Black Bean Friday?

I haven't been garden blogging for a while but have been spurred to action by something that has shocked me to the core.

Yesterday, on so-called 'Black Friday', my inbox filled with predictable sale mail from companies keen to embrace this American tradition.  Fair enough, if you're tall girl clothing company Long Tall Sally which operates 'across the pond'.  Slightly silly from UK bulb and plant companies J Parker and Thompson and Morgan, who should really stick to advertising their Christmas gifts of indoor bulbs and other plants tortured and confused to flower out of season.

But the Royal Horticultural Social exhorting me to 'make Black Friday a Green Friday' with a selection of special offers?  Say it's not so!  How frightfully un-British of them.  What shocking cad, what utter bounder, in their marketing department thought that was a good idea?  I had a hissy fit of the Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells variety and deleted the message, without pausing to check out the bargains.

American import

I'm certainly not against all things American - my extensive collection of Sarracenia cultivars, boundless enthusiasm for the mighty spud and support for the oft-oppressed grey squirrel surely illustrates that.  My problem with 'Black Friday' is that it is irrelevant with no 'Thanksgiving' to precede it, becoming merely another opportunity to encourage reckless consumer spending on supposed bargains.

I therefore signed up to 'Buy Nothing Friday' the antidote to this hysteria, determined to spend not a penny on the day. The news that we were short of milk and that without a purchase, there could be no midday cuppa forced a relaxation of the rules and permission was also granted for Himself to buy a stamp for his letter to our MP, opposing air strikes in Syria.

Parsnip of Mass Destruction!

"Yes, but how's the garden?" my few followers might wonder.  Better today than tomorrow is the fairest answer, with another spell of very windy, wet weather threatened.  It has, though, been a really good year in many respects, not least due to a highly successful brassica crop from the allotment.  We've enjoyed calabrese, romanesco and, for the first time ever, some very presentable cauliflowers, largely down to Jon's meticulous caterpillar-picking.  The taters also thrived but we have only two squashes, due to the cool, wet start to the summer.

Highland Burgundy Red taters and 'Bob's Beans'

'Bob's Beans' - a black-seeded variety of runner, bred by selective seed-saving by a friend in Hampshire - gave us a fine crop, though we started them late.  As well as enjoying the pods, we cooked and ate some of the seeds as beans, boiling them rigorously and changing the water, and have a few saved for next season.  I have a cunning plan for training next season's runners, so watch this space.  

Natural inspiration

Towpath 'herbaceous border'

A friend has asked me for help and advice regarding turning the boundaries of her large, rural garden into something more attractive - and more effective as a wind-break - than the post-and-wire farm fencing entangled with nettles currently running along them.  We're hindered by the exposed nature of the site, the sheer length of the boundaries, limits on the budget and possibly the worst excuse for 'soil' I have ever encountered, including the sand-and-shingle Hampshire Basin geology on which I grew up.

Ideally, the planting should be robust enough to cope with the occasional browsing by cows (without poisoning them) but without too much attention from humans, and on the north side to have the potential to form a backdrop for a more traditional herbaceous border in due course.  So far, thanks to the squirrels who have raided my nut tree for the past few years only to forget where they buried their loot, we have planted a number of surplus hazel saplings along the south side of the site.  With appropriate pruning and coppicing, they could be layered into a proper hedge in due course.  There is an ample supply of periwinkle on site already which could be transplanted to scramble through it at ground level and honeysuckle would be a good addition to the mix for colour and scent, allowing other wild flowers and trees to naturalise with it.  Briar roses might help with the animal-proofing; I have taken dozens of cuttings this week of this lovely example from my garden, so hopefully some will take and can be added to the 'hedgerow' in a year or two.

Luckily, I should also be able to strike plenty of honeysuckle cuttings from the luxuriant growth in my garden, though I am reluctant to share Ash saplings due to the risk of spreading die-back if it is in our area.  

I was pondering the options for the 'herbaceous border' boundary during a week on the boat, when I noticed how Mother Nature manages to achieve much the look we would like working with wild plants.  Unmown canal towpath sides often support a glorious array of species, especially from mid-summer onwards, so I made a point of snapping a few good examples. 

