Gardening Attire

Tags

Alan Titchmarsh, allotment, Carol Klein, Monty Don, rachel de thame, Sarah Raven, what you wear

What do you wear when gardening?

So what do you wear when you’re gardening or at the allotment? Are you like Alan Titchmarsh wearing jeans, a jumper and boots? Do you emulate Monty Don and his intriguing uniform of blue shirt come smock? I always wondered where he got them from until I came across an ironmongers in Ludlow that had some in stock and wondered whether this was his source. Maybe you manage to garden in a skirt a la Sarah Raven and Alys Fowler or with funky, chunky scarves like Carol Klein.

Me . . . . well I like to think of my gardening attire as ‘scruffbag chic’. I’m messy at the best of times, although not on a par with Wellyman whose record is 2 minutes wearing a clean shirt before food ended up on it. Put me somewhere with soil, tomato feed and flower pollen and there really is no point wearing anything that is considered ‘good’. I’d love to look half as elegant as Rachel de Thame does in her Barbours, even when she’s digging up an enormous shrub. But it isn’t to be.

You will find me in jeans that are paint splattered and holey, teemed with Wellyman’s jumpers that have shrunk in the wash and an oversized fleece which has splatters of ‘Wild Thyme’ paint on it from painting the fence last year. Of course, there are my trusty green wellies but even these are looking past their best and have traces of paint on them. I told you I was messy.

The thing is I actually quite like the opportunity to not have to worry about how I look. It makes a refreshing change when there is so much focus on fake tans, designer clothes and botox everywhere you look now. A woman did turn up at the plot last year in big ‘Posh Spice’ style sunglasses, smart dark jeans and pristine black wellies. She planted up some strawberries and then I never saw her again. Allotments really aren’t the place to be precious about appearances. As I found out early on when I was caught in a torrential downpour. With nowhere to shelter on the plot, I tidied up and set off for home. By the time I got there I was completely drenched, hair plastered to my head, rivers of water running down my face and soaked right through. I got some strange looks from people as they drove past in their cars cocooned from the elements.

Fortunately, there was nobody about the other day to witness my trouser incident. Having decided to go to the plot I got changed into my scruffs. One pair of jeans had a hole in the crotch and were waiting to be patched up, my other pair had a gaping hole in the thigh and it was cold and I didn’t want a draught. After some digging around in a drawer I found another pair, got changed and wandered up to the allotment. Now these jeans normally need a belt but when I had put them on they had felt fine. I just thought that I might need to do a bit more exercise after Christmas excesses, so I didn’t bother with the belt. However, after 10 minutes or so of bending and digging something didn’t feel quite right. It was then I discovered the jeans had slipped right down and I was now displaying my knickers to the world, like some teenage boy in his deliberately saggy trousers. I am just so grateful it was January and I was alone with my embarrassment and that my oversized fleece pulled down as far as it would go protected my modesty on the walk home. Note to self, those jeans need a belt next time.

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The Quest for Woodchip

Tags

allotment, New Year's resolutions

the storage area on my plot

I’m just about to embark on tidying up the storage end of my allotment. I can’t say it’s a task I’m looking forward to but it is one of those jobs that will make life easier during the hectic growing season. This part of the plot is the only bit that we left as arranged by the previous tenants. We aren’t allowed sheds on the site so the previous tenants had erected a makeshift wooden fence behind which all my tools and canes etc are stored. This has worked fine over the last year, it’s just by the end of the summer it does get a bit overgrown with weeds. So I need to get in there and tackle the nettles and the stems of an old plum tree that keep pushing through.

The main problem with this part of the plot was the grass path between my planting beds and the storage area. We don’t have a strimmer and it proved very difficult to keep on top of the grass, so much so that after a two week holiday I came back to find that the hosepipe had been swallowed up by the grass. It took a good couple of minutes to extricate the hose. It was at this point I thought that I really needed to do something about the path and the occasional trim with garden shears clearly wasn’t good enough. Of course I never got round to doing anything, I had plenty of other demands on my time.

