Time for a Break

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Cornwall

There comes a time when a break from the plot and garden is needed. It’s time for the wellies to have a rest, along with their wearer. (Although after this week’s torrential rain I may need to pack the wellies, *sighs*). I need to see the sea, to feel sand between my toes, to indulge in some seafood and cream teas and clear away the cobwebs. Wellyman has finished his third year of his OU degree, so the laptop will be put to one side and the mobiles switched off and I’m going to take a bit of a break from blogging too.

Cornwall, here we come!

The Rules of Gardening

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Daucus carota 'Black Knight', Ken Thompson, RHS, University of Sheffield, Vita Sackville-West

Daucus carota ‘Black Knight’

Much of what we do as gardeners is about following rules. We might not realise it because we probably do the jobs without thinking but somewhere along the line we learnt how to plant a shrub or the best way to get seeds to germinate. Maybe we were shown how to do it by a parent, perhaps we read about it in a book or possibly it was a Gardener’s World presenter that showed us the technique. Most of these ‘rules’ are based on sound horticultural science but are they always worth following or does sticking to what the experts say constrict us as gardeners and prevent us from being a bit more experimental?

Rosa ‘Nuits de Young’ growing in Vita’s garden at Sissinghurst in Kent

I’m reading In Your Garden at the moment which is a collection of articles written by Vita Sackville-West for the Observer newspaper in 1950. In her March 26th entry she writes about gardeners across the country, knives and secateurs at the ready, ‘brandishing these objects of destruction, battalions of professional and amateur gardeners advance, prepared to do their worst, as they have immemorially been taught’. During the war Vita had worked as a Land Army representative and came across roses that had been left to their own devices and she had found them to flourish and whilst visiting a friend’s garden, where she was daring to break the rules by barely touching her roses, she discovered the same results. As she wrote ‘it rejoices me to see that different ideas are creeping in’.

Often the difference is between those gardeners who have been formally trained and those who are self-taught. Whilst I did go back to college to study for my RHS qualifications several years ago, I’m an amateur gardener and see myself as having a welly in both camps, so to speak. I loved studying in greater depth the science behind plants and the soil, and knowing why plants did things meant I had more of an understanding of what I needed to do to help them grow but you learn the RIGHT way to do tasks and sometimes there was part of me thinking ‘really, does it have to be done that way?’ To achieve the levels of perfection attained by the RHS then the answer is yes but for the rest of us mere mortals some of the rules can be broken some of the time. For instance, the very precise ways to sow seeds may well guarantee better germination rates and be necessary on a commercial scale but when your shed is so small your seed sowing is done sat on the path outside the shed and wielding a sieve to dust my seeds with a covering of compost would be impractical you make the best of your circumstances.

This spring I tried to grow the beautiful flower Daucus carota ‘Black Knight’. As it is from the carrot family it’s advised to sow direct, as the plant does not like root disturbance. I dutifully followed instructions but the first sowing were eaten by slugs and the second sowing succumbed to the deluge of rain we had in April and May. Frustrated but determined I thought I’d start some off in a seed tray. Well perseverance paid off and I have been picking flowers for a month now and there was not a trace of the plants suffering from being moved from a seed tray into the ground.

When I got my first compost bin last year I was quite nervous about how to go about the whole business of composting, thinking I was just going to end up with a pile of slimy sludge stinking in the corner. I’d read so many books advising me to what to do that my head was swimming. Fortunately, I came across the writer, Ken Thompson, and his book, Compost. It was informative and fascinating but most importantly it was a relaxed book, there was no sense that there was a right or wrong way to do it. I don’t have time to be prodding and poking my heap so I leave the worms do their work. Admittedly, my heap is not the fastest at producing compost but I still get a result.

Zinnias attract wildlife too and are much more attractive to look at than nettles

Since then I’ve discovered two other books by Ken Thompson both of which continue his refreshingly pragmatic approach to gardening. A plant ecologist and senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield he uses his extensive knowledge to dispel some of the myths that have been perpetuated over the years. In No Nettles Required he explains that you don’t need a patch of nettles in your garden to attract wildlife or have to turn it into a scrubby, unattractive piece of wasteland just to get birds, bees and butterflies visiting His other book An Ear to the Ground which I’ve just borrowed from the library, includes snippets such as the disadvantages of solid windbreaks, such as fences, being over-exaggerated and not to be afraid to be experimental with pruning to see what gets the best results. I can see this is a book I’m going to love.

