Happy birthday to me-blog thing

26th August was the 1st Anniversary of my 1st post. Coinciding with Summer starting to head for the door, it seems a perfect time to reflect, tho maybe not in South Park style, on what I've learnt.

1. Do structural work in Winter

There were 3 structural jobs I wanted to do this year:

• Stairs & terracing in Stinky Dog Corner.
  Achievement unlocked! (as the kids say)
• Seating semi-circle around the gravel.
  Well I bought the sleepers... That counts as progress, right...?
• Wall consolation & seating in The White Corner.
  Yeah well given how much the wall has moved this year, it'll have demolished itself by the time I get around to it.

The only reason Stinky Dog Stairs got done was cos I did it in Winter (it was snowing ffs, but once I got going I was fine).

Working in Winter has a bunch of advantages:

• I don't overheatKey factor for me as I'm a bit prone to heat stroke.
  Heavy work = Tired.
  Tired + Overcooked brain = Losing a limb.
• No plants to knack
  All the annuals have gone, all the bulbs & most perennials are underground, leaving only me, the shrubs & trees. There's a lot more room to manoeuvre, & a lot less to get precious about, so I can get stuck in.
  
  Later in the year, when everything's up & leafy & growing, it seems like the height of bad manners to turf 'em up & mess 'em about.
  Plus they sulk:

You moved me!

Right in the middle of my big dance number!

How DARE you!

Well tough titty, big boots,

I'm going to cry for the rest of the season

& every time you look at me

you'll know it was

All.

Your.

Fault.

• I have the time
  I like to be a busy bee but things quieten down during the shortest days.

All this said, it would be nice to do the heavy work in more clement weather, but I now know this is delusional thinking. Even if all the above weren't true, big Summer work just won't happen as...

2. Summer is for having a life

I like to do stuff. Lots of stuff. In the Summer there's generally more stuff on. Can't do it all. Weekends get packed out with exciting new opportunities, leaving only the occasional day here & there, maybe the odd evening, to get out into the garden & tidy up a bit.

But that's OK cos...
 

3. Mowing the lawn = instant makeover

Such a quick job, such a transformation.
Dead easy to pop out on a sunny evening & give the grass a quick hoove.
The sharp contrast with the wild & unruly the beds works beautifully.
Full of win!

Unfortunately the mower doesn't quite get
the grass in the path gaps

4. Power tools rock!

As well as the mower, there's my new best friend: the hedge trimmer. Truly, it is a sword of power worthy of Hattori Hanzo himself. Even removing the cover feels like unsheathing a katana of legend.

The hedge trimmer has transformed the biggest job of the year - the annual hedge hack.

In the dark days of yore, attacking the hedge was a gruelling marathon. At least 3 sessions of hacking with shears & loppers, and then several more stuffing the trimmings into bag after bag, garden waste bin load after garden waste bin load.

But not this year - 2 sessions, all done. Woohoo!

Admittedly not all this is down to the awesome power of Excalibur. The odd Spring confused the crap out the laurel. Its initial growth was badly burnt by the late cold snap & only now has it started to recover. But I'll take any assistance on this mammoth task. The laurel is tougher than old boots; it'll be back to fight another year. But this year, it did not claim the lion's share of my Summer garden time, & there are no words for how grateful I am.

Not to say I am completely unscathed tho'...:

A bit of a poor effort by Emo standards

This? Yeah, well I sort of fell through the hedge.
Backwards.
yeah, yeah, laugh it up fuzzball...

I was stood on top of the wall, both hands on Excalibur. I needed to turn around.

When using the shears I'm happy to walk backwards, but when I have the trimmer out I prefer to see exactly where the cable is. 

As I was halfway through my pirouette, I started a slow fall backward... into a gap in the hedge.

Fortunately both hands were off the triggers so the blade wasn't spinning. Plus the hedge gap wasn't quite as wide as me, so I came to rest at a jaunty 45° recline. The ground level is much higher on the hedgeward side so I was able to stand.
In the hedge.
I felt like a pillock.
But it could've been sooooo much worse...

5. The hedge yields weird harvest

No hedge treasure during this year's annual haircut, apart from me, obvs.

