Horticultural

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.

 

 

Chicken keeping: dos, don'ts and should Is?

I’ve been researching chicken keeping for over four years now and I still haven’t taken the plunge.

I could easily buy one of those cheap flatpack coops off the web, or splash out on an Eglu if I’m feeling flush. So what’s holding me back? I’m convinced of the benefits of back garden chickens: endless supplies of rich manure to boost my compost heap, the entertainment of watching the birds, teaching my children the responsibility of looking after animals, and of course the fresh eggs.

It’s the downsides I am worried about - greedy chooks trashing my veg patch, the ever-present threat of fox attacks, and the extra drudge of feeding and coop cleaning on top of the domestic demands of looking after two kids under five, for starters. And the myth that I am going to save money keeping hens is quickly dispelled by adding up the setup costs: hundreds of pounds for a decent coop and run, not to mention the cost of feed. (From my years of research one good piece of advice I’ve often received is this: don’t buy one of those cheap flatpacks - mites love setting up home in the felt roof and they’re far too flimsy.)

Then there’s where to put them. There is an obvious spot in my garden, tucked behind the office in a sheltered corner, at the moment just rough grass in the wake of our building project. But that will mean careful design to make it look good. I guess there's the option of putting them on a putative allotment plot, like Ryan, but I don't think I'd be able to get up there enough to keep them fed and watered (Ryan, how do you do it all - haven't you got a horse too?) And I need to be careful in my choice of breed, too – ideally I want something that won’t be able to negotiate the 1m-tall picket fence into the veg patch. Brahmas, or Buff Orpingtons, maybe? Any other suggestions welcome.

I did take a detour for a few months into the world of quail, after noticing that Omlet, who make the Eglu, also do a version for these tiny birds. But there seemed to be so much contradictory advice out there – some said they’re noisy, some reported them to be quiet as mice. Others warned of cannibalism and other nastiness between birds, but some found they all rubbed along nicely. The main attraction was that unlike chickens they weren’t amenable to free ranging, and they were rather more low maintenance. But the very helpful @Chickenstreet on Twitter persuaded me in the end that if I was going to go for poultry keeping, chickens were far more interesting and rewarding.

Chicken keeping has grown hugely in popularity in the last few years, but are some people leaping into this hobby without fully absorbing how grim they’ll feel getting turfed out of bed at 7am on a rainy Sunday to feed and water their charges?  I’d guess a fair number of the secondhand Eglus for sale on eBay are being sold by people for whom the work involved outweighed the fresh eggs.

And me? I still plan to become a hen keeper, but I think I am going to wait until my toddler has realised that bird poo isn’t one of the major food groups.

Crowdsourcing my beds

Just as there is no ideal time to have a baby, there’s no ideal time to get your garden revamped. In the past year, I’ve done both.

In the summer, when I got the back of my garden sorted – new shed, raised beds, picket fence – I was itching to get growing but couldn’t do a huge amount because 'd just given birth. This winter, the bit of the garden closest to the house has been transformed, along with the knocking down of the garage and replacement with a garden office/guest room/bathroom/storage (visible on the left of the picture above). The weather was the problem here, with the builders facing snow, ice, lashing wind and rain with surprising good spirits. Oh, and the aforementioned baby’s had everything from flu to croup via vomiting and eczema, so I’ve been trying to project manage the whole thing while sleep deprived, dishevelled and possibly slightly deranged. No wonder, I guess, I haven’t been particularly on the ball with updating this blog. I’ve been blogging here since 2004, so I think I am allowed the occasional break in service, yes?

