Salad Days

Tags

cos lettuce, grow your own salad, lettuce, salad, salad leaves

Tasty Salad Leaves

After a long winter of eating root vegetables and brassicas I find by spring my body and palate are craving lighter, fresher foods. The longer days and warmer weather (well maybe at some point!) bring about a desire to eat salads. Not some bag of soggy salad leaves lurking in the bottom of the fridge or the tasteless but crunchy iceberg, no I want something colourful, interesting and fresh but most importantly tasty.

I’ve grown salad leaves for quite a while now, even before we had our own garden. You can quite successfully grow enough salad leaves for two from some long plastic window box style troughs. Even now, with the allotment, I still use this method to keep some lettuce close to the house for quick pickings.

Picking ‘Ruben’ leaves from around the edge

I was, initially, reluctant to grow salad at the allotment, worried that slugs would prove to be too much of a problem. However, a desire to grow some of the bigger ‘romaine’ and ‘hearting’ type lettuces led me to give it a go. Well, I’m so pleased with the results. I haven’t bought any lettuce for a good 6 weeks now and despite the tremendous amount of rain we’ve had, giving us perfect sluggy conditions my lettuce have been a great success. A great deal of this is thanks to the local bird population that seem to be scouring my allotment beds in the search for anything slimy.

So far, I’ve grown ‘Dazzle’ from the Thompson and Morgan ‘Kew Garden’ range. It is a particularly attractive lettuce, a mini romaine type with leaves that are a beautiful apple-green colour merging into burgundy. It produces a heart of pale green leaves if left to heart-up but I like to pick this, as well as my other hearting lettuces, by the leaf rather than the whole plant. Picking from the outside and leaving several smaller central leaves the plant will continue to grow, giving you a much longer picking period. Because this variety is only a ‘mini’ type it is perfect for containers or grow bags. I am also growing ‘Rubens’, a coppery-red cos lettuce that looks so good. ‘Freckles’ is another looker, an heirloom variety that has glossy green leaves splattered with speckles of burgundy which is apparently slow to bolt, although there has been little danger of that so far this year.

For some contrast on the plate I have also grown the all-green ‘Lobjoits’ another cos type lettuce that has a good crunch. Again I pick this like a cut and come again salad, removing just a few outer leaves at a time.

To add some further interest I love to add the softer salad leaves such as salad bowl and pea shoots. I have one big pot outside my front door with peas in it, every couple of days I can harvest a few shoots. The plants will continue to send out shoots until into mid July when the change in day length back to shorter days (boo) means they change from putting on leafy growth to trying to fruit. My plants, which will have been grazed over and not achieved much height, will then just be composted but in the meantime they are adding a lovely pea flavour to my salads and sandwiches.

Russian Red Kale, picked small for salad leaves

Russian red kale is a great plant. Colourful, with a stronger flavour than lettuce leaves, if picked when young it adds another dimension to your salad. I have a pot of this which I can pick over twice a week and the bonus is that any leaves that get too big for salads can be lightly steamed like spinach.

Finally, a salad wouldn’t be a salad without a few herbs. At the moment this includes a few basil leaves, chives and the colourful addition of chive flowers.  As the summer progresses I will resow in an attempt to keep us supplied. I’ve got a second batch with a few additons such as ‘Catalonga verde’ on the way and I’ll introduce others such as rocket and mizuna later in the summer so that they don’t bolt in the heatwave summer that is just around the corner!!!

Salads needn’t be boring after-thoughts and are one of the simplest and cheapest of all the edibles you can grow.

For a great choice of lettuce seeds try More Veg, Sarah Raven and Seeds of Italy.

The Final Push

Tags

cold frames, cut flower patch, Dahlias, scented flowers, stocks, zinnias

The sun shone on Saturday, after another week of heavy rain, giving me the opportunity to get up to the plot for the final push. This is the latest I have left the planting out of half hardies and tender plants. Often dictated by an upcoming holiday, I would normally expect to have empty cold frames by the start of June but not this year. Difficult weather conditions have meant a slow start to the growing season. Plants such as rudbeckias and zinnias are a quarter of the size they were this time last year.

Whilst some plants have struggled, it has been great weather for grass and weeds, unfortunately. Wellyman was on hand to tidy up the paths at the plot. With no strimmer and only hand shears to keep everything in check its a job neither of us enjoy but a trim every 3 weeks or so is better than leaving it and letting it get out of control.