The mug I once found in the hedge is a bit tatty so sits at the back of the cupboard & will do for decorating.

The lovely spotty pint glass was perfect & is now my regular garden refreshments glass. It makes me smirk every time I use it.

But it's not all treasure.

There's usually quite a lot of litter. To be expected really on an end of terrace.

The unripe apples were a disappointment - lobbed over the hedge & landing in the gravel with tell tale titchy teeth marks in them. Fortunately, & after a bit of a word, the kids didn't strip the tree completely bare, & 5 apples made it to full size... if not quite full maturity - scrumpers left us with 1, so we snaffled it ourselves.

A bit tart, & hopefully enough next year for a tart

But without doubt the weirdest thing to arrive over the hedge was the rat in a bag. Still no clue what the hell that was all about.

6. You tend vegetables

The flowers, fruit, herbs, trees & shrubs in our garden do a grand job of looking after themselves. Whether I'm out there or not, they carry on regardless.

I was keen to give more veg a go this year, & with hindsight I can see that I expected them to do just what the other plants do & get on with it.

But no. It was a endless round of sewing & potting on & watering & feeding... & I just could not be arsed. By mid-Summer I was proclaiming, loudly, to anyone who would listen & those who couldn't run away, that vegetables were needy. They wilted, they bolted, they got infested, they got nibbled, they got mangled. Jeez, what a bunch of lightweights!

Then I visited my Dad's garden & the truth slapped me in the face:
You get out what you put in.

I'd been expecting a free lunch, but we all know there's no such thing.

It's not been a total disaster though. A couple of tough buggers have soldiered on.

Courgettes

Still going strong, still flowering, still fruiting. The one veg plant that suits my inability to micro-manage.

Courgette flower in full pomp 

Radishes

They worked! First attempt with these this year & they're bright, fresh, crunchy & peppery. I'm chuffed to bits.

All shapes & colours from my mixed seed pack

Their location in the greenhouse might be unconventional but at least I could keep an eye on them, & the snails tend to stay out of there.

Borlotti beans

The snails definitely found the beans, but I'm surprised the damage wasn't more extensive.

Bit of a snail mauling in the middle there...

The snails first attacked while the pods were tender, so we harvested some beans then & Hubby steamed them whole, runner bean style.

At this end of the Summer the remainder have really taken on that trademark red colour, so hopefully we'll get beans too.

Onions

Yeah, not a great result here. In a variety of locations they've been universally terrible. These survivors are barely larger than the sets they started out as (20p off the right edge there for scale). But they've done better than their brethren, who are M.I.A....

Call them shallots?

The veg experiment has been interesting, but I think next year I'll look to expand hardy herb selection instead.

7. Seedlings compost is only for seedlings

The Greenhouse Guttering experiment has worked much better in Spring & Summer than it did over Winter. We had lots of salad leaves and tender herbs and things germinated very well in there... but they didn't last.

Hmm... row 2 looking a little dry there...

I finally twigged with the little gem lettuce: they were going well but after a little while they started to fade - literally. The colour started to leech from the leaves. Hubby was baffled. After a few days something pinged in my head: food. So he gave them some liquid feed & they perked right up again.

And then I remembered hearing that seed compost isn't like normal compost. It's finer plus it doesn't have as much nutritional content. So potting on isn't only about giving the roots more legroom, it's also about getting more scran into the soil.

8. Post it!

Not all the year's lessons are from out there. Some are from in here, in blogland.

Some posts have had a long gestation. I've still got Japan posts from Christmas sat in drafts. I have a phone memory card stacked with photos waiting to be processed. I have emails marked as unread so I don't forget to write about them.

All these posts sit in the back of my mind like gravel, grating away. They force "should" statements into my subconscious.

If I have a year 2 resolution, it'll be Post it!

It doesn't have to be perfect, but it needs to be out, or let go...

9. A diary, for me

When I started the blog, part of my motivation was to show the world that gardening is far more hit & miss than the experts would have us believe. But the way it's panned out, this blog is more like my gardening diary. It definitely feels like it's of more use to me than you. Does that sound rude?

