Gwenfar's Lottie and other musings

The achievement of black plastic

2012-01-23T20:42:00.000Z

After three years work, Kevin and I have finally cut down the worst of the brambles and the 2nd half of the lottie, not yet in cultivation, is now covered in black plastic.

This feels like quite an achievement, though one might wonder why in the hell I would celebrate putting down black plastic? It simply means that after a lot of very hard work, aching backs and scratched arms and pricked fingers, the brambles are seriously becoming EX-brambles* and the land has been reclaimed for growing.

In the space of the afternoon, the last quarter of the lottie went from being covered with brambles to being covered with black plastic. Thanks to some help from our friend Manishta a few weeks ago, we had already started cutting down the brambles in this section. You can see the pile of cuttings to the left.

voila! brambles cut down

After a couple of hours work, much tea and pastries, the clearing was done.

take that brambles - plastic-fantastic

Then came the black plastic. Never has black plastic been such a welcome sight. The big bulge (ooooh, that sounds rude) is the large pile of brambles that we are drying out so we can have a bonfire with them.

Proud lottie holder

The plot now

The first half is well into cultivation. In the third quarter of the plot we have started building raised beds and these will have the potatoes growing in them this year. And the last quarter that we just covered? Well, we obviously still have to dig out the bramble and weed roots. But this will be where the shed, compost bins, and eventually (oh, dreams), the polytunnel will go. Oh, and a small area for an outdoor fire pit so we can cook some food we just dug up on the lottie.

In the meantime, the dream of finally putting up a shed is finally much closer. By the end of Spring, a shed I shall have. Black plastic - I love you!

*no ex-parrots were harmed in the creation of this lottie.

Mulching experiment: update 2

2012-01-19T21:37:00.000Z

This is my 2nd update since first starting my mulching experiment in mid-November 2011.

For bed 1 (standard cardboard and compost mulch), the cardboard and compost mulch has broken down much more since December. You can see that in December it was covering over all the edges of the raised bed, whereas now (2nd pic) it is sinking down the sides as it breaks down.

Bed 1: Mid-December 2011

Bed 1: Mid-January 2012

Because of the unusually warm weather throughout December and part of January, I did get a few odd annual weeds trying to grow on the top, which I promptly pulled out. Otherwise, just doing it's thing, no bother at all.

For the 2nd bed (based on the idea of 'three-layer grow through mulch', see first post for description of my changes), it's a bit different. I think you can tell that the veg remainders mulch is starting to breakdown more, just. Not sure the photograph shows it that well, but I can assure you it has. So far had no annual weeds have popped up, unlike bed 1. However, the old chard remainders that I had dug up and thrown on top, are trying to grow!

Bed 2: Mid-December 2011

Bed 2: Mid-January 2012

You can see the new chard shoots at the top (from the middle going towards the right). Yes, I had thrown a little used compost (from containers) onto this mulch, in part to help hold it down in the high winds. But I literally threw the old chard root on top, in no way digging it it. But the bugger wants to grow anyway. It's not a lone wolf either, as at the other end of the bed (not in the photo) some other old chard roots have started to sprout.

I suppose I'll pick the young shoots and then maybe throw the rest of the root into my compost bin at home. I don't really want the chard to grow in this bed, as this is going to be the brassica bed this year. However, I'm very impressed with just how much the chard wants to grow.

Overall, the 2nd bed is mulching down much more slowly, which isn't surprising given both the unusually warm weather until the last week or so. The cardboard underneath is also drying out more and so taking more time to break down as well. It will be interesting to see if the recent cold weather helps break it down quicker. Will report back mid-February.

Making the most of enthusiastic bamboo

2012-01-11T12:58:00.003Z

After sorting out the black bamboo, Phyllostachys nigra, we had to cut down in order to fix part of the fence that was knocked down in last weeks high winds, I've ended up with another lovely bunch of black canes. I've been musing over what to make from them, some pea and bean climbing frames, or another trellis.

I made my first bamboo trellis last September, and am now growing an evergreen honeysuckle Lonicera japonica 'Hall's Prolific' up the canes. The honeysuckle has taken off amazingly well, and even though it is mid-winter, it has masses of bright green new growth.

The black canes are not as black and shiny any more, but where the honeysuckle grows, you cannot even see the canes, so I can see eventually it will be a lovely green wall rather than the colder faded red brick and grey wall currently on view directly out of one of the kitchen windows.

Bamboo crammed in

The bamboo wasn't planted in the best place, squeezed in between brick paving and right next to the neighbours fence. So it's rather taking over, growing under the fence, pushing against it, which I think was part of the reason for the fence becoming weak.

However, it's a beautiful plant. I love the way it moves, the sound of the leaves, the fact it is evergreen, and is always elegant. I'm not that keen to take it out, so I'm making the most of this enthusiastic bamboo, gaining a yield at the same time as hopefully stopping it from taking over.

And now I have some more canes to play with.

Oxford Sow & Grow newsletter

2012-01-04T15:46:00.003Z

For Oxford Sow & Grow, my garden advice business, I'm going to start sending out a regular newsletter with gardening tips and information on upcoming workshops.

If you would like to receive the newsletter, email me on jgp@cooptel.net and ask to go onto the mailing list. And no, I will never pass on contact details to anyone.

Don't know what Oxford Sow & Grow is? Check out the website!

Cultivate!

2012-01-04T14:50:00.000Z

There is an exciting new food initiative in Oxford, Cultivate. It's a new food co-op that is to be community owned, run and financed by people local to Oxford.

I'm personally keen on Cultivate, not just because I know some of the wonderful people involved in setting it up (!), but also because I think the model they will be working on is great. They will be running a VegVan that will come to any part of the Oxford area where locals want them to come. This means not just the better-off areas, but the less well-off areas of Oxford. If people want the VegVan to come to their area, they will be able to work with Cultivate to make it happen.

Cultivate will have 5 acres of land in South Oxfordshire, and will also work with other local organic farmers and veg box schemes to source the food they will sell in the VegVan. I like this as it will be local food people working together, not against each other, and will help build a more sustainable and resilient food system in the Oxford area.

The reason I'm particularly blogging about Cultivate now, is that they will be opening the Community Share Offer on Monday 16th January, at their launch event. So if you would like to find out more, do RSVP to them at info@cultivateoxford.org.

If you cannot make the event, you can also join their mailing list and they will keep you up-to-date with information on the share offer and other news.

Seed viability

2012-01-03T18:43:00.001Z

It is the time of year when everyone is looking at ordering new seeds for the growing year. We should also go through our old packets of all seeds to see what we do and don't have, before we get carried away with ordering new seeds! I'm quite guilty of this. I get very excited when new seed catalogues come through my door and before you know it I've circled enough 'wants' to need a 5-acre farm to grow them all.