Nigella damascena ‘Double White’ on the cut flower patch

I weeded the whole plot, which took an hour and a half. The ground was nice and soft after the rain making the weed removal easy. My problem weeds are speedwell, hairy bittercress and, in one bed, bindweed but none of them are too bad, mainly because I do as little digging as possible.

The last patch of stocks was removed. They had been such great plants, straggly looking things I’ll grant you, but they had been flowering since last October and had provided so many bunches of gloriously scented flowers, I’m slightly sad to see them go. They were finally giving up the ghost, though and I needed the space, so in their place are now some larkspurs and zinnias.

The plot in June

I managed to squeeze in two dahlias which I’d stored in the downstairs loo over winter. Potted up in April they have spent the last couple of months in the cold frame and have made good-sized plants, one is even about to flower. I have no idea which varieties they are, somewhere along the line their labels have disappeared. Still, it’ll be a nice surprise when they do flower.

The last plants went into the cut flower patch; cornflowers, gypsophila, rudbeckias and godetia. The plants were a little smaller than I would have liked them to be but I’m going to be away for a while, so they need to fend for themselves. I’m hoping I’m going to have enough flowers to take me through to October and for my first foray into the world of the horticulture show. If I can get myself organised I’ve decided to enter some flowers into one of my local shows. I haven’t decided which show yet or had a look at the schedules to see which class I’ll enter. See what I mean about needing to get organised.

Sweet Williams – I possibly didn’t need quite so many plants

Fortunately, the heavy rain and gale force winds didn’t do too much damage but some extra staking and tying in was necessary. The broad beans were now tall enough to pinch out the growing tips, this encourages the plants to divert their energy into producing pods and also helps to discourage black fly. Don’t put them on the compost heap though, they are really nice steamed – a bit like spinach but with a mild broad bean flavour.

So that’s it for another year, the seed sowing and plant nurturing frenzy of spring is over. I always feel like I can breathe a sigh of relief when the cold frames and window sills are emptied and the plot fills up with plants. But there’s little time to rest on my laurels as June is the perfect time to sow biennials. Better go and dig out my seed tins.

Seed Sowing No-Shows

Tags

Dobies, minimum germination rates, Nicky's Nursery, Sarah Raven, seed sowing

So we’re well into the main seed sowing period of the gardening year. It’s a time of great anticipation, with compost, trays and seeds at the ready. It’s a crucial time for every gardener, a window in which the plants that will feed us and provide colourful flowers throughout the summer and into the autumn are started into life. It can be make or break for some plants which need a long growing season to reach maturity, such as celeriac and parsnip. If these plants miss their window of opportunity that’s your chance gone for another year.

So it can be incredibly frustrating, to say the least when seeds don’t appear. We’ve all experienced that sparsely populated compost where there should have been a sea of shoots or even worse the completely bare seed tray. Of course, we blame ourselves. We must have done something wrong. Did we sow them too deep or too shallow? Was the compost too dry and too wet? Was it too cold for them to germinate? All of these are possibilities but how many of us think it might be the seed that is the problem? It might be a more likely explanation than gardeners realise.

In recent years the consumer magazine Which has carried out research to determine the germination rates of selected seeds from some of the main seed suppliers in the UK. In 2007 it discovered that significantly high percentages of seeds were actually dead at the time of purchase. One company’s Delphinium seed were found, when analysed, to be 99% dead and  the other 1% were unhealthy and just 15% of seeds of a variety of lettuce produced healthy plants (figures were taken from a report in The Daily Telegraph). Two years later they carried out more tests and found 7 out of 17 seed supplying companies failed to meet minimum germination standards with spring onion ‘White Lisbon’ and only 27% of a variety of pelargonium germinated. They did however praise several companies, including Nicky’s Nursery and Dobies for their overall seed health.

There are legal standards set by the EU for the germination of vegetable seeds. These minimum germination percentages vary according to different plants to reflect the natural viabilities of different seeds, for example it is 80% minimum germination for cucumbers and runner beans and 65% for carrots and leeks. I suppose I hadn’t really given it much thought but it is surprising and sobering to realise that a number of the seeds we buy are already dead, even if they are meeting the legal requirements and as Which discovered many are not even meeting these. Flower seeds are not covered by any minimum standards at all which seems quite shocking to me. I can’t think of any products that we purchase that don’t have to meet some sort of minimum standard. I can quite easily spend £20 – £30 on flower seeds in a year and the thought that I’m not getting what I paid for is annoying.

