Horticultural

Hits and misses of 2012

Early September is a great time for a quick retrospective on the hits and misses of the 2012 growing season. Given the sodden weeks of early summer and the slug and snail apocalypse, it's a wonder anything has grown, but there were a few bright spots here and there.

Plug plants

I got sent two sets of plug plants by Unwins to try - Campanula 'Iridescent Bells' from Unwins - I can't show you a picture because all three plug plants got munched by slugs despite my best efforts, and the plant is no longer on their website. I had more success with Agastache 'Blue Fortune': one of the three plugs didn't survive the slug onslaught, but the other two made it through to flowering (pictured left). These are definitely a keeper: the pollinating insects love the blooms, and the leaves are edible, too: they taste like licorice in leaf form, and I am now addicted to munching them at every opportunity. I am not sure whether to keep them in a container or plant them out in the border, but I think I'll keep one in a container as an insurance policy against pests.

Seeds

Other sacrifices to the slugs were my Zinnia 'Queen Red Lime' seedlings, from seeds provided by Thompson & Morgan, and Tithonia 'Fiesta Del Sol' from Higgledy Garden. I had a bit more success with T&M's Nasturtium 'Troika': I liked the variegated leaves and it made good ground cover but didn't really do what I want it to - climb up this willow obelisk with the mangetout pea 'Shiraz' also from T&M. Most of the 'Shiraz' got munched by slugs (notice a theme developing here?) and the 'Troika' didn't seem to want to climb but the plain-leaved climbing nasturtiums grown from seed from Lidl did a bit better. Oh, and my Mina lobata seedlings grown from seeds from Higgledy Garden got smashed by hailstones, and replacement plug plants from Sarah Raven never got past a few inches tall. All in all, I just wished I'd put sweet peas up the obelisks as I'd done the previous year with great success.

Tomatoes

I was very restrained in my selection of tomato varieties to sow this year, sowing just two: the yellow cherry 'Sungold' and the bush tomato 'Bajaja', both from T&M. 'Sungold' lived up to its reputation as a sweet little performer, and 'Bajaja' was shaping up nicely into a big (80cm across) plant until a couple got hit by blight: the 'Sungold' wasn't affected. A couple of plants of 'Bajaja' weren't too badly affected but the big disappointment was that the little red tomatoes just didn't taste very nice: especially when compared with 'Sungold', which were little balls of sweetness that exploded in your mouth. I've just been sent some organic 'Sweetie' tomato seeds by Unwins who have recently teamed up with Garden Organic on a new range of organic seeds. They're definitely on the list for next spring, but can they beat 'Sungold'? I'll let you know this time next year!

 

 

 

 

 

Foraging books, apps and maps – a review

There are lots of foraging books out there, but which one’s the best? Here’s my review some of the major titles.

 

Backyard Foraging by Ellen Zachos (£11.99, Storey)

(Review added June 17 2013)

Just the title sold me on this book because back garden foraging is my speciality. With two small kids, there isn't much of a chance for excursions to remote places, whereas my back garden is a couple of steps away, and packed full of plants I can eat, as this book shows. I consider myself to be a reasonably experienced forager, now, but there were some genuine surprises in this well-illustrated and informative book. Oregon grapes, yes; nasturtiums, naturally, but firethorn? Really? And spiderwort (Tradescantia virginiana), too. I am still delving into it to see what other edible delights might be on offer in my garden. There's a useful code at the top showing what seasons each plant can be eaten, and the text is well-written. This is an American book so British readers may have to skip the section on prickly pears.

The Forager's Kitchen by Fiona Bird (£16.99, Cico Books)

(Review added June 17 2013)

This isn't so much a guide to foraging as a cookbook for foraged ingredients. Like The Forager Handbook (see below for a review), it's inspiring, but somehow the recipes seem more realistic: something you could recreate in your own kitchen rather than a recipe you'd see on the final of Masterchef. I, for one, can't wait to try salted caramel wild hazelnut shortbread, and crabapple and wild honeysuckle jelly. This book is no doubt more accessible to the foraging newbie, because it shows you in full technicolour the culinary possibilities foraged ingredients can provide. I'd love to go foraging with Fiona Bird, she clearly knows her stuff.