As the climate changes and the seasons become more blurred maybe we’ll all have to become more flexible in our approach to gardening. And whilst much of horticulture is based on very sound reasoning who knows what a little bit of experimenting every now and again might uncover.

I’d love to hear about the ‘rules’ you’ve broken in the garden and the outcomes, good or bad.

I want to be an ostrich

Tags

autumn equinox, Florence fennel, French bean 'Blauhilde', leek moth

So it’s officially autumn. It was the autumn equinox on Saturday and from now until March the nights are longer than the days. The weather is distinctly autumnal and it’s cold enough to light the wood-burner. The problem is I’m in denial; I refuse to light the fire in September, it’s just too early. I even went into town last week in flip-floppy things, cropped trousers and no jacket. The sun was shining, which had lulled me into thinking it was warmer than it actually was but the nip in the air quickly made me regret my attire. It’s unusual for me to be under-dressed. I have never bought into the ‘a coat is not an option, even if it is minus 15 outside and blue skin is distinctly unattractive’ ethos that some of my fellow north-easteners have become famous for. I guess I’m still hoping that by some miracle an Indian summer will appear and my trips to the allotment won’t require layers of fleece just yet.

Of course, I know denial is futile. Burying my head in the sand like an ostrich might keep my head warm but it won’t do much for the rest of me. Do ostriches actually bury their heads in the sand or have they been badly misrepresented over the years?

Borlotti beans

I did make the most of Saturday’s lovely sunshine though, to start to prepare the plot for its winter slumber. We’ve been lucky to escape the early frosts that have affected some but the cooler temperatures had started to take their toll on the French beans and the weight of the plants on the teepee had caused quite an alarming lean to the structure, so with strong winds and rain predicted I thought it was time to remove them. They were the tall climbing bean variety ‘Blauhilde’ with long purple pods which I would highly recommend, partly because it coped with the worst summer any of us has ever known, and also because the beans were very tasty and never got tough or stringy. I harvested the last two Florence fennel bulbs and made the decision to pick No. 1 squash. It could have done with longer on the plant to ripen a bit more but after nurturing it for so long I didn’t want to lose it to frost. It’s now on the kitchen window sill where the skin can harden a little more but to be honest as it is our only decent sized squash curing the skin to prolong storage is not really an issue; I’m sure we’ll be cooking with it in the weeks to come.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the last couple of weeks moving manure from the allotment pile to my own plot. I can only really manage an hour or two before my back hurts so I try to do a little bit every couple of days if the weather allows and gradually the beds are being mulched.

Russian red kale

My plan was to have more winter veg this year so there’s some mizuna and cavolo nero kale in a bed along with some red Russian kale. This Russian kale is actually more bluey-pink and it’s particularly versatile. I love it wilted in omlettes and pasta dishes or in bubble and squeak. If you grow one winter veg I’d recommend this one.

The purple and white sprouting broccoli plants have recovered from the caterpillar onslaught. Even though I had covered them in enviromesh butterflies had still, somehow managed to lay eggs on them. Vigilance and judicious squishing saved the day but it just shows how a gardener can’t rest on their laurels even when pest controls have been employed.

My leeks have not faired so well, in fact they’ve been a bit of a disaster. It appears they have been subject to an attack from the leek moth. I perhaps wasn’t as vigilant with my leeks as I now realise I should have been. They had started to look a bit raggedy but I didn’t think much of it until an inspection last week when I discovered tiny little caterpillars chomping their way into the stems of my leeks. With little hope of some of the leeks recovering I had to remove them. So it seems I need to cover them too next year, with fleece or enviromesh. You never see the elegant kitchen gardens in sumptuous photo shoots swathed in fleece, do you?

Not wanting to end on a tale of leek destruction though, I have planted up some more biennials for early flowers next year. I love biennials as they give me hope at this time of year. It can be quite melancholic removing this year’s plants but biennials remind me of my plans for next year and they fill me with hope for good weather and bountiful crops.