Larkspur plant – one that did germinate

My own experience so far this year has been mixed. Most of the seeds have germinated well, particularly sweet peas, celeriac and lettuce but I’ve had my fair share of frustrations. I sowed one seed tray, half with blue larkspur and the other half white larkspur. They had exactly the same conditions. The blue larkspur are now good-sized plants hardening off in my cold frame, not one white larkspur appeared though. I resowed and 3 have so far germinated which is not enough for my cutting patch. Sarah Raven, who I purchased the seed from said they knew of no other problems with the seed but promptly sent out another packet and I have now sown another batch. Rudbeckia ‘Cappucino’ is another seed I have had problems with, 2 years in a row. The contrast between this variety and another Rudbeckia variety ‘Prairie Sun’ is incredible, with virtually every seed of the latter germinating and a measly 1 out of 20 from the ‘Cappucino’ germinating.

With my cutting patch I’m trying to grow lots of varieties in small groups of between 6 and 10. With the confined growing space of window sills and cold frames, the problems of patchy germination or complete no-shows are heightened. I, like many other gardeners don’t have the space to sow lots of seed en masse.

Perhaps though, one of the main reasons why this problem seems to be brushed under the carpet is our reluctance as gardeners to complain when our seeds don’t perform as expected. I am guilty of this, too. Some companies are reluctant to admit there is a problem and insist it must be the gardener at fault and what gardener wants their seed growing prowess called into disrepute? Others seem to have a better understanding of customer service, such as Sarah Raven. I was talking to a commercial grower recently who has experienced the vagaries of seed germination and the reluctance of companies to acknowledge the problem and he said we should all complain more. It is only then that the companies would have to take more notice of the issue.

I’d love to hear if you’ve suffered from similar seed germinating problems and whether you’ve complained or not.

International Guerilla Gardening Sunflower Day

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Guerilla Gardening, International Guerilla Gardening Sunflower Day, Richard Reynolds, sunflowers

Sunflowers everywhere (photo courtesy of Richard Reynolds)

‘Lets fight the filth with forks and flowers’ are the words of Richard Reynolds the unofficial leader of the ‘guerilla gardening’ movement, where people garden on land that they are not legally allowed to use and on May 1st people will be sowing sunflower seeds in abandoned and neglected parts of their towns and cities under the guise of International Guerilla Gardening Sunflower Day.

Back in 2004, Richard Reynolds fed up with the grime and neglect of parts of London and frustrated by a lack of any growing space of his own set about tidying up abandoned patches of land, removing litter and putting in plants. It soon became his passion and led him to write a book ‘On Guerilla Gardening’ charting the history of ordinary people  challenging authority and asserting their right to culitvate land, from the Socialist Diggers of the 17th century to modern day guerilla gardeners.

Guerilla Gardening Sunflowers (photo courtesy of Richard Reynolds)

He now writes a blog guerillagardening.org, where there are tips on how to be a guerilla gardener and how like-minded people can coordinate their actions. A quick look at his website shows roundabouts, the central reservations of roads, or squares of earth around the base of trees transformed from bare and scruffy patches of earth into little oases of colour, amongst the grey, concrete and tarmac. The movement however has split the horticultural world with some sections embracing it but others disliking the anarchic element.

It could be argued that it is the ‘Big Society’ working, local people taking responsibility for the area in which they live and tackling problems that councils and businesses aren’t interested in dealing with. Volunteers cleaning up litter and beautifying their neighbourhoods with plants and flowers seem like actions that are hard to decry. There are problems though, the most obvious being that permission has not being given by the land owner to use the land and that any gardening would be trespass. However, as you can see from the photos most of the ground used is small patches with no other use and generally council owned. There are safety issues with most of the planting done illicitly at night, being around areas of busy traffic and the possibility that abandoned land might harbour toxic substances or dangerous materials on the land or in the soil. It’s also not a good idea to plant edible food in areas of high pollution such as by the side of roads.