However, this year one of my New Year’s resolutions is to get rid of the grass. I’m going to skim off the surface layer of grass and put down some weed membrane and cover it with chipped bark like the other paths on the plot. Thinking about doing this has reminded me of the lengths we went to last year to get the woodchip. I had finished laying the weed membrane and putting in wooden planks for the paths by the start of March and then started looking for something to cover the paths. We knew it would be too expensive to buy woodchip from garden centres. I had a look on the internet and found a few sites but even these worked out at £150. I contacted several local tree surgeons who sounded interested in getting rid of some woodchip rather than having to pay to dispose of it. Unfortunately, none of them were keen enough to actually turn up and drop any off. So by April we still had nothing on the membrane but then Wellyman spotted mounds of chipped bark lining the wooded verge of a local dual carriageway that had been left by the local council after tree cutting.

So that Sunday we spent 3 hours collecting 2 tonnes of woodchip and filling green waste bags and stuffing them in the boot. We parked in laybys so we were safe and amusingly we weren’t the only ones doing it. People driving past must have wondered why there was a sudden demand for woodchip. The main problem was that once you’re on this particular stretch of road you have to keep going for 10 miles until you can turn around. We made 6 trips and did over 100 miles!!! We weren’t in the best of moods by the time we’d finished but the paths were covered and for free (fortunately Wellyman has a car with work so he doesn’t have to pay for the fuel).

This year I will have only one path that needs covering but I’m already on the look out for signs of the local council chopping down trees. I’d love to hear if anyone has done something similar, in the quest to save money, create a special look or just in the spirit of recycling. Gardeners are nothing if not resourceful!

My Green Gym

Tags

allotment

Just what is needed after a hard day's gardening - a long hot soak in the bath!!!

So it’s that time of year again when my body wonders what has hit it. When joints ache and muscles that went into hibernation over winter are rediscovered. As the garden and allotment start to come to life and demand some attention my body too, creaks and groans back into action.

Its not like I have spent the winter sat on the sofa. I swim twice a week and do a lot of walking but for some reason the first couple of months back in the garden do take some getting used to. All that bending and stretching for a couple of hours to weed and prune certainly gives me a good workout.

On Monday I thought I would make the most of the strangely mild and dry weather for January and tackle the back garden, cutting back dead foliage and seedheads but within hours of finishing I could feel my back stiffening up. After sitting on the sofa for a while it took some effort and a push from Wellyman to stand up. Fortunately a soak in the bath helped, although I did groan when I got out of bed yesterday morning.

This time last year I was making my paths at the allotment. It was pretty hard work manoeuvring 6ft planks of wood into place (I’m not quite 5ft myself) and digging the trenches to hold the wood and weed membrane in place. I would return home aching, exhausted and looking a right mess in my scruffy clothes that were covered in soil. The only thing I wanted to do was jump in the bath, well it was more of a crawl actually, I didn’t have the energy for jumping into anything. It took a couple of months for my body to get used to the effort but by April I felt really fit, what became known in the Welly household as ‘allotment fit’.

I love my swims but I have never been a fan of gyms. Years ago my friend Judi and I signed up to the gym at University and only made it as far as the changing rooms. We were put off by the supremely fit looking men strutting their stuff, so we made a quick exit and ended up in the pub opposite. We never returned and I have never joined a gym since. The thought of being stuck inside, doing repetitive exercises whilst watching tv monitors showing programmes I have no desire to watch cannot compete with being outdoors in the fresh air, listening to the birds sing and getting exercise whilst doing something useful. My green gym wins every time.

My First Year On The Allotment

Tags

allotment, cut flowers, fruit, plot, seed catalogues, vegetables

I had a wander up to my allotment the other day. It’s looking a bit sorry for itself at the moment. It has taken a bit of a battering in the wind and rain, a local cat is using my chipped bark paths as a litter tray (nice!!) and the sunflowers that I left standing so the birds could feed on the seed heads have collapsed. On days like this it is hard to imagine how beautiful the plot looked between April and October. So I thought, as it is coming up to my first anniversary with my allotment that I would have a review of the year.

Jewel like fruit

I was fairly lucky when I took on the plot, it had been pretty well cared for and managed organically. Apparently, quite a few people had been eyeing up our plot before we got it. Initially, we were given a half plot but then someone pulled out and we were offered the other half. At first I wondered if it would be too much and there were times during the summer where it did feel a bit overwhelming but half a plot would have been way to small. In fact, I’m now coveting a derelict neighbouring plot as a possible extension since I fear I will not be able to squeeze my ever growing seed list into my current plot.