Malvern Meanders

Tags

green alkanet, harebell, Malvern Hills, rosebay willow herb, speckled wood butterfly

Iron Age hill fort on the Malvern ridge

The Malvern Hills are one of my favourite spots for a walk. The eight-mile long ridge of hills rises above the Worcestershire countryside. They stretch out across the landscape and the humps make me think of a sleeping dinosaur. Paths criss-cross the hills; walking along the tops gives spectacular views across to Wales and the Black Mountains and the Brecon Beacon National Park or you can wander along at a lower level enjoying some of the flora and fauna.

Speckled wood butterfly

We did a walk here recently as summer was fading; it was the same walk we had done earlier in the year when hawthorns were covered in their frothy blossom, now their berries were turning red. Back in spring it was bluebells covering the hillside, now it was bracken with its rusty coloured spores and the towering spires of rosebay willow herb with its pink flowers. Its not an attractive plant to my eyes. It flowers are a gaudy colour of pink and its habit is inelegant to say the least, however it does provide a great source of pollen and nectar for bees through the summer and into autumn, a very important time for the health of hives as the bees build up stores of food to get them through the winter. I also admire a plant that can grow in seemingly inhospitable places such as railway embankments.

Rosebay Willow Herb

Appearing above the grassy hillsides were patches of lilac harebells. Also known as cuckoo’s shoe or witch bells, Campanula rotundifolia looks very delicate with its papery bell shaped flower, a complete contrast to the coarseness of the willowherb. Harebells must be fairly strong plants though, to be able to compete in amongst the grasses. Flitting about all over were speckled wood butterflies. Many of our native butterflies are struggling, especially after such a difficult summer but the speckled wood seems to be one that is coping remarkably well. They feed on brambles, fleabane, ragwort and dandelion and I’ve seen them on all my woodland walks this summer.

Green Alkanet

At first glance I thought this was Omphaloides, it was only when I checked my wildflower guide that I discovered it was Green Alkanet. They look very similar and are both members of the Borage family. The flowers are edible, although they apparently have little flavour but can be used like borage flowers to decorate ice cubes or salads. Alkanet is not a native British flower, originating in the southern Mediterranean but it was popular in medieval times with monks for the red dye that it produces and it is probably from these monastic gardens that it spread into the countryside. Not much further on were the lime green spiky fruits of the horse chestnut tree.

I’ve never been a fan of heather in the garden but I do love it growing in the wild, en masse. Another great source of nectar for bees, the smell of heather honey always transports me to a walk I once did on the Pennine moorland around Haworth. The scent of the heather that day is captured by the bees in their honey.

September is the month to look out for fungi in all their glorious forms. This one I think is a bracket fungus but my identification skills can go no further, unfortunately. One day I’ll have more time to study the vast and intriguing array of fungi, until then I’ll rely on the vast knowledge out there, as I’m sure someone will be able to help me give it a proper name.

I love walks like this, ones that I do throughout the seasons, the different stages of the growth of the trees, the wildflowers that appear and then disappear to be replaced by something else that catches my eye. Autumn will be in full swing by the time we get to walk here again and there’ll be a whole array of natural wonders to delight once again.

For more information about the Malverns.

Rich Pickings

Tags

borlotti beans, bubble and squeak, celeriac remoulade, Florence fennel, Sophie Dahl

Rich pickings from the plot

The blue skies and sunshine of the last week or so have been lovely but the resulting cold nights are much less welcome. Parts of the country experienced their first frost last night and, although it is the middle of September, it just feels too early to be having frost. I’m just not prepared for the colder weather yet, no logs for the wood burner, no pallets chopped for kindling. We were fortunate to escape the very low temperatures last night but the prospect of it spurred me on to go up to the plot this morning to harvest some of the produce. The French beans, courgettes and fennel will all suffer if the nights continue to get colder and it would be a shame to lose them, so I thought I’d better start harvesting.

It has been such a short growing season, with a lot of these plants only getting into their stride in mid-August coupled with the threat of frost putting the kibosh on ideas of an Indian summer. Still, looking at my basket of produce I’m pretty happy with what I’ve managed to produce.

I’m particularly chuffed with my celeriac and Florence fennel. Carrying them back from the plot this lunchtime felt like I’d been given a trophy. It was slightly tempting to raise them aloft as I walked past one of my fellow plot holders in a triumphant gesture to show I can grow veg and not just flowers.

