Showing posts with label Shropshire garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shropshire garden. Show all posts

28.8.19

White gold, green gold


It's been a funny season in the vegetable garden. Our weather has been very erratic, and some things have struggled. I planted two small crops of potatoes and we decided to investigate them at the weekend. One batch was planted as a pioneer, right at the end where the really poor soil was. I wasn't expecting much, but it is always exciting to shove a fork in, turn the earth and see what comes up.


At first it seemed as if there would be little or nothing, but two plants provided enough for dinner. They were rather misshapen and scabby, but a good scrubbing brought up the  yellowy skins and they were, in fact, delicious. 

  
My planting in the front patch has also been hit and miss; I envisaged a carefully landscaped herb patch with pretty little alpines spotted about. However, I planted dwarf comfrey. Wild comfrey grows quite large, so when I bought some 'dwarf' comfrey roots, I anticipated that they would be of a fairly modest size. 


This has not turned out exactly as planned; dwarf comfrey does, in fact, grow just as large as wild comfrey. It has grown into a many headed beast. My reason for cultivating it was purely practical; comfrey leaves (I have read) make excellent liquid fertiliser. The good news is that I have plenty of them and the plants thrive on being cut back. The bad news is that they are far too much of a thug to grow here and will have to be relocated to a wild patch, where they can flourish without drowning out their smaller neighbours. (Somewhere behind this lot are two lavender bushes and a curry plant). 


I harvested a fair amount. The leaves were torn into pieces and are now soaking in water, in a  not-very-picturesque plastic bucket. They rot down very quickly and produce an almost black, viscous liquid which frankly stinks to high Heaven. I'm going to need a bigger bucket. 


8.8.19

Tall beans and broad beans



This is the first year since moving here seven years ago that I've managed to get the vegetable patch properly dug over and planted up. It isn't very large and there is a bothersome area which is mostly clay and rubble. All that considered, it's been rewarding seeing everything grow, especially considering it was a paved over area once.


Broad beans are not to everyone's taste; they are called fava beans in other places and the strong, irony taste can be off putting.


We have been mixing them in with warm potatoes, as a summer salad.



I remember having to shell some once when I was a child, at an aunt's. I loved the 'furry' lining inside the pods. Once opened, the beans seem strangely vulnerable, as if a small sleeping creature had been uncovered and hadn't quite woken up yet.


While I was sat on the draining board by the kitchen window, busily shelling, Jean-next-door popped round with a small offering of raspberries, the first from their garden. This is a tradition started from my first year here, and is always welcome. I offered her some beans, but they are firmly in the not liking them camp.


Podding took over an hour and to be honest, it seemed like a lot of work for half a large bowl of beans. But we never had any illusions about being self sufficient, especially with limited growing space. All the empty pods went back onto the potatoes to rot down as extra fertilizer.


Blanching is one of those necessary things for long term freezing - it sounds like a bit of an effort, but actually takes less than twenty minutes. I don't use iced water to cool them down as I find that cold water works perfectly well. In the end there were enough for four double portions, which will be a nice treat in the winter.


Earlier in the year I planted a whole packet of Purple Podded Peas, a heritage variety which came with the warning that they can grow up to 2 meters high. I  managed to find some very tall canes and planted them alongside the fence, to maximize growing space. They did reach an astonishing height, outgrowing the poles and tumbling over themselves at the top, forming tangled bundles.





Apart from anything else, they are simply beautiful to look at and very prolific. I had meant to pick them earlier, but being pre-occupied with Joe's health, gardening took a back seat. I was worried that I had left them for too long, as most of the pods were wrinkled. 


Happily, most of them were fine.


After another long podding session and with careful sorting, I ended up with some dried peas for next years planting,  two batches of green peas and one batch of older peas which I can make into that  traditional British stalwart 'mushy' peas. All now frozen and waiting to bring us summer joy later in the year when the warm weather is a distant memory.


14.6.19

The garden in June


As I write, we are coming to the end of what has been a solid week of rain. Thankfully the cottage is on a hill and we have escaped the flooding that has disrupted some parts of Shropshire. So as the garden is looking rather soggy and the summery flowers temporarily defeated, I am glad I took these photos when everything was happier and drier. 


A foxglove self seeded itself in an awkward corner and while my first instinct was to remove it, I spared it, to see how it would grow. I'm very glad I did, as it naturally shaped itself around the large lavender bush and has grown to be  roughly six feet tall.



Like the lavender, it is buffeted by westerly winds which push it into a curvaceous line and so they have combined to make a graceful composition that, had I planned it, could not have looked more beautiful. 


The front herb patch continues to grow - with very little money, I am slowly filling it out, leaving enough space for everything to spread. Cheap herbs, such as the common and trailing thymes will, over a couple of years, grow rather too well. I hard prune the common thyme back twice a year, when the bee friendly flowers are finished, but this year I am going to be more ruthless or it will take over. 

At the front of the patch where the shallow growing plants are, there are three types of oregano, four thymes, golden marjoram, trailing rosemary, a French tarragon which struggles, and a few other things including a random tub of parsley used as a space filler.





