A dead mouse, an Indian summer and Christmas colour

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amarylis, bulbs for forcing, Countryfile, hyacinths for forcing, paper white narcissi

Bulb planting

There’s something to be said for blissful ignorance. There are so many forms of communication nowadays that being unaware of what is going on has to be a deliberate choice; don’t listen to the radio, turn off the TV and don’t read twitter. Take the weather for instance. The Countryfile weather forecast had set expectations high that a spell of good weather was on its way, the Indian summer I had been hoping for. For days though a thick layer of looming and oppressive cloud hung over this corner of Wales. The sense of disappointment was huge but it was made worse when I would hear reports of sunshine and warmth elsewhere. The thought that if we lived only 40 miles or so further west or north and I would be basking in glorious sunshine just made me feel as if I was missing out, rather like knowing there was a party taking place that I really wanted to go to but couldn’t be there. Much better to not know the party was going on in the first place!!

Tuesday was another day that started off with a slate grey sky, the cloud was so low it was almost making me feel claustrophobic. Opening the curtains in the dining room I spotted a little mammalian treat left behind so thoughtfully by our neighbour’s cat. I made a mental note to tackle the mouse’s disposal after breakfast. Of course I got distracted and forgot entirely about the dead creature so inconveniently deposited just by the greenhouse. So an hour or so later, on my way to check my seedlings in the greenhouse, I stopped to see if our resident frog was poking through the pond weed. I knew instantaneously what the soft squishy thing was that I could now feel under one of my flip-flops and screamed. I had stood on the dead mouse. Poor thing! To add insult to injury the meaninglessness of its death, purely as a play thing for a cat that has no need for extra food as it waddles around the neighbourhood, had now just been compounded by the lack of respect my shoe had shown it.

Despite the lack of sun I thought I’d better make the most of the fact that it was at least warm and start my bulb planting. I really dislike bulb planting. It’s hard work and the deferred gratification of having to wait until spring to see any rewards for your efforts doesn’t help. My strategy this year is to plant the bulbs in stages rather than in one mammoth session. This will hopefully make it all seem a less daunting task. The first of the bulbs to be planted were those I had bought to force for some early colour indoors this winter. I prefer to not give Christmas any thought until about mid-November, if I have any say in it but sometimes a little planning ahead is necessary and with my pots and bulb fibre ready I got planting. There were some paper white narcissus which should flower before Christmas, a multi-headed and highly scented narcissus called ‘Grand Soleil d’Or’, an amarylis and some Hyacinth ‘L’Innocence’, a beautiful simple white especially prepared for forcing. I haven’t grown any bulbs this way since I was a child, it was one of my mum’s rituals to plant hyacinths every autumn. I remember planting them in brightly coloured bowls and putting them under the bed in the spare room and checking them every week or so, waiting to see signs of shoots poking through. I never used to like the smell of hyacinths so it’ll be interesting to see if my sense of smell has matured at all. I’m hoping that planting these strongly scented bulbs isn’t going to make parts of the house a no-go zone this winter.

The hyacinths need a spell in a cool, dark place to allow roots to develop. I simply covered my pots in the left-over bulb fibre compost bag and then put them in a cool spot in the house. I’ll check on them every now and again and when shoots start to poke through I’ll remove the compost bag and move them into the light. I planted them into normal plastic pots but the plan is to get hold of some zinc planters in the coming weeks. I think the combination of the white flowers and the silvery zinc will look quite festive.

The daffodil varieties I’m growing, on the other hand, don’t need light excluding from them. So I’ve put the pots in a cool spot in the garden for now. As the weather gets a little cooler I’ll then bring them indoors. The amarylis needs warmth and light and is sitting in the greenhouse at the moment because of the warm weather but, as soon as the temperature starts to drop, it too will take up residence on my kitchen windowsill. You don’t need to use bulb fibre to plant up indoor bulbs, a multi-purpose compost mixed with some perlite to improve drainage is fine. Bulb fibre is best though if you’re using containers that don’t have drainage holes in them as it has charcoal in it which will keep the compost smelling fresh.

Woven birch plant supports

I have, in the past, bought bulbs already planted up from the garden centre which are just about to flower but they do have a tendency to become very floppy. The low light levels of winter mean they strain for any available light and they are quite tall plants for a pot anyway. Garden centres often put a stick painted green into the pot to provide some support but it’s such an ugly thing and detracts from the beautiful flowers. So that’s why I spent yesterday weaving some birch twigs to create some more natural looking means of support for my home-grown forced bulbs. The birch twigs are brilliant and super flexible and the woven structures should do the trick.