Many of our old seeds are still useful. You might ditch some, as you didn't like the taste of the variety, or it didn't grow well etc. And of course some might be out of date and are no longer viable (how old they can be before they no longer germinate).

To find out the viability of seeds isn't that easy. You can find lots of websites talking about viability, but not many list that many of the actual seeds a gardener in the UK may grow. I finally managed to find a really useful seed viability chart from Amateur Gardening magazine (January 2012 issue). I also found a printed copy of the Seed Savers Handbook list (Australian) which someone gave me last year.

I noticed some differences between the two, so have compiled an Excel document listing seed name and the number of years each suggests. Most of the differences are minimal, though I do wonder why one says Chicory has a viability range of 5 years, and the other 8. And Cucumber has been given 5-6 years by Amateur Gardening and 4-10 by Seed Savers! Maybe the different climates (UK and Australia) affect the viability of seeds? And I'm curious to know why Amateur garden left out Chard (which is known as Silverbeet in Australia), given how popular it is in the UK? I guess as it is the same family as Beetroot, the viability must be similar.

Anyhow, I thought my little documents might be useful for other people, so am including them here so others can download them if they find it helpful.

Download Vegetable seeds

Download Herb seeds

If you come across any further useful seed viability lists, I would love to know about them!

First day of the month in the front garden: January 2012

2012-01-01T17:08:00.001Z

For 2012 I am going to blog about my front garden on the 1st day of each month. I'll follow how it changes over the year, how much food I can produce from the space, and how my development plans are progressing.

Front garden and path, 1st January 2012

I redesigned the front garden in 2010. It is a space of 5m x 4.46m and when we moved in January 2009, it was just a square with various plants haphazardly dotted around, with no paths and no clear idea of what the previous owner was trying to do; or maybe they weren't trying to do anything? You can read about the initial redesign and see how it originally looked in my post from April 2010. The new design has raised beds made from recycled scaffold boards obtained from building sites, and paths with permeable membrane and wood chips on top. This gives it an attractive look and makes it also easily accessible for doing weeding, planting and harvesting.

My overall aim for the front garden, which is based on permaculture principles, is to find a balance between obtaining fruit and vegetable yields, maximising output from a small but south-facing space, whilst including perennials and bulbs, raised beds and clear paths, to help give it some structure and make it attractive all year round.

Map of layout

The front garden is almost full south facing. The path/driveway leading to the front door (above) is a mix of asphalt and paving stones, all of which is breaking up and in poor condition. Although I have plans for this area to get rid of the eyesore and create a lovely path and beds, this is for the future. It's a big job and we need to get a new roof for the house this year! Gardening, sadly, doesn't always come first... In the meantime, last year I let the self sown flowers take over a bit (i.e. hollyhocks & primulas) and personally found this more pleasant that the asphalt, even if it did look a little wild, so will leave it to do the same this year.

It is shaded on the west side by my neighbours, Fung and Simon's, front gardens trees and shrubs. These are kept largely under control, mutually agreed by myself and Fung and Simon, but do still mean that the west side does get shade in the late afternoon. I have planted two pear trees here and an am training them as espaliers. They are only 3 years only and in 2010 I started training the first espalier level on both. I think it will be hard for your to spot them in the photos; you can see 'Onward', just, between the first and 2nd posts. Underneath they are planted with strawberries, as I'm want to maximise the yield from that part of the garden, using forest garden principles. We got a good crop of strawberries from here last summer, so the later afternoon shade doesn't effect the yields coming from the strawberries. I've also under planted the pear trees with a few perennials and spring bulbs, and added winter flowering clematis, Clematis Cirrhosa Freckles and Clematis Cirrhosa Ourika Valley to grow up the trellis so this will be prettier in coming winters (I hope!).

Layout from front door

The rest of the front garden can get shade from the large flowering Prunus (on the left of the top photo). We have been pruning it heavily over the last two summers. It's been problematic as it was allowed to grow way too large for the space prior to us moving in, but is beautiful in flower and in autumn. I'm loathe to take it out, as it would be a massive job and expensive, and we do get the yield of small branches from prunings that we dry out and use for kindling.

However, I am thinking it over, as I have been considering whether to remove both the Prunus and the ugly concrete fence on the street side, and plant a hazel nut hedge in it's place. The hazel nut hedge would act as the new 'fence' but also give me a yield in nuts; if I can beat the squirrels to them of course! In the same bed as the Prunus is a Phormium, which I'm not keen on and definitely want to get rid of. It's only staying there until I decided what to do with this border. In the meantime, I have added annuals (teasels) and perennials (heleniums) and some more bulbs to accompany the vinca minor that was already there. It's pretty but a bit of a brute and I found when I grew broad beans in this bed in 2010, that the vinca tried to smother them. So yes, this border definitely needs some rethinking.

The central bed has an obelisk that is beautiful and gives interest even in mid winter. So far I've grown a mix of vegetables (tomatoes and broad beans in 2010, both very successful with excellent yields, plus green manure) amongst annuals, perennials and bulbs. In 2012, the front half of the bed has broad beans and garlic. The back half currently has green manure, and perennial kale will be added late spring. I'll grow some heritage beans that will crop mid summer, up the obelisk, which is also under planted with heleniums that will take over from mid-summer onwards.

The bed next to the asphalt path (to the right in the photograph below) currently has rosemary, sage and irises and a mix of calendula, crocuses and muscari around the edges. In 2011 I used it to also grow a mix of beetroot, chard and spinach. I have planted autumn-sown broad beans for 2012, and will also add tomatoes in May.

Front garden, 1st January 2012

There are also a few containers and planters in the front garden. The big blue pot on the left has a fig, which I am going to pass on. I brought it from our previous house in Witney in 2009, but don't need it as I have a large fruiting one we inherited in the back garden. I'm thinking of putting in a lemon tree in it's place. I thought a lemon tree might do well in this position, as with the south-facing warm brick wall of the house, it should have a slightly warmer and protected micro-climate.

The large planter in front of the bay window has lavender and geranium phaeum, and I will add some sweet peas and nasturtium as I did in 2011. I have tried growing veg in the planter, but it gets so hot and dry that even with constant watering and feeding the yields weren't particularly good. So I planted it up with flowers and shrubs instead, and will concentrate my food yields in the raised beds.