Guerilla Gardening Sunflowers (photo courtesy of Richard Reynolds)

Planting sunflowers and other plants might seem like a bit of a jape by young people, circumventing authority but maybe it goes a lot deeper. Perhaps it is a sign that the ‘powers that be’ are not listening to those in the community. Everyone who is lucky enough to have a garden or allotment understands how much pleasure and joy being in touch with the earth brings. Some would say it is more fundamental to human wellbeing than is often acknowledged. City living, office jobs and modern life have taken us away from nature and the rhythms that our bodies crave. For those desperate for their own patch of soil it must be frustrating to walk past neglected areas, abandoned by their owner for years.

Guerilla Gardening Sunflowers (photo courtesy of Richard Reynolds)

Even where I live in rural Wales there is a patch of abandoned land in a local village that has been like that for at least 6 years and yet there is a ten year waiting list for an allotment. A few years ago some frustrated soul had stuck a poster to a telegraph pole nearby saying it was outrageous that what could be a beautiful, productive patch of land was instead covered in weeds. Maybe the message to those who can shape our communities is the importance of making the inhabitants feel like they can still be in touch with nature. So much of what is built today is cold, grey and uninspiring it’s no great surprise that with increasingly crowded cities, the growth of grow your own but the lack of space to do so that people are taking things into their own hands and greening our urban spaces.

Making a dash for it

Tags

broad beans, charlotte potatoes, cold frames, courgettes, seed sowing, squashes

Dry days have been few and far between so far this April. Now I’m not complaining, there’s no denying we need the rain to fill the reservoirs and aquifers and my garden has taken on a lovely green hue as herbaceous perennials spring into growth. But I had started to suffer a window sill and cold frame backup, with plants needing to be potted on and moved into the cold frames to harden off but with no space available in the cold frames for them. It’s just been too wet to plant anything out. Well to be honest it’s been a bit on the cold side too.

So with the weather forecast suggesting more sunshine than showers yesterday I decide to make a dash for it and in a flurry of activity I planted out, potted on, sowed more seed and shuffled plants between window sills, cold frame and the allotment.

Sweet peas ready for planting out

The first to be planted out were the first batch of sweet peas. Sown back in February they were great looking, bushy plants in desperate need of some support so they could do their thing and start climbing. Due to lack of space at the allotment these sweet peas were destined for a hazel wigwam in my front garden. The idea is that they will add some height and provide scent for the warm, sheltered garden in front of my kitchen. To be honest the ground was a little on the wet side to be planting into but with the forecast suggesting another couple of weeks of similar wet weather these plants were going in regardless. Sweet peas can grow to over 2 metres over the summer and will produce huge numbers of flowers if you keep picking them so all this effort requires some food. I tend to add a bit of compost to the planting hole with a handful of comfrey pellets. Comfrey is high in potassium, the nutrient that plants use in the flowering process so this should encourage a good supply of blooms over the next couple of months.

Another batch of broad beans and some scabious plants were taken up to the allotment and planted up. Whilst there I spotted the first Charlotte potato pushing through so grabbing a spade I earthed up the shoots to protect them from any frost.

Back at home I sowed some more lettuce, basil and carrots in pots and then moved into the cold frame some antirrhinums, asters and larkspur. It’s all a bit of juggling act at the moment trying to have enough plants to plant out with some spares. It’s also time when gardeners start to gamble, gamble on the weather that is. When to sow the tender plants such as french beans, cucumbers and squashes can be a difficult one to call. None of them like sitting in cold, wet soil and don’t like fluctuations in temperature. Sown and grown inside these plants can grow quickly with the warmth of a window sill or greenhouse. The problem is if it hasn’t warmed up outside you could have some triffids on your hands probably not a problem if you have a greenhouse but squashes and courgettes are hard to maintain on a window sill once they get going.

It’s already later than I have previously sown but I decided to sow some courgettes, Defender, Romanseco and a patty pan type squash called Sunbeam and also a couple of pots of a red skinned squash called Uchiki kuri. I’m going to wait another week or so before I sow any cucumbers or french beans.

The first Clematis in flower despite the weather

As I’m writing this it has been teeming down for about 6 hours now and I’m just preparing to go out with waterproof trousers and wellies on. Such a good look but at least I’ll be dry. They say a months worth of rain will have fallen by the end of the week and I can well believe it. Hope the plants don’t drown!!

