Garden 2013 no 6

Garden 2013 no 6

As I said in the previous garden update, I spent the month of May in France. It rained a lot while I was in away, but this is Scotland, and I’m pretty certain it rained even more here. Thanks to the heavy rain throughout May, I came home to a jungle. I’m not complaining, every thing I planted before I left had grown, but so had every thing else. 

The grass was knee high and took several attempts at cutting and there were more weeds than my little veggie plot had ever seen.

The pond looked lovely with forgetmenots all around and the water marigolds spilling out of the pond. But the water was so high it was overflowing at one end.  On the plus side, the radishes were ready to eat as soon as I arrived home and the strawberries will not be far behind, they already have lots of flowers.

It took me a couple of days to cut the grass, weed the shallots and then weed the little plot behind the pond. I planted garlic sets, red onions sets and beetroot there before I went away.

The garlic and red onions have done very well but needed weeding and the beetroot, which was planted from seed,  had done so well in the rain they needed thinning out as well as weeding. 

This little chappie was my constant gardening companion for a few days.

The bags are all doing ok, the radishes are ready to eat. The rocket seems to be slower, I just hope it didn’t get too wet, the spring onions are looking good, they needed thinning out but they are fine and the beetroot I planted in bags also looks good. The carrots are coming up very well in the tubs. It looks as if I accidently left some potatoes in there because I have potato plants growing in there with the carrots, which I wasn’t expecting. I resorted to buying some little lettuce plants last weekend because the rocket is no where near ready and it would take too long to grow lettuce from seed. I bought a tray of green lettuce and a tray of red lettuce, the type where  you can just pick leaves and leave the plant in the ground.  I need some green to go with my radishes.
And on the ‘non eating’ front, I came home to find the London Pride and the Bluebells in full bloom down the side of the garden. 

Lastly…………….this beast of a plant nestling between the Pink Campion and the Bluebells is Mullein. I scattered seeds from wild Mullien on the ground two years ago and when nothing happened I thought the seeds were dead. 

I didn’t know Mullien takes two years to grow. They are fantastic plants, described on good old Wikipedia as; ‘’a hairy biennial plant that can grow to 2 metres tall or more. Its small yellow flowers are densely grouped on a tall stem, which bolts from a large rosette of leaves’’. I first saw this plant growing outside a ruinous, abandoned farm building in rural France and fell in love with it straight away. I’m so pleased I now have these in my garden. Its old fashioned herbal name is lungwort which reflects mullein’s traditional use as a treatment for relieving cough and congestion of those with minor respiratory ailments. Mullein is recommended by herbalists for treatment of cough, sore throat, and colds. Not of course that I intend to use it, I just like looking at it and as it grown to its full height, I’ll be posting more pictures of it.

Garden 2013 no 5

Monday 15th April was a rare day of sunshine and I took advantage of this all too brief window.
The shallots I put in last week were virtually unearthed by the heavy rain, they all needed bedding down in the soil again.
I dug over my other small bed and planted out the red onions in neat little rows.
After the onions the garlic went in. Or at least some of it did. I have another whole garlic to split into cloves and plant out individually.
There is a space left at the side of this small bed for my beetroot. I didn’t have time to put the beetroot seeds in because the weather started to turn but that is the next task on the list. Hopefully I’ll not have to wait too long for another window of opportunity. The important thing is that I get these few basic tasks done before heading off to France.
I put some carrot seeds in my big potato barrels late last year and left them to over winter. I wasn’t expecting much because I thought I’d left it too late, and then we had so much awful weather I thought what ever was there would be ruined, but to my surprise, I’ve now got more than a kilo of young sweet and tasty carrots. I intend to replace some of the compost, re-fertilise it and then grow more carrots in the same barrels. I think if I can keep this going, I could get two crops per year.

The ultimate plan is to get the beetroot seeds in, plant the rest of the garlic, prepare the barrels and get some more carrot seed in. Then I’m going to  prepare a couple of the containers. The containers will be used to sow lettuce, radish and salad leaves before I leave, and if all goes according to plan, I’ll come home to fresh salad. I’ll also come home to weeding, grass cutting, tidying, fence painting and all the other routine jobs that badly need doing. Of course on the plus side………….being a retired lady I’ll have the time to do all these little jobs.

Garden 2012 no18.