The Weeder's Digest by Gail Harland (£12.95, Green Books)

(Review added on July 19 2012)

When this book landed on my desk, it took me just a few seconds of flicking through to discover it was my new favourite foraging tome. It ticks all the boxes for me: excellent photos for easy identification, detailed information about the possible risks of different foraged plants (which are often alluded to in other books, but rarely covered in enough detail), and a good selection of recipes and ideas for using your bounty. There's also a useful section on growing some of these plants in your own garden, if you aren't up for picking plants elsewhere. It's small enough to carry around in your rucksack for on-the-go identification of plants, but detailed enough to serve as your main reference guide.

Food For Free by Richard Mabey (£4.99, Collins Gem)

This is the classic forager’s guide, first published more than 30 years ago and still going strong. Small enough to fit in your pocket, sturdy enough to survive a few dips into muddy puddles, it features hand drawings that are detailed enough to help you make a positive identification of most plants you’ll come across. Mabey’s also honest about how good things taste, and balances practical details with lots of historical information too. If you’re serious about foraging, this is a must-have, and at £4.99  it won’t cost you a fortune.

The Thrifty Forager by Alys Fowler (£16.99, Kyle Books)

This is not a field guide in the vein of Food For Free, but a book you can study at home before heading out on a walk, for inspiration and guidance, then open it again once you’re home to confirm your foraging finds . That said, there’s loads of useful information on identifying plants, including very clear guides to leaf shape and positioning. The strength of this book is that it focuses on things that you’ll find in urban and suburban settings, rather than the wild places of Britain. This makes sense - after all, most of us will want to forage regularly in our home environs. Alys also provides food for thought for would-be foragers in the form of sections where she meets various people and projects with a foraging theme, such as Incredible Edible Todmorden.

*Disclosure: Alys is the Guardian’s gardening columnist and as gardening editor, I edit her copy.

The Forager Handbook by Miles Irving (£30, Ebury Press)

I met Miles Irving at the Hampton Court Flower Show this year and tasted his delicious meadowsweet cordial and yarrow flower shortbread. His book has been out for a couple of years now but I hadn’t come across it before. It’s a weighty hardback tome, most definitely a reference book rather than a field guide. This book is exhaustive, with hundreds of plants listed, and impressive detail about where each plant has – and hasn’t – been found in the UK.

It’s one for the gourmet cook, including recipes featuring foraged ingredients from top chefs. That’s because Miles forages for a living, supplying top restaurants with everything from fat hen to shepherd’s purse. I loved some of the detail here, such as the fact that he supplies the famous London restaurant The Ivy with the tiny flowers of the ivy-leaved toadflax to garnish a signature dish (I tasted one of these the other day – absolutely flavourless to my unrefined tastebuds).

But what lets this book down are the pictures. The small black and white images lose a lot of the detail necessary for a positive identification, so I am left wondering what the difference between wall lettuce and shepherd's purse really is. It’s a great book for the serious forager but you’ll need to cross reference with other books to check that you’ve got the right plant and not a poisonous imposter.

Hedgerow by John Wright: River Cottage Handbook No.7 (£14.99, Bloomsbury)

(Review by Toby Travis, added September 26 2011)

Small enough to fit in a backpack, entertaining enough to read in the bath - Hedgerow by John Wright is a worthy addition to the excellent River Cottage Handbook series. The blurb describes the book as "a thoroughly practical guide to gathering edible plants from hedgerow and wood, meadow and heath".

The plant descriptions are witty, opinionated and informative. The photos, together with the text, have been sufficient for me to safely identify such wild delights as alexanders, garlic mustard, yarrow and wood sorrel. That I burnt my mouth eating lords and ladies leaves instead of sorrel is entirely my own fault as there is a photo in the book highlighting the difference between the two.

There is also a very useful chart showing when particular plants are in season.

I haven't tried any of the dishes from the short recipe section at the back, but chestnut pancakes with birch sap syrup must surely be the holy grail for the dedicated autumn forager.