Collapsing Cloches and Pest Hunt

Tags

broad beans, cloche, pea and bean weevil, RHS, slugs, successional sowing

Pea and Bean Weevil Attack

There are days when I wonder why I spend time growing my own fruit and veg. The sort of day when I think, ‘you know Wellywoman you could just buy this from the supermarket or pick it up at the farmers’ market at the weekend’. That happened on Wednesday when, after a night of strong winds and torrential rain, I went up to the plot to check everything was OK. The cloche I’d constructed over some lettuce seedlings to protect them from the cold, frosty nights we’ve been having had collapsed under the weight of the rain. Fortunately most of plants had survived. The ones that hadn’t had been got by slugs.

Our slimy mollusc foe isn’t the only pest that has already started the onslaught on the vegetation growing on my plot. My broad beans which were lovingly nurtured at home before being planted out have been chomped and my peas, which were likewise started off at home, have been nothing short of mauled. I had just assumed it was either birds or mice attacking the peas and beans. These are generally the prime culprits and a quick check of my RHS Encyclopaedia seemed to confirm my suspicions. There was little I could do about mice but I constructed a barrier out of chicken wire in the hope that this would keep off the birds. Regular inspections though showed both peas and beans were still being attacked.

After some research online Wellyman, convinced it couldn’t be mice unless they had acquired the ability and equipment to dangle Tom Cruise like in Mission Impossible, came across the true culprit, pea and bean weevil. A pest that doesn’t even get a mention in my RHS Encyclopaedia, it chews distinctive u-shaped notches into the edges of leaves. Brown and grey in colour and about 5mm long they overwinter in plant debris and vegetation before moving on to plants to feed in spring. Growing green manures overwinter doesn’t seem such a great idea now but my plot is surrounded by grass paths so even without the phaecelia the weevils would have had somewhere to hide.

My forlorn looking peas

The adults are normally not active until May but in milder springs can appear earlier. It gets worse, the adults come out at night so no chance of catching them and there is no other organic control I have come across, other than growing plants until they are a good size before planting out, which is what I ‘d thought I’d done!! My problems were probably exacerbated by the cold spell just after I’d planted them out, whilst the peas and beans sulked the weevil tucked in for dinner.

It’s only April and my great plans for successional sowing are down the pan already. Some of the peas appear to be growing ok but others aren’t going to recover, so now I’m left with patchy rows. This is my first year growing peas and broad beans and I’m beginning to wonder if it was such a wise move. Others on the allotment have been affected too, but some of the older plot holders soak their seed in Jeyes Fluid so that the mice don’t eat the seed and I’m wondering whether this is also why their seedlings haven’t been nibbled nearly so much as mine. I don’t plan on resorting to Jeyes Fluid, a quick look online and it seems fairly toxic stuff, being suggested as a way to get rid of moles to being diluted and used as a weed killer. Doesn’t sound like the sort of thing I want near something I’d eat.

I have got other batches of peas growing in the cold frames which were meant to be my second crop, so my plan is just to start again. I might try and keep the new plants at home a little bit longer this time, hopefully by the time they’re sturdy plants it will have warmed up. If not, I’ve suggested to Wellyman we start look at properties in southern France. I don’t mind changing my moniker to Sandalwoman if it means my plants actually grow.

Is anyone else experiencing early season growing pains? Please share your woes to make me feel better.

Seed sowing, shed clearing and fleecing an apple tree

Tags

espalier apple tree, frost damaged fruit buds, my untidy shed, seed sowing

My crab apple in bloom for Easter

So, as usual, the weather this spring is proving to be the gardener’s greatest foe. The warm March weather has brought on some plants, only for them to be hit by the cold spell at the start of April. My newly purchased espalier apple tree was starting to come into bud but with the weather forecast predicting more frost I was worried they would get damaged, which would potentially ruin any much anticipated first crop of apples.

It was Tuesday night on our way back from swimming that I noticed the car said it was only 4C. A perfectly clear night and our breath visible in the air, I felt fairly sure it would be a hard frost. So there we were at 10pm in the back garden with only the light of the moon to guide us, erecting a bamboo cane and fleece contraption around the tree in the hope this would protect the new fruit buds. This was after a quick detour to the allotment when I realised I had taken all the canes up to the plot several weeks earlier and there were none left in the shed.