Plans and potential yields for 2012

Plant some perennial kale in the back half (closer to house) of the central bed. This will yield food and give winter interest.
Obtain yield from strawberries, broad beans, garlic and tomatoes, plus ongoing yields from herbs (sage and rosemary).
Investigate costs of removing prunus, concrete fence, and practicalities of putting in hazel nut hedge.
Continue training the pear tree espaliers.
Photograph the space at the beginning of each month and track how it changes over the year.

So now, on with the year!

Flowering late December

2011-12-28T15:50:00.004Z

Following the footsteps of other gardeners, such as Patient Gardner and Veg Plotting, I took some photos today of what was still flowering, out of season, this late in the year. These are all from my front garden, which is south-facing. Although the front garden has had frost, it obviously wasn't hard enough to kill off all flowering plants.

Good old Calendula

The Helenium is more yellow than it's usual orangey-yellow tones, but I can assure you that it is 'Sahin's Early Flowerer'. I would add that it appears to be a perpetual flowerer. This year it started flowering in June and is still going at the end of December. I've had a lot of bunches of flowers for the house and to give to friends, and this wonderful plant just kept on flowering.

Helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer'

And good old Calendula again, a yellow variety

On to more muted tones, some of the Verbena Bonariensis still has flowers on it. I leave it over winter as goldfinches love the seeds, and I like it to self seed so I can pot up some free plants to pass on the next year.

Verbena Bonariensis

Finally, some Lavender, angustifolia 'Hidcote'. As usual, I trimmed all my lavender mid-Autumn to help prepare it for next years flowers. However, being so mild it decided to flower a second time this year.

Lavandula angustifolia 'Hidcote'

This time last year everything was under several feet of snow, and these pictures remind us of the changeability of the seasons. As ever, nothing is guaranteed in the garden, there are challenges and new delights every year, every season.

Choosing heritage seeds

2011-12-20T21:21:00.000Z

I never fail to get excited about the arrival of the next years Heritage Seed Library (HSL) catalogue. So many choices of wonderful sounding veg, often with great stories behind them. I've been a member for quite a few years now and have even started sending back some seed, such as my favourite pea 'Lativan', which I have written about in the past.

There are several vegetable varieties from HSL that are now favourites at Gwenfar's Lottie. Besides my Lativan Pea, this also includes the Estonian Yellow Mini Cherry, pictured below.

Tomato - Estonian Yellow Mini Cherry

This is incredibly prolific, something like 80-100 little cherry tomatoes on a branch and lots of branches. It also showed some blight resistance, in that when blight hit, not all of the Estonian toms were hit, and even if they were, they kept growing and fruiting anyway. I gave away quite a few batches of these, froze some, and of course ate quite a lot. They are incredibly sweet, just like eating sweets, and with the wonderful colour to go with them. Bursts of sunshine in your mouth!

Another favourite is Lettuce 'Bronze Arrow', and I've met a lot of people at least in Oxford who also love this variety. It's very reliable, has a slightly nutty flavour and is slower to bolt than many lettuces I've tried. I have saved seeds from it this year and will be sowing lots come 2012.

Lettuce 'Bronze Arrow' close to flowering, late August

Other favourite HSL varieties include Kale 'Hungry Gap' and another Pea, 'Robinson', which I've also written about previously.

My HSL catalogue for 2012 arrived last week. Like a child in a sweet shop I poured over the varieties on each page, getting excited by such a wonderful range of seeds on offer. As a member you can choose up to 6 varieties, and these are my choices for 2012.

Kale 'Daubenton': dating back to Victorian times, this is apparently a perennial kale and can be treated as a cut and come again veg. I've been thinking about growing more perennial veg in my front garden, to give it a bit more structure as well as an ongoing food crop (I grow a mix of perennial flowers, annual veg, fruit and herbs in the front garden). So this one hit the top of the list.

Brussels Sprouts 'Catskill': coming from the US, it is meant to be robust and be good for both eating fresh and for freezing. I have not tried heritage Brussels before, so thought I'd give it a go.

Broad Bean 'Martock': I couldn't resist this one, it's key attraction being that it was a mainstay of the medieval diet - that's some history! Grown in Somerset for centuries, it was donated to HSL in 1970's after the beans were offered to someone in exchange for a donation to the Bath & Wells cathedral roof restoration. Medieval bean, medieval cathedral - will it suit modern tastes?

Broad Bean 'Red Bristow's': as my friends know, I've got a bit of a thing for red and purple vegetables. I love purple/blue beans (see below), but they usually loose their colour once cooked. These broad beans are meant to stay red even when cooked, and have a delicious taste, so seemed like a good choice for palate and plate.

French Bean 'Blue Coco': I must admit, I just love the name and the fact that it is a purple/blue bean. Ok, I was also attracted by the fact that it is meant to be good in salads and be hardy, reliable and prolific. Oh, and they have purple tinged leaves and lilac flowers. I think this might be another for the front garden.

Dwarf French Bean 'Hutterite Soup': a variety coming from an Austrian religious sect that moved to Canada in the 1750's. I'm more interested in beans for drying to use in winter for soups and stews and this one is meant to be perfect for precisely that reason.

So those are my heritage veg choices for 2012. As all gardeners know, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what it says on the packet, it is how it performs and tastes that really matters. Based on past experience growing heritage varieties, I suspect there will be at least a couple of tasty winners in this selection.

Attacking brambles

2011-12-17T16:39:00.000Z

Spent a couple of good hours in the sun down at the lottie, attacking brambles. Kevin and I were delighted to be joined by our friend Manishta, who for reasons best left to herself, thinks 'brambles are cool'.

Manishta, rugged up and happily cutting up brambles

Thanks to Manishta's help I am really feeling we are finally starting to really cut into the brambles. This pile Manishta is putting the cuttings on, goes under cover to help dry them out. Probably late January we can have a bonfire and burn them to the ground. Which will be good timing, as where the pile is now is where I'm planning on putting my shed in early Spring.

Of course, it wasn't all girl power. Kevin was a star, attacking bramble roots with great gusto. Or a pick. Or maybe we should call the pick 'great gusto'?

Kevin and the pick 'great gusto'

And here is the offending root...

A proud Kevin holding up the root, "I got you, ha ha ha"

To thank Manishta for her work, I dug up some carrots and parsnips for her to take home. One parsnip was very well rooted and when I finally got it out, well, you can see why. That white long thin bit is a part of the root I pulled out. The whole thing was almost a metre long!

A day in the sun at the lottie. Definition of a good time.

Mulching experiment: update 1

2011-12-16T10:31:00.000Z

A month after I first began the mulching experiment, here is the first update.