I’ve never tried celeriac before and had read that it could be a bit difficult but it has been really easy to grow. I started off the seeds very early in mid-February and planted them out in May and other than pulling away any leaves that have fallen down around the sides I haven’t had to do anything. I think I have been helped somewhat by the wet summer. By all accounts, they don’t like to dry out but there wasn’t much danger of that this year. Today was the first harvest. A vegetable that wouldn’t win any beauty awards it has an unusual flavour, similar to celery but milder. It is something I had never even eaten until about 2 years ago when I saw Sophie Dahl use it in a recipe on TV, for a bubble and squeak type dish. The recipe looked so good I thought I’d give it a try and I wasn’t disappointed. Half of it will be used to make that recipe tomorrow night but, for tonight, I think a bit of celeriac remoulade is in the offing. It sounds really quite fancy, celeriac remoulade, but it’s only small batons of celeriac mixed with mayonnaise, lemon juice and I use a little dijon mustard. A very tasty accompaniment to all sorts of meals.

And, I’ve finally cracked growing Florence fennel. I’ve tried in the past but they’ve never got beyond seedling stage always devoured by slugs. This year, I managed to get 5 to a big enough stage to plant out at the plot and they have all swollen to very respectable sizes. OK, 5 fennel bulbs isn’t exactly self-sufficiently but I’m so pleased I’ve managed to grow them that I’m encouraged to attempt more sowings of them next year. My favourite way to eat the bulbs is to slice them into chunks and roast them in rapeseed oil. They are lovely mixed with other roast vegetables such as peppers and courgettes and go particularly well with fish and pork.

I’m picking so many raspberries at the moment. Pretty much a large bag-full every day, it’s a good job they freeze well.

The borlotti beans have been a real success. The opposite of the celeriac, these are real beauties. The pods start off green with the faintest mottling of red but as they develop the green turns to cream and they end up looking as if they’ve been splattered with a paint gun, as the red increasingly becomes more dominant. I have been picking them at this stage and then podding them and using them in casseroles and soups. The beans inside are stunning, creamy white or eau-de-nil, often with streaks of red on them, too; disappointingly this colour disappears once cooked. Their lovely creamy texture when cooked, a little like butter beans, more than makes up for this, though. Today’s harvest are destined for a minestrone soup at the end of the week. So not such a bad harvest after all.

Abergavenny Food Festival

Tags

Abergavenny Food Festival, Fine Forage Foods, Isle of Wight Garlic, Jekka McVicar, Sea Spring Seeds

Over the last decade or so it is hard to deny that there has been a bit of a revolution in the way we approach food in this country. For years we, and others, thought our food was dreadful, we were the poor relation culinary wise, not just in Europe but in the world. Our food industry had, and still does, to some extent suffer from the intensification of agriculture needed during the Second World War. Small scale producers found it increasingly difficult to compete with large companies and then the supermarkets came along and food became about convenience. People no longer wanted to spend time making food, ready meals and microwaves were the way forward. I can remember watching Tomorrow’s World and there being a story about us only needing to swallow a pill in the future and we would get all our nutritional needs that way. *shudders*

But things have changed, nowhere near enough, I’ll admit, but we are no longer seen as a culinary desert. We are learning to celebrate our food and nowhere is this most evident than at the Abergavenny Food Festival. Held on the second weekend in September, people from all over flock to the small market town on the edge of the Brecon Beacon National Park. September and October have traditionally been the months of harvest festivals and ever since man started to grow their own food I imagine that early autumn was seen as a time of abundance, a time to be thankful for the crop that year. Over the last decade or so food festivals, like the one at Abergavenny, have sprung up all over the country and are, I think, a modern day version of the harvest festival.

Abergavenny is only a short drive from my home and I can’t quite believe my luck that we have such a great event on our doorstep. Food producers from the local area and beyond set up stalls in the town centre and the market hall selling their wares. There are plenty of opportunities to taste and stock up the fridge and larder for autumn and winter.

At various venues there are talks from chefs and food producers giving an insight into subjects as varied as the wonders of garlic and foraging to urban growing and setting up a rural skills centre.

There is a great buzz to the town, so with cool bags at the ready we set about the ever so slightly daunting task of navigating ourselves around so much tasty food.