It's not cheap at £14.99 but, along with Mushrooms and Edible Seashore (Nos 1 and 5 respectively in the same series), this has become my primary source of inspiration before setting out on a foraging expedition.

Put together, the seven handbooks (also including concise and illuminating volumes on bread-baking, cake-baking and preserving), form the foundation for an entire approach to thinking about, acquiring, and preparing food.

Apps and maps

There's a useful collaborative map of where useful and edible plants are available which you can view online at Forager's Friend. This is a superb idea, which also comes as an app for use on the move, but like a lot of projects of this nature, it's partly dependent on where you live as to whether you'll be able to glean much in the way of foraging tips for your local area - there are just two entries for my home town, for instance (although I plan to add lots more!). 

There are also a number of foraging  apps available, none of which I have tried because I own the world's most basic mobile phone. If you have, do add your experienes with these below. Or have you got another favourite foraging guide?  If you have, please feel free to add your thoughts below, or even email me a mini-review to add to this post – jane.perrone@gmail.com. I'll be adding other titles as I read them - to come next, Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons.

Foraging meadowsweet, and a bitter encounter

Photo: Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) by amandabhslater on Flickr

To the man with the black dog, I was a woman with a kid in a buggy engaged in antisocial behaviour.

To me? I was engaging in an ancient practice, learning about my local environment, providing for my family, and not breaking any bylaws.

I was down by the river in my hometown, picking meadowsweet flowers to make cordial, while at the same time introducing my son to the wonder of watching a white-lipped snail bungee jumping on a sliver of grass. I hadn't noticed the chap until passed by and called back to me, in a tone that left no doubt as to his irritation, "those flowers are for us all to enjoy". In other words, "stop picking them, you good-for-nothing, irresponsible layabout".

I tried to explain what I was doing, but he kept on walking. I would have loved to have been able to chat with him: to tell him that I was picking perhaps 5% of the dozens and dozens of meadowsweet blooms in that spot, a public place: that I only picked enough for my purpose and left the scene looking as if I'd never been there, and that I wouldn't return to that spot that year to make sure the plants - an extremely common plant locally - have a chance to regenerate.

And I wasn't picking meadowsweet to sit and wilt in a vase - they were to be infused and turned into a cordial for me and my kids to enjoy in place of Fruit Shoots, cartons of orange 'juice' and all the other "healthy" drinks marketers try to convince parents to buy for their offspring.

It was the first time I'd ever been challenged by someone while out foraging: perhaps he wouldn't have batted an eyelid if I was blackberrying, but I think it was the fact that it was flowers that made the difference (He'd have had more of a point if I was picking flowers from the local park, but meadowseet flowers, though pretty, aren't exactly a bower of roses.)

This is a dilemma: despite the trendiness of foraging right now, most people still have no idea what foraging is, or what rules good foragers follow (there's a useful set here). And of course, foraging's newfound popularity means there are doubtless some people who are acting irresponsibly. And I don't like being told off by men with black dogs.

Perhaps education is the answer. Or wearing a T-shirt saying "I am foraging responsibly".

The cordial, meanwhile, was easy to make. This recipe makes a smallish amount, which I've stored in a jar in the fridge. Perhaps ironically, meadowsweet - used to flavour mead - is also said to reduce irritation in the stomach.

Meadowsweet cordial

50 meadowsweet blossoms 2 l water 250 g sugar 2 lemons

Read more at Celtnet: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/miscellaneous/fetch-recipe.php?rid=misc-meadowsweet-cordial
Copyright © celtnet

50 meadowsweet blossoms 2 l water 250 g sugar 2 lemons

Read more at Celtnet: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/miscellaneous/fetch-recipe.php?rid=misc-meadowsweet-cordial
Copyright © celtnet

• 15 meadowsweet blossoms (shake off any insects)
• 1l water
• 150g sugar
• 1 lemon

Add the water and flowers to a large pan. Bring up to a boil then add the sugar, lemon juice and zest. Leave to infuse for 24 hours then strain through a muslin into a bottle or jar.