Protecting our apple tree from frost

The cane/fleece construction did need some further work to it later in the week when Wellyman discovered that there were spots where the fleece had been touching the buds and they had suffered a little frost damage. Fortunately, it was nothing serious and after some more canes were added and the fleece stretched a little it seems to have provided the tree with sufficient protection. Although, as I write the fleece is now sagging under the weight of Bank Holiday rain and will need some remedial work before tonight and another predicted frost. Remind me why I wanted my own apple tree.

I spent Saturday afternoon sowing more seed and potting on. My larkspur, antirrhinums and scabious were all ready to go into individual pots. This is always a difficult moment for the gardener without a greenhouse. Deciding how many seedlings my window sills can cope with. It’s a balance between available space to grow on, how many I need and keeping some as spares in case some come a cropper due to pests, diseases, the weather or my own clumsiness. It’s hard having to get rid of perfectly good seedlings but there’s no point in keeping too many and not being able to look after them and they all suffer. Much better to be a bit ruthless and give all your care and attention to a few but end up with really strong healthy plants.

Seed sown included cosmos, rudbeckias, zinnias, spring onions, some primrose seeds in the green and some more peas. I also resowed a batch of white larkspur because the first batch didn’t germinate. Strangely, the blue larkspur sown at the same time germinated really well but not one of the white ones popped up. It’s annoying when this happens but at least at this time of year there is still a chance for plants to catch up.

Cosmos 'Candy Stripe' - hopefully it won't be too long before I'm picking these flowers

I am running out of space though so I’m hoping temperatures will start to warm up a little over the next couple of weeks then I can start moving plants out to the allotment and others can take their place in the cold frame. April and May are just one big juggling act and much as I enjoy seed sowing there is a great sense of relief when June arrives and all the plants are in their final positions.

And finally we tackled the shed …. again. I know this is a running theme but the shed is the engine room of the garden and my shed is by no means a well oiled machine. It did get a bit of a tidy up back in March but the problem is I’m so often in a rush that when I’ve finished in the garden I tend to just dump everything in there. Another problem is spiders. Now I am much better than I used to be. I’ve been able to share the shed with 2 fairly enormous arachnids for the last couple of months. It has meant one pile of pots has been out-of-bounds because I could see the legs of one spider peeking out from behind them on the shed wall but that was fine I had plenty of other pots I could use. Wellyman, however decided that whilst we were tidying out the shed anyway he might as well rehome the spiders.

Now I know the spiders are big when I hear a Wellyman’s voice from the shed say ‘Oh yes … that’s a big one’. I, of course, am several feet away at this point doing important pot sorting out tasks. Both spiders were captured, after a degree of huffing and puffing, in a container and taken to a flower border near the local bus stop. Hopefully they don’t have homing instincts, like snails. So here’s to Wellyman, my spider catching and releasing hero! And here’s to my newly tidied shed, pots neatly stacked, rubbish bagged up and waiting to go to the tip and I can see the floor again. The challenge now is to keep it that way for the rest of the summer.

First Pickings and Frost Fears

Tags

cold frames, forcing rhubarb, protecting from frost, seed sowing

The first produce of the year

Throughout the winter whilst I’m pining to be out in the garden or at the allotment it’s easy to forget about the ongoing battle gardening can sometimes be. If it’s not something trying to eat the plants, it’s the weather conspiring to make life as difficult as possible and last week was the perfect example.

I’m now in full blown seed sowing mode with cold frames stuffed with pots and trays and window sills performing their role as substitute greenhouse. The weather here in Wales, like most of the UK has been beautiful for several weeks now with unseasonably warm temperatures and unbroken sunshine. It has been a real pleasure to get out and garden in a t-shirt after spending months cocooned in layers of clothing. The soil has been dry allowing for preparation of beds for the coming season and I’ve been able to get so much done that wouldn’t have been possible with typical spring weather.

The problems, however came on Tuesday when I was preparing to go away for a long weekend, visiting family and friends. Now I know you might think I was bringing these problems on myself by going away at such a crucial time but arranging these visits is already a logistical nightmare without me saying I can’t go anywhere because I have plants to look after. We did once take some plants away with us on holiday. They were tender plants, courgettes and the like and it was May and too early for them to go out so they came with us and sat outside the cottage during the day and then I brought them in on a night. I can’t surely be the only one who has done this, can I?