Half way through the year I realised that to be useful to others, I'd have to be posting like clockwork & running around social medialand driving traffic to the site. Advertising to only my Facebook mates doesn't really get the message out there.

But frankly, what a chew on. It's got "time swamp" plastered all over it, & I already spend much longer writing about gardening than gardening.

Having said all that though...

10. Folk are actually interested

I've had some really nice comments about things I've written over the last year, & that's been unexpected. I'm frankly astonished that anyone takes the time to read these witterings.

& I love the stories it brings out of you. You tell me what you're up to & we all get to learn from each other. & that's great.

So thank you for taking the time. I'm really touched.

Who's the Daddy?

How did I get into gardening? As with many things, (my height, my love of Monty Python & Queen, & my colour blindness) it comes from my family.

My Mum & Dad are both keen gardeners & my Dad is King Of Veg. I think for him it started as a combo of financial necessity & sanity break, but over the years his dedication & ability have become legendary amongst family & friends.

I was recently at my folks for my Dad's birthday party, so I took some pics to show you all, & to show myself that, whilst veg plants are needy, if you look after them they will look after you.

Maximise the space

Dad's garden is bigger than ours (veg plot of... erm... about 12m x 15m I think) but he also cannily makes the most of what he's got.

Runner beans up front,
courgettes in the compost at the back,
& blackberry management over the fence

Runner beans

I used to help my Dad put up the runner bean canes in early summer. One year, we could hear my Mum laughing all the way back in the kitchen. What? Turns out that whilst I was still shorter than my Dad at that point, my legs were already longer than his. Seems it wasn't only the beans that were climbing...

Courgettes

On holiday in Switzerland the other year, we saw folk growing pumpkins on top of the cowpat compost heaps. Apparently they love the heat and aren't bothered by the high nitrogen levels that would burn many other plants. So it was interesting to see Dad doing the same this year with his courgettes. I've not seen him do this before - always learning, always evolving.

Blackberries

Brambles are so invasive. There's a large bush that runs along the edge of the arable farmland to the South of my folks' garden. Many people are amazed that Dad tolerates this invasive bully of a weed on the other side of his fence. But blackberries are tasty, & Mum makes a mean apple & blackberry crumble, so why not manage them? Fair point.

Banter

My Dad & his neighbours have an annual veg competition. It's run along the lines of an RHS show, & by-and-large to those guidelines, but it's mainly about the banter: year after year of wind-up, gloating, goading, snooping... they love it.

Onions

There are many categories the growers can enter, but the 2 onion classes (Heaviest 3; & Heaviest Single) are the ones they all want to win.

Biggest Onion is the blue riband event at the street growers annual show 

The 50p is to give you some scale... & that's one big onion.

Beetroot

Dad's been growing beetroot since the early days. He & Mum used to pickle jar after jar, but over time they stepped away from the vinegar & we all started to appreciate the fabulous natural taste of the beetroot itself.

The beets are looking canny hefty too

Since he's been competing, Dad has split his sewing. His primary concern is still tasty fresh veg, so that still makes up the majority of his plot. But he now sews competition varieties too, alongside the kitchen ones.

However, his fellow competitors agree that growing for size alone misses the key point veg growing - great taste.

Tomatoes

One of the 1st taste categories they introduced was Tastiest Tomatoes. Last year I know lots of folks suffered terrible tomato times, but we've had plenty of sunshine this Summer so I hope everyone else's look as juicy as these:

Soooo many tomatoes

The toms get pride of place in the greenhouse, although there is room too for capsicums & cucumber.  Rather than plant these guys straight into the ground, the pops them in large containers instead. He's also rigged up an irrigation system, with each plant getting its own dedicated little showerhead. Certainly seems to be working.

Pest management tips & tricks

Brassica row: Cabbages, sprouts & purple sprouting

As we were chatting, one of my Dad's friends asked for advice on how to get such great cabbages. He had 2 tops tips.

