That was the year that was...

And what a year! 

This time in 2010, I was considering taking voluntary redundancy.  I'm glad I did; I could never have imagined how good my course at Reaseheath would be, and certainly had no idea that I would have the opportunity to work on the building of a large show garden at RHS Tatton Park, and then to discuss it with visitors to the show.  Definitely the horticultural highlight of the year.

"The Secret Garden" by Reaseheath College

OK, so we felt a bit robbed to get a Silver medal (we thought Silver Gilt, and Carol Klein on BBC Gardeners' World also hinted that we'd done better than perhaps the judges had assessed), but the actual experience of working in a great team on such a gorgeous project, and seeing how Carol Adams and Louise from the college designed and organised the planting, was the best possible inpiration for a gardening career.

The build team (those present on the last day before judging)

At home, the garden and allotment emerged quickly from a freezing winter to a warm spring, but we seemed to get the only rain for miles around through the summer.  While everyone else fretted about drought, I regularly tipped an inch or so out of the rain gauge every couple of days.  We did really well for salad leaves and got the best potato harvest ever, short on slug damage even to the Highland Burgundy Reds.  The tomatoes were good, once they got going, the squashes and pumpkins reasonable considering the lack of summer sunshine, and the onions excellent.  As usual, the carrots were a waste of space.

Onion crop drying in our allotment shed

The fruit crop was amazing - a fair bit of the soft fruit went to feed the two broods of blackbirds, but we had more top fruit than we could handle.  The freezer is still full of frozen plums (especially the Oolins Orange, which cropped well for the first time ever due to mild weather at flowering time), and I was even able to sell the excess pears, though with hindsight I suspect I may have made more money selling them from the front gate with an "honesty box" than via the farm shop.  Lesson learned!

There were flowers too - the front garden looked good until the poppies faded, but hopefully next year the perennials will have filled out a bit and there will be more autumn colour.

Then the decision to go "self-employed".  The business plan for this year is essentially "don't actually lose any money"!  At least I know - after Kevin's garden - that I need not be afraid of quite overgrown sites.  New adverts will go up in the local shops next week, and maybe I'll get a few customers.  I have a veg garden project to do with some other former work friends and some likely venues for car boot sales of herbs (definitely not back to the farm shop with them!), and my second set of RHS level 2 exams in February.

Happy 2012!

Midwinter madness

Well, here we are at the shortest day of the year.  Last year, we were snowed in with frozen pipework, without a functioning washing-machine for a month.  This year is a bit different.

At RHS Wisley on Friday (16th December) we were buzzed by a huge bumble bee foraging about in camellias in flower.  Still, that is 200 miles south of here.

Camellia at Wisley in mid-December

But this afternoon at Great Haywood (near Stafford) we spotted a bumble bee taking a rest in the sunshine on the bow rope of a narrowboat!  Hardly surprising when there are still plenty of late summer flowers in bloom - I still have Calendulas, Antirrhinums and Fuchsias in full flower, plus the Hellebores (these are completely confused and have been flowering since September). 


Even the zonal Pelagonium which I've so far neglected to move into the greenhouse is still growing healthily out of the patio table (must move it in tomorrow though!).  It'll be interesting to see how early (or not) the spring bulbs are, and if we get too little frost for a decent crop of rhubarb.

Winter evenings

This blog is in danger of ending up like many of my diaries from my teens - completed regularly for the first few weeks, then getting forgotten for a couple of days and filled in with the prosaic "not much happened today", then blank pages for days on end, finally running out of steam in mid March never to be picked up again.

It's not a great time for gardening, November, even when it's been milder and drier than usual, and unsurprisingly I have not been run off my feet with demand for the gardening service.  In fact, apart from a request to help an elderly lady renovate her orchard (a project on hold for the trees to properly shut down for the winter), it's been all quiet.

The farm shop collaboration isn't looking promising.  I was paid for the pears which sold at, I suspect, about 50% of their retail price - but that's a gain over regretfully composting the over-ripe surplus, like last year.  Depressingly, they had sold just one of the herb plants and killed four of the remainder through neglect then over-watering, so that settles it as far as further deals for live plants are concerned - no chance!  But interest was shown in surplus Jerusalem artichokes, and as again any return for these is an advance on putting them in the recycling, a deal may be done.