There can’t be many occasions when you have sampled pumpernickel bread, a variety of goats cheeses, rose petal syrup, roasted seeds, crayfish tails, raw chocolate, lavender jelly and a shot of Herefordshire gin all before 11am and all this was topped off with smoked salmon and bubble and squeak for lunch. It’s certainly a test of your digestive system and reading the list now, makes me feel slightly queasy. Where’s that mint tea?

It shows how far we’ve come though, as a country, in regards to food. There was a whole range of food I hadn’t eaten until I went to university. I can’t imagine cooking now without ingredients such as aubergines, peppers, hummus and pesto but these were foods I’d never come across until I was in my twenties; they were the staples of health food shops rather than supermarkets, seen only as foods for hippies but now they are ubiquitous. The wealth of produce on offer now however, is quite incredible, from smoked garlic and goats meat to wild boar and pickled unripe blackberries. We’ve rediscovered classic British recipes but by using the best ingredients it has meant they can rival any other cuisine. We’ve also started to produce our own versions of classic foods from around the world such as our own charcuterie, mozzarella and parmesan.

The market hall packed with stalls offering tasty produce

My favourite stalls were the Isle of Wight Garlic Farm, along with the colourful chillies from Sea Spring Seeds. Jekka McVicar’s herb stall is always a treasure trove of the most essential herbs for cooking and something a little bit different, such as ginger mint. Probably the best discovery though, was the Forage Fine Foods stand. The brainchild of Liz Knight, there were all sorts of concoctions made from wild, foraged foods such as the elderberry viniagrette or from locally grown produce such as the herb garden rub which could be used on meat. My favourite had to be the rose petal preserve. I’ve always been a bit wary of floral scented food products, I think I was scarred as a child by being given parma violets. As a result, I thought everything with flowers in it would taste like old fashioned soap but this rose petal preserve was so delicious. The taste of a British garden in June. I know that sounds a little strange but believe me it was lovely and would be delicious on ice cream, pancakes, sponge cakes, even porridge.

Events like this are a great way of trying different foods and ingredients without having to buy lots of jars only to find you’re not that keen on something. Here you can try until you can take no more and then, when you find those products that tickle your taste buds, you can make your purchase safe in the knowledge it won’t sit at the back of your cupboard unused for years.

Abergavenny may be over for this year but over the next couple of months there will be foodie festivals the length and breadth of the country. Hopefully I might get to squeeze in a few more but for now I’ve got to go and find some recipes for goats meat!

My Crab Apple

Tags

crab apple tree, crab apples

It has been quite a while since I posted about my dear crab apple tree. Summer is always a quiet time for it, anyway. Once the blossom fades in May it blends into the background providing some shade for the end of the garden and a dark green backdrop for other plants to shine.

It looked as good as ever this spring, covered in blossom and, with the introduction of an espalier eating apple into the garden, I was hopeful it would be a pollinator for it. But, whilst my new apple was happpily pollianted and produced our first tasty home-grown fruit, my crab apple has not faired so well. In June, July and August we had so much rain, day after day, that I rarely venutred out into the garden. If I did, it was for a hurried trip to the compost bin and to the shed to drop off some recycling. Then, one day it stopped raining and I finally got a chance to potter and whilst doing a spot of weeding I had a look at the crab. Oh, it didn’t look well. My first thought was not another tree to have to get cut down. We’re not doing well with trees so far, an ornamental cherry lost to canker, an acer lost to something undiagnosed, a silver birch that was just too big. I was beginning to wonder if I had some unwanted propensity for killing trees.

The leaves looked sickly, and I could barely see any fruit. I did wonder if it was the weather. The tree looks a little better now for some sun, but I can only describe it as looking a bit mangy; it’s had a hard year.

It should be dripping in fruit and they should be ripening nicely now but the weather has put paid to that. When it came into blossom at the end of April we suffered a cold snap. Late frosts and heavy rain meant there were no insects about to pollinate. This will certainly explain the lack of fruits and is a worrying example of what will happen in the future if we don’t protect our pollinating insects, such as honey bees. Those fruits that have appeared are much smaller than normal and scabby and I can only imagine this has been caused by the miserable summer.