Experiment 1: after 1 month

For bed 1 (standard cardboard and compost mulch), you can see that the cardboard is starting to break down a bit. No annual weeds have come up. This may not seem significant, but on my non-mulched beds, like those still with spinach and chard, some annual weeds have sprung up, even though I weeded them at the same time as setting up the mulching experiment. Usually I wouldn't need to weed so late, but we had such a warm autumn. I suspect now that it's finally turning into winter (light dash of snow on the ground this morning), the weeds shouldn't grow any more now until end of Winter/early Spring.

Bed 2: mid-November 2011

Bed 2: mid-December 2011

For bed 2, with the cardboard and non-composted plant material mulch, if you compare to the first photo from November, you can tell, only slightly (!), that the plant material is breaking down just a little. I think adding the extra compost to hold it down has helped, as has finally getting some cold weather. But not a lot of change really.

Let's see how it looks in January!

Mulching experiment

2011-12-14T20:07:00.006Z

Green manure: Hungarian rye on the left, tares to the right. Will be dug in early Spring.

It's been the mulching time of year, well, more in Autumn, I'm just writing this up late! I decided to try experimenting with a couple of different mulching techniques on a couple of beds at the lottie which didn't have green manure in them, so they would not be bare over winter. The main reasons for mulching are:

Killing weeds by denying them light
To conserve water - reducing evaporation
To protect the soil from erosion or capping
To encourage biological activity
To add organic matter and nutrients to the soil

(from The Earth Care Manual, p.194)

The first bed I am doing my mulching experiment on had potatoes growing in it this year, and will be planted with courgettes, pumpkins & squashes and corn in 2012. My key aim for the mulching on this bed was to add organic matter and nutrients in preparation for plants that will need lots of food. A secondary aim was to kill weeds (annuals) by denying them light.

Having already tried to clear the bed of perennial weeds like couch grass when it was first dug, and again after I pulled up all the potatoes, I had hoped that I had got it all. Couch grass is very sneaky and the tiniest amount left behind will start a new plant. Clearly I haven't quite mastered the art of getting rid of perennial weeds as I still have couch grass appearing! So I therefore first did my best to dig out any perennial weeds, again.

Experiment 1: standard cardboard & compost mulch

I then covered the bed with cardboard, and then added in a couple inches of compost on top of the cardboard. The cardboard should help kill off any annual weeds. It will breakdown over winter, and the worms will take the compost down into the soil, doing the handy work of adding it's nutrients to the soil.

This is a fairly standard type of mulching, so I'm not doing anything new. I'm going to monitor this bed over winter and see how it breaks down. I will probably add another layer of mulch in early spring, as pumpkins etc are hungry feeders and I want to give them the best possible chance of yielding lots of yummy food.

The experiment part really comes in with comparing this standard way of mulching with another bed I mulched. This bed had broad beans on it this year, and I will be planting brassicas on it in 2012 (in fact there are already some over-winter cabbages in the bed). Again, these need lots of nitrogen nutrients.

For the 2nd bed, I'm using the idea of 'three-layer grow through mulch' (Earth Care Manual, p.195), but adapting it. The 'three-layer' mulch first has cardboard or newspaper placed on the bed. Then manure is added, and then holes made plants, i.e. potatoes, planted though a hole. The 3rd layer is a mulch of grass mowings, straw, generally loose material, which helps contain moisture. This system is really used for when you are immediately added young plants/seed potatoes, not leaving it over winter.

For my experiment* I have added a layer of cardboard (after again doing my best to get rid of the perennial weeds), but instead of adding manure, I have thrown on all the left-over bits of plants. This includes everything from the remains of corn, chard/spinach I had dug up prior to it going to seed, carrot tops, broad bean and pea roots, the remains of the asparagus plants after cutting them down in autumn, etc. I then threw on some compost to help hold it down. The lottie is very exposed to wind and as the plant material is a bit light, I needed something to hold it down so it didn't just blow away.

*This isn't my own bright idea. I know I've read or heard about this, or something similar to it, a few years ago but cannot find where, so I'm unable to give the credit for the idea. I'm just using what I remember and adapting it to what I think might work.

Experiment 2: Showing the cardboard layer, then plant material on top.

I could put all the plant material in the compost and break it down that way as usual, but I wanted to see how it might go if I just add the material straight onto a bed in autumn. My thoughts were that maybe the frosts and snow will help break the plant material and cardboard down a bit, and then when it starts warming up in early Spring, I'm hoping the worms will get to work and start taking some of the material down into the soil.

At the very least, this mulch will help kill annual weeds and stop the soil from being bare and at risk of winds blowing away some of the good top soil over winter. If it doesn't break down enough, I don't loose anything as I can just pull up the plant material and put it in the compost bin, then add some standard compost back onto the cardboard and bed.

In nature, trees loose their leaves and just fall to the ground. It doesn't get raked up and put on a compost pile and then once broken down added back to the soil. It is left to do it's own thing and nature gets to work and over time it breaks down and releases all it's nutrients back into the soil. So I'm trying this because I was curious to see how much the plant material would break down over winter, when just left there as is, kind of mimicking nature a little bit.

The photos above were from mid-November. I'll be taking photos once a month over the next couple of months and report back how it is going.

#Nov30 in Oxford

2011-11-30T11:22:00.001Z

Updated 5pm: More pictures from the march and rally

Proud to support all workers on strike today. I joined the Unison picket line in Rectory Road, Oxford, for a couple of hours. A couple of pictures from striking Oxford workers.

Plus pic of the #Solidaritea chocolate cakes I made and dropped off at a couple of picket lines.

Launching Oxford Sow & Grow gift vouchers

2011-11-22T10:30:00.000Z

Today I'm launching the new Oxford Sow & Grow gift vouchers! What's more, I am offering a discount on vouchers up until 24th December 2011. During this period, a voucher for a 2 hour consultation is discounted from the usual £50, down to £40 (other offers also available).

Oxford Sow & Grow vouchers gives the gift of growing. If you are just starting out with gardening, or have been gardening for a while and need help with the next steps, Oxford Sow & Grow can help.

A gift voucher offers:

A visit to the site and advice on how to get started growing.
Advice to those already growing but who need inspiration to develop their growing further.
How to make the most of small and awkward spaces.
How to get growing on a small budget.
How to sow from seed, potting on and planting out and taking cuttings.
Help with composting: getting started and identifying problems.
Advice on layout and design: from where to position plants to helping you plan a growing design that works for you.
Advice on seed saving.

So, if you are stuck for a gift idea for a gardener or potential gardener, then Oxford Sow & Grow gift vouchers will be just the thing.

See the Oxford Sow & Grow website for full information.