 

Even the most unlikely 'weeds' such as dock and cow-parsley looked surprisingly attractive amid a mixture of grasses, meadow-sweet, water mint and balsam, suggesting that we could decide to tolerate some of these colourful or architectural plants along with whatever we use for our hedge (more hazel probably, as the squirrel has been busy planting).  Even ragwort looks glorious in late summer sun, but isn't a good choice where livestock are about.

Rose bay willow-herb always looks stunning but has invasive roots, and parachutes its seed everywhere!  However, on the north side of the site, most of the fluff should be blown into the fields rather than the flower beds and any rogues can be dug out if the appear where they aren't wanted.   

 In front of the really wild plants, we could aim to establish a plantable area by building up farmyard manure and grass-cuttings to create something more akin to soil, and plant that with clusters of hydrangeas (again, cuttings have been taken), buddleia (which grows happily on site), dogwoods (it's the right time for me to raid the roundabout at the end of the road for cuttings!), and crocosmia (which grows abundantly on site), establishing a semi-cultivated middle zone of the border capable of fighting off the really wild plants and blending with the less sturdy cultivars that could form the true 'herbaceous border' in front, with space for large drifts of flowers. 

Prairie planting at Trentham Gardens

Whereas the south hedge is primarily a spring and early summer feature, this would be at its best through late summer, autumn and into winter, so the front section would need some earlier flowers to add interest.  Unfussy aquilegia and alchemilla mollis are always available from the garden here, but establishing a depth of soil for spring bulb-planting may take some time!

A typical British summer?

Naturally, I'm being ironic with the title of this post because while it used to be said that a British summer was 'three fine days and a thunderstorm', that seems like blissful predictability compared to our current climate.  While we've had a disproportionate amount of wet, windy and cool weather here in the North Midlands, until very recently my father down in Hampshire was grumbling down the phone to me about water shortage. 

We had our hottest day ever on July 1st 2015, if Wikipedia is to be believed (big 'if' there, I know) but the heatwave soon broke down and since St Swithan's Day (which was pleasantly warm and dry) we've had vivid thunderstorms worthy of a Hammer Horror movie, high winds, nights so cold rural areas were warned of the risk of frost (I used the need to incinerate some confidential waste as an excuse to light the fire) and such heavy showers on Saturday they suggested the arrival of the monsoon and onset of the rainy season.

   

The rain has at least kept the plants lush.  In fact, against the odds, the garden appears to be thriving, though it's no surprise that the Astilbes - happy in damp soil and shade - are having a particularly good year. 

 

The persistent heavy rain eventually wrought destruction on the chairs of our bistro-style patio chairs, bought quite a few years ago, renovated with a pot of Hammerite two summers ago, but finally succumbing to rust this year.  Fortunately, a hinge on one had the good grace to fail when nobody was sitting on it, leaving the seat hanging at an odd angle by way of warning, so we were spared the indignity of having it snap under us and given a cast iron (sorry...) excuse to get a new set. 

The table from the old set makes a great place to display the sarracenia collection safely above slug and snail attack.  I may treat myself to some new saucer pots for them, in place of green but not-so-chic plastic trifle dishes they're sitting in for now.  They prefer to be outside in the summer, where their colours develop better and they make sturdier growth than in the greenhouse.  Although they have taken a battering from the high winds and heavy rain in the last few days, they are still feeding happily...

Dodging the Storm Clouds

Under stormy skies - the back garden in full bloom

I had been planning to plant the last of the potatoes today, but heavy showers of rain and hail are streaming across the Cheshire Plain and it's proving impossible to make progress in the garden between them.  With light evenings and the promise of better weather in the next few days, I've decided that the taters will have to wait and I'll do some writing instead.

  

Clematis montana / Spanish Bluebell and Golden Hop

I was tempted to settle down to a deadly serious politically-focused blog, with the General Election result still fresh and my thoughts not yet collected into a coherent article.  If I wrote that today, it would be a bit of a rant.  As the song goes, it's not easy being Green...

Alternatively, I have the closing chapters of my latest 'Welfare Rights Lit' saga to write, rewrite and edit - arguably, a task I should set to with greater urgency with the new Government pledged to slice another £12 billion from the Social Security budget and my characters still coming to terms with the last lot of 'reforms'.  But you have to be in the right frame of mind to write fiction and today I'm not, so here's a gardening blog post.  Late May/early June is actually when the garden tends to look its best and sunshine between storm-clouds creates particularly good light for photography, so there will be lots of pictures.