For me, it means fewer lovely red apples to gaze at whilst I do the washing up this autumn and winter, but more importantly, the blackbirds and starlings that strip the tree of fruit from December into March, will be short of food this winter. I fear it will be a hard year for the birds and small mammals dependent on trees and hedgerows for their food. Hips, haws and berries are all scarce, certainly here, this autumn.

So, whilst the tree doesn’t look at its best and I’ll have to buy more bird food to make sure they don’t go hungry this winter, it is a relief that it just seems to be the weather that has caused my crab apple to look so bad this year, I don’t think I could face another visit from a tree surgeon.

Botanical Bristol

Tags

botanic gardens, Chinese herb garden, Giant Amazon Waterlily, Register for Chinese Medicine, University of Bristol Botanic Garden

A couple of days off last week were well-timed with a spell of lovely weather and, as much as I love my plot, I do like the opportunity to get out and about. We’d been thinking about visiting the Bristol Botanic Garden for a while but had never got round to it, so with the sun shining we thought we’d give it a try.

Part of the University of Bristol, the garden has moved around quite a bit. In 1882, the first botanic garden was created on a site in the Clifton area of the city, the gardens were then relocated twice before 2005 when they were moved to their current location, known as The Holmes. It must be some task moving an entire botanic garden, the prospect of moving house and wanting to take so many plants with me fills me with trepidation I can’t quite imagine having to move enough plants to fill almost 2 hectares.

I love botanic gardens but it’s important to approach them in a different way to other garden visits. Whilst they can still be beautiful places, the focus is on learning, showing how plants have evolved, how they fit within our ecosystems and how humans can exploit plants in a multitude of ways. The ideas behind the planting and design of botanic gardens is different to any other type of garden. Plant labels are in abundance. There tends to be only one plant of a variety, as the idea is about showing diversity within species and not necessarily creating a ‘pleasing to the eye’ planting scheme. Often plants are included that have very few aesthetic qualities; they wouldn’t make it onto most ‘must buy’ lists. Visiting a botanic garden though, is about seeing plants in a different way not just looking at them in terms of beauty but removing our gardening glasses and appreciating plants for the food they give us, the chemicals within them that provide important medicines and understanding how they have evolved over 500 million years.

Tricyrtis macropoda or the toad lily

The first section of the garden is an area where plants have been grouped according to how they are pollinated. It was fascinating to discover that it’s not just bees, butterflies and moths that pollinate plants and that there are some plants that have developed a special relationship with a particular species of pollinator. There are orchids pollinated by wasps, bat pollinated bananas and bottlebrush plants pollinated by possums.

Bird of paradise flower – reminds me of a crazy emu

There is an area devoted to flora local to the Bristol and Somerset area which includes some rare species. There is the rare Bristol Onion and Sorbus bristoliensis and Sorbus wilmottiana which can only be found in the Avon Gorge and nowhere else.

The botanic gardens have strong links with the Register for Chinese Medicine and, in partnership with them, have created a Chinese Herb Garden where students can study. Some of the plants are not found anywhere else in Britain. It’s rare, for example, to find a female Ginkgo biloba tree in cultivation because the fruit it produces, when ripe, smell disgusting.

The Dell and the story of plant evolution

I particularly loved the section devoted to plant evolution. The path dipped down here to create a dell with some gorgeous specimen plants. Rocks from key geological periods had been used along with plants from the time to show that the first plant life existed only in water but then mosses and liverworts evolved, as did ferns and horsetails. There were some beautiful tree ferns and cycads followed by Monkey Puzzle trees and Wollemi pines until you reach the first flowering plants to evolve. Many of these first ancient flowering plants became extinct but the magnolia family is one of the few to have survived.

In the area devoted to Mediterranean planting there were crops specific to this climatic area. It is intriguing to see Flax plants, from where linseed comes and durum wheat. I’ve eaten pasta made from the wheat and often put linseed in my cereal but I’d never actually seen what the plants looked like.

My what a big lemon – Wellyman demonstrates just how big this lemon was.