So while the plants and gardening business fails to grow, I've been putting my efforts into my winter project - painted canal ware, with a craft fair in just over a week's time.  If I can find some suitable small plant pots to decorate, I may even smuggle a few herb plants onto the stall!

Herbology

When I decided that I could do with a change of direction, and that it might be possible to turn my love of gardening into my profession, I considered investing my redundancy settlement in a full-time degree course I had seen was available at Reaseheath College - Historic Garden Restoration and Management.  There are a large number of historic houses and gardens close by, and I particularly enjoy looking at their kitchen gardens, and growing "heritage" vegetables myself. 

But you need to learn to walk before you can run, and the advice from the college was to start with the RHS Level 2 Princples of Horticulture part-time course.  It was possible to join this at the half-way stage, while I was still in my last couple of weeks at work, but I couldn't make the first session due as I had a tribunal to represent at that day.  But I could reshuffle my remaining working days, and early in March found myself back in education.

In addition to classroom-based lessons, my first day included a tour of the college greenhouses.  These include a tropical house and several for raising plants commercially for sale, plus the "hydroponics" house.  This was a revelation, as already the pepper plants inside were carrying large fruits, from flowers pollinated by a resident hive of small bees.

Returning to work the next day, I enthused about everything to my colleagues, particularly the hydroponics house and visit to the greenhouses.  Steve asked whether we'd had to repot mandrakes, and if so, whether I'd had to wear ear-defenders - and so it became accepted around the office that Sarah was doing "Herbology at Hogwarts"!

Which would seem pretty daft, if we didn't have one tutor who frequently tells us that plants are "magic"!

The tutor in question is something of a college legend.  I have no idea how long Harry Delany has been teaching at Reaseheath, but his career in horticulture stretches back many decades by his own admission.  Despite great knowledge and experience, and "Master of Horticulture" RHS qualification he has the humility to state regularly that he is "still learning", and such boundless enthusiasm for his subject that it's impossible not to be inspired, even when he has wandered well away from the "learning outcomes" into tales of Victorian plant hunters or marvelling at the fact that a whole new plant can develop from a root cutting.

Actually, there is something magic about that!

Fair trade

This is a gardening blog, not a political one, but it seems sometimes the two overlap.

I've been hoping that a convenient market for my herb and flower plants might be a local farm shop, and having mentioned the idea to the proprietor previously, took a sample selection along yesterday.  They're all healthy, well-rooted young plants, and I would have thought should sell for £1 each - the local DIY chain sells 4 for £5.  My opening suggestion was that I'd be happy to take £5 for the tray - my prospective business associate said £3, on the basis that the plants would probably sell for 75p each.

Mixed herbs for sale

If there was no cost to me to produce the plants, that would still leave the seller with a third of the profits.  That seems a bit too big a cut.  I would expect them to want to make something on the deal, but not this much.  In fact, when I consider that there is cost to me in the pot and compost, plus my time to take and root the cutting, pot it on, clean it up for sale and label it, then deliver to the shop, the deal looks less good still.

The unacceptable face of capitalism, perhaps!

It was left that the shop-keeper would see what price could be obtained for the plants, and then get back to me, but it's a lesson.  If I want a fair price for my plants, I am more likely to get it looking for somewhere I can set up a stall myself - even if it's just a local car-boot sale.  If I choose to sell my plants for just 50p - the price of a DIY chain half-dead reject plant! - I would rather do so direct to the public.  If I can talk to customers directly, give them plant care advice and perhaps an information and recipe sheet, I can provide a really good service, and that will also give me a means of promoting the garden maintenance service.  



Talking about Kevin

I spent yesterday afternoon digging and planting the first garden project I've undertaken for someone else - a former work colleague called Kevin.  Some years ago I misguidedly attempted to turn Kev into a vegetable gardener, persuading him to dig up part of his lawn and plant potatoes.  But the vegetable garden was not a success. 

Seeking a simple hedge-cutting and lawn-mowing project to time, I recalled Kev's garden as being a neat rectangle of grass with privet hedges, so offered to cut the grass and trim the hedges as a trial run for maybe doing this sort of thing for a living.  Kev's email accepting the offer confessed that he had "somewhat neglected my horticultural duties". 

