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Tag Archives: espalier apple tree

Cocktails or Compost?

20 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by wellywoman in In the Garden, On the plot

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

comfrey, espalier apple tree, Open University, tayberry

Cut flowers from the allotment

A posy of flowers from the cut flower patch

Much as I would have loved to have been wandering the cobbled streets of some Mediterranean town or sipping a cocktail somewhere glamorous, staring out to sea, there are some weekends when a girl has to put such plans on hold and get down to tackling those jobs she’s been putting off for weeks, if not months. The sort of jobs that get neglected in the hustle and bustle of busy lives or are pretty unappealing when the sun is shining, namely compost making, shed tidying and a trip to the tip.

It’s a hectic time of year, as Wellyman is studying for a degree, in his spare time, with the Open University. He’s coming towards the end of his third year, with essays and a project due in over the next couple of weeks, so whilst he was busy scribbling away it seemed the perfect time to get on top of the jobs that I haven’t been able to do because of all the rain.

Borlotti beans

My borlotti beans nearly ready for picking

After a rain sodden morning on Saturday I was pretty grumpy having had to listen to stories of the glorious sunshine and heat that were elsewhere but by 2 o’ clock the sun was finally shining and the plot beckoned. Loppers at the ready, I tidied up the mess left behind by the hedge butchering incident of the previous weekend. I wrestled with a few wayward bramble shoots and then turned my attention to the tayberry. I had thought it would be a real nightmare to remove this year’s fruiting canes and tie in the new growth, some of which was 10ft long and growing along the ground into my other beds. Fortunately, it didn’t prove to be as bad as I had expected. I had thought I would have to be swathed in protective clothing in case one of the thorny canes sprung back at me but I even managed to tackle it without gloves, which I’d forgotten to bring up with me. Gingerly, and somewhat painfully, I twisted the long, arching, and still very pliable canes into the support that was already there, tying them in place with some twine. Remarkably, I came away with only a few puncture wounds and scratches!

Celeriac

Celeriac remoulade in a couple of weeks, I think.

The next on the list was the compost. I’ve done very little to the compost heap this year. Visits to the plot have often been snatched in between spells of rain so that piles of plant debris have tended to be dumped on top of the heap without any work to make them more compostable. This untouched mountain of material had got so large that, rather than tackling it, I simply opened up another front of composting waste, depositing the old broad beans and peas on a pile next to the actual heap. It was starting to look a little bit of a mess and, if I actually wanted some compost from it, I really needed to give it some attention.

The loppers were a surprising good tool to chop up large pieces of plant material; I cut back my comfrey plants and added the leaves to the heap with some nettles that were growing around my tool storage area. I had a bit of rummage underneath and despite my neglect there was the lovely sight of some dark brown crumbly compost below the layers of the more recent additions. The heap is contained simply in one of the large sacks you get sand delivered in from a builders merchant, with 4 stakes at each corner and a couple of covers to put on top to stop it getting too wet. Of all the different types of compost receptacles I’ve used I have to say it is the simplest and the most effective. Although, I can’t claim any credit for the construction, as it was already on the plot when we took it over. It does show though, that all those different products marketed at us as the best way to make compost are probably unnecessary if you have the right spot for a rubble sack and some stakes.

Florence fennel

I’m so chuffed with my Florence fennel which has been my nemesis in recent years.

Sunday morning was shed time. I had a clear out several months ago and had failed, again, to keep any sense of order or tidiness but one of the problems was that I had never actually got round to taking everything that had been bagged up to the tip. A third of the shed, and that’s a significant amount of floor space in my tiny little storage area was taken up by rubbish bags. Once these had been removed the shed wasn’t actually as bad as I had thought.

The final job was to add another line of wire support for my espalier apple. When we bought it in the spring it was two-tiered but when I was pruning it a few weeks ago I had spotted two branches that looked perfect to be trained out horizontally, to create a third tier. We’d picked up some hooks with a bolt on them from the hardware shop and Wellyman did the drilling. It’ll be a while before it has filled the space but already the apple tree has created a lovely screen between two parts of the garden.

Now my ‘to do’ list is looking a lot a shorter maybe I can find the time for a few cocktails, might have to be in the back garden though.

