June 2021

It has been a while since I wrote anything here, things have been pretty hectic in the walled garden, getting ready for the open gardens.

After deep consideration we decided to do open gardens for the NGS, only 3 gardens in the village opened in the end, two large and one small where we did timed tickets to make it safe.

By the end of Sunday we had around 250 visitors to our walled garden, about half of our normal numbers but worth doing to raise funds for the NGS medical charities.

The weather this year has been odd and unpredictable but has resulted in many plants open in the garden which may not have been previously, so great for returning visitors.

No April showers this year but very cold and dry. Along come May and with it the rain. Here in the walled garden 25 days in April had night time temperatures below 4 degrees (freezing). We had only 13.3mm rain in April, half that of 2020, 9mm of that came in one day. Then in May we had 64.76mm rain (17.27mm in one day, 13th)

Temperatures only started rising the last few days of May and now in June it is so hot.

All this has caused much confusion for the plants. Growing seeds in the unheated greenhouse they did not know what to do and very slow or non-existent germination for many of the seeds we were trying to grow.

The plus side of this unusual weather is that plants, usually already flowered and going over were only just beginning so the garden had a different look for the visitors. The Iris was typical of this, showing their full colours.

Bearded Iris on 6th June 2021

In the front garden we have some paeonies, the oldest is almost white, very large blooms and usually petals are falling by now but….

Peony on 6th June 2021

We also have a big patch of Alliums which by open gardens will have become the brown seed heads. I have planted some Salvia Ostfriesland in between to take over when the alliums die.

This year the alliums were still purple for open gardens.

Allium on 6th June 2021

Unfortunately the same could not be said for the edibles, the first, covered strawberries were ready for picking but most vegetable seeds sown this year are struggling, hopefully they will get a move on now the weather is much warmer day and night and so we shall have a good harvest, eventually.

That’s gardening for you, unpredictable, rewarding and always something different!

Winter harvest

A few weeks ago I was talking to someone about our walled garden and said how we only had to buy mushrooms (I did try to grow them once but not very successfully) bananas and citrus. ( I do have a lime tree but so far no edible fruit)

They seemed surprised that the fruit and vegetables kept that long!

In the freezer are all the soft fruits, currants red black and white, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, loganberries together with runner beans, dwarf beans, broad beans , peas and the last cauliflower. In the shed we stored onions, shallots, garlic, potatoes. eating and cooking apples. Also some squash although they were eaten before Christmas.

But what I did not know was how many people didn’t realise how much there is to harvest fresh over the winter.

Over the 4 months December to March we have picked fresh the following (most we ate ourselves but some went on the charity table for local people to enjoy):

Beetroot – 25, Brussel sprouts 942g, Purple sprouting broccoli 501g, red cabbage 2, carrots 6056g, swiss chard 1172g, leeks 57, kale 1332g, lettuce 1, parsnips 11836g, spinach 236g, spring onions 7, Rhubarb 1374g and forced rhubarb 1128g.

Rhubarb and leeks ready for sale

Purple sprouting broccoli

Squash

Each year we grow various squash, favourites at the moment for flavour are uchi kuri and hunter, a butternut squash.

They do take rather a lot of land and the fruits need to be clear of the soil to try and prevent slug damage. They also get shaded from the sun , which prevents ripening, unless the leaves are moved.

On a holiday in Norfolk we visited an open garden and saw a wonderful method of growing squash which looks attractive, keeps the fruits off the soil and enables the sun to reach the fruit and ripen them.

We had several ideas to try and achieve the same effect in our garden and eventually came up with this using old fruit cage poles and water pipe cut offs for the corners.

Seeds are ready and will be planted soon, the plants will go out in the garden after last frost in May and fingers crossed we will get a good crop.

First signs

 The days are getting longer, the air is warming (some days!) and spring bulbs are coming up.

Snowdrops have been in flower since before Christmas but the bulk of the came through from the end of January.

Clumps are bulking up nicely and by splitting them every 3 or 4 years I am now getting quite a display.

I also grow snowdrops under some of the fruit trees, giving colour and interest while the trees are still dormant.

I even have a few “Special ” snowdrops

Diggory

Also coming out now are the dwarf daffodil Tete a tete and some crocus

Soon the buds will be opening on the trees, the herbaceous perennials emerging from their winter slumbers and the grass will need mowing!

February

We are almost half way through February and it is very cold. I am sure there must be a record that this winter has been the coldest since………..

We have had some snow, although not as much as some places in the UK but it is very cold.

For many days temperature has been minus degrees all day as well as all night.

It may be freezing but we are lucky to have a heated propagator in the greenhouse and so we have been able to start sowing seeds of some plants that need that early sowing or long growing season.

A few weeks after sowing the leeks, rocket and celeriac have started to show and the sweet peas are coming through too.

Next to sow are dahlias. Grown from seed they should flower in the summer and then produce a tuber which can be saved overwinter for next year.

2020 Harvest

A strange year in many respects including the crops in the garden. The hot weather meant we were unable to water some of the areas in the garden as the stored rain water ran out. We tend to limit watering to greenhouses and raised beds and hope that the rest cope ok. Unfortunately the onions failed because we did not manage to water them enough. But the potatoes were huge so they had been able to take advantage of the moisture in the soil from the wet winter.

A few new crops were grown this year, Luffa, which failed to produce any fruits but more success with edamame beans and watermelon (delicious)

Needless to say overall we were not short of a harvest and as you can see from the chart we had plenty for us and our family with lots of excess along with plants I had propagated to sell for charity.

We raised over £700. We donated this money to; Tysoe Dementia friends and Pam Britton Trust for Dementia, ECO work-shop Stratford (for adults with learning disabilities and autism),NGS (National Garden Scheme, medical charities), MIND(mental health charity), Garden Organic digital library, RNIB (Royal National Institute of blind people), NCDS(National Children’s deaf society),

January

I was hoping for some cold weather this winter to try and kill off some of the bugs in the garden, this last week has certainly been cold.

We have a weather station in the garden that gives us details so we can see what has been happening over the past 24 hours. It has not been above 4 degrees overnight ( freezing) since 22nd December and most of those were minus. On 7th it did not get above -0.2 all day! Overnight on the 6th it was -3.8 degrees which was colder than any night for the whole of 2020.

If you do not have to go out anywhere, and many of us can not now thanks to lockdown, those of you who are lucky enough to have a view of one, it is nice to sit in the warm and look at the garden and see what is going on.

I do not cut down a lot of the dead flowers in the autumn and I leave the seed heads as food for the birds and a sculptural shape in the garden for interest over winter.

I was so pleased that I do that as last week I saw chaffinch and bullfinch eating the seeds on the Phlomis seed heads.

Now with the frost and snow in the garden everything looks great with it’s white frosting.

Frosted grasses

Phlomis seed heads

Stipa gigantica in the frost

Verbena bonariensis