He wasn't joking.

Apocalypse then - Kev's garden before I set to work

So the simple hedge-cutting and lawn mowing became a bit more of a project.  An afternoon cleared the top layer of scrub and brambles - much of which was the overgrown remnants from a previous hedge-cutting, and during the next session the dry waste then went through the shredder to mulch the cleared ground.

Ground cleared and hedge trimmed back - and shredded

I'm planting the site with a selection of trusty, indestructible perennials and enthusiastic self-seeding annuals and biennials which will, as far as possible,take care of themselves and put up a good fight against any weeds that I've missed, as I don't think my 'client' is going to get the gardening bug soon. 

Looking towards the house

There's still about a quarter of the site to dig, and the last planting to do - Digitalis and Crocosmia and some ferns, and the last pile of hedge-trimmings for shredding.  In future, I'd like to add some sage shrubs for structure, and some summer perennials as most of my 'spares' for Kev have been spring/early summer flowering, but the annuals should fill in the gaps.

All being well, the end result should look rather like this...

My herb garden in 2008

"At work"

Another mild October day, and it's been spent potting up plants for sale next spring and sorting out the herb plants that might be sold via the farm shop in a few weeks' time if they continue to make good progress.

Baby cottage garden perennials - foxgloves, columbines, lady's mantle and candelabra primulas
(also available in Latin - see the favourite plants page for details)

It will be great if this side of the business takes off, especially as I'm a bit too close to 50 to spend too many days in the average week doing heavy digging!

The two mini-greenhouses just about squeeze into the polycarb one in the garden, so I now have quite a lot of space for raising cuttings and protecting the tender ones if we get more seriously freezing weather this winter.  Hope not...

Herbs to go - including Vietnamese coriander, tangerine sage, grapefruit mint, golden variegated sage and lavender.

Planning ahead

Busy day on the allotment today, planting onions ('Senshyu' and 'Electric') and garlic ('Germidour').  These are all varieties I haven't tried before, so we'll see what sort of a crop we get next June.  If we get another warm, dry spring, these might do better than the usual spring-planted varieties.

Having planted 12 rows of each (12 to a row), we shouldn't be short of onions, and 30 garlic cloves went in too.  That reminds me - I need to get more 'Radox' next time we go shopping!

It was a brilliantly bright autumn day and the soil should be warm enough to get the onion sets and garlic cloves off to a good start.  So that's the first of next season's crops planted.

Smashing Pumpkins!

Despite a dull summer, the allotment has produced a good crop of squashes and pumpkins this year.

Apart from the butternut squashes, which definitely needed an extra month of sunshine, I'm pleased with the rest, and we should be eating them well into next year.

Another big success this year was the 'Doyenne du Comice' pear tree, which produces about 20kg of fruit despite being small enough that I can pick the whole crop from the ground.  We can't use that many, so I took about half to the local farm shop, and they're going to sell them for me - all being well.

They should be ripe enough to eat fresh in a couple of weeks, but the smaller and mis-shapen ones will be turned into chutney and wine before then.

Getting started...

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who loved gardening - digging her little patch in her parents' garden, sowing seeds and planting flowers and trees.  As a result she rarely had clean fingernails and often had smudges of soil on her face - so her Mum and Dad called her "Dirty Face".

She did very well with her studies at school and college and passed lots of exams with very good grades.  She continued to love growing things, learning to take cuttings and working with Dad on his allotment.  But when she went to see the careers advisor and she asked for advice about working with plants, she was told she would "just end up working in a garden centre" and was "far too academic" for anything like that!

So she went to Sheffield University, supposedly to study Ancient and Medieval History - but got involved in the Students' Union advice service, and spent the next twenty-five years working in welfare rights and housing advice.  Which she loved, and knew was helpful to people.  But she never stopped gardening...

Then one day she was offered voluntary redundancy, and so had the chance for a complete change of direction...

I'm now in the second half of my RHS Level 2 studies at Reaseheath College near Nantwich, Cheshire, and have just started advertising (postcards in local shops) "Sarah's Plants and Gardening Service". 

"Dirty Face" is back!