But because things are beginning to settle downI am going to get blogging again. So it is with some trepidation that I am posting a picture of the new look to my garden - well, the patio near the house anyway.*

Trepidation? Yes, because a) it’s cost me a lot of money (although the building cost a lot more than the patio) and b) because I designed the patio area and surrounding beds myself (all the money we had went into the architect and the build, no money for a garden designer except, er, me). I already know where I’ve gone wrong in a few respects: the raised brick planters (visible in the foreground of the top picture) have ended up slightly different sizes, and I would have preferred the bed alongside the building to be wider. And I know it's probably also rather boring looking (I had thoughts of Anne Wareham peering over my shoulder the whole time I was sketching plans), but I am hoping the plants will do the talking. A professional garden designer would have undoubtedly done a far better job, but not for the princely sum of zero pounds.

And a lot of things have gone right too. I’ve put beds in the right places for planting up the walls with heaps of climbers, and the steps feel wide enough to double up as a seating area but not too steep for tiny legs. The big windows in the office are designed for an expansive view of the garden, and the plants in the raised beds will eventually form a bit of a screen to help the patio feel separated off from the rest of the garden. I plan to put a big wooden table and chairs on here and eat every meal there when it's not raining. (I haven’t even begun to tell you about the green roof on the garden office, have I? I’ll save that for a separate post.)

Speaking of which, the next big job is sorting what to put in the seven (SEVEN!) beds I have to fill. This seems a less tension-filled task, partly because it’s more my area, and partly because any mistakes I make are fixable – plants in the wrong place can be moved. And, of course, the money squirreled away for plants has gone elsewhere so I’ll have to buy gradually as my purse allows.

Here’s where you come in. I have ideas about what plants I’d like, but I’d like to know what you think. The beds have all been filled with topsoil which I’ll enrich with compost from the heap and wormcasts. I've been working on plans for the dingy side passage pictured, (mostly full shade with a tad of occasional sun at one end first), so here's the plant list so far.

Bed 1, alongside the fence (which I am going to paint pale green to lift the dinginess)

• Skimmia 'Kew Green' for evergreen leaves, winter colour, scent and structure
• Sarcoccca confusa, ditto
• Another Skimmia I can't recall the name of
• Climber Pileostegia viburnoides for the fences to give evergreen colour plus flowers and will cope with the shade: I probably need one other climber for the sunnier end, any suggestions?
• Garrya elliptica 'James Roof' as a wall shrub for beautiful catkins, to screen next door's back door
•  a couple of unidentified deciduous, medium-sized ferns I already had
• Hosta 'Sum and Substance' for its big leaves. I've always had a problem with hostas but this one's supposed to be slug resistant and there's a first time for everything
• Dicentra spectabilis alba for its longlasting white blooms

Bed 2, alongside the house - full shade

• Asarum europaeum
• Polygonatum x hybridum
• Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost'
• Couple of dark-leaved heucheras I already had, possibly 'Silver Scrolls' and 'Obsidian'
• Some kind of climber going up the house wall, not sure what, possibly more P. viburnoides

Bed 3, under the kitchen window - full shade

• Bergenia 'Silberlicht'
• Dryopteris wallichiana

That's it so far - I'll post some more plant lists if I get a good response to this. Let me know what you think of the plant list, and the patio (be kind, though, you wouldn't want to rile a woman who hasn't had a full night's sleep for eight months, would you?).

* For those of you interested in this kind of thing, my builders were the excellent Bedford-based firm ADMC and the patio stones are Marshalls' ethically sourced limestone in ‘Autumn Bronze’.

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Herons, sheds, and other works in progress

(Let me say, before we go any further, that the willow sculpture you see here is a heron. A HERON. Not a giraffe.)

I made this chap at a willow sculpture workshop taught by Hazel Godfrey at Albion Arts in Harpenden a few weeks back. I don't know what you think of my efforts, but I was rather pleased with him. My friend Sarah also did the course at the same time and  made a heron, which you can see below. It was interesting how everyone in the group followed exactly the same instructions, yet everyone's sculpture came out different. Sarah's heron looks more realistic than mine - mine looks a bit, well, shocked, whereas hers is more naturalistic.