As the hours passed the sun did finally burn through the cloud, so much so that I was gardening in a vest top and shorts by the end of the day. Strange to think that these bulbs will be flowering in several months time when the warmth of summer will be a distant memory. Hopefully their flowers will brighten up those winter days. Does anyone else grow bulbs for indoors? I’d love to hear about your favourites.

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Hops, squashes and the final push

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'golden tassels', 'sweet dumpling', coppicing, growing squashes, hops

ripening winter squashes

So September has come and it’s the final push for my finishing my book. The photographs have all been decided and have gone off to the printers to be set and the text has been ‘jiggled’ about to fit. I’m pretty sure jiggled isn’t the technical term and the whole process required much more skill and expertise than that word conjures up, so apologies to the designer if she’s reading this. But I’m still not particularly au fait with the intricacies of the publishing world so jiggling will have to do. The next couple of weeks involve editing the text and proofreading and just when I think I’m finished I remember that there’s an index to do and I mustn’t forget those all important ‘thank yous’.

I do feel slightly like this summer has passed me by. I have got photographic evidence though that I was outdoors and gardening for some of the time at least. Maybe it’s because despite July and August resembling summer for a change that really has been it – just 2 months of decent weather. It’s all too easy to forget we had the coldest spring for 100 years preceded by such a wet 2012. And now we’re heading towards autumn and I don’t feel ready for it. An Indian summer would be nice, not only to give me a chance to get all manner of jobs done that have fallen by the wayside this year but also to ripen my squashes.

Last year was the first time I had grown squashes. I tried a few onion or uchiki kuri squashes and grew them up a wigwam so they didn’t take up much space. They weren’t a great success bearing in mind the rain and cold that was summer 2012 but a few fruit did mature and it was enough to make me want to grow some more this year. Whilst the harvest may not have been huge, growing them vertically worked well. So I came up with a plan for this year’s squashes which involved some coppiced posts, Wellyman, a mallet and some hops.

Hops and squash screen

The idea was to create a screen at one end of my plot, the end which sticks out into the rest of the allotment. Strict rules on the allotments mean we’re all a little limited with the type of structures we can erect and I didn’t want anything that would shade out any neighbouring plots. A green wall of foliage though would make life much easier over the coming months when I was having photographs taken, blocking out any water butts and blue carrot-growing bins.

I’ve always wanted my plot to look pretty. I like the make do and mend philosophy of allotmenteering but sometimes some plots can end up looking like a scrap yard with all manner of pipes, posts and tubing lying around. I wanted something that wasn’t going to break the bank but which looked rustic and natural at the same time. A bundle of coppiced posts from a local coppicer did the job. Tasked with the job Wellyman was in his element with his tape measure and mallet, working out the correct spacings for the posts. What resulted was a simple criss-cross pattern of posts pushed into the ground at an angle along the length of one of my beds. They were then lashed together with twine. At both ends of the screen I planted a hop. I chose the dwarf variety ‘Golden Tassels’ as it is a little less rampant than it’s taller growing cousins. ‘Golden Tassels’ can reach 3-4 metres, non-dwarf varieties can grow up to twice this. It’s also a pretty ornamental variety with lovely golden leaves. The idea wasn’t to harvest our own hops for beer making purposes but to cut down the long stems with their pretty green cones and dry them for decorating at home. The plan was for the hops to meet somewhere in the middle and then in between there would be squashes trailing up the posts too.

Of course, not everything went quite to plan. It turns out hops are prone to aphids and the cold spring meant I didn’t see my first ladybird until August. As a result one of the hop plants was a little stunted by the aphid infestation that took hold and never really recovered enough to reach its true potential. They’re perennial though so I’ll be prepared next year with my garlic spray at the ready. Despite this I’m happy with the overall effect. Hop number two grew as I had hoped, using the posts to climb upwards. The squash too are doing well. There was a point where I wondered if I was going to get anything from them. There were a lot of male flowers and no fruit to be seen. But I have nine fruits now swelling and ripening in the sun. They were meant to be a variety known as ‘Sweet Dumpling’ a winter squash with a creamy coloured skin and distinctive green stripes. Mine for some reason are lacking the green stripes. I could write a whole post about seeds not turning out to be what they should. Maybe I’ll do that next. I’m sure they’ll taste just as good though, whatever variety they are.