotting, dreaming and scheming about gardening do come to life in the off-line world.  While it is grey and still too wet underfoot to garden, I'm harvesting ideas and using Pinterest as my store cupboard for this season's dreams.

If you haven't visited yet, take a peek at my scrapbook here:

http://pinterest.com/tuckshopgardenr/

or better still, start making your own!

Snow gardening

Sometimes you are given gifts which you like, but are not sure you will ever find a use for.  Such was my feeling when I was handed a pair of furry boot toppers by my mother-in-law at Christmas.  Any doubts about their usefulness have now been banished and they have proved effective snow excluders atop my walking boots for the past week.  Very useful for sledging and snow digging.

Armed with my spade and sweeping brush, I have just come in from clearing snow from shrubs - just as well I know my garden like the back of my hand so I can identify the lumpy forms of baby ones hidden in the thick snow.  My hydrangea heads have stood well through the winter, but this morning resembled heavy white footballs and threatened imminent snappage to their meagre branches. As I pinged the snow off, you could almost hear the plant sigh with relief as it boinged back into a more upright position.

As for the cold frame, it has taken on a whole new meaning:

It looks more like a cool box for a massive party than a nurturing place for plants.  However, hollyhocks, ammi majus and sweet peas still lurk comfortably within.  I know because I cleared the snow off the top and checked up on them.  I suppose the snow provides insulation against the cold and protects them slightly. I'm so impressed by the durability of these little annuals though, I think they deserve pride of place in the garden come March - maybe I should make a 'snow heroes' border?  I don't think any of their outdoor-sown contemporaries will emerge to keep them company. Indeed, as far as I can see, outdoor September sowings were a complete washout.  This year I'm tempted to stick to autumn sowing only under cover, or perhaps I should experiment with sowing earlier in September than I did in 2012.  Mind you, last year was such a growing disaster that I probably shouldn't use it as a yardstick for judging the efficacy of sowing times.

Snow jobs for now

Clear the glass of the greenhouse and the cold frame to allow more of winter's limited light to penetrate - do your plants a favour and get sweeping (or digging, depending on how much snowfall you got!).

Unburden your shrubs and woody plants, like rosemary and lavender, of snow to stop the branches snapping.

Make hot chocolate with marshmallows as a reward to yourself.

Sprout alert

This is not a post-Sunday lunch warning, merely an update on what's happening in my boiler cupboard for the 52 week salad challenge.


Three days into my mung bean growing foray and things are already looking positive.

I look forward to tucking into them in a few days time - great to get that nice crispy/crunchy/fresh flavour at this time of year.

Meanwhile, have just dug out the car to go to the supermarket to stock up on the hazardous (but also tasty) brussel variety of sprouts to go with all the hearty wintery stews etc we will no doubt be consuming over the coming days.  

Dared to peek into my snow-shaded greenhouse this morning. I lifted the horticultural fleece covering my annual seedlings with trepidation after a week of temperatures hovering around freezing or below but was delighted to see that they are still defiantly with me. I just hope they can continue to resist the arctic conditions until the milder weather which we've been promised from next weekend.

Now I'm going to venture outside and brush the snow off my lavender so it doesn't get entirely bent out of shape, and also off the viburnum bush.  A gentle shake will help the plants to maintain their shape rather than getting snapped by the weight of the white stuff.  I, however, will probably end up looking like my snowman by the time I'm finished with this task.

The kindest cut

Inspired by getting my own straggly locks chopped off this morning, wielding my sharp secateurs and a disinfectant rag, I ventured into the thorny midsts of my roses today and took out all the lanky, dead and twiggy bits:  I want them to work hard for me in the cutting garden come early summer.

Most of my choices in the garden were made for glorious scent - the thing that turned me on to roses about 15 years ago. I was visiting a friend who suddenly exclaimed "Sniff that".  No, it wasn't anything more intoxicating than a beautiful white rose - and that was the start of my perfumed rose addiction.

I started off with 'Gertrude Jekyll'  (even though I thought I was buying Constance Spry).

Rosa 'Gertrude Jekyll'

She's beautifully perfumed and flowers well but does get a bit leggy and straggly so I had to reduce her height by about a third this afternoon. Sorry Gertrude, but you'll thank me for it later, I hope.  Growing at the back of the border, climbing up an obelisk,  the lower growing peonies and hardy geraniums hide her naked legs, and it's good to have her pink blossoms giving height to the overall scheme.

A later purchase delivered a  'Constance Spry' to keep Gertrude company in the same stretch of border. I cut this one back quite a lot last year without any loss of flower power, and as a result have slightly less work to do on the pruning front this year.

Rosa 'Constance Spry"

I'm always slightly tentative about cutting back Old English type David Austin roses as I don't want them to lose their relaxed, arching habit.  This same habit, however, does mean that for arranging they are best cut on a shorter stems as they tend to droop with their thinner stems and large, heavy flowers.  Or you can support them in denser arrangements with your filler flowers as below:

Here, they're arranged with my yellow floribunda rose 'Absolutely Fabulous' which lived up to its name from June to November with amazing repeat flowering despite the pouring rain. The deep pink rose pictured is a small shrub 'John Betjeman' which has fantastic colour but, like Ab Fab, little scent.  The jury is still out on this one as his stems are rather weak and spindly - the glorious colour, however, buys him another year of grace to see if he can merit his space with sturdier stalks after a prune.

My other loves are the petite Felicite Parmentier;  the most perfect shell pink cluster flowered rose with amazing scent, and Falstaff; another leggy scrambler of the deepest magenta hue and nostril-thrilling whiffage.

Felicite Parmentier

Falstaff and foxgloves

The harshest cut was today reserved for my newly planted hybrid teas.  I've cut the ones which weren't already shortened by the nursery to about half their previous size - want them to grow into nice sturdy plants with strong flower-bearing stems.  My new additions are Black Baccara and Peace roses - the former seems to be reliably dark and dusky. The latter, however, in the images I've seen, seems to vary wildly between pastel hued lemon/cream delicately fading to pink edges,  and horribly canary combined with  lipstick pink - so I'm waiting with bated breath to see how that one pans out.  Will keep you posted!

Can't wait for them all to put on a show for me come June and to breath those smells again.  (But before that will come their manure top dressing in spring - not quite so pretty...).

So what are you waiting for?  You can't do a lot else at this time of year.  Take up your secateurs, sturdy gloves and your tweezers for spike removal surgery afterwards.  Some time between now and the end of February, nip out between the showers and give your roses a prune.

For advice on rose pruning, check out the Royal Horticultural Society website

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.