It was enlightening working with willow - the wood has to be soaked for a day per foot to make it supple, then the work of bending it to your will is all down to the strength of your hands. It definitely inspired me to make some willow obelisks for my garden as and when I have the time and materials - they're ridiculously expensive to buy and now I've made a heron, I can make an obelisk, surely?! I just need to lay my hands on some willow. Hazel said she gets most of hers from the wild, so I just need to scope out some harvesting spots ou in the countryside.

My heron - who may well end up being called Horace - is about the only point of interest in my increasingly bare garden right now. Rick kindly got rid of the mostly dead but huge ceanothus bush, a rogue forsythia and a suckered lilac to free up a huge space for my not-yet-bought potting shed. I would've done it myself, but just under 6 months pregnant I've been banned from heavy work in the garden. With any luck by the summer I should have a new shed, possibly a new patio and with any luck, foundations for the garden office, oh, and a new baby. The latter may mean the garden office will take a little longer to get around to, but just getting rid of the algified ice rink that is the decking will be a great relief.

Awards, sheds and silver birch wine

Sorry for the break in service. I've been focusing all my blogging energies on the Guardian gardening blog in a naked attempt to win the Garden Media Guild best blog award. Having been beaten to the line for a second year on the trot by the inestimable Mr James Alexander-Sinclair, I thought I'd retire to my personal blog to lick my wounds.

Here's a potted summary of what I would have been blogging about, courtesy of a look back at my Twitter feed:

- I've finally found a way of dealing with the fruit flies that seemed to be plaguing my kitchen, courtesy of a bottle of silver birch wine (I know, what was I thinking of?) which sat half-drunk in the kitchen, swallowing those suckers and drowning them in a haze of bad-tasting alcohol

- RHS president Giles Coode-Adams to retire next July. I'd love someone to write a "Friday debate" post for the Guardian blog entitled something like "how to fix the RHS" but no luck so far. Volunteers?

- Managed to tweet most of the winners from the GMG awards, well the categories that I was interested in, anyway. I may sound bitter above, but I am only jesting - if I'd been judging best blog I'd have gone for Veg Plotting.

- I'm planning the purchase of my first ever shed. I know, hard to believe - how have I got through life thus far without owning a shed? The one currently in contention is this one from Taylor's Garden Buildings - not cheap, but it looks good and is carbon neutral, too

- In honour of James Alexnader-Sinclair, I've added this random clematis pic above, taken in Kathy Brown's garden in Stevington, Beds. the soft focus, by the way, is not due to some nifty camerawork but my daughter grabbing the daughter grabbing the lens with sticky fingers. I'm guessing it's Clematis tangutica?

- Coming up next: Hot Plot Or Not's latest instalment, OMG award winner Anne Wareham's garden, Veddw. Can't wait to see what you make of it...

Fierce plants for bottle gardens

I’ve always been a bit of a bottle garden nut. As a kid I got a huge aquarium from god know’s where (perhaps my sister can remember?) and set it up in my room as a terrarium, with plants bought with my pocket money from Woolies. It even had a grow light in the top, which my dad set up for me.

Bottle gardens (or terrariums) have been rather out of fashion since then, but I was inspired by posts on Garden Rant and the Blithewold Gardens blog to give them a second look. I made up a couple for today’s gardening feature in Weekend, which looks at three different fun things to use as pots. The terrarium that ended up being pictured (although you'll have to look in the actual magazine to see it) was a rather nice jar from Heals filled with some baby Chlorophytum ‘Ocean’ plants.

I was pleased at how it turned out, but I think I prefer the other bottle garden I made (pictured left), containing a sarracenia and a venus fly trap.

Carnivorous plants have a bit of a reputation for dying once you get them home, but bottle gardens help because it's easy to check they have enough water (they prefer to be more or less waterlogged in summer, less so in winter, so keep the gravel covered in rainwater - never use tap). The closed environment keeps out the draughts that can kill these plants, but if you want them to catch some meals you'll have to take it off from time to time, or else feed them occasionally with a very dilute foliar houseplant feed. The jar I used here was £30 from Lytton & Lily but if you like hunting things down in junk shops and charity stores you can track something down for a lot less. A good book to start with if you want to get into carnivorous plants is The Savage Garden by Peter D'Amato.