The front garden - replanted

After all the digging and shuffling about earlier in the year, the front garden has started to settle down, although the top bed still looks rather empty and I've yet to get the solar fountain for the little pond.  I'm not planning to add extra perennials to the top bed as I want to plant bulbs in the autumn and there should be some unexpected summer colour as turning the soil over has brought a lot of poppy and borage seeds close enough to the surface to germinate, though there are weeds to come out too.

It may be a little short of spring flowers, but the mixture of foliage creates a lovely tapestry of shapes and colours and, with perhaps some long-lived tulips or late flowering narcissi, should improve in future years.

Bramley blooms - one for 'AppleWatch'

Across the driveway, the apple blossom is now in full bloom - the question now is whether to report this to 'AppleWatch'?  Some friends will already know that a few weeks ago when #AppleWatch was trending on Twitter and Facebook, I thought it was a survey of when apple trees were coming into flower rather than the latest must-have gadget!  The plum and pear blossom is long gone, but it appears that our 'Onward' pear may have managed to coincide its flowering with the 'Concorde' and been pollinated for a change - usually it is slightly too early, despite being the same flowering group, through being planted in a sheltered spot against the outhouse wall!

The veggie plot

The back garden has also recovered well from a month of neglect, due to lengthy absences boating to Birmingham and back, with both the flower garden areas and veg plots looking good.  The quantity of flower on the strawberry plants is especially encouraging!  We have just about finished the purple sprouting broccoli, but there is still chard and a good crop of early lettuces in the cold frame propagated from a reduced to clear 'living salad' tray from Sainsbury's.

 

  Reproduction 'sagger' with geraniums / clematis arch

The flower garden area is almost overwhelmed in places by over-exuberant clematis montana, which I was afraid I had pruned back too hard for flowers during the early autumn.  No chance!  I plan to give it a more determined hair cut after it finishes flowering, though this might have to wait if the blackbirds choose to nest in it again this year, as they have done before - one reason that it has got so out of control!  The garden is blessed with lots of birds this year - nothing desperately exotic, but a good contingent of sparrows after a few quiet years and plenty of goldfinches, blue tits and blackbirds. 

  

'Hilary' and 'Tom' / purple aquilegia

Concerning birds, this post wouldn't be complete without a mention of the two wood pigeons who have earned themselves the nicknames Hilary and Tom (after a couple from my stories - that's a minor spoiler if you haven't read them, I'm afraid), on the basis that they are clearly very much in love and often to be found chasing each other around the lawn beneath the pear tree.

In between moments of passion, however, they helpfully hoover up the birdseed that the sparrows throw out of the feeders, which will hopefully avoid that awkward moment when something unexpected turns up in the border!

Spring Surprises

We had a brief taste of summer this weekend, which is always dangerous, encouraging reckless gardening.  Bumblebees, butterflies and ladybirds appeared in the warm sunshine, and while the wind was cold, there was a proper sense of winter being behind us.  Much digging and planting ensued, only to find the Countryfile forecast on Sunday evening warning of frost, snow, high winds and heavy rain.

Too bad.  The first taters are in - only the very earliest of the earlies, a bed of Foremost with an insulating floating cloche over the top, at least until those high winds come battering in.  There are enough for a couple more beds so I'll be planting more in succession over the next few weeks, in the garden.  I plan to grow the second early Kestrel on the allotment, but the Sarpo Mira and Pink Fir Apple maincrop are also going in the garden to rest some of the allotment plots where millipedes have been an issue.

The plan is beans, brassicas and squashes for most of the allotment this year, none of which need to go in for several weeks, giving us plenty of time to get the winter covering of manure and the well-rotted compost dug in.  The latter has been breaking down for years in a big compost heap that J heroically dug out this week.  It's such fine stuff I'm even contemplating another attempt at carrots, my 'bogey' crop, though hopefully parsnips will be successful.

I have my collection of out-of-date seeds to continue testing too.  I was resigned to writing off the broad bean experiment (see 'The Germinator' post), and had gone so far as to buy fresh seed to start.  Then, this weekend, over a month after planting, the first few leaves appeared in the cardboard tubes!  Germination has been patchy (assuming there aren't more to come - which there could still be) so I shall be glad of the extra seed I bought.