Anyway back to the problem. The front garden cold frame gets sun from early morning right through to mid afternoon at the moment and it’s a real sun trap which is great ordinarily but not when the young seedlings are drying out so quickly and I won’t be around for 4 days. I knew I couldn’t leave them there so I moved them all round to the back garden which is much more shaded at the moment. Not everything would fit in my other cold frame though so I took a gamble and left some grouped together by the house. The other problem was to close the cold frame or not. Do I risk the plants keeling over from too much heat or being exposed to frost? Even at this time of year and especially with this weather the temperature under glass can rise significantly but then at night can drop dramatically. What was I to do? I settled for slightly propped open and then gave everything a good water before I left on the Wednesday, hoping for the best.

I was fairly confident my little plants would be fine until we caught the weather forecast on Friday night. Sharp frosts and minus 4C in rural parts of Wales were predicted for Saturday night. I envisaged coming back to blackened seedlings, some I’d be able to sow again, others like celeriac, which I’d been nurturing since February wouldn’t have a second chance this year. It’s hard to explain to non gardeners how it feels to see plants you’ve lovingly tended wiped out. Like the row of marigolds completely decimated overnight by slugs, the ripe and juicy strawberries nibbled by blackbirds or podding much anticipated peas only to discover the pea moth larvae have got there first, it can be soul destroying. Contrary to what some books and magazines say, gardening is hard work; pleasurable and enjoyable yes but requiring time and effort to produce the desired results. To see your hard work destroyed before you even get a chance to eat it, smell it or cut it is a bitter pill to swallow.

They survived!

Fortunately, this tale has a happy ending. There had been some frost and I did lose a baby fatsia but have another two that survived and a few flower seedlings aren’t looking too great but everything else including the celeriac survived unscathed, much to my relief. But with the warm spell coming to an end with predictions of snow for part of the week and still no significant rainfall it looks like the weather will make gardening a challenge again this year.

To end on a happier note we had our first produce from the plot yesterday, which is always cause for celebration. Two stems from the forced rhubarb clump made a very tasty crumble when combined with some apple. Hopefully the start of a productive year for all gardeners.

Into the Ground

Tags

Ammi visnaga, Beetroot 'Chioggia', Daucus carota 'Black Knight', seed sowing

Seed sowing

I decided to get sowing some seeds directly into the ground the other day. I don’t sow many seeds this way. Experience has taught me that the seeds and seedlings are easy pickings for slugs, snails and mice. Unlike plants in the garden I can’t get up to the allotment as frequently to check how everything is doing so I much prefer to start most of my plants off at home in seed trays, pots and modules, where I can nurture them to a good size before releasing them into the wild to fend for themselves. By this point they are much more able to cope with whatever the allotment might throw at them, whether its pest or weather related.

There are some seeds, however that prefer to be directly sown into the ground. They don’t like having their roots disturbed and it’s just as well really, with a limited amount of space to sow and grow on seeds it’s a bit of a relief that some can go straight into the soil. Of course with direct sowing does come problems. If you sow too early and the soil is still cold they will sulk, well wouldn’t you? Last year we had such a dry spring that lack of water was the problem. Quite a few of my early sown seeds didn’t germinate because I found it difficult to keep the seed drills moist. This isn’t normally a problem you would expect in spring, that’s what April showers are for after all, to provide just the right amount of moisture interspersed with sunny spells providing the warmth to provide the perfect conditions for seeds to germinate. Whether it’s climate change or just a blip in weather patterns we might not be able to rely on these perfect conditions in future.

The ground feels like it is warming up nicely. The old farmers’ way of checking the soil apparently was to sit on it with a bare bottom!! I have to say I didn’t go to these lengths. I don’t want that sort of reputation at the allotment and I find hands do a good enough job. If the soil feels nicely warm and it’s not too wet then it should be perfect to sow. Another good indicator is whether annual weed seeds have started to appear. If the conditions are right for them, your seeds should be fine too.

watering the seed drill first to help germination

The weather here in Wales has been glorious for 2 weeks now and the soil is quite dry so there are a few tactics I’m going to adopt to see if I can keep the soil moist enough for the seeds to germinate. The first task is making sure you’ve prepared the soil well with some organic matter, this helps to retain moisture not just in the initial stages but hopefully throughout the growing season. Then it’s a good idea to water the seed drill before sowing and finally, once you’ve covered over the seeds, mulch the drill with dry compost which helps to retain the moisture under the surface rather than it evaporating away. That’s the theory anyway, hopefully in practice it will work.

