The Wellywoman Awards 2012 – Part One

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Burgon and Ball, Daucus carota 'Black Knight', Derek Jarman, Dungeness Nature Reserve, felco secateurs, greenhouse, Lia and Juliet's supper club, tayberry

With winter approaching it’s a good time to look back and reflect on the year that has passed and, as the award season is starting, I thought I’d introduce the inaugural Wellywoman awards. Courtesy of Wellyman and his rediscovered model making skills I have the ‘Golden Wellies’ which I’ll award for those garden related greats of 2012 and, in homage to the Golden Raspberries that go to the year’s worst films, I bring you the ‘Golden Snail’ awards. It was going to be the ‘Golden Slugs’ but modelling a slug and making it actually distinguishable from, well, a blob of modelling clay proved a little difficult.

So it gives me great pleasure to announce, in no particular order, the recipients of the first ‘Golden Wellies’.

Daucus carota ‘Black Knight’

My flower of the year has to be Daucus carota ‘Black Knight’. In itself, it’s not the showiest of blooms and the tricky growing conditions this year meant it took a while to get going but once it did flower it just kept on going right into November. The plummy-pink coloured umbel flowers of this variety of carrot looked so good in arrangements and they lasted up to 2 weeks when cut.

This was the first proper year for my tayberry fruiting. Although I made the mistake of buying the thorn covered variety which has made it interesting and painful when training into some semblance of a structure, its fruits have more than made up for any scratches. A combined flavour of blackberry and raspberry and a long fruiting season have made this a great addition to the plot.

The humble pea gets my nod for an award. This is the first year I have grown them. I’ve always wondered what was the point when frozen peas are so good but nothing on the veg patch this year could beat the sweetness of freshly picked peas eaten raw. They are top on my list of crops to grow in 2013.

My favourite TV gardening programme of the year had to be Sarah Raven’s Bees, Butterflies and Blooms. The series followed Sarah as she tried to change perceptions about community planting schemes for the benefit of locals and wildlife. It was fascinating, informative and, at times, infuriating (it appears some would rather having plain old, boring grass than a beautiful flower studded meadow).

This was the year I discovered the delights of squashes. The plural there is really rather stretching it. I grew Uchiki kuri and the weather conspired to make this not the best of years to be trying to grow squash for the first time.  I didn’t, at one point, think I was going to get anything at all from the plants so I was delighted when I spotted two yellow fruit forming. It was a bit of a race against the lower temperatures and lack of sunshine to see whether they would actually ripen in time. In the end, one grew to a really significant size and turned a beautiful deep orange colour, the other ripened but didn’t grow very much. It was a squash version of Little and Large. Despite the low yield I’ve been bitten by the squash bug, so I’m hoping I can fit some more varieties into my planting plan for next year.

The tool of the year has to go to my Burgon and Ball flower snips. I was lucky enough to receive a pair this time last year to review on my blog but November wasn’t the best time of year to put them through their paces. I didn’t think anything could replace my Felco secateurs but I used my snips all year-long. They can cut through surprisingly thick stems and are lighter and smaller than my secateurs so I tended to favour them. The one problem is their green coloured handles. I’m not sure how much time I wasted this year hunting for them after I’d put them down somewhere. I think some coloured tape around the handles may be applied this winter.

Derek Jarman’s garden

Despite the weather I did get the chance to visit some beautiful gardens. After years of wanting to go to some of the iconic gardens of East Sussex and Kent we finally got around to visiting them. My favourite was Derek Jarman’s garden at Dungeness. The simplest and possibly least typical garden it had immense charm and was set in a stunningly bleak location. The plants that thrived here seemed all the more precious because they were growing in such a hostile environment. For me it showed that the need to grow is an innate response to our environment and that even when faced with such unlikely growing conditions the desire to create beauty using plants was too strong to resist.

The amazing food at Lia and Juliet’s Supper Club deserves one of my ‘Golden Wellies’. I was new to the concept of supper clubs when we went along in June but what really drew me to this one was the celebration of fruit and vegetables and seasonality. Keen allotmenteers, Lia and Juliet wanted to showcase the produce they grew and make it a real event. With tea-lights lining the path to the front door, fairy lighting in the back garden and a verandah for pre-dinner drinks the scene was set for a great night. Not only was the food great but so was the company. In fact we loved it so much we went back again in October.

Some golden wellies have to go to the newly installed greenhouse. It was a pain to build and was responsible for a fair degree of swearing and although it’s not really the time of year to start using it to its full potential, I love it. There are already several seed trays of hardy annuals in there, some salad leaves and herbs. Roll on spring.