I knew I wanted to grow some cut flowers it was just how much space to devote to them. As I spent a couple of months with my notepad, graph paper, seed catalogues and piles of books I realised there were a lot of fruit and vegetables I wanted to grow too. In the end I was happy with the balance I created. The cut flowers were a great success and I was picking buckets every couple of days. Some were better than others, for example Cosmos ‘Candy Stripe’ with its taller stems and more delicate flowers worked better as a cut flower than the Cosmos ‘Sonata’ variety. The Zinnias  despite a slow start provided many a vase, although some of the colours in the mix were a bit muddy and difficult to match with other colours. Next year I plan to grow some single varieties.

It was nice to see wildlife enjoying the plot too

We had a great crop of autumn raspberries despite it being their first year and endless strawberries from plants we inherited with the plot. Courgettes, kale, french beans and potatoes have all been tasty and bountiful. I was given some baby leeks and I loved being able to pop up and dig up a leek. I haven’t had enough to see us through the winter but I’ll be working on that for next year. Sweetcorn and carrots were the only 2 crops that didn’t really work. The weather got the former and carrot fly the latter. There’ll be no sweetcorn next year but I might give carrots another try I’ll just have to come up with some ingenious method to outwit those pesky flies.

One of the nicest experiences over the year has been meeting people. There were some comments initially such as ‘So you think you can garden then?’ which made me fume. However, after a year up there I understand a bit about the scepticism that greets newcomers. The reality is not many stay the course and most do just enough to get by, spending most of their time in a seemingly endless battle with weeds that appear in between their fortnightly visits.

I have been touched by the generosity of some fellow plotholders, giving me spare plants, digging out some old fruit bushes I was struggling with and showing me where I was going wrong with my leek planting (I wasn’t dibbing them in deep enough). I think I might have been accepted since I’ve had a few practical jokes played on me. I went to water my plants one day only to discover that the ends of my hosepipe had been swapped over. The older guys are also a great source of village gossip which is invaluable to a newcomer.

Of course not everyone is friendly and the plot is certainly no utopian dream. There are a few who think it isn’t really a woman’s place digging and growing veg and some who think flowers should be kept in the garden. There are the cliques, especially as several allotment holders are related. I went up one day to discover a small pile of manure which I helped myself to but apparently the pile had been enormous. When a local farmer had dropped off the pile phone calls went out around the village with wheelbarrows mobilised well into the night. There wasn’t much left the next day. The rumour is a lot of it made its way into several village gardens. We’ll know when we see who has the best dahlias and roses this coming summer.

There was the molecatcher who insisted on putting his catch on the gatepost. I got quite a fright one day when I went to open the gate and 2 beady little eyes were staring back at me. One plot holder was happy though. He had stood and watched his rows of onions move up and down like a ‘Mexican wave’ as a mole travelled underground. He’d tried to get it with his spade but it got away.

I’ve certainly learnt a lot from my year on the plot and it has been nice to find out that some are going to grow some flowers for cutting next year as well.

So here’s to another year on my allotment.

 

Book Review – Home-grown Harvest

Tags

allotment, Christmas, Home-grown Harvest, recipes, vegetarian cookbook

I’m always interested in finding new recipes, especially now that I have an allotment. Sometimes I just run out of ideas as to what to do with my produce. So I was particularly interested in this book, Home-grown Harvest when it arrived from the publishers.

The book is a collection of recipes designed to inspire people to use their home-grown fruit and veg in new and imaginative ways.

I liked how the book was divided up into sections which included ‘Root Vegetables’, ‘Fruiting Vegetables’ and ‘Tree Fruits’. Within each section there are several recipes for each of the fruit and vegetables mentioned. If, for instance you had too many courgettes (and who hasn’t been there!!) you could just go to that section and all the recipes would be together, rather than having to find the various recipes scattered throughout the book.

The book covers a good selection of ideas from main dishes and accompaniments to desserts and pickles. I particularly like the sound of the ricotta and cherry strudel, the apple and carrot bread with walnuts and a parsnip, chorizo and chestnut soup. The photography is gorgeous and everything looks yummy.