Solving a thorny problem

2011-11-21T21:56:00.000Z

Brambles - ugh!

Like many gardeners, I am regularly at war with brambles. I cannot control the council land that my garden backs onto. Although the council have promised, a couple of times, to remove the brambles, this has yet to happen. I clearly need to hassle them more. In the meantime, I have to do what I can to keep the council's brambles from trying to take over my garden.

This war has inevitably led to some injuries. Actually, quite a few injuries. There has been thorns stuck in my fingers. There has been scratches on my arms. There has been blood. It's not been a pretty sight. And I really need to stop swearing bloody murder every time I'm hurt. There are children living next door.

I've tried different types of so-called pruning gloves over the last couple of years but so far none of them have lived up to their name. So when at the Chelsea Flower Show this year, I specifically looked for some gloves that would stand up to brambles and that would leave my poor hands and arms unscathed and my need for band aids diminished. And the ears of my neighbours children uncovered.

Of all the stands I visited, the Gold Leaf glove stand looked the most promising. They had a glove on offer called a 'Tough Touch Glove'. It's made with leather, and has a gauntlet like cuff (you know, like knights used to wear) that goes over the wrist and part way up the arm.

Trying them on they felt good, warm too (fleecy inside). But would they really do the job? Obviously the sales people were used to suspicious gardeners, so they had some rose stems with thorns on hand (as you do) to demonstrate the effectiveness of the gloves. Wearing the glove and then grabbing the thorny stem, they did appear to be very strong and I didn't get any stinging or cuts. What's more the gloves were quite comfortable. Whilst I was still not 100 per cent convinced how they would work in practice, they were the best thing I'd seen so I decided to give them a go. I gave them £24, they gave me an expensive pair of gloves that I hoped would work.

I had a couple of bramble advances into my home garden over the summer that I had to halt, and used the gloves. They appeared to do the job. But I was still thinking, but what about when it's a whole bramble patch? Yes, I'm hard to please.

Fast forward to last weekend. I was talking part in my Allotment Association's working party on Sunday. A large part of it was spent clearing brambles. I suspect this may be a regular occurrence on lotties up and down the country! So, out came the magic gauntlet gloves and I got to work.

You know what? They bloody worked. I was right in the thick of it, grabbing thorny branches, pruning and carrying a stack of the thorny buggers to the fast-growing-pile-of-things-to-burn. All through it, I didn't get one cut or scratch on my hand or wrists. I have to say, I'm quite impressed.

They don't stop branches falling on my head because I cut the wrong angle and then didn't get out of the way quickly enough. They won't stop brambles growing in the first place. But they did do just what they said on the tin. And the neighbours children can play outside without bursts of bad language disturbing their play. Finally, a solution to a thorny problem.

Agroforestry talk - some musings

2011-11-17T21:00:00.001Z

I attended an excellent talk on Agroforestry by Professor Steve Newman of the Agroforestry Research Trust (and BioDiversity Int.) last night, put on by Oxford Permaculture. Whilst I might live in an urban environment and won't be setting up a forest garden on a piece of land, the talk was still relevant as you can still use elements of the forest garden in a small garden or at your allotment. This might be something as simple as growing strawberries underneath your pear trees, as I currently do. Or it could be creating several layers of crops within a small kitchen garden or on your allotment, as I plan to to do as I develop my kitchen garden and lottie in the future.

Steve also repeated one of best definitions of permaculture that I've come across...

Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that is modelled on relationships found in nature.

I must try and remember that next time someone asks me what permaculture is!

Steve also questioned 'what is food?' and thought maybe we needed a new definition. So much of our food comes from monoculture, and have been brought down to the lowest common denominators: grasses (wheat, rice etc), potatoes and maize.

However, I think the question isn't 'what is food', but 'what food is appropriate to grow in a given environment?' For example, as Steve pointed out, in the UK we should be growing nuts (walnuts, hazel nuts, chestnuts) rather than cereal like wheat (or at least growing more nuts and less cereal). Our environment is highly suitable for nut growing and nuts are high in protein and carbohydrates and are more nutritious than wheat. Nuts can be ground into flour and used for baking. And from a permaculture/agroforestry perspective, nut trees can fit really well in a diversified agricultural system.

One example Steve showed was of nut trees with wheat growing underneath (see - you can have your cake and eat it!). As the leaves on nut trees come out quite late, wheat can be sown in the autumn when the nut tree has lost it's leaves (which go into the soil and add nutrients). The wheat starts growing before winter sets in, stops during winter, then gets growing again in early spring once the temperatures start rising. By the time it gets to summer, the leaves on the nut tree will be out, but by this point the wheat isn't doing much photosynthesising. Therefore the shade of the tree does not impact on the wheat as it now putting its energy not into photosynthesis, but into using the energy stored in the plant to develop the grain.

Getting the initial design and spacial relationships right is very important. The nut trees should be planted carefully so they are not too close together. With careful design you get two yields from one area of land (and probably more but I'm just limiting this to nuts and wheat for as an example).

As someone who rather loves her potatoes and fresh bread from the farmers market, I don't want to give them up. But Steve's talk did make me think about how what I see as key food items, wheat and potatoes, is quite limited and not necessarily giving me the best nutrients. Wheat is grown in as a monoculture in the UK in a way that is clearly unsustainable. However, if we shift what we think of as key food products, and start using agroforestry techniques to diversify, we have the opportunity to grow more food locally that suits the UK environment, build resilience (because if would be less likely that both crops would fail in a given year), and of course we would get to try lots more new ways of eating yummy food.

Thanks to Steve Newman for such an inspiring talk, and for Phil Pritchard from Oxford Permaculture for organising it. I know it's a cliché, but it really was, food for thought!

Bavarian & Bonn holiday

2011-10-31T22:44:00.005Z

Ok, it's taken me about 6 weeks, but I've finally got around to sorting through the rest of my over 600 photos from our holiday in Bavaria and Bonn back in September. I briefly posted back in early October, but here is a fuller photo story of our holiday...

View from our cabin in Bayerisch Eisenstein. It was so beautiful and the air was so fresh I almost felt like I was on a high!

Wandering in Bayer's streets.

Bayer is in the Bavarian Forest, right on the boarder with the Czech Republic. In fact, the train station is half in Germany and half in Czech, as I demonstrate here!

Us on the top of Grosser Arber.

A day trip out of the forest to the beautiful Bavarian city of Regensburg. It was a bit grey and cloudy that day, but I can assure you the city is very beautiful.

Julieanne in front of another part of the Roman wall. Notice how they built the 'newer' buildings into the old wall.