Common violas, which cost one UK pound a pot, seem to go on forever if they are deadheaded and add subtle splashes of colour. At the back of the trough, the hyssop and blackcurrant sage have tripled in size already. There is a large bare patch for more low growing alpines at some point.


Next to the violas grows dwarf comfrey - it was grown from six stubby roots I picked up cheaply on eBay and has flourished rather too well. However, this is fine, as it was planted for the leaves which I'll be harvesting soon, as they provide an intense, nourishing fertiliser when soaked in water. And when it flowers, it is another bee attraction.



To temporarily fill up spare space, I have pots of pretty summer annuals in front of taller herbs. Since this picture was taken, the herbs have shot up and I am slightly regretting putting (what were) three tiny lemon balm plants. Now shot up and spreading, they are providing the thick cover at the back, which is what I had planned, but will need some taming soon.  


One of my favourite finds this year has been 'black' petunias - like many annuals, they hate the rain and are looking bedraggled now, but when they are warm and dry, they look like dark velvet.


I have frequently complained - bitterly - about the amount of rubble and stones which have plagued my digging efforts in the vegetable patch. However, I have found a very good use for some of the more natural shapes; large ones can hold back a vigorous plant from over growing a smaller neighbour and when placed next to a dainty alpine, adds a rather Japanese element (I like to think).



Finally, a rather blurry shot of the 'very tall foxglove' at night, from my Instagram feed. Now is coming to the end of it's glory and I will miss it when it is over. 


26.3.19

The herb patch

2016
 
When Andy and I first looked at the cottage in 2012, we partly picked it for the good sized garden (for the price) that came with it. I knew that I would want to remodel it, as it hadn't been at all well planted, but when I lost Andy, just three months after moving in, gardening was the last thing on my mind and for a couple of years I left it all to do its own thing, while I tried to recuperate and regain my own life. Which eventually, I did.

I always had this small patch of garden ear-marked for a herb patch, including bee friendly flowers.  It was a fairly picturesque huggle-muggle of things randomly planted by the previous owners, which looked pleasant enough in the summer, but not so much in the winter. And most of the plants were weeds or 'thugs' (as Jean-next-door calls them). I've always found pots to be a useful and quick screen; they look pretty and cottage-y, and you can shift them about to change the scene.
 2016

There was also the issue of the hideous washing pole set in the centre, in a  lump of concrete, which was a labour of Hercules to remove.


 2016

Not to mention the rampant pussy willow trees by the fence, which blocked the view and drained the patch. So they went too; I'm not a fan of cutting down trees, but I'm also not sentimental about removing things if necessary. Then the whole lot was cleared and deep dug, as there were years of embedded roots choking the soil.

 2016
We put a couple of small troughs in, which the birds enjoy. 
 
2016

Over the last three years, I've gradually cleared it of everything, but with finances being so rocky and my mental collapse last year, it's remained static, apart from a couple of thyme plants which are thriving. I honestly didn't know, this time last year, if we'd even still be here in 2019. Happily, we've turned things around and for the first time since moving here six years ago, I've been able to look ahead and even buy some small herb plants.


I've had enough time to mentally plan how I want it to look, and to start with, I have put in some quick growing lemon balm to hide one of the old tree stumps (which annoyingly won't come out). The rest of the fence side of the bed will have hardy, bushy perennial herbs such as the curry plant, sage and rosemary cuttings, which will eventually grow to a good height and fight off the grass, nettles and weeds that are always trying to invade from the neighbouring field.  

 2019

It's very much a work in progress, as I'm planting slowly, carefully and within my means, but  I hope that at some point, this bed will be chock full of useful and insect friendly plants.

 2019

There has also been a lot of seed sowing - which means more garden clearance. It's the best therapy I know, and I am grateful for Spring arriving in good time.


30.7.17

Slow hedge cutting


The time came ten days ago when I finally felt up to tackling the front yard. As you can see, it is a little overgrown. It has been for a few years. If anything expresses my life as it has been, it is this messy jungle.  So I fetched my secateurs and got to work.

 

It was a mish mash of mostly  honeysuckle, wild geraniums and some kind of jasmine, with assorted weeds for good measure. As with the rest of the garden, it has just had random things put in it, here and there. And some rocks.


Cutting back a large hedge with small secateurs may seem like a thankless task, but I enjoyed every minute of it. I could have got the shears out, or even borrowed a small hedge cutter, but this way I got to see exactly what was what and to know where everything I wanted to keep was rooted.


After a few sessions, you could actually see the fence and Joe helped me get the weeds out of the cracks. We disturbed an ants nest and one managed to get in my vest. It got its revenge by biting me a couple of times; the bites were tiny but extraordinarily painful for such a small creature.


The (possible) jasmine in the far corner is a bit of a beast, but it does provide cover all year round.


Yesterday, I had an afternoon session and finally cleared it. I just need to get rid of the rotten wooden trough now.


It does look bare, however a lovely person sent me some seeds in the post and hopefully I will be able to plant it up next year. Some are from the Brown Envelope Seed company, and some from the lovely Bealtaine Cottage.

Blessed are the seed givers. I look forward to the time when I too can send someone lovely little packets of garden treasure.