Depending on what plants you opt for, terrariums require very little maintenance. Faster growing plants like the chlorophytum will need thining every now and again, but this really is the ideal way of growing if you're short on time but want some greenery in your home. Read my piece for more info on how to plant them up: I'll write a separate post soon with some extra info on the other elements of the piece: A hanging basket made from a colander and some funky plant pots made from a tea set.

The path that leads back to Horticultural

It's been a while, I admit, but it's time to bring my personal blog out of cold storage.

Why? I did an interview about blogging the other day in which I was asked for my advice to other bloggers, and one of the things I said was "keep blogging". I stopped blogging here for a number of reasons, mainly because the new Guardian gardening blog, set up in January, ate up all my blogging mojo. The other reason was not much was going on for me garden-wise - we moved house a year ago, and there was a lot to do inside before I could tackle the garden. it's hard to keep the blogging momentum going when all you're feeling is frustration that you can't do any gardening while waiting for the plaster to dry.

Now things are getting easier at home, the garden revamp is on the horizon, the fruit trees are heavy with fruit and I have stuff to blog about again. So I am making like Robbie Williams and staging a comeback.

So what's happening around these parts? Well, I am in full preserves mode, making good use of my two fruit trees - a Victoria plum and an as yet unidentified early pear tree*. My tomatoes have seen off a touch of blight and romped through to a successful harvest - I'll post soon about my favourites from the varieties I tried this year. But pretty they ain't. The plants look a complete mess, due to a staking disaster, again, more of which later. And I've been experimenting with various houseplant planting schemes which I'm looking forward to sharing with you too.

In the meantime enjoy this rather mysterious pic above, which really is the path to Horticultural - well kinda. It's the footpath from my old house to my allotment-as-was. It's looking pristine-ish here, but it always used to amaze me that people in the houses backing onto the alley chucked their garden waste over the fence as if no one would notice. People sometimes as if I miss having an allotment - the answer is yes, sometimes, but now I have a 70ft garden I don't have the energy or time for both. But I do hope I've got the energy for two blogs.

*I suspect it's Jargonelle or Onward - if you have either, please take a look at this pic of a slightly underripe specimen and tell me if I am right

Lav break loser: Horticultural shortlisted for GMG blog award

Without wishing to turn my life – and indeed this blog - into a poor, unfunny approximation of Seinfeld, I have to share what happened at the Garden Media Guild awards last week.

Now, I’d entered this blog for the digital media award, and I am not quite so sieve-headed as to have forgotten that fact. But the GMG had cunningly divided the award into two categories: one for websites and one for blogs, unbeknownst to me or the person who printed the programme. So once I saw I hadn’t won, I nipped out to the lav, only to come back and see James Alexander-Sinclair onstage receiving his (much-deserved) award for best blog.

“You were shortlisted!”, my fellow diners at the Marshalls table informed me. So my comfort break denied me the chance to witness my micromoment in the spotlight. No one’s been bold enough to tell me but I think the judges said something about Horticultural needing to be updated, which is a fair point. But anyway, I was delighted to be “mentioned in dispatches”. Meantime I managed to miss most of the people I wanted to chat to and didn’t feel up to quaffing any of the wine on offer. What a poor imitation of a hack I am.

Digging for dinner

There's an interesting piece in the Guardian today about how London's royal parks are considering setting up model allotments to show people how they can grow their own fruit and veg.

Of course my mentioning of the article has nothing to do with the fact that I wrote a sidebar for it on the decorative value of veg.

Death becomes you

Now, I know sometimes people say us gardeners are old before our time, but this is ridiculous.