A new experience

The garden is just over an acre, with many different areas including the vegetables and flowers, shrubs and trees. I have also put various art works in the garden, some I made myself, stone carved owl, willow hare various constructions made from old clay plant pots. There are also others artists work from the local potter, a galvanised leaping hare, a huge metal cow parsley and the latest, a wonderful cuddle seat made by Nik Burns.

                                                                Ramsey and Baa'bara

Last week a new experience. We were videoed in our garden, I was talking about 5 of my favourite areas in the garden, I could have included at least double that!.

The video was to promote the wonderful gardening trousers from Genus. I bought my first pair six or more years ago and have worn them almost everyday since. I now have several pairs, different colours and summer as well as winter ones. Soon to be on you tube and instagram!! a slightly scary prospect.

This weekend is our open garden with the NGS another chance to show others our garden. 

Garlic

Each year we grow garlic, planting the tiny cloves in October.

They do like moisture but not drowning or they will rot. This year we grew Provence Wight garlic and elephant garlic. This is not a true garlic but from the leek family, but looks like giant garlic bulbs. A much milder taste than normal garlic.

The garlic should be ready to harvest when the leaves turn yellow, this is in June, much earlier than the shallots and onions which were also planted in October.

With the very wet winter and alternate days of very hot then much colder weather this Spring/ early summer , we wondered what they would be like.

It was a good harvest, decent sized bulbs and the elephant garlic are the biggest we have ever grown.

We probably should have harvested a couple of weeks earlier as many of the cloves are separating but they will still taste as good.

                                            Elephant garlic

                                            Garlic Provence Wight, plaited to store.

                The soft fruit is ripening really quickly so picking every few days

Memories of May

A funny year so far in the garden, Some plants were very late coming in to flower and then raced through the month. Lots of blossom on the fruit trees were successfully pollinated and are now developing fruitlets, but others did not get pollinated so no fruit this year on the apricot and some cherries. The weather must have been too wet on those days so the pollinators stayed away.

Stand out flowers this months were the Bearded Iris. They obviously enjoyed the wet winter and have been flowering throughout the month. A wonderful display but now time to cut down the flower stalks.

It is several years since I last divided the plants, time to do so again .They tend to grow round in a circle and the middle bit dies out. In a few weeks I will dig some up, transplant some around the garden and others can go on my charity plant stall.

Then a little patch in the garden  came into flower making a lovely White garden.

White foxgloves and Orlaya Grandiflora make a lovely combination.

last stored veg

The vegetables and fruit have stored very well this year, probably because we have not had the early warm weather that usually comes around March.

I used the last of the apples tonight for some apple flapjacks and an apple pie. Amazing as it is May.

We also had the last winter squash roasted for tea.

We grow a lot of winter squash, many eaten before the winter, they ae delicious roasted, but they also keep well if kept cool and dry. The shed is often too damp if the temperature gets very cold. So the place to store them now is in the unheated pantry/utility room.

The one for tea tonight was the last Delicata. A lovely medium sized squash, so called because in the summer the skin is quite delicate, but store into the winter and the skin gets so hard. The only way to cut it open is to use a pruning saw, none of the knives would go through.

What a difference a day or two makes!

Wow! a few days ago the asparagus bed was looking neat and tidy, the winter mulch of well rotted leaves covering the slight hump in the ground that indicated the asparagus was there.

Then a couple of warm days followed by another of rain and up come the beautiful spears.

A tasty addition to the evening meal and more to come for the next 6-8 weeks.

After that the spears should be allowed to grow into tall billowing fronds feeding the roots ready for next years harvest.

March 2024

 In February we had about  80 mm rain (compared with only 10 mm in February 2023).

This March about 50mm rain (roughly the same as in 2023).

But the ground is so wet, occasionally a dry day so we can just manage to give the grass its first high cut, before the rain come again.

This wet clay soil is very hard to weed without removing great clods of soil with the weed and getting gloved fingers clogged with wet clay. So the weeds are flourishing!

The soil is too cold and wet to plant out new but established plants are doing well.

The herbaceous perennials are appearing though the soil and everything is greening up, a sure sign of spring.

Anemone blanda in the "wild " area of the lawn is lovely with various shades of blue from almost white to deep blue. These are now joined by the cow slips, Snakes head fritillary and green stalks of the Camissia, which will come into flower later in May.

Other splashes of colour are appearing daily

Narcissus bulbocodium  "Arctic Bells"

                            Daphne mezereum rubra, the flowers come first then, the foliage

                                            Hellebore are still going strong, this lovely white one.

                                                    Trillium kurabayashii, a weird and wonderful plant

...and we are still harvesting the wonderful purple sprouting broccoli.

February 2024

 What a wet and soggy month.

Very few days have been dry enough to do any work on the soil, but we have managed to prune all the fruit trees, apples and pears and the soft fruit, currants, gooseberries, autumn raspberries and blueberries.

We are harvesting leeks, carrots and parsnips from the garden. A lovely crop of sweet rocket growing in the greenhouse, free from the flea beetle that fills it full of holes on that grown outside in the summer!

There is no chard this year as it rotted in the cold and then the wet, but we have had some kale and yesterday the first of the purple sprouting broccoli. A delicious crop but takes all year to grow, we are now sowing seed for next  years harvest!

The spring bulbs are looking good. The snowdrops are starting to go over but they have been followed by the daffodils, tete a tete being the first to show. The berm is looking good with the spring bulbs and hellebores which are still flowering.

Then the rain!. in 2023 we had quite a dry February with 9.65mm rainfall recorded in our garden. This year we have already had over 58mm rain and still a week to go. There have been too many days where the temperatures have been over 10 degrees, 14 days in the last 21days have all reached these temperatures. Too hot for February and the plants and birds think it is Spring already.

The path between cold frames and raised bed became a stream last week!