Garden 2012 no 18

Oh my poor garden. Hospital says I can now ‘resume normal activities’ (while taking care) and the eye is healing nicely. Therefore; this weekend is going to be a gardening weekend. I’m still getting fresh spinach leaves every couple of days and they are good either steamed as part of a hot meal or fresh as part of a salad.

 My lettuce is almost gone, I’ve another two or three and then that’s it. I am still picking spinach leaves, the last of the nasturtium leaves and the last of the spring onions to make up a bowl of salad every couple of days and I have the last of the shallots drying out ready to be spiced and pickled.
I’m a bit upset about the lavender and the tansy. I usually make up bowls of potpourri for the house with these. Unfortunately this year they flowered and died of in the couple of weeks I’ve been unable to get out there. I’m quite cross with myself for leaving them, they were ready to be cut a few days before I went into hospital but I decided to leave them until that weekend. Now I wish I had harvested them when I had the chance. But at least these will flower again next year and there is no real harm done. The more lasting damage is likely to be around the edge of the garden in amongst the wild flowers and hedgerow. I’ve always been very careful about removing deep rooting invasive weeds as they appeared. Particularly the thistles, dandelions, and those big tall dock leaves, they all have roots that quickly go deep and are a real problem to get out. I’ve taken a walk around the edge of the garden and there they all are, happily growing, spreading and depriving my plants of space and nutrition. This weekend it will be a war on those weeds. Its not even that I have any particular grudge against these plants, they are all part of the natural habitat and, in their own way are quite attractive, its just that left unchecked the garden would be full of these and little else. 

Another regret is the way my herb collection has gone to seed and is past its best for harvesting. But I still have quite a lot of frozen herbs collected last year and if I cut the herbs back now they should all grow again next year and I’ll be able to collect them then. I bought Mace for the first time this year and didn't even get to save a little. It smelt wondefull, harvesting my first Mace will be something to look forward to next year.

The dainty little purple flower growing in the midst of chaos is…….actually I don’t know what it is. I think it was part of the mixed wild flower seeds I sprinkled there. As you can see.....the wind was getting up and the little flowers were waving wildly in the wind.

This yellow flower is another attractive but unknown addition to the garden. It has grown tall and flowered in the couple of weeks I’ve been away from the garden, and now I’m busy looking up pictures of yellow flowers and trying to identify it. 

This is something I am pleased with. I brought back a whole load of Mullen seeds from my last visit to my sister and this is where I sprinkled them. At this point I’m not sure if these new plants are self seeded Digitalis (foxglove) or, if some of the Mullen seeds have started to grow.  To my non-expert eye, Mullen and Foxglove look too similar to decide, but which ever it is, I’m happy with it.

Garden 2012 no16

Garden2012 no 16

So now I’m 11 days post surgery and absolutely NOT supposed to be gardening. But I needed to go to the shop which is only across the road and that meant walking though the garden. The first thing I did was to fall over my tub of beetroot, while I was down there, sitting beside it, rubbing my knees and feeling very foolish, I was close enough to notice how badly it needed watering. I thought ‘just doing a bit of watering couldn’t hurt’, and that’s what I intended to do, just a little bit of watering. 

That is until my friend arrived, she’s not a gardener but she knows how much my garden means to me. She agreed to pick the last of the broad beans and pull what was left of the bean plants ready for composting. 

Some of the beans were already going black on the plants, they wouldn’t have lasted much longer. Picking the beans, pulling the plants, collecting the canes and then doing some watering was the only work that was done today, plus pulling a few of the biggest shallots and   beetroot, but it was enough to stop me getting really frantic. 

I couldn’t help noticing the rhubarb needed pulling, some of the lettuce has to come up and some of the Tay berries are ripe. 

The nasturtiums have mostly gone to seed and there is grass growing in their tub.   

And of course the weeds are thriving in my absence.  After my friend helped me out we just sat outside, enjoyed the sunshine and admired the plants. The pond is looking good. It is covered in duckweed now which, as far as establishing a wildlife pond goes, is a very good thing. The water under the duckweed is crystal clear and the tadpoles and baby frogs are loving the cover it gives them.

Today is the first time I have sat in my garden, in the midst of my plants and enjoyed being there for almost two weeks, It was lovely, until big black clouds appeared and blocked the sunshine.

This evening I have bottled my first jar of beetroot and my first jar of shallots. It’s a start and the rest will be OK in the ground for a little longer. I hope I can get back out there soon, my garden needs me.