My favourite area had to be the glasshouses. I love the intense heat, the damp musty smell and the exotica inside these places. Here, at Bristol, the glasshouses are divided into different climatic zones. There was an impressive collection of cacti, pelargoniums and succulents representing the warm temperate areas of South Africa and the Americas. The sub-tropical area included orchids, ferns and, the always fascinating, fly-catching plants but it was the tropical zone that was most impressive with the Giant Amazon Waterlily and lotus plants in the central pool. Around the edge were plants we all know from our weekly shop such as the banana plant and the cocoa plant. A stem of some sugar cane had been cut open and it was possible to see the gleaming white sticky sugary liquid inside.

Giant Amazon Waterlily

Botanic gardens are important places and it’s good to see that the University wanted to invest in a new site when the garden was moved rather than closing it. No university in Britain now offers Botany as a full degree, which is incredibly sad when the potential of plants is so vast and our knowledge of them is still so limited. As climate change increases, I think our need for understanding plants will only become greater. The gardens are still a work in progress and it will be some time before some areas have become established and I do wish there was a more ‘appealing to the eye’ way of labelling the plants than the green plastic labels with marker pen scrawled on them. I’m sure it is the cheap option, important when funds are tight but it did look sometimes like they were cultivating the labels and not plants. But as a place to while away a few hours it was well worth the trip and I now know what a chickpea looks like when on the plant.

Chickpeas – Cicer arientinum

P.S. It appears that these dangling pods above, are not, in fact, chickpeas. I am none the wiser to what they actually are. One of the problems with Botanic Gardens is having lots of labels dotted about can sometimes make it difficult to work out what plant relates to what label. Hence, the chickpea misidentification. Thank you Christina for making me wonder and thanks to the internet for confirming her thoughts. Just thought I’d clarify, wouldn’t want to be giving out duff information. ;)

For more information about the garden and events and courses held there visit the Bristol Botanic Garden website.

Fruits of My Labour

Tags

Clifton, cooking with nasturtium flowers, Damson gin

Blackberry ‘Ruben’ will soon be ready to eat

Last week’s taste of summer, albeit late, was a delight. At the allotment the light on a morning and in late afternoon was beautiful. I’m not sure why the light in September is so lovely, maybe it’s the angle and the tone, there is none of the harshness of sunlight in high summer but crucially there is a warmth that isn’t there in spring. Shafts of light falling on the dahlias and rudbeckias and heavy dew glistening on the feathery foliage of the fennel meant the plot sparkled.

September is one of my favourite months, even though the prospect of winter just being around the corner doesn’t thrill me. There is something about the shortening days that makes me want to prepare the house for winter. To squirrel away fruit from the plot in the freezer, to dig out recipes for warming stews and to think about ordering our wood for the log burner. Food might have something to do with me loving this time of year so much. The month of harvest, even in a year where the weather has impacted so much on food production, September is the time to celebrate the best of our crops.

Damson gin

Unlike last autumn, where the hedgerows were laden with hips and haws, this year is looking a little bleak, certainly in my neck of the woods. We fancied making some damson gin for the first time but hadn’t been able to find any on our walks around the village. However, on Friday we spent the day in Bristol and were sat opposite a great greengrocers in Clifton, enjoying a spot of café culture when we spotted a large tray of dark, juicy damsons. Buying isn’t quite the same as foraging but needs must. So on Sunday we filled a jar with damsons that I had pricked all over, a fair amount of sugar went in and then I filled it up with gin. Sealed and stored in the larder I need to give it an occasional gentle shake and then after several months I can decant the liquor into bottles. For someone who doesn’t really drink it might seem like a strange thing to have done but there seemed something quite special about trying it at least. The colour of the liquid inside the jar, if nothing else, will remind me on a cold January evening of the warmth of a September day.

My autumn fruiting raspberries are producing a great crop. I have a mix of ‘Polka’ and ‘Autumn Bliss’ with the former having far superior berries and I’m picking enough to fill freezer bags full, for treats later in the year. Crumbles are a favourite dessert of mine and a versatile way of using autumnal fruit but even I can get sick of crumble. So I’ve started making the healthier option of compotes and purées. My favourite at the moment consists of cooked apple and plums with blackberries. I use eating apples and therefore don’t need to add any sugar to sweeten it. Apparently, in France there is no distinction between eating and cooking apples and it is perfectly acceptable to use what we would consider dessert apples such as Cox’s, in tarts and pies. I blitz my fruity concoction so it is very smooth and it’s yummy with porridge, yoghurt and ice cream. To make a compote, just keep the fruit quite chunky and add a little apple juice and cook over a medium heat until the fruit has softened. The pectin in the fruit should make for a slightly syrupy sauce and the colour will be amazing.

