Onions

We grow quite a lot of onions, shallots and garlic and they do taste nicer than shop bought ones!

Planted in October they are ready to harvest early summer. Garlic and elephant garlic in June followed by the onions and shallots in July. A few summer sown onions will be ready to harvest in late August/September.

After last years disaster with the onion harvest, too hot and a shortage of water to keep watering, it has been good this year. We grew onion Champion, shallot Longor and shallot Giselle. There are also red onion called Electric, not quite ready yet.

When the top growth starts to flop over the onions are ready to loosen in the soil, carefully push a fork under each bulb at lift up but leave them sitting half in the soil for a few more days. Then take them out of the soil and either leave on the top to dry out in the sun or if weather is very wet, we place on greenhouse floor to dry. They are ready to store when the stalk and outer scales of the onion rub off easily. Once cleaned up the onions are stored in the shed

Champion

Shallot Giselle

Shallot Longor

Shallot Giselle were quite small and since the Longor were much bigger ( 7 cms) we decided to pickle the small ones. A good tip I found was to pour boiling water on the shallots, leave 20-30 seconds remove the water and then pour cold water on them. This loosens the skins and makes them easy to peel.

peeled shallots

Pickled now leave for at least 6 weeks

Busy time

It has been a busy few weeks, trying to get on top of the weeding, a little rain and everything you want and do not want grows like mad.

Bindweed is the worst in the borders, gets up all the stems and you have to be careful taking them off some of the more tender plants.

It is also harvest time. Soft fruit has been coming for a while but now as the strawberries come to an end we have red currants, black currants, white currants, summer raspberries, blackberries and blueberries and 2 early but very large figs.

All these berries and currants are wonderful for breakfast on cereal or porridge. We freeze them in small, 2 portion , re-useable bags and put them in the freezer for breakfasts throughout the year. A few bigger bags of currants are frozen, for jelly or jam later in the year and crumbles or pies can be made by using a few of the “breakfast bags”.

White currants

This variety of white currant is called Blanca the bush was grown from a cutting several years ago and is now producing very large pea sized currants.

Another opening

We spent last week working hard in the garden trying to get rid of as many weeds as possible. On Saturday the Warwick Plant Heritage group visited our garden, the bindweed still managed to come up overnight!

It is rewarding to show other people what we have achieved in the garden over the past 10 years and hear their comments. They seemed to have an enjoyable time and with tea and cake available the many seating areas were used, until it rained. Fortunately this was nearing the end of the afternoon, so some people could stay sitting under the sun shade while others opened umbrellas and continued walking round the garden.

The roses were still going strong, the Alfred Carrier gave a wonderful scent on the arch as you walk up the garden.

Alfred Carrier

The Joanne Elise is still producing loads of blooms

Joanna Elise

Penny Lane is doing great this year, this has wonderful hips in the autumn

Penny Lane

Not only roses in the garden but more about that on a later blog.

Good or bad?

There are many insects and bugs in the garden, some useful some not. As we garden organically we do not use chemicals to eradicate all those we do not want.

Slugs and snails are a problem for every gardener we try to keep the numbers down with the use of a garlic wash, especially on hostas, also going out and manually picking them off and moving them away from the garden. On newly planted seedlings we use the organically approved ferric phosphate slug pellets, sparingly. Once the plants are established we tolerate a few holes nibbled from the leaves.

Aphids are bad this year especially on the new shoots of the apple trees, squashing them between finger and thumb reduces some and a soap spray helps too.

Once the beneficial insects arrive it is best not to use the soap as we do not want to kill everything.

A welcome sight is this “ugly” bug:

What is this?

The few early lady birds have been busy and the sight of these larvae mean we will very soon get many more lady birds to keep eating all the aphids.

Asparagus beetle

This very pretty beetle can be devastating on the asparagus crop. They nibble the head of the asparagus. Later they lay little black eggs on the fern foliage and these hatch into tiny grey slugs which can defoliate the fern.

This is a problem because once you stop harvesting the spears, the crop is left to leaf up and nourish the roots ready for next year.

We try and reduce the effects of this bug by squashing the adults, the are very hard to catch as when they sense a shadow they drop to the soil upside down and play dead so are hard to see! We also have to squash the slugs that hatch to try and reduce the damage and prevent the crop from being completely weakened.

Asparagus beetle 

Year of the Rose

Each year in the garden is different. After a slow start, this year has been great for roses. This climber was already in the garden when we arrived (unknown variety). Over the last 2 weeks the blooms have doubled in weight 3 times with the rainfall events! Caught it in a dry period with its clematis sieboldii companion, which is enjoying having cool roots. They just look great together.

Rose and clematis on east facing wall June 2019

I did not plant theses but…

The garden is full of colour and most was not down to any planned design or planting.

Poppies everywhere and so many different colours and shapes.

A sea of poppies

Red ones

Really dark

Ladybird poppy?

Purple ladybird?

Frilly edged ones

They look great and most are still standing upright despite the heavy rain and wind last week.

I will however remove most the the seed pods before they fully ripen as we do not want the whole garden being overtaken by poppies next year.

Open Gardens 2019

Phew an exhausting but rewarding open gardens, which this year brought 456 lovely visitors to our garden.

Open Garden 2019

Saturday was very warm and with 10 gardens to visit our elderflower cordial was welcomed by many.

After working hard all week we were pleased with the results and the many wonderful comments made it all worthwhile.

The clematis, on an arch by the new patio, came into flower perfectly on time giving a wonderful display, Clematis Duchess of Edinburgh looking almost like a rose deceived many visitors and sunset a wonderful dark pink flower.

Duchess of Edinburgh

Sunset

Sown seeds, self sown seedlings, division, cuttings many of the ways I try and propagate plants in the garden which give me lots of new plants to sell for charity. This weekend we raised £150 for the National Garden Scheme charity.

Plants for sale

More plants for sale

Wood store much liked by many put together with OCD!!

The new Thyme clock is looking good