Rhubarb for club root

Once you have the club root fungus in your soil, it can be nigh impossible to remove. This usually means the end of your cabbage growing capers, but Dad said he had recently received a top tip that was working for him: chop stems of rhubarb into the bottom of the cabbage trench. Reading the RHS page, I wonder if the rhubarb changes the pH of the soil? Worth a shot I guess.

Spray for cabbage insect pests

Dad knows I'm not keen on traditional chemical pest treatments so asked me to cover my ears as he said it. The butterflies even found my kale seedlings in the greenhouse this year. It must be a massive pain in the arse to clear all the eggs off every leaf of every plant by hand. We each make our choices, but I know the chemical path is not for me, & given how lazy I am, I guess I won't be growing any cabbages any time soon.

Carrot crèche

Dad will admit however that chemicals aren't always the answer. Sometimes a physical barrier is the best defence, hence the fleecy play pen for the carrots.

Carrots play pen

As you might know, carrot plants are quite pungent little things - if you ruffle the leaves with your fingers they give off quite a strong scent, and the carrot root fly can smell that from a long way away. However, they fly low to the ground. So, if you wrap them in fleece like this, you both reduce the risk of creating carrot perfume clouds as you wander around your plot, and you have a physical barrier that stops any of the little miscreants getting in to punch holes into your lovely roots.

New kids on the block

Part of the fun of gardening is trying out new stuff, & there are several plants Dad grows now that he didn't when I left home nearly 25 years ago.

Corn

I love the look of sweetcorn plants. They're fabulous - statuesque, unusual & tasty too. All good.

No elephants to measure corn height against

Dad has 2 rows, this one was by the greenhouse sheltering from the wind. This is exactly what our neighbour did the other year - a row of corn between his greenhouse & the stinky dog cage.

Rainbow chard

Dad has tended to grow quite traditional fare, but after his asparagus success I think he's really starting to think outside the veg box. Mind, this one might've been Mum's idea...

The yellow stems of the rainbow chard

Sunflowers

Flowers?! In the veg garden?! My, things have definitely changed...

Bringing all the bees to the yard

I think I remember Dad saying these had been started with the grandkids, but it has to be said that the row of sunflowers makes a lovely line of sentinels marking the boundary between Mum's flowers & herbs & Dad's veg.

Grapes

Mum & Dad love a Summer holiday in the Med, & who can blame them. It was understandable too that they would want to bring a bit of that sun soaked gorgeousness back home with them.

This Is England. I kid you not.

The vine is on a pergola over a patio that gets sun all day long & catches the sunset too. It's also against the neighbours' tall boundary wall, so the bricks catch what heat there is & feed it back to the vine as the day fades.

The vine has taken quite a few years to get established, but there are some things you just can't rush.

If you do just 1 thing...

As you might imagine, it was lovely to wander around taking snaps of Dad's garden, remembering old stuff, checking out the new.

Some of Dad's oldest friends were at the party, & one of them is just getting into veg gardening. Dad's advice?

"Talk to people."

As it's been since before the dawn of our species.
The oldest ways are the best, eh?

---

Update

Cos this post was about family stuff, I sent the link to family folk. My Aunt has an allotment & today she sent me a photo of her Patty Pans. I do like these spacey squash varieties, & given how well the courgettes grow in our garden, I think I'll add these to my Spring seeds shopping list.

My Aunt's visitors from Outer Space

---

Update #2

I saw Dad recently. After berating me for "sharing his secrets" with you, I got some of his results from the annual weigh-in:

• Heaviest 3 beetroots - Won!
• Heaviest 3 carrots - Won!
  It helped that the favourite, & eventual overall winner, left his carrots at home...
• Final position overall - 3rd

Every year there's some controversy - a bit of drama is all part of the banter for them.

Where's the champ?

This year's overall winner wasn't present when the results were revealed. Why did he miss his moment of glory? Because the local football team had a match the same day & he was determined to be in front of his telly for kick off.

Let me get this right - you spend all year growing outstanding veg for competition day, & then sack it off for football, which happens every weekend for half the year? Boggling. But then, this guy wins the overall prize most years, so maybe he just sees it as a foregone... Bit of a slap in the face for the other guys tho'.

The best cucumber?