And finally, my last ‘Golden Wellies’ of 2012 go to my fellow garden bloggers and tweeters. They are too many of you to mention individually but you’re great. You inform, inspire and amuse. I’m looking forward to reading about the highs and lows of 2013.

Read my next post to see who and what will receive a ‘Golden Snail’.

A Thorny Problem

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felco secateurs, Geof Hamilton, green fly, RHS encyclopedia, Rosa, Rosa A Shropshire Lad, Rosa Gertrude Jekyll, Rose pruning

The end of February is the perfect time to prune your roses, whilst they are still dormant but just about to burst into life. On Tuesday, as mine were starting to show signs of growth with a few buds opening I decided it was a job that needed tackling, so armed with some cleaned and sharpened secateurs and some gloves I set about the task.

I do have a bit of a love/hate relationship with roses. They are such a quintessential part of a garden for me and their scent is beautiful but they take a lot of care to look good. They seem to attract every greenfly in the vicinity, along with leafhoppers and are particularly prone to fungal infections such as blackspot and mildew. Trying to look after them organically, without an arsenal of chemical sprays at your disposal can be a real test.

Then there’s the pruning, a thorny problem indeed. A lot of people are flummoxed by pruning in general but roses, like clematis, seem to cause more than their fair share of panics. I think it is mainly due to the many different types of roses available; species roses, ramblers, climbers, old English roses, modern shrub roses, tea roses, musks, I could go on. It can be confusing to say the least as to how to tackle the different varieties. Coupled with this is the fact that roses have evolved to be covered in vicious thorns, natures way of protecting them from being eaten by grazing animals, although there are times when it feels like it was probably more to fend off gardeners wielding secateurs.

Rose 'Gertrude Jekyll'

We have 3 roses; Gertrude Jekyll an old rose hybrid, with a particularly strong ‘rose’ scent which was voted the nations favourite rose by BBC viewers in 2006, Geoff Hamilton, a Leander hybrid, again with a lovely scent and named after one of Britain’s most popular TV gardeners and A Shropshire Lad, an English Alba hybrid which we grow as a climber.

I started with the 2 shrub roses first. Pruning these is fairly straightforward, removing any dead, diseased or damaged stems first and then reducing the other stems to between one and two thirds. It is also good practice to try to create quite an open bush with no congested stems growing in the centre as this allows air to flow through the plant minimising problems with fungal diseases. To maintain this open structure always prune back to an outward facing bud, so any new growth is growing out and away from the plant.

It wasn’t long though before the roses were putting up a fight. It may have been the warmest February day for years yesterday but on Tuesday it was still quite chilly so I was wearing my winter hat. Whilst bending over my hat was snagged on some thorns, Gertrude Jekyll has some particularly vicious ones. My hands were full with prunings and I couldn’t release my hat. After a couple of tugs the hat came off my head but remained attached to the thorns as if the rose had acquired a triumphal trophy. The other problem was my gloves. They’ve been through the wash so much now that they’ve become really stiff, making it awkward to perform tasks that require a bit of dexterity. It was no good the gloves would have to come off, of course this meant I was scratched to bits. I also came across the first green fly of the year, can you believe it, already congregating on the young rose leaves just as they’re opening. So much for that cold spell killing them off.

I then turned my attentions to A Shropshire Lad. We have this growing up against a fence and I have been training in the stems over the last 2 years to create a nice framework. I still find it a bit daunting pruning this rose though and after a couple of minutes of looking at it wondering where to start I went into the house in search of my trusty RHS Encyclopedia. Because there are more stems and branches it can feel a bit overwhelming tackling a climber but with my book propped open at ‘How to prune and train a climbing rose’ I felt a bit more confident. Initially, the principles are the same as the other roses removing the dead, diseased and damaged stems but then it became more about maintaining a shape that encourages the most flowers.

By training the vertical stems to grow horizontally this changes the hormone balance in the stems and rather than the plant concentrating on producing vegetative growth it focusses on flowering. I removed a couple of large stems from the base and any spindly, twiggy branches and then reduced any sideshoots by about two thirds. Finally, I tied in the stems to wires already on the fence to hold them in place. The flowers on A Shropshire Lad are quite large and especially after rain can become heavy so it’s important to tie in any new growth over the year to prevent any stems snapping.

A Shropshire Lad, pruned and tied in

My back was aching afterwards and I was a little blood-stained from my thorny encounter but it felt very satisfying. Although pruning the climbing rose has exposed that I now need to paint the fence. Another job to add to the list. The question is can I manage to paint the fence without covering the rose in it.