Horticultural

Anna Pavord on her new book, Bulb

I promised a blogpost on Anna Pavord's talk at the Garden Museum on October 1 and hey, presto, 14 days later, here it is!

Anna was talking about her new book, Bulb, which took her four years to write, and you can see why - it's an erudite, beautiful piece of work that deserves to be pored over on many a cold winter's evening to come. The talk was full of gems - her bulb planting mix recipe (two scoops of John Innes no 3 to one scoop of 6ml grit), what bulbs to pick ("the simplest route to growing bulbs is to find out what likes you and grow lots of it"), and her description of Narcissus cyclamineus as looking "like a surprised piglet caught in the wind".

What was most reassuring to me was her emphasis on the importance of remembering that it is an "unreal expectation" to asume a bulb will flower every year: even in optimal conditions in the wild, many only bloom sporadically. So it may not be your fault when your tulips don't come back year after year! If you want to get more of a flavour of what she said, read this piece in the Independent. Here she is above signing copies of her book after the talk.

I was so inspired I went straight home and planted loads of bulbs the following weekend, and ordered many more. Incredibly, I've never grown paperwhite narcissus, so I'll be giving those a try for the first time this year, and using this top tip of giving the bulbs a nip of vodka to stop them falling over (funny, that - it's the reverse in humans!) And whatever the Garden Monkey says, I'll be growing some hyacinths (white ones, probably) because I like them, and that's that.

Also in the audience were the garden designers Dan Pearson (who I'd never met before) and Cleve West (who I already know), and I got to meet Christopher Woodward, the Garden Museum director, in person for the first time. Have a look at the Guardian gardening blog for my post on the museum's latest exhibition, The Good Life: 100 Years of Growing Your Own.

Nerine discovery

There's not a lot by way of exciting plants in my new garden, but I did thrill at the sight of a patch of the lovely autumn bulb Nerine bowdenii which have come up in one of the raised beds, partially covered by a rather rampant rosemary (try saying that after a few pints).

I've not grown these before but they're fairly straightforward provided you don't bury the bulbs too deep. There's a good piece from the Telegraph last year if you want to find out more.

Freaky foxgloves

I've just been leafing through the latest edition of Gardens Illustrated, as you do, over a screenbreak in the Guardian canteen. I got to the readers' questions page, a stalwart of any gardening publication, and had to double-take over the picture of an odd-looking foxglove.

I'd seen this somewhere before - twice. In a weird coincidence, THREE gardening mags - GI, plus BBC Gardeners' World magazine and Organic Gardening (I think - I don't have a copy of the latter on me to check) - have featured a question about foxglove flowers that have fused together, like this.

GI's John Cushnie says the distortion has been caused by damage from a sucking insect like a capsid bug or aphid, wheres BBCGW says it's "a naturally occuring abnormality, known as fasciation". Can't remember what OG thought it was, but I hope Bob Flowerdew or someone thinks it's down to a lack of zinc or somesuch.

But what are the chances of a weird foxglove triple-whammy, particularly when two of the mags in question are produced by the BBC? Are our foxgloves at risk? The nation's gardeners need to know.

Red and white campions

Now the allotment is (nearly) no longer mine, the focus of this blog changes to my garden.

I don't have a huge amount of blooms on my plot: as the picture to the left shows. I do love the acid green of the dogwood's leaves against the dark glossy red of the heuchera. (The Allium christophii was the sole survivor of several blubs planted two years back, and had been well and truly battered by the rain - only the branches of the dogwood were holding it in place for this photo.)

But the flowers that have given most pleasure for least effort so far this year are the red and white campion that are sprinkled on the bed outside my kitchen window. The plants were a Valentine's day gift bought from Wiggly Wigglers a year or so back and they've been no trouble - aside from a small amount of blackfly easily removed with some soap spray. The pink flowers dominated at first, but now the whites are taking over. 

They need no staking, are slugproof and very pretty in an understated way. The fact that they're "wild" is neither here nor thereto me, really, although I have noticed more birds in the garden since I introduced the campions. I've recently bought some devil's bit scabious and stinking iris (which, i am told, don't actually smell that bad), but does anyone have further recommendations for expanding my little patch of wildness?

Rose growing the organic way

I've never had many roses*, at least in part because they're reputed to be a difficult plant to grow organically, and partly because I don't feel confident enough to prune them correctly.

When our daughter was born earlier this year, we were given a patio rose called Many Happy Returns, which was a lovely gift, and prompted me to finally get around to some rose care research.