Seed sowing, shed clearing and fleecing an apple tree

09 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by wellywoman in In the Garden, Seeds, Spring

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

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

Blooming Crab Apple

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

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'

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.

Posts, Poles and Pea Netting

26 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by wellywoman in In the Garden, On the plot, Out and About, Sustainable gardening

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

espalier apple tree, Herefordshire, Moreton Wood, National Beanpole Week, Planting Charlotte potatoes

Chitted Potatoes

Our chitted potatoes waiting to be planted

Another weekend of glorious weather. This doesn’t feel like spring, it’s more like summer, 21C and tshirts in March isn’t typical for the time of year in these parts so we made the most of it and had a really productive couple of days in the garden and on the plot.

Wellyman put in the posts and wire supports for the new espalier apple tree. These are the sort of jobs that invariably take three times longer than anticipated and before you know it a whole morning has been swallowed up by something that seemed so straightforward. Usually Wellyman discovers the drill has no charge, the drill bit he needs is the one that broke last time and the various screws, bolts, nails required are the wrong size. Not this time though, maybe we’re just getting more adept at this DIY thing but it all went really smoothly, which was just as well because we had an appointment to collect some beanpoles.

Hazel beanpoles

Coppiced hazel beanpoles from Moreton Wood in Herefordshire

I posted last autumn about National Beanpole Week and how there has been a resurgence in people managing coppice woodlands and selling the products. National Beanpole Week runs from 21st April to 29th April this year but because we wouldn’t be able to make these dates I had managed to find a woodland in Herefordshire where I could pick some up early. It wasn’t exactly local but it was such a beautiful day and Herefordshire is a lovely county that it wasn’t a chore to drive that little bit further. Moreton Wood is classified as ancient woodland with records going back 400 years but in the 1960s the deciduous, native trees were cleared for conifer plantations. The couple who now manage the woodland are slowly restoring it, removing the conifers and allowing broadleaved, deciduous trees to grow again. The practice of coppicing dates back to the early medieval period but declined from the 19th century. It seems to be making something of a comeback as people realise that coppicing is a great way to produce a fast and reliable source of timber without needing to replant and that it has beneficial effects on the woodland ecosystem. At a time when every company is jumping on the eco-bandwagon this really is a sustainable business. We came away with some great, sturdy posts about 8ft long which will be perfect for their job and they were only 50p each.

Baby pea plants ready for planting

Baby pea plants ready for planting

Back at home we carefully carried up to the allotment the chitted potatoes with their fat, stubby shoots and some small pea plants for planting out. The potatoes are Charlottes, a very versatile potato that is excellent as a salad spud or left to grow a bit bigger and can then be roasted, particularly tasty with a little bit of butter and chives chopped on top. Wellyman dug holes for each tuber and I put some compost and a handful of comfrey pellets in the planting hole before placing in the tubers, being careful not to damage the shoots, especially as you backfill.

Then came the pea planting. Is there another piece of gardening kit more annoying than plastic pea netting? It has a life of its own and trying to cut it, making sure you cut in a straight line and don’t go off at an angle leaving you with an oddshaped piece of netting that is no use to anyone is easier said than done. Getting exasperated doesn’t help but that’s also easier said than done. We got there in the end, with sections attached to canes so the newly planted peas have something to scramble up. I think only trying to use fleece to cover your plants on a windy day and discovering a kink in the hosepipe at the opposite end of the plot to where I am, can match pea netting for annoyance.

Forced rhubarb stems

Forced rhubarb stems

Just before we left I checked the rhubarb I’m forcing and we should be able to pick our first stems and the first produce of the plot this year, in the next week. So everything is taking shape. Exciting times ahead.

For more information on coppicing and finding a wood local to you visit Coppice Products.

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My latest book – The Crafted Garden

My latest book - The Crafted Garden

My latest book - The Crafted Garden

My Book – The Cut Flower Patch

My Book - The Cut Flower Patch. Available to buy from the RHS online bookshop.

The Cut Flower Patch – Garden Media Guild Practical Book 2014

The Cut Flower Patch - Garden Media Guild Practical Book 2014
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