I have finally dug the weeds and excess perennials out of the front garden, which looks quite bare now, especially with the transplanted snowdrops finishing and the crocuses fading.  The exception is a pretty little patch just outside the front door.  There should soon be more perennial growth and I'm hoping the young hellebore plants will take in the two lower sections, and that I can split the plants in the back garden to share them around the borders there.  Once again, they have put on a glorious show.

The plan is to add extra colour to the front garden next spring with miniature iris and Tete-a-tete narcissi.  There are still plenty of Aquilegias despite bundling up literally hundreds for sale to support the work biscuit fund, the Alchemilla is (hopefully) back to sustainable levels, the oriental poppies have been split and replanted and some of the spare foxgloves from the back garden have been re-homed at the front, so there should be a good early summer display again.  The Japanese anemones should be back in greater numbers for later summer colour, but the out-of-date seed bank should supplement them with sunflowers, annual poppies and annual chrysanthemums, all of which can then be easily cleared away when the 'Winter Garden' plants are ready to bloom.

For now, however, you'll have to use your imagination!

Spring Inspiration

Colourful Cornus

Winter swept back with a vengeance this weekend, but between showers of snow, sleet, hail, rain and odd combinations of all four, there have been hints of spring and sunshine.  Luckily, a visit to the beautiful Winter Garden at Dunham Massey in Cheshire, with some old and new friends from Reaseheath College, coincided with one such break.

Dunham Massey House across the lake

Dunham Massey has glorious deer-filled grounds accessible with or without a National Trust card and the house has an intriguing exhibition recreating its history as a small military hospital during the latter years of the First World War, but the gardens are quite a favourite of mine as they have year-round interest.  We enjoyed a summer visit last year, mooring our little narrowboat nearby and enjoying the herbaceous borders at their best and the new rose garden, while a few years earlier we visited in bluebell season.  The winter garden was a recent creation when I first saw that, on the recommendation of one of my first Reaseheath tutors (Carol Adams), but it has matured well in the four years since.

Birch bark and snowdrops

The snowdrops are probably just about at their best just now and the drifts beneath the pure white birches, which looked a little sparse at first, are knitting together well now and the simple palette of white and pale green is attractive and restful. 

Blue and white mix

There's a lot to be said for adding a dash more colour.  This clump of snowdrops with a dark blue miniature iris looked particularly striking; a combination with the softer blue 'Sheila Ann Germaney' was less so - perhaps golden aconites or early narcissus might lift the paler blooms, though the dark autumn leaves also set them off well.  They were an unusual and attractive little bulb and had the NT been willing to charge less than £4 for a small pot of them, I may have treated myself.  I will definitely be looking out for bulbs in the autumn.

Iris histrioides 'Sheila Ann Germaney'

There were some gorgeous scents drifting across from the winter flowering shrubs, particularly the Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill' and Lonicera fragrantissima, thought the most colourful displays came from the flowers of various hamamellis and the striking stalks of the cornus, particularly 'Midwinter Fire'.  Cornus aren't hard to strike from cuttings and I have noticed some planted as landscaping at a local DIY store, and a variagated-leaf red-stemmed cultivar handy to the nearest petrol station, so a visit to both with secateurs is on the 'to do' list.

'Witch Hazel'

My own front garden was looking decidedly short of impact when I got home, though in the back garden I seem to have had more luck with my hellebores than the gardeners of Dunham, and my little snowdrop clumps are spreading nicely.  The remodelling of the front garden will incorporate some ideas from this visit, but there was no chance to start work this weekend - Sunday disappeared under snow and hail and, though brighter, Monday was battered by a bitter wind. 

Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill'

But there's nothing like a blog post to reinforce good intentions for the future and record ideas, and some fragrant winter shrubs would be a good addition to a space that lacks structure at present.  And if my nose detects the scent, it must be quite overpowering!

 

The Germinator

Somewhere in northern Norway, hidden away below the permafrost, is a great vault.  Within, safe from whatever climate or conflict might inflict on the conditions above, seeds of all the world's precious plant-life sleep away the years in suspended animation, an insurance against apocalypse.