The elusive Lynx. It's blurry (it's been cropped), but it was very rainy and being a cat, it did not like being out in the rain much, so it hid deep into the trees. At Falkenstein Naturpark, Bavarian Forest. And yes, there are still some Lynx in the wild in the Bavarian Forest too.

And now the Wild Cat. Though hard to tell in a photo, these cats are much larger than your usual moggie. At Nationalpark Lusen.

Tree-top walk at Nationalpark Lusen.

A riot of colour at the Bundesgartenschau in Koblenz. Was enjoyable to visit, but Chelsea, it's not!

Playing on the chairs at the Bundesgartenschau in Koblenz

The Ehrenbreitstein Fortress, other side of the Rhine in Koblenz. Another part of the Bundesgartenschau also held here.

Colourful Cauli's (Bundesgartenschau).

Cycling in the Ahr valley (part of Rhine region) with our friends from Bonn. This is all of us (well, minus me) in the town of Mayschoss. L-R: Alexander, Kate, Simon, Sam & Kevin.

Fantastic use of permaculture 'edge'. Grape vines, Mayschoss. The tunnel to the left is the bicycle tunnel, and to the right, the train tunnel. I love the Germans, they are so organised.

Julieanne, Kate & Simon. Between Dernau and Ahrweiler in the Ahr Valley.

Sam & Kevin. Who's the cutest?! In Ahrweiler.

New glass chicken from the Regensburg Glas-haus graces the lottie.

It was a really relaxing holiday in the Bavarian Forest and we had a great time visiting Kate, Simon and the boys in Bonn, and came back refreshed and relaxed. Somehow though, it already seems an ice-age away...

For the extra keen, I've posted more photos from the holiday on my web album.

Container gardening with legs

2011-10-10T19:22:00.000+01:00

I saw this when on holiday in Germany, as we were cycling into Dernau, in the Ahr valley (near Rhine) with friends. Gives container gardening legs, don't you think?!

Block the bill - NHS block the bridge

2011-10-09T19:57:00.002+01:00

Ok, I realise it has been yonks since I've last blogged. I promise I'll catch up soon and will supply you with pics and stories from our holiday in the Bavarian Forest and visiting friends in Bonn. In the meantime, today I was at the NHS Block the Bill action in London.

There is a lot of hope that the House of Lords will hold up the bill by referring it to a committee, effecting stopping it. Ironic that it might be a bunch of unelected predominately rich white men, that may help save the NHS. However, not counting chooks yet...

Jenny & I on #blockthebridge

More pics here and here.

DIY trellis

2011-09-03T22:20:00.000+01:00

Since undertaking the Permaculture Design Course last year, my confidence in trying to make my own objects for the garden has increased. I've also got better at noticing how I can increase the use of the different resources that I come by.

A couple of months ago I pruned the Phyllostachys Nigra, the black stemmed bamboo, above. It was planted quite close to the fence we share with our lovely neighbours Fung & Simon. Whilst they like the bamboo well enough, it was trying to get a bit too close and was pushing out the fence in a funny angle and making it a bit unstable. Furthermore, on our side, it was starting to take up lots of space and block out some light, so pruning was in order.

If you know Phyllostachys Nigra, you will know that the black stems are a lovely shiny black. Bamboo is also quite strong, hence the large number of imports from China to garden centres throughout the UK. In general, I don't buy bamboo canes for staking, I either get hold of some hazel branches, or keep any branches that are relatively long/straight from pruning trees in my own garden. When Kevin and I pruned the Prunus (prune Prunus - ha ha) I collected a large number of stakes that I have been using for anything from growing my French climbing beans to staking Brussels sprouts at the lottie. Hence, rather than cutting up and throwing away the pruned branches, I saw them as potentially useful objects for the garden. Even the smaller stems are drying out and will be used for kindling. So when pruning the bamboo a couple of months ago, with it's lovely long black stems, I knew I would find some use for them and so put them aside to dry out.

Today I made use of those bamboo canes, making my own trellis. I needed a trellis for a new evergreen Honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica 'Hall's Prolific'*, that I am going to grow up the front wall of the Lemony.

laying out the vertical canes

First I put the container I was going to plant the honeysuckle in on its side, then placed the 5 bamboo canes inside to the bottom. I arranged them into a fan, with the tallest in the middle. I then cut a smaller cane to go across (horizontal) the long canes. Because I wanted to get the trellis to fit in a small space, I used this cane to measure up next to the wall. Good thing, because I had arrange the fan to be too wide. I cut the horizontal cane to side, then arrange the long vertical stems accordingly, starting from the bottom end of the trellis and working up..

adding the lowest horizontal cane

Next I tied the lowest horizontal can to each vertical cane, as above. I then moved up to the top of the 'trellis' and tied in the top horizontal cane, below. I did this to help make the overall framework a bit more steady, to make it easier to add in all the middle horizontal canes.

adding the top horizontal cane

I used string to tied all the horizontals to the verticals and then added a bit of super glue to each knot. The glue was because I don't think I had the strongest string on the planet and I wanted to make sure the knots held!

voila! the completed trellis

Moving the planter and new trellis upright, I attached a couple of canes on each side to nails coming out of the wall. This is because this area is quite windy and I wanted to make sure it was steady and the whole thing won't come crashing down.

planting up**

Next was the planting up! Along with the honeysuckle, I added in some spare daffodil bulbs I had drying out from Spring, and some early flowering crocuses, Crocus tommasinianus 'Whitewell Purple', one of my favourites. Then to add some further interest for later in the year (since the daffs and crocuses will be for early Spring), I planted up a couple of Pennisetum Red Buttons, a grass seed I picked up from the Knoll Gardens stand when I was at Chelsea this year and have successfully grown into lovely new plants.

ta da!

And here is the completed planting with my DIY trellis. At a later stage we will add a couple of rows of wire across the top and over the door so that I can train the honeysuckle along the rest of the front of the Lemony. I should add that I wanted a fragrant evergreen in this place for two reasons. One, a kitchen window looks out directly onto this space, so I wanted something green all year round. Adding the bulbs was to help lighten the spirits with their colour, when it is desperately needed, at the end of each winter. Two, Kevin and I go in and out of the Lemony door all the time, as it is the end when we place our bicycles, so when it flowers next year and in future, we will be able to regularly enjoy the fragrance. This is also next to the entrance to our back door and garden, so visitors will also get to enjoy the fragrance since we use the back door, rather than the front, as our main entrance to the house.

I admit the trellis is no great work of art. But I made it from home-grown resources and it does the job, and I feel rather pleased with it. Hopefully as the honeysuckle grows up the trellis, it will take on some 'rustic charm', the string will be hidden and the fragrance will delight all who passes by.