I found the Organic Rose Gardening site,  which was useful although fairly basic. But I had an idea in the back of my mind that the HDRA as was, now Garden Organic, had been looking into how to manage roses. A quick Google search brought up the Garden Organic/National Trust technical note on organic management of roses (a PDF file), which is a superb resource. Not surprisingly, the practices mentioned will be of no surprise to anyone with experience of organic gardening techniques - hygiene, rigorous soil preparation, and biological control to deal with aphids and other pests are all crucial. It's also helpful if you're prepared to dot your roses about among other plants in the garden rather than the more traditional "rose bed" approach, a monoculture that can result in lots of diseases flourishing.

Despite being left to languish on the patio largely untended as I tended my child during the summer, my rose did very well, flowered abundantly, providing blooms for the house and brightening up the garden. It will get a pruning in February or March, as per the RHS instructions here, and will, I hope, bring many happy returns.

*I have been given a few of those miniature roses you can get that are meant to be grown as houseplants, but they've always ended up outside, because unless you live in a huge, poorly-heated stately pile, they're atrocious as indoor plants - they need bright conditions but a cool room of 50-70F in the summer, which not many of us can achieve in modern homes. They also need lots of humidity, which is also not conducive to the bone-dry heat of the modern radiator. So, if you see one going cheap at the garden centre, do buy it, but think of it as a temporary visitor to your home and plan to find a place outside for it before it succumbs to mildew or wilts away in the heat.

Aubergine in bloom

This is the first flower on my aubergine plants (sounds so much more classy than the US word "eggplant"). If the fruit's anything like as gorgeous as the bloom, I'll be delighted.

The hot weather should make for a good harvest, I hope.

I am not sure exactly what I am getting, because it was a mixed packet. Given the huge variety of types in the aubergine family, I could end up with anything.

Please pass on any good aubergine recipes, because it's not something I cook with a lot. Rick isn't a big fan - or rather, wasn't, until we had a dish in our hotel in Italy that was so good he was completely won over. It was an aubergine tart - you can see a picture of it here - but we'll have to wait until the Montali recipe book comes out before we can make it for ourselves.

Mystery flower

Anywhat this pretty little weed is? I spotted it on my way to the plot, the flowers glowing neon blue in the alleyway.

I am off to try to identify it in one of my books but I bet one of you can tell me what it is. It's almost pretty enough to want for my garden ...

Cup and saucer vine: a sowing debacle

Aside from the tomato seeds detailed below, I also sowed a pot of Cobaea scandens, the cup and saucer vine, which I knew as a child from looking at it longingly in DG Hessayon's Houseplant Expert book. It's an exotic-looking annual climber that I am hoping will jive along nicely with my red/purple/blue colour scheme in my back garden, clambering up a fence or wall. (It's an annual that can be grown either in a conservatory or in a sheltered spot outside).

The seeds were large, papery and round, which at least made them easy to sow - or so I thought. The seed packet wasn't very forthcoming about sowing methods: reading the information on the page linked to above, it seems I have down everything wrong.

I didn't soak the seeds before planting, I planted the discs flat against the soil rather than on edge, and I probably covered them with too much compost. I am hoping that the seeds will stick a metaphorical two fingers up at the expert horticultural advice and germinate nonetheless. I am off now to stick a clear plastic bag around the pot. That much, at least, I can remedy.

Flower power

Behind growing things to eat, growing things to look at comes a close second. My bid to avoid supermarket plastic-wrapped flowers this year is going well: hardly a week's gone by when I haven't had a couple of vases of cornflowers on the windowsill or some dahlias in a glass.

This sunflower (right) is a lone glory on the plot at the moment: many of the seedlings have been swamped by the rampant cornflowers. And the dahlia reminds me of an old English sheepdog.

It was an excellent buy from the deeply uncool but excellent value Wilkinsons. I can't get enough of these dahlias and I'm planning to grow a lot more next year.

Helianthus tuberosus news

So far so good on the jerusalem artichokes: as you can see from the pic, they are pushing skywards and beginning to produce some buds. The plan is to leave them be until autumn then cut the stems back to 12 inches and dig the tubers up.

They need very little attention now - just a bit of weeding and feeding. They're quite an attractive plant and the flowers are rather jolly too, so like the cardoon this would make a good space filler for the back of a large herbaceous border, with the added bonus of a harvest at the end of the summer. The only potential snag is that the tubers are tricky to remove completely from the soil, so any stragglers could hang around year after year.