There's a box like that in our house, holding all the packets of seed I've bought, usually in the sales, but never got around to planting.  Though the north-west corner of the front bedroom isn't quite as cold as a vault under the tundra, it's not a bad spot to keep seeds in hypersleep. The box, unlike the rest of the room, is beautifully organised; divided into sections for each month and for vegetables and flowers, and now it's been properly catalogued so I know exactly what it contains - and their supposed expiry dates.

There are almost seventy packets, of which six are still officially 'in date'.

I blame the narrowboat, of course - we've been away on the boat when we should have been gardening in the last couple of years, so 'bargains' snapped up in 2011 or 2012 and specified for sowing the following year sat in the box all of that year - and the next.as well.  Having stayed sealed and at a cool, steady temperature, there is a fighting chance they'll be viable, in most cases.  Where there is more than one pack of the same plant - and I have a particularly plentiful supply of broccoli and opium poppies, for reasons that now escape me - the plan is to sow the older pack first, early in the recommended period and, if nothing emerges, try again with the second.  Or third.  Or fourth...

Actually, I can't blame the boat for all of the long-term deposits in the seed bank.  Like the broad beans that were popped into loo-roll middle planters yesterday dated 'sow by 2010' - though they looked to be in better condition than the 'sow by 2013' batch that were also started yesterday, so it will be interesting to see which batch (if either) germinates most successfully.  Old carrot seed is supposedly a guaranteed fail, but all carrot seed is such in my hands - I plan to scatter some about when it warms up a bit alongside the 'sow by 2010' spring onions and see whether anything appears at all.

If something of everything does come through, we will do well for veg and flowers this year and I actually don't have to buy anything extra, unless there are crucial failures.  About the only thing that would count as a crucial failure would be no spuds - officially an 'ELE' (Emigration Level Event).  We don't take chances with is potatoes, and this year's seed spuds are ready for setting out for chitting.  Short of space for experiments this year, as the allotment is getting a rest from taters to try and starve out the millipede problem, I'm sticking to the holy trinity of Foremost for first early, Kestrel for Second and Sarpo Mira for maincrop.  Okay, I bought a small bag of Pink Fir Apple, as a little treat because they're so tasty and of course the funny, rude shapes are endless source material for this blog as well.  What's not to like?

And if I see some Highland Burgundy Reds, there might just be room for them too...

Plotting and planning

I'm determined to make more of an effort with this blog, as I've neglected it dreadfully for months, though I have been updating its spin-off and rival here - http://benebook.blogspot.co.uk/ - and that one will stay busy as I have a proper paperback to launch as well as a further ebook Social Security saga serial. 

Well, someone needs to challenge the Channel 5 view of benefit claimants!

Welfare Rights Lit!

So why are we back to the gardening blog today?  Firstly, because it's the Big Garden Birdwatch and after last year's featherless fiasco, the pressure was on to spot something.  The little chart was printed off, the feeders were topped up and the rule was simple - nobody leaves the kitchen until we've done an hour of serious monitoring. Six wood pigeons, four blackbirds, two blue-tits, two crows, a robin, a goldfinch, a greenfinch and a wren later, I'd spent a lot of time looking at the garden and making plans for next year.

Front garden in the summer

Secondly, I've had a cunning plan to give the front garden more focus - a nice, big pond!  It's been a patch of perennials for a long time and can look stunning in the late spring and early summer, but underwhelms in other seasons.  By reshuffling some of the shrubs and installing quite a big pool, it should stop being so featureless at this time of year - and if it's well-designed, provide safe haven for a lot of wildlife.  I fancy trying some of the Sarracenias as marginals; there is a bucketful on the balcony at the CAB being tested for general hardiness and while conditions have remained relatively mild, they have coped well enough to be optimistic that they could take a few degrees less without suffering.  Pictures will follow once the project starts in earnest, which is dependent on the ground thawing out enough to get a spade into it!

Thirdly, I'm aware that there is the usual nervousness around funding at the CAB and that I shouldn't neglect my fall-back self-employment.  I still have a few people looking to me for gardening help, plants and hanging baskets and I need to maintain and increase that customer base in case there isn't a place for me in benefits training after the summer.


And finally, this is always a good time of year for gardening.  It's a fresh start, time to sort out the seed box, draw up the crop plan for the allotment and look forward to spring with a clear slate and a new growing season to enjoy.


And hopefully, plenty of good things to blog about!