*This was Kevin's choice and he even paid for it. He now owns a total of 2 plants in our garden!
**That's my other neighbour, Richard's garden behind me. He's not a gardener...

More harvesting, and green manure

2011-08-21T22:42:00.001+01:00

I must say thank you to the weather, for hearing my plea and making the weekend predominantly sunny, or at least, not very rainy, as it did rain for 1 hour on Sat. My lottie was ever so pleased to see me today.

Thankfully I got there just in time before some of the courgettes started becoming marrows. This particular courgette, verde di Italia, has yielded quite well, though I do have to be quick about getting to them before they become marrows. They taste much better when smaller. As usual, another good variety I got from Real Seeds.

Courgette verde di Italia

I only had to dig up a couple of beetroot to get enough to make some brownies...

One of them was quite large compared to the others (see right side in the picture below). This was a variety called Devoy, which rather than giving you round beetroot, gives you longer more carrot-like beetroot. This one was quiet chunky. Mmmm, brownies....

The St Valery carrots were also doing well and taste really sweet, like sunshine in your mouth.

The green manure I sowed a couple of weeks ago is coming along wonderfully. First is the Tares, (with the errant pumpkin elbowing in for some space) which over-winter without any problems from frost damage. I planted the tares after pulling up the garlic. Tares are from the legume family, and fixes nitrogen into the soil as well as improving soil fertility.

The following bed is a mix of winter salads and pak choi to the left, and Hungarian Grazing Rye to the right.

I will be putting a cloche over the salads and pak choi, so carefully marked out the space it will need for when I have to put it on. This will be just before the first frosts, probably in October. Well, hopefully in October and not late September when I'm on holiday in Bavaria!

Because the rye is a cereal it can fit anywhere in a rotation. I thought I'd try it because it is supposed to stop nutrients from leaching, for example, from heavy rains or flooding. Apparently it can really take off and put in deep roots in Spring, so I need to remember to dig it in, in early Spring. Ok braincell, remember that...

You dig in green manure in Spring, at least 4-6 weeks before you want to sow seeds. The freshly dug in green manure can inhibit germination, which is why you need to wait a few weeks to let them break down and release their manurey-goodness before spring sowing can commence. My plan in general, is to have some kind of green manure growing through winter in any bed that I don't have veg over-wintering, such as my Brassicas, Spinach/Chard and the winter lettuces.

Whilst I was busy harvesting, weeding, and sowing more Spinach, Chard and an overwintering cabbage, Wintergreen, Kevin was working on digging out weeds and preparing another raised bed.

Our great aim(!) is that for a change, next year all the beds for the potatoes will be ready when it is potato planting time (traditionally Good Friday), rather than the desperate rush in mid-late May as has been the case in the last two years! Oddly, the late sowing of the potatoes doesn't seem to effect the yields, but still, it would be nice to not have rush in May for a change.

My final photograph is of a poppy that has self-seeded in my spinach/chard bed. Seems a bit late for a poppy to be flowering, but hey, not complaining. I mean - pretty! Ok, perhaps it is flamboyant, but still, pretty...

Dear weather...

2011-08-18T17:57:00.001+01:00

Dear weather,
I don't want to sound ungrateful. Because I'm not. I'm really pleased that I don't have to lug heavy watering cans around the lottie for an hour tonight. My maincrop and late potatoes are no doubt swelling with joy. And it's great that my water butts have been filled up again.

But, you know, it would be nice to see the sun again. My green tomatoes would flush red with delight. The bees would be able to get back to working on polinating the flowers of the corn. I'd be able to collect the courgettes before they turned into marrows and pick some carrots before the slugs start some serious munching.

So, if you wouldn't mind, could the rain stop for now and we have a lovely few sunny days? Just in time for the weekend. Everyone in Oxford could enjoy the choice of attending creative wood workshops at Barracks Lane Community Garden or the Elder Stubbs Festival on Saturday, and my lottie would be ever so pleased to see me on Sunday.

And I promise not to say "it's too hot" next time it gets over 20 degrees.

Yours affectionally,
Gwenfar

Potato harvest begins

2011-08-16T21:16:00.002+01:00

On the weekend we started digging up the 1st and 2nd earlies. Yes, we could have started digging them up earlier, however they were planted quite late (mid-May), so I held off starting to dig them up to soon. Or rather, I asked Kevin to hold off digging them up... He is the master potato digger in our household.

Master digger seeking Charlotte taties

So here are the first five types of potatoes we dug up. When it comes to yields, for small potatoes I add them up, then divide by 2. For expected yields, I use the Alan Roman's potato guide.

Foremost. 1st early, for baking, boiling, mashing and salads. First time I've grown this potato. I planted 3 seed potatoes and the result was 4 extra large, 10 large, 5 medium. I was expecting a yield of about 15 and got 19.

Lord Rosebery. 1st early, for baking, boiling and mashing. Again another one I am trying for the first time. I planted 8 and we dug up 4 large, 15 medium and 12 small. Yield expected was 40, but only got 24. A few of the taties did have a bit of scab on them, though as it was the first time taties were growing in the soil for some years (if ever), this can happen.

Red Duke of York. 1st early, for roasting, chips, baking and boiling. This is one of my favourite taties. It's a great baker/roaster and yields are usually good. This year the yield was down slightly, but could have been because I did squeeze in 6 seeds potatoes into a small space. We dug up 1 large, 22 medium and 10 small, so a total of 33 (expected 30). In 2010 I planted 5 seed potatoes and ended up with a yield of 42, so yes, definitely down on previous years. However, i'll forgive it as 1. it was probably my fault and 2, it's such a good baker!

Anya. 2nd early, boiling and salad potatoes. Another new one for me. Only planted 3 seed taties and expected no more than 10, but got 35, 5 large, 18 medium and 12 small. So great yields - looking forward to seeing how they taste.

Charlotte. 2nd early, salad potato, but also can be roasted, baked, boiled and mashed. This is the classic salad potato and I do rather like them, hot with a bit of butter. Yum. Planted 5 and expected about 25-30 though , got 39. These were 7 large, 26 medium and 6 small.

The late planting doesn't seem to have effected the yields and I am pretty pleased so far. Will dig up the rest of the 2nd earlies soon, they are down at the lottie. Will leave the maincrop and late maincrops until September, maybe even October - they were planted late May...

So the potato recipes start now. Tonight it was a potato and tomato bake (yes, with my own tomatoes too - will write about them later).

Kevin having a well-deserved beer after all that digging.