 

A photo a day Bedford: day 1 - water

I love my watering cans. The one on the left is a vintage "Beldray no 2" bought from the Bargain Alley junk shop on Castle Road for a fiver; the other two were gifts bought from new.

They may be heavy and bang my ankles, but they will last for years and I can leave them around the garden and they look all cool and vintagey. Although the hosepipe ban is over, I prefer to fill these cans from my water butts and use them to water the garden: it makes you think a lot harder about what needs watering when you have a heavy can to lug about!

In the shot below ("stick 'em up punk, we're the fun-lovin' water cans") the Beldray's in the middle.

I took these pictures as my opening gambit in the Bedford Clanger's A Photo a Day Bedford project. Tomorrow: style. Eek.

Astrantia 'Shaggy': with thanks to Margery Fish

I discovered today that the Astrantia major subsp involucrata 'Shaggy' - a much-loved plant in my garden - is also known by the far more pleasant name 'Margery Fish'. This sent me scuttling to my bookshelves in a hunt for one of my favourite old books, Cottage Garden Flowers, by Ms Fish herself. She loved Hattie's pincushion, as astrantias are also known, and had this to say about what presumably ended up as what we know as 'Shaggy':

A very interesting and unusual variation of Astrantia major is found in cottage gardens in parts of Gloucestershire. The bracts are pale green, about three times as long as in the normal type, and very shaggy. I have never been able to find any name for this truly decorative flower, nor does it seem to be included in any dictionary. I have been given a plant and I hope it will increase and seed itself as generously as the ordinary Astratia major does.

It's lovely when the pieces of a plant's story begin to fit together like a jigsaw. If Margery Fish is a new name on you, do look her up - she was a great plantswoman who had a fascinating life and championed many cottage garden flowers that were seen as unfashionable before she came along. And her book 'We Made a Garden' is a study in what happens when both halves of a couple have different views on the garden! Check out her biography on the website of her gardens at East Lambrook in Somerset, which are still open to the public: there's a review of the gardens on the Galloping Gardener's blog. She was also responsible for naming a number of other plants - see this page on the East Lambrook site for a full list.

But back to my astrantia. I love the purity of the green and white, but I do also covet the darker varieties, such as 'Venice' and 'Hadspen Blood' which always look so good in Chelsea show gardens. Mine are planted in quite the wrong place: full sun and soil that dries out easily, but this rainy weather has seen them right this year. Perhaps I should move them to a shadier spot in the winter, though - or perhaps divide and move the divisions. Any tried this and got some advice?

Why, garden? Or, onions and verbascums are enormous

The world is just a great big onion
 and pain and fear are the spices that make you cry
Oh, and the only way to get rid of this great big onion
Is to plant love seeds until it dies, uh huh

What was Marvin Gaye on about, eh? I have no idea, but there's no need to have such a downer on a big onion, Marv!

Sorry for the silly start to this post: this song's been my earworm companion for a while and I am hoping this blogpost will help to extract it.

Anyway, back to this particular onion. I had real struggles on my old allotment with onion white rot, but since I moved my veg growing operation to raised beds in my back garden, overwintered onions go like a dream (they like the good drainage, I think - except where they were planted in ground containing too much fertiliser, which resulted in some bull-necked onions - a lesson learned for the next planting come autumn).

In the self-sufficiency stakes, my fruit and veg harvests are a drop in the domestic ocean: they do taste good, and save some food miles, it's true, but it's the physical and mental benefits of gardening that I treasure.

I don't think it's an overexaggeration to say that the bouts of gardening time I manage to snatch inbetween work and childcare are absolutely vital to my mental and physical health.

It doesn't really matter if I am growing food, like the overwintered onion, or growing verbascums from seed like these 'Snow Maiden'*. What is it that makes gardening so pleasurable? At their most negative, many of the tasks I enjoy (sowing seed, watering, pruning and taking cuttings, for instance) could, as Anne Wareham has pointed out in her book The Bad Tempered Gardener, be described as "outside housework". So why doesn't cleaning the bathroom give me such deep joy?