Nasturtium breadcrumb topping

I’ve even found a great use for my nasturtium flowers. They have added a real splash of colour to salads but I tried them in a breadcrumb topping a few weeks ago and it was a real success. Simply chop a good handful of flowers and add to some breadcrumbs, some grated parmesan and chopped sun-dried tomatoes, stir and then add a little rapeseed/olive oil, put in an ovenproof dish and cook until golden, in a medium oven. This topping is perfect with some grilled white fish and the nasturtium flowers add a real peppery flavour.

With the inaugural first harvest of celeriac, fennel and the prized No. 1 squash it looks like a tasty autumn ahead.

One Year On

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Facebook, my plot, Twitter, Wellyman, wellywoman

I’m quite embarrassed by the state of my wellies.

So today is the first anniversary of Wellywoman. A kind of birthday, I guess. It was hubby’s idea, knowing the looming prospect of winter and the effect low light levels have on my well-being, he suggested I give writing a blog a go, as a bit of a distraction until spring came. And so Wellywoman and Wellyman were born.

I have to admit, I have always been a bit of a technophobe and a late adopter when it comes to new technology. A year ago I didn’t get any of this social media stuff and now, well there are aspects of it that I still don’t like and you’ll never convince me about Facebook but I can now say I can’t imagine life without blogging. I’m even on Twitter.

For me, sitting at the computer seemed the antithesis of everything I love about gardening; the outdoors, fresh air, birdsong and getting my hands dirty but what has surprised me most is that writing about my plot, my garden and plants, in general, has made me appreciate them all the more. I thought I might struggle to find ideas to write about but actually wanting to write has made me seek out new places, people and plants, whilst looking at what has been around me for years in a new light.

On the face of it, blogging possibly wasn’t going to work for me as diary-keeping has never been a strong point. I was given a diary for my thirteenth birthday. It seems to be quite a rite of passage for a teenage girl to keep a diary. Most of my friends were very good at it, but I was rubbish. I’d write maybe once a month and then, even that dwindled. I’d occasionally have a spurt of writing activity but then I got engrossed in other interests. I think it was the writing about the minutiae of daily life that didn’t really appeal, I did love writing and research though and ended up doing a lot of this in my previous life and I didn’t really realise how much I had missed it until I started writing again. Somehow I’ve managed to write 115,192 words over the last year for my blog, so maybe I can finally say I cracked this diary writing.

Wellywoman has introduced me to people I wouldn’t have ordinarily met and given me opportunities I wouldn’t have thought possible a year ago. But the best bit about blogging has been discovering a whole community out there of passionate people who love the good things in life, plants, wildlife, food and books, as much as I do. Gardening tends to be a solitary pastime or job. For some, this is part of the attraction. I’ve met some gardeners/nursery owners who really seem to dislike the intrusion of other people, even if they are customers, into their space but I think most gardeners are actually very social people. Well, my experience from blogging, and more recently Twitter, certainly seems to back this up. There are some who have formed real friendships through the blogosphere, those who swap seeds and plants and those who share the highs and lows of life, in general.

For me, blogs provide a source of inspiration, hints and tips and personal views that are not possible through any other form of media. I love the honesty I have found in people’s writing. There is an immediacy that is especially appealing about blogging. I’m reading a book at the moment about the plant hunters and collectors of 18th century, when it used to take months for letters to reach their destination. The tensions and disputes that resulted because of misunderstandings and the time lag between explanations is amusing and quite incomprehensible in our modern world of instant communications. That’s not to say blogging and Twitter don’t come with their problems but, so far, the best bits far outweigh any negatives.

So, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who pops along to read my blog. I hope you like what you find. To all those who leave a comment, I really appreciate it, to hear your thoughts and suggestions make the difference between just writing and actually engaging. To those fellow UK gardening bloggers, you have been a source of solace and inspiration, in what has been a particularly difficult growing year.

To those from overseas, thank you for adding a different perspective. I find it fascinating to read about a shared passion from places as diverse as America, Italy, South Africa and Tasmania.

It has been a real pleasure to hear from you all. Here’s to another year of blogging.