Homemade

 It is always rewarding when you have something that you made yourself, and doubly so if you collected materials from the garden.

Most meals come under this description but at this time of year there is the chance to do more.

I always like to make the Christmas decorations using materials collected from the garden, environmentally friendly. no miles and fully compostable or recyclable after use.

I made 2 wreaths this year. I have used laurel as the main foliage, I could do with some conifer or leylandii really, perhaps I should plant some? or perhaps not! (be careful what you wish for).

The wreath by the front door also includes ivy, holly, mistletoe and sedum seed heads. On an ivy stem circle and fir cones which I made about 8 years ago and have reused every year since. Oh and an apple too.

We also put a wreath on the garden gate, again a reused circle with this year laurel, sedum , holly and apple.

The table on the patio gets a decoration too. Using the top of the now rusted chiminea which is nice and heavy, chicken wire inside to support the stems and a collection of seed heads and grasses from the garden. The inclusion honesty seed heads makes it really glow in the low light levels of this time of year.

A few stems with berries adds colour but not for long, the blackbirds fly into the display and eat the berries.

I also put a string of apples up for the blackbirds, unfortunately the squirrel has been and demolished it already.

 The weather has turned cold at last but we still get many warm days, and along with that comes rain!

There are a lot of old apple trees in the garden, some forming strange shapes as they were once closely pruned espaliers but were left many years ago to grow as they wish, which is straight up!

Some are cookers, Blenheim Orange, Bramley and Grenadier, others eaters, Wealthy, Belle de Boskoop, Discovery and Tydemans Worcester. One thing they all have in common is Mistletoe.

This was an espalier over 40 years ago but despite its shape it still produces lots of fruit and mistletoe and looks great.

We always take some of the mistletoe off each year to help prevent it from completely covering the tree and stopping the apples from growing.

We sell some of the fruited pieces for charity and supply a local florist.

This has not been a good year for mistletoe, I think it must be that the weather was too warm.

Some of the mistletoe has not produced berries

No berries here this year

Others have taken a long time to turn from yellow/green berries to the lovely white ones that everyone wants for their Christmas decorations.

We are usually picking the mistletoe in the last week in November, this year we only had a small amount by December, a bit more has turned white now and the rest we are still waiting for it to turn white.

Too green

Perfect!

October

 How time has flown by and it is now October.

The harvest is slowing although still loads to eat.

Tomatoes are still ripening, the remaining green ones will come inside and left on a tray with ripe tomatoes or a banana will soon colour up.

Aubergine have been brilliant this year, even had plenty spare to put on the sales table. We grew 3 varieties this year, the white one, Clara, a long thin one, long purple and the striped one, Listada da Gandia. Cucumbers now over but we had a good crop on the second sowing, the first was very poor.

Also picking sweetcorn, cabbage, beetroot, calabrese and lots of apples.

Autumn colour is very good, I think it is my favourite time of year.

Spetchley red vine

I collected the grapes from this, too small to eat (all pip and skin), but squeezed them and had a lovely grape juice for several mornings breakfast.

Rainbow chard looks great and this time of year and tastes good too!

August

 Some of my favourites in the garden in August are:

On the left, Crinum, these huge bulbs first emerge in early spring and the leaves are ravaged by the frosts, slugs and mice. However they always survive and in August the flower spikes erupt and the lovely white flowers (usually 4 on each spike) open and last for around 4 weeks.

Next to the crinum is my new David Austin rose called Tottering by Gently.

Another favourite at the moment is agapanthus, I planted these along the edge of the patio.

They have grown about a metre tall and provide the screening I had hoped that gives the seating area a cosy enclosed feel during the summer months.

Then there is the Aeonium Zwartkop. I bought a cutting at an open garden I visited in 2010. Since then I have taken dozens of cuttings and have numerous pots of them. They go into an unheated greenhouse over winter but come out when all frosts are gone and spend the summer in the sunshine (and rain).

This one I am very pleased with and is 4 separate cuttings in one pot.

Of course the other highlight of the month is the fruit and vegetable we are harvesting, beans, peas, cabbage, edamame, courgette, cabbage, cucumber, tomatoes, figs, currants, peaches, apples, raspberries, blueberries and much more.

July

Gosh it is almost the end of July already.

The weather has been up and down with several days of very hot weather. A lot of watering to do with pots and even onions and beans needing some along with the celeriac and newly planted trees and shrubs.

Butterflies had arrived and in the sunshine we have seen : painted lady, small and large white, brimstone, peacock, red admiral, speckled wood, common blue and many others. It has been a great time for them and also lots of honey, bumble and solitary bees and many other flying insects.

Most of the soft fruit has done very well, lots of strawberries (finished now) the summer raspberries have been abundant along with red, black and white currants, blueberries, blackberries and gooseberries.

At last the beans have begun to grow and we have had a couple of portions to eat. A few tomatoes are ripening and courgettes and the first of the white aubergines are ready to harvest.

Many flowers have bloomed since open gardens paeonies looked great

Roses are great too and my new treat, a David Austin rose, tottering by gently, has been in flower for weeks.

After days of very hot weather (and nights), we have had heavy rain all day today, so we will see what that does to the garden, lots of growth everywhere I expect.

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