Dill flowers growing on the plot last year

The seeds I sowed today were two varieties of beetroot, ‘Boltardy’ and ‘Chioggia’. I had soaked the seeds overnight. I can’t remember where I read this tip but I had much better germination rates doing this last year. I also sowed some dill. I love dill’s feathery foliage chopped into potato salads, in omlettes and in sauces for fish but an extra benefit is the beautiful yellow flower heads make nice fillers in cut flower arrangements.

The other seeds were for my cut flower patch, Ammi visnaga and Daucus carota ‘Black Knight’. Both of these produce umbellifer flower heads which give arrangements an airy feel. I grew Ammi majus last year but visnaga is a chunkier form and ‘Black Knight’ is a cousin of Ammi majus but with crimson-black flowers which looked so unusual in the seed catalogue I just had to give it a go. Certainly Ammi majus was loved by hoverflies last year, so I hoping both these additions to my cut flower patch will benefit insects too.

I’d love to hear whether you started sowing outdoors yet.

Buds and Mummified Fruit

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buds opening, crab apple tree, grape hyacinths, pinching out sweet peas, seed sowing

After a week of mild weather the garden feels like it has really shaken off the last vestiges of winter. The snowdrops are no more but have been replaced by the golden glow of daffodils and clumps of primroses. Hellebores are still going strong and they have been joined by pulmonarias and grape hyacinths. But the sight that fills me with most joy is the tiny buds on my crab apple that are starting to unfurl. On Saturday I was doing the washing up and looking out of my kitchen window when I thought the branches looked different, squinting through the glass it looked like little specks of green were appearing. Abandoning my dishes and pans to investigate further I was greeted by this sight.

Crab apple buds

At the start of last week I had the not so pleasant job of removing the mummified fruit that were left on the tree. Last year had been a particularly good year for fruit and the tree had provided blackbirds, starlings, thrushes and redstarts with some vital food through the winter but there are always fruit that they don’t get to.

It’s not essential with a crab apple to remove the mummified fruit, I do it for aesthetic reasons. Not wanting the old wizened fruit to detract from the blossom that will start to appear over the next month. However, with a tree that provides eating apples it is important to remove any old fruit remaining on the tree as these can harbour diseases. I couldn’t get to all of the old fruit, especially those on branches over-hanging the neighbour’s garden but it still looked better for a bit of a tidy up. The smell from the apples was a quite potent, fermenting apple juice aroma. The excitement of what is to come over the next month as tight pink flower buds appear and then unfold to produce whitish pink blossom is building.

Clematis flower buds

Not only this but I discovered the soft, almost furry, flower buds on an early flowering Clematis. My honeysuckle is now covered in leaves and roses are springing into life. In fact, everywhere I look are signs of plants emerging, it’s like being reunited with old friends. I wander around the garden stopping and puzzling over plants appearing. I redesigned a couple of borders in my garden last autumn and I can’t remember where I put certain plants. I was also very kindly given some plants by gentleman from the allotments which I planted up but I couldn’t remember what I’d done with them. I’m really looking forward to seeing how my redesign will work.

Grape hyacinth (Muscari)

The garden isn’t the only place with signs of new life. My cold frame and kitchen window sill have trays and pots of seeds pushing through. I have broad beans waiting to go up to the allotment, sweet peas that I have pinched out the growing tips to make bushier plants and edible peas which are just germinating. There are celeriac seedlings that need pricking out and only a week after sowing I have my first hardy annuals for my cut flower patch. I have a ritual every morning of opening the blind in the kitchen and then checking my seeds. Even though I know it’s not possible for seeds to germinate overnight I will check them the day after sowing. It generally takes between 7 to 14 days for seeds to germinate so I was really surprised to find seeds sown last Tuesday had germinated by Saturday and that I could see my first echium and scabious plants.

Cold Frame

There’s plenty to do, with the busiest time for gardeners upon us. So on that note I’m off to sow some more sweet peas and having read other blogs it sounds like I should introduce some leek seeds to some compost. Happy seed sowing!!!