There are a few recipes that felt a bit like fillers. Most people who enjoy cooking have probably tried roast potatoes with some garlic and rosemary or roasted tomatoes. However, there are only a few of these and there are more than enough new ideas to interest the experienced cook. There are a good selection of completely veggie meals but it is by no means purely a vegetarian cookbook so will keep meat-eaters happy too. My main gripe was the sweetcorn, asparagus and goats cheese frittata. For a book promoting seasonal produce it seemed odd to include this recipe as it would be quite a feet to get asparagus and sweetcorn cropping at the same time!

I have yet to cook anything from the book but I am thinking of ideas for Christmas and I’m sure I’ll use some recipes from this book.

Thanks to Sarah at Ryland Peters and Small.

Available now from your local bookshop or on Amazon.

National Bean Pole Week

Tags

allotment, coppicing, garden, habitat management, National Beanpole Week, twiggy peasticks

Beanpoles (image from gardenstandard.com)

I have been thinking more and more recently about how I can garden in a more environmentally friendly way. I have been spending time on the internet searching for ways I can limit my impact on the environment. One of the ideas I have come across is using coppiced products in my garden and on the allotment.

Coppicing is a traditional way of managing woodland in Britain where trees are carefully cut to ground level and the new shoots that emerge are managed until they are the right size to be cut down again. I always thought it was only trees such as Willow and Hazel that were coppiced, but most deciduous trees and shrubs can be coppiced including chestnut and oak. However, the time between coppicings can vary greatly from 1-3 years for Willow and up to 20-40 years for Chestnut and Oak. Coppicing is an excellent way of producing timber without having to replant and it is also incredibly important way to manage habitats. The cutting down of trees in small areas of woodland allows light to reach the woodland floor encouraging herbaceous perennial plants to grow, this in turn supports a whole ecosystem of mammals, invertebrates and birds. As the shoots grow from the coppiced stumps the open glade is gradually shaded out but then in another part of the wood a new glade is opened up as a different section is coppiced. Creatures such as woodland fritillaries and dormice thrive along with bluebells and primroses. Unfortunately, Britain lost 90% of its coppiced woodlands during the 20th century (figure from http://www.beanpoles.org.uk).

This is where gardeners can come in. What gardener hasn’t got a stash of bamboo canes in the shed? I have, although I have never been much of a fan of bamboo. I appreciate it is an amazing plant that has many uses but it doesn’t really blend into a Welsh cottage garden. I have always been envious of various TV gardeners and their supply of Hazel poles or twiggy pea sticks but I don’t have any trees to provide me with these alternatives. Then I came across the website http://www.beanpoles.org.uk, which was set up to support the coppice business in the UK. The people behind the website want gardeners to buy locally grown, ecofriendly beanpoles instead of bamboo canes. By buying coppiced products you can support the local environment, wildlife, rural jobs and ancient skills and traditions.

To promote knowledge of coppicing and the products that can be purchased for the last 4 years there has been a National Beanpole Week. Next year this week is to be held from 21st April to 29th April. I have found a local coppicer who is holding special events during that week that the public can go along to and best of all I can get hold of my own supply of beanpoles and twiggy peasticks. Even better than just minimising my impact on the environment I will actually be helping it by supporting an important part of habitat management.

For more information and to see if there are any National Beanpole Week events taking place near you take a look at the following websites: http://www.beanpoles.org.uk/ and http://www.coppice-products.co.uk/.

Grow Your Cut Flowers – Part Two

Tags

allotment, biennials, cold frame, cut flower patch, cut flowers, Sweet peas

I posted the other day about the successes and failures on my cut flower patch this year. In this post I thought I’d share with you my plans for next year. I’m getting excited already!!

Sweet Williams at the plot

Back in July I sowed some Sweet Williams, Sweet Rocket and some Honesty. These are all biennials, so you sow one year, they put on some growth and then the following year they flower. I love biennials, you can sow them between July and September, at an otherwise quiet time of the year. You then plant them up where you want them to grow next year and then they sit there through the autumn and winter tantalising you to the prospect of what is to come. If you’ve never grown biennials before and you’re worried about the state they’re in after the winter, don’t. Mine looked pretty sorry for themselves after last winters snow and minus 16 degrees C but they soon perked up when spring came.

I’ve also planted some bulbs, some Anemone coronaria and some Gladiolus colvillei ‘The Bride’.