With two small kids, gardening time is stolen time: time when I can do things my way, have time to think and nurture something that won't answer back or throw porridge at me. Like cleaning or washing up, gardening is cyclical and routine-forming, but every year is different and there is always more to learn: whereas the washing up is always just the washing up. Perhaps if I was miraculously able to spend five days a week in my garden, it would start to pall, but I don't think so. I think I'd get even more addicted. It doesn't help that my job means I spend my working day thinking, reading and writing about my hobby, too.

My latest love is verbascums - so easy to raise from seed, I have discovered, which means lots and lots of plants for not a lot of money. And they're a bit of a revelation in the garden. They like my dry, sunny border and have made vertical vapour trails of blooms that gave some much-needed height to the whole thing. I am also growing the delightfully furry V. bombyciferum  'Silver Lining' (yellow flowers, a bit like a giant lambs' ears before the flower spike heads skyward) for my gravel garden. And finally, I got plug plants of the orange-flowered 'Clementine' from T&M, which so far have been rather weedy in comparison, although I like the dusty orange of the flowers - the benefits of growing from seed yourself are that plants don't get so much mollycoddling at the start, and so the shock of moving from pot to open soil is not so great.

Fortunately, the 'Snow Maiden' are also perfectly positioned to draw attention away from the disaster of what are meant to be two obelisks full of sweet peas. More like a couple of straggly stems and two flowers, right now. Compare this to last year's glorious sweet peas they're an embarrassment. But, like I said, every year's different. This year is the year of the verbascum. And not just big onions, but alliums of all kinds. More of which, another time.

 

 

The HotBin: Aerobic hot composter review

It's normally around Christmas time - when other people (some may call them 'normal') turn their thoughts to presents, festive nights out* and how long it takes to defrost a turkey -  that I start getting twitchy about my kitchen caddy.

With the potato peelings, sprout snubs and pouring in daily, the caddy seems to be full to overflowing (not a good look) every time I turn around. And yet my composters - the two "beehives" and two wormeries - are also stuffed full of not-very-decomposed kitchen waste already. Yes, I can dig a bean trench, but if the grounds frozen or I am feeling sluggish, that may not happen.

So when the chance to try out a new compost bin that promised to chomp my kitchen waste and garden waste and aerobically compost it at 60C, even in the depths of winter, I jumped at it.**

The HotBin's claims include that it "recycles more types of household food waste, generates rich compost more quickly and delivers efficient hot aerobic composting". So we're talking about composting at a temperature of at least 60C, and the ability to add garden waste including weed seeds, and kitchen waste of all kinds including meat and fish. Yes please!

About a month in to my trial, it's proven a bit of a tease to get the HotBin "up to speed".The setup instructions recommend adding a starter layer of compost 30cm deep to start with: added to that, I primed the beast with regular additions of all and sundry from the now much-relieved kitchen caddy. Still I only managed to get the temperature up to 60C once (at least I managed to get a picture of the moment, above) usually stalling at a steamy but not quite hot enough 40-50C. I did try the recommended 'kickstarter', adding a plastic bottle full of boiling water nestled within the pile, but this didn't seem to work, and repeatedly boiling the kettle didn't seem particularly green. I think I know what some of the problems were:

1. I do not, and never will, chop up my kitchen waste. If an apple's whole, it goes in whole. The HotBin does come with a handy poker/rake device which I did use to break up a few bigger lumps once they've softened, but nevertheless I suspect this slows things down a little.

2. Being a curious type, I lifted off the 'access hatch' at the bottom to see what was going on down below and had trouble getting it back in position tightly - I suspect cold air may be leaking in that way.