Dad says his cucumber was his best submission ever for that class. Then seeing the competition laid out on the judging table, he though his was a shoo-in. But no! Another won & Dad feels robbed.

I asked:

Did you ask for feedback on why you didn't win Best Cucumber?

No.

Why not?
Is it cos you're sulking...?

Yes.

Did I mention Dad was 65 this year?

End of April catch up

Crikey, nearly a month since my last post. Is it because I've been too busy doing actual gardening? Of course not.

But that doesn't matter as it's been a fairly sunny round here this April. Admittedly some of the showers have been a tad, erm, white & lumpy, & the temperature has been up & down like the Assyrian Empire. But the garden has clearly decided Spring is here & is just getting on with it. That's the spirit!

So how's everything getting along while I've been maximising my quality sofa time?

Bay cuttings

When I pruned the bay last year, I had a go at taking cuttings from the trimmings.

2 pots, 3 stems per pot, over-Wintered in the greenhouse & they seemed to be going well. But I've been as slow to get started as Spring has & the other week Hubby spotted the cuttings were wilting. With the weather heating up (a bit) they weren't getting enough water. So I've moved them outside & given them saucers, to help them keep some of the rain they catch.

Some green left on the Autumn's Bay cuttings

As you might be able to spot in the pic, at least 2 of the 6 cuttings still have green in their leaves, so hopefully they'll strengthen as Spring progresses.

Magnolia flowers

The week before I put the stairs into Stinky Dog Corner, I bought a couple of trees: a Himalayan Birch, for the top of those steps; & a Magnolia for The White Corner, bottom right of the garden. To be honest I didn't think the Magnolia's flower buds would survive a March planting, but 3 or 4 look like they might just hang on in there. Yay!

New tree: Magnolia Manchu Fan

Old bulbs

In The White Corner, the Magnolia joins some other white plants put in previously. A few years ago I started thinking about playing with some colour theory to make the garden feel a bit longer: strong colours nearer the house; paler ones further away.

So a few years ago, I declared (in my mind) the bottom right end of the garden The White Corner, & I put in some white tulips & pale daffs.

Tulips & daffs in The White Corner

I love the pale green on these tulips, & the flowers are huge.

So, normal sized daffs, fairly large tulips, large tulip-shaped magnolia flowers... yep I've just realised that my colour/distance illusion is going to be shattered cos it's not accompanied by an illusion of scale: large flowers in strong colours nearer the house; small flowers in paler colours further away. Doh!

Hellebore

Also new to The White Corner this Spring, planted underneath the Magnolia, is a white Hellebore... Well it was white when the flowers were new. I didn't realise the flowers would change colour as they aged & set seed.

White (& pink & gold) Hellebore flowers

Bonus!

Dwarf narcissus

Dwarf Narcissus in the Eye bed

The bulbs I planted late last year are going great guns & have brought much joy between the snow showers. The daffs were 1st up & have put on a beautiful show regardless of what the weather has thrown at them. Fair play.

New tulips

2 sorts of tulips went in at the same time as the dwarf daffs. The orange Shakespeares have come & gone & to be honest I was a little disappointed - their colour wasn't as punchy as I'd hoped. Hopefully the Synaedas will be more zesty when they make an appearance... & that should be an "if" cos none of the tulips currently maturing are orange... they're all purple:

The Queen Of Night tulips are starting to colour up

Wow! Looks like these Queens are going to be suitably regal. The purple edges look very much like the dupion silk of my wedding dress.

New Alliums

Last of the new bulbs are the Alliums. I've had them before but they don't seem to stick around in the beds, so this time they're all in pots so I can keep a good eye on them.

The first Allium flower head makes an appearance

The leaves are suitably & noticeably oniony, which I really like. Hopefully when the flowers explode, this tall slender pot won't get toppled.

Onions

I planted them! I found a little time a couple of weeks ago to get them in the ground:

They're alive! The shallots are sprouting! Yay!!!

I've got 2 of these module trays, plus I planted 10 out in the central Twisty Hazel bed. Most of them have started to sprout, one so vigorously it was pushing itself out of the ground... I maybe shouldn't firm down the soil in the seed tray so enthusiastically...