This year I definitely lacked enough filler flowers and foliage so my plan for next year is to improve this. I found Alchemilla mollis to be a brilliant filler. It’s lime green flowers contrasted beautifully with so many other flowers and it lasted well once cut. An added bonus is that it self seeds very freely so I am moving little plants that have self sown in the garden up to the allotment and I am edging all around one of the beds with Alchemilla. In the centre will be the early flowering Gladioli and once these finish flowering I will have some later flowering plants waiting in pots to go in.

Hardy Annuals in my cold frame

I have sitting in my cold frame a whole array of hardy annuals that I sowed back in September in the hope I will be able to get an early supply of flowers. These include Scabious, Nigella, Orlaya and Bupleurum. Although the mild autumn has meant they have put on more growth than I would have liked. I just hope they don’t succumb to botrytis. But there’s nothing really lost if they don’t make it, I’ll just sow another batch in March and have slightly later flowers.

My main aim is to make the space work as efficiently as possible. Any flowers really have to earn their place, which means they produce over a long period of time and  have a good vase life. So with this in mind I won’t be growing any Calendula or Dahlias at the allotment. I love both but they just don’t last very long when cut. I’m sure I’ll be able to find a spot for them in my garden though. I’m trying some Larkspur next year and some annual Asters. The Zinnias I grew this year just flowered and flowered but it was a mix and some of the colours were difficult to use with other flowers so I think I will go for single mixes next year, there are some particularly beautiful colours in the Plants of Distinction seed catalogue along with a great choice of Antirrhinums. I will definitely be growing Didiscus ‘Blue Lace’ again, it took a while to get going but was so unusual.

Didiscus

And of course there will be Sweet peas. There vase life is not great but they produce so many flowers over such a long period and their scent is so amazing that they are a must. I had 3 teepees this year which was a good amount. There was a period when I had so many I couldn’t pick them fast enough and I was having to give them away at the allotment but nobody complained.

My netting support system with biennials waiting to grow up through it

I will also be extending my bean netting support system to a third bed. I only used it on 2 beds partly because of expense and partly because I thought the other plants (rudbeckias) would be strong enough to support themselves. And for most of the season they were but then we had quite a stormy patch at the start of September and the rain and heavy winds meant the plants flopped over and some stems broke. It’s always hard to resurrect plants after this has happened. Some I’m just going to bite the bullet and net the third bed.

Growing cut flowers this year gave me so much pleasure. I can’t wait to see what I can do next year. If anyone has any suggestions for great cut flowers let me know.

Should have stayed in bed

Tags

allotment, forget-me-nots, garden, wellies

There are few places I’d rather be than my garden or allotment but just occasionally that relaxing day doesn’t turn out quite as I would have hoped…

1. My foray into the border to plant up some forget-me-nots is curtailed by the neighbour’s cat that has used the newly mulched border as a litter tray. Fortunately wellies and gloves remain clean but I go off in search of a carrier bag to remove the offending item. Of course I can’t find any carrier bags because I’m helping to save the planet, so I eventually find a freezer bag….that will have to do.
2. After planting up the forget-me-nots I return their pots to the shed. But the pots are all stacked quite precariously and adding any further pots results in an avalanche of plastic and half an hour of reconstruction into a hopefully more sturdy structure.
3.  I eventually get round to the main job I had planned to do – potting on some seedlings but because my shed multi-tasks at this time of year as a log store I find myself sitting on the path outside the shed pricking out.   Unfortunately, I’m pretty clumsy anyway and whilst tidying up I knock over several pots and squish a couple of seedlings.
4. I remember to water in the forget-me-nots and newly potted up seedlings (I have been known to get distracted and forget to water newly planted plants only to remember later that night so I end up watering in my pyjamas and wellies with a torch). I don’t, however remember that the hose pipe nozzle was damaged by the frost last winter and has developed little holes along one side of the nozzle. This results in an unusual, and always surprising, sideways squirting of water along the length of the nozzle before the user can get to twist the nozzle enough so that water actually comes out the front . Damp jeans (mmm…. lovely!) generally results. So what should have been a little bit of gentle pottering has taken 3 times longer than it should have done and I wouldn’t say I feel relaxed as I go off muttering about cats, hosepipes and needing a bigger shed. Fortunately days like these are rare, which is just as well really.