And bear in mind that the outside temperature was dropping to 0C and below at this point, so compared to my other compost heaps, which were icy to say the least, I should be impressed by its performance. This is only my early-days findings - I'll report back again in a month or two once I have conmposted some more. But to summarise so far:

HotBin pros

• Can take all kitchen and garden waste: a huge bonus. My black bin waste has dropped as a result and I should be making more compost than before.
• Produces compost more quickly than conventional garden heaps (32 times more quickly, according to the marketing bumph): again, a huge plus if it's true - and so far, without quite reaching the heady heights of a constant 60C temperature, the pile sinks very fast. In smaller families may have to beg waste from neighbours to feed their HotBin.
• Is wheelie-bin sized and compact (takes 200l of waste) and not as hideous-looking as some other composters (see point below about siting though).
• The lid stays up when you lift it. Let me repeat that: THE LID STAYS UP! This, my friends, is compost heap progress.
• The HotBin setup kit includes a thermometer on a stick, which is very useful for checking how hot things are. If you're a bit sad like me you may find yourself becoming a bit addicted to checking the temperature.

HotBin cons

• I am not entirely convinced of the long-term durablility of the HotBin's walls, they look as if they could easily be damaged by a wayward trowel. In fact mine already had a ding in it when it arrived, which you can see in the photo (right).
• Though I could theoretically keep it on the patio outside the back door, as it's pictured here, there does seem to be some liquid coming from the little grille right at the bottom - possibly not very good for my stone, so I have moved it onto grass.
• Price - how many of us can afford (or want to) spend £138 on a new compost bin, even if it is a whizzy one?
• The hatch - I had trouble fitting it back in place snugly. If you are batch composting and emptying the whole thing it shouldn't be a problem, but if (like most of us) you want to remove some compost and leave the rest to mature, it's hard to get a proper fit and avoid compost jamming the entrance.

* I don't do festive nights out, I have two small children so prefer to get drunk on Stone's Ginger Wine in front of the Come Dine With Me Christmas special.

**Disclosure: As per the Guardian's editorial code I can't accept gifts so this composter will be going back to the people at HotBin to be passed on to another tester when I have finished with it.

Winter salads for free: how I kicked the supermarket salad bag habit

A while back I made a decision that I wasn't going to buy supermarket salad leaves any more. It wasn't one of those big, announce-it-on-Twitter-and-write-a-blogpost-about-it things. More just a gradual realisation that I was fed up of drab lettuce that cost 10p a leaf when there was a world of green stuff to be grown and gathered without recourse to the shops. I already knew that bagged salads cost a packet, to the consumer, to the environment and to the workers who are exploited in their production. Then I read Charles Dowding's How To Grow Winter Vegetables and realised that, with a bit of planning, I could use my potting shed to grow greens year-round to supplement the foraged stuff.

Around six months on, it's so far, so good. I am eating homegrown/foraged salads three or four times a week, rather than letting a sad plastic bag of pricey leaves go limp in my all-too-tiny fridge. The picture above's fairly typical of what I am eating right now: there's some hairy bittercress, which is a weed that's growing in one of my raised beds and providing a fantastic crop of watercress-flavoured leaves; baby chard; 'Red Streaks' mustard leaves, 'Bulls Blood' baby beet leaves and some baby lettuce leaves.

Dowding's method is simple: pick the right varieties (winter lettuce, Chinese leaves and chard all do well over winter), fill any old container (a washing up bowl with holes cut in the bottom or a wooden banana box are good) with well-rotted cow manure, top with a thin layer of compost, then sow your seeds. (It's a bit more complex than that, you need to be aware of timings and sowings now may struggle more than those done in, say October. I'd recommend buying his book, it's a great read that will inspire you to extend your growing season into winter).

I didn't have any manure, so I tweeted @charlesdowding to ask if wormcasts from my wormery would be an acceptable alternative. "Even better!" he tweeted back, and we were off! I've sowed about six trays between September and now, and probably had 5-10 croppings of cut-and-come-again leaves off each. I guess I've been lucky with the mild winter we've had so far, but if the cold sets in my salad trays will be fine swathed in a layer or two of horticultural fleece. The quanitites aren't huge - somewhere between microgreens and cut-and-come-again leaves, but topped up with foraging finds, it's been plenty.