Salads

Hubby's done a great job of keeping an eye on the Greenhouse Gutterbeds:

Lower pipe: over-Wintered coriander & parsley.
Upper pipe: this Spring's mixed salad.

The parsley & coriander in the lowest row have struggled through the Winter - not really vigorous enough to harvest, but hanging on in there. I guess if we plant them out into the main greenhouse bed they might make for a good early crop.

I'm really good at buying seeds I never plant, so this time Hubby's stepped in & put some Spring salads in the middle gutter. A mixed leaf selection closest to us, some little gem lettuce in the middle & some flat leaf parsley at the far end. Hopefully we won't have to wait so many months to harvest these.

Weeds

& of course the early weeds are making a Spring dash too, but I did manage to get in some mid-week weeding recently. My compost bin's never hot enough to properly deal with serious weeds like dandelion & burdock, so I usually put them into my Council garden waste bin. But this time I thought I'd give Alys Fowler's soggy rotten bucket suggestion a go.

Bad-asses in the bucket

But Hubby came in this afternoon & cheerily announced:

"Whatever's in the bucket is sprouting nicely..."

The leggy buttercupy things are loving it in there. I've given them another mushing but if by next week the bucket looks more like a pond, into the Garden waste they go.

Hopefully, at some point soon, I'll get out there & sow some more seeds, & fill the gaps the weeds have left.

Can I keep on top of the weeds this year? Only time will tell.
Let battle commence!

Salads all year round?

At any given moment, I've usually got several stray thoughts floating around the back of my head. Half-formed sentences waft around, searching for something to hang on to, waiting to coalesce into fully fledged, proper ideas... A bit like this post...

What does it all mean?

Here are some of the itinerant ponders that were bubbling up over the Summer:

• You can grow seedlings in lengths of guttering.
• Seedlings grown in gutters can be easily planted out, in chunks, reducing root disturbance.
• At River Cottage, they grow tasty micro salads in gutters, all year round.
• Hubby really enjoyed cooking with the lovely fresh parsley that survived all winter in the greenhouse.
• We could really do with some shelving for seedlings, but there's no space in the greenhouse.

The mists are clearing...

& slowly... an image formed... & I said to hubby: "Do you think we could attach a couple of rows of guttering to the back wall of the greenhouse, & grow salads & parsley & coriander in them?"

He was so keen on the idea, he did it that very weekend - wot a star!

3 rows should do it

So we've got:

• Some timber planks screwed to the window frame; then
• Guttering brackets mounted onto the planks; then
• A standard length of guttering per plank;
• Capped at the ends with standard guttering ends.

How neat & tidy is that? Lovely.

1st sowing

The next step is to bung some compost in & sow some seeds. Rather than going mental & filling all 3 rows, we plump for just doing the bottom row for starters, with the 2 leaves we're most likely to use: Parsley & Coriander.

They're ALIVE! The coriander get going

After a couple of weeks - success! The seeds are starting to germinate - woo hoo!

Fancy a dip?

It's been a wet summer; you may've noticed. However, what we've never realised before, is that we have a very leaky greenhouse:

Hmm... are we creating a water feature?

It seems the rain just runs all the way down the garage wall, with scant regard for the greenhouse frame. But no matter, less watering for us :) It does mean tho' that if we don't want the seedlings to drown, it's time to get busy with the drill.

There's a hole in my gutter, dear Liza, dear Liza...

We'll keep an eye on them to see whether we need to add any more.

2nd sowing

When hubby put the 1st set of seeds in, he deliberately left some gaps. As well as trying to grow more things over Winter, we're also playing with sequential sowing. This is partly to try & give us a more regular delivery of leaves, but also cos when I've tried to grow corinader in the past, it's bolted quicker than Usain.

A second sprouting

So now all we have to do is wait & see how the little seedlings cope with reduced heat & light over the next few months. If these quite tender fellas should struggle, we can also try out some winter salads.

Up here in North East at midwinter, it starts getting dark about 3:30pm, I kid you not. On the upside, it's now less than a month til the days start getting longer... which means Spring is on the way - you heard it here 1st, folks!