It's amazing quite what's still fresh and green and available for the picking right now in December, both the"weeds" in my garden and in other local green spaces. The aforementioned hairy bittercress is a banker, but I have also discovered that the leaves of the ubiquitous garden weed Oxalis corniculata var. atropurpurea or creeping wood sorrel are just as deliciously lemony as cultivated sorrel (although you have to be a bit careful not to eat tonnes of the stuff as it can (like a lot of things) be bad for you in very large quantities. Then there's dandelions and cat's ear (bitter but good in small quantities, who needs chicory?) and nettles (select only the fresh green tops) and chickweed (good for you) and violet leaves (a bit bland but a great bulking agent).

I was planning to get the seed sprouter out if the foraging got lean or the cultivated salads failed, but so far I haven't had to. Alfalfa's ok, but my own saladings are better. Now I am just waiting for an opportunity to feed all my friends and relatives a big ole plate of weeds at the next family gathering.

 

 

Green roof update - six months after planting

As years go, this probably wasn't the best for establishing an extensive green roof - too dry by half, and I know I am anthropomorphising but the crows and pigeons seemed to take a vindictive joy in pulling out my plug plants and spreading them around the garden. Nevertheless, things have changed a lot since I first planted it up back in March. It's useful to look back and remember the bare expanse of soil which is now, well, still a bit patchy but there's a lot more green to be seen.

Yesterday I planted out the sedums I'd been growing from seed (using T&M rock garden mixed), and was pleased to see that some of the sedums and sempervivums I planted earlier in the year have established really well. You can also see in the picture to the right some surplus-to requirements Verbascum 'Silver Lining' that I planted up there in some of the deeper areas as an experiment. I am still expecting it to look rather bare in the winter when all the annual wildflowers die back, but I know they've been self-seeding (with a bit of help from me) so there should be a great new flush of grwoth in the spring.

There are some odd things up there - for instance, loads of amaranth* in red and greeny-yellow which I think must have come from one of the rather panic-bought packs of 'meadow mix' I bought when things were looking much barer. There's also some pink cosmos (ditto) and lots of alyssum. Some grasses are getting established (which as Kate Bradbury has pointed out on her recent post on the Guardian gardening blog, are an important thing to include). I've removed some things - fat hen in abundance, couch grass and a few ragwort-type things, but at the moment until the bareness is completly gone, I am letting things take their course.

One of the strange things about the roof as a "garden" is that it's only really visible from my bedroom window, although I do rather like the little line of plant silhouettes  you get when looking up at the roof from the side passageway - just visible in this shot.

There's a full set of photos on Flickr. I would love to be able to identify everything, so do take a look: for instance, what's this little pink flower, above - anyone? My plants for next year are not very strategic - I think it's going to take at least another year to settle down. I'd like more grasses, in the Briza media vein, but would welcome any other suggestions - preferably stuff I can grow from seed.

*I'd like to harvest the amaranth grains - any advice on the best method would be welcome!

 

Why is it so hard to find a decent bit of trellis?

Sometimes it seems ridiculously hard to find what seems like the simplest of products without having to go down the hugely expensive “bespoke” route - you know, getting a blacksmith to fashion you plant supports from old horsehoes, that kind of thing.

Am I looking in the wrong place? Going to the wrong garden centres?

There’s got to be something wrong here – as gardening editor I get sent press releases and catalogues by the dozen about new products. But could I find a 6ft by 4ft square-latticed, decent quality wooden trellis that wouldn’t cost a fortune to deliver? Nope. Had to settle for a 6ft by 3ft one. What about a non-hideous, non-"nostalgic" hosepipe holder? Eventually, after a plea on Twitter, I found this one from brilliant Dutch firm DeWiltfang. I liked it so much I got two!

And do I really have to schlep to Ikea every time I want a reasonably cheap and modern pot for a houseplant? (or for that matter, a houseplant full stop: they’re definitely out of fashion right now, as I’ve said before).

I have, however, just defeated one of my demons – a wire trellis system that works with fencing featuring concrete posts and doesn’t cost hundreds of pounds – it comes from Rivelin Glen (I love you guys, and I don’t even know you...).

Is it just me, or are you struggling to source something for your garden? Do share ...