Potatoes ready for storage

Oxford Sow & Grow launched

2011-08-03T12:42:00.001+01:00

I have just launched my little business, Oxford Sow & Grow, which offers gardening advice and support for beginners.

I've found from chatting to visitors at Barracks Lane Community Garden and when running the recent women's gardening workshops, that there seems be a need for someone who can just be there to help people get started with growing their own. So it seemed like an opportunity for me to maybe try and do more gardening related work and have fun encouraging others to grow!

So if you know people in Oxford looking for help, do direct them to my website!

Harvesting

2011-07-31T16:51:00.000+01:00

After yesterdays garlic harvest, today I collected kale, peas and some beetroot, plus the last of the broad beans.

Thanks to Kevin's trusty bike trolley, it's no problem getting the food home from the lottie.

Home!

And here is today's harvest, plus some ex-courgettes I picked the other day too.

The kale will be blanched and frozen. There is plenty more growing and with so much food coming in at the moment we cannot eat everything straight away, so storing some for winter.

The purple podded peas (bottom right), look pretty, but are better for soups than eating fresh from the pod. However, the green Robinson, from the Heritage Seed Library (HSL), taste great just picked and will get eaten quickly. I've left quite a few on the plants as I'm saving some for me, and to send some back to HSL.

As for the marrows, these are going to become cakes, such as Lavender cup cakes and Coconut cake, thanks to my wonderful vegetable-based (and largely gluten free) cake cook book, Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache. Yum.

Garlic harvest 2011

2011-07-30T18:01:00.000+01:00

Today I finally harvested the garlic. And here I am, tired (it's bloody hot out there*), but happy with the harvest.

The picture below shows them drying on racks. Yes, I have cut the stems short, I won't be plaiting the garlic. I did try once but it was really hard and took me 30 minutes to do one with about 9 bulbs on it! So I'm forgoing the plaiting. Just drying it so I can eat it.

I will be saving some of those that I've tried over the last year and liked. Some will not be saved, as either the bulbs are too small or don't seem to grow big in my soil. I'll also be giving some away at the Barracks Lane Community Garden harvest festival on 10th September. This will include all of the Irkutsk which is so strong that a quarter of one clove in an omlette was massively overpowering. We couldn't get rid of garlic taste for days. We love garlic, but our affair has it's limits.

If you have vampire problems and/or want some powerfully strong garlic, I have a few bulbs I'll be willing to post out (UK only).

*hot to me is over 20 degrees. Now you can see why I don't want to live in Australia!

Lush July

2011-07-27T22:30:00.000+01:00

The back garden is looking really lush at the moment. Thanks to all the rain in the earlier part of July, it looks a little like mini-jungle in urban Florence Park.

It's hot for a fluff-ball like Merlyn. Notice how he is right on the edge of the sun and shade?

Garden visit: Bryan's Ground

2011-07-16T20:53:00.002+01:00

For some time I've wanted to visit Bryan's Ground. I've read about it in gardening magazines like Gardens Illustrated and RHS's The Garden. And I've read other gardening bloggers experiences of visiting, such as VP's back in May, where she got to see the irises in the orchard in bloom. I admit to being envious! It also happens to be in my favourite part of the UK, the Herefordshire-Welsh border. So when Kevin's cousin Nigel, and his partner Andy, two keen gardeners themselves, heading over for a visit from Melbourne suggested we meet at a garden, say, Bryan's Ground - it seemed like the moment had arrived.

I always get a bit nervous when arriving at a garden I've heard so much about. There is often the great chance that it won't live up to expectations. I need not have worried, Bryan's Ground is beautiful, fun and considerably more wonderful than I could have hoped.

The garden is a wonderful mix of 'garden rooms', of calm and formality, vibrancy and humour. Owners David Wheeler and Simon Dorrell have developed the garden around the house, using the house as a backdrop to, and and as part of the garden. In the picture at the start of the blog you can see the house being used for wisteria to grow up, to sow boarders mixed with annuals and perennials to blend and contrast. In the photo below, you can see that the house is also a stage upon which the garden can perform.

There is so much fun in the design of Bryan's Ground. These formal pyramid-type shapes above are not box or yew, the usual choice when shaping bushes or hedges, but our native hawthorn (poss. Crataegus laevigata). And when they do use yew, the cut straight at the top to create doric-like columns, rising up amongst the greenery and flora like broken temples.

The fun is explored in a variety of ways. Objects that may of us would throw away become sculpture, like these old bikes hanging from a tree over towards their arboretum...

The base of an old spring bed to grow climbers up, and making art out of an old boiler...

Turning bits from cars into fun for young and young-at-heart...

And using the remaining bed frame to make a delightful grass bed.

All these quirks only added to some lovely planting. I was reminded yet again, of the wonderful blues of Anchusa azurea 'Loddon Royalist.

And the lovely subtle beauty of Astrantia's and Geranium's.

Even minus the flowering irises, the orchard teamed with fecundity.

And around every corner was another delightful blend of recycling-as-art and planting. I picked up couple of purple sedums, Sedum Bertrum Anderson, to take home for one of my stone planters, and as a memory of this elegant and witty garden.

In fact I spent so much time focussing on the plants and garden that I didn't get a photo of Nigel and Andy, so only have this brief shot of Nigel to prove we were really there with them!

Bryan's Ground is only open from April to July as the owners apparently view it as a spring-early summer garden. I suspect this is modesty, I'm sure it would be beautiful and hold interest all year around. I certainly intend on visiting again. Perhaps it will be me next year, rather than VP, showing you photos of the irises in the orchard!

The garden from an alternative perspective

2011-07-13T13:03:00.000+01:00

I was playing around with my new camera whilst lying down on the grass in my stonewall garden. I found it was a very interesting way of looking at the garden.

my arch, with Rosa Seagull climbing over it

a foot's point of view...

Birch and cloudy blue skies

Broad bean harvest

2011-06-20T23:01:00.000+01:00

I finally managed to get to the Lottie on Sunday and wow, what a broad bean harvest. I collected 6 kilos of broad beans!

This equalled 1.5 kilos once shelled.

I'm afraid I cannot show you the lovely broad bean, bacon and mint pasta we made with it, as we were too busy eating and going 'yummmmmmmmmm' and 'mmmmmmmm'...

Of course, that only used up 300g of broad beans, so still got heaps left for more broad bean delights in the next few days. Oh, and I probably still have close to another 8-10 kilos (unshelled) that will be ready to pick in the next couple of weeks. Some to freeze for winter then. Yay.

Too busy to garden

2011-06-17T22:05:00.000+01:00

I'm just so busy at the moment with work that I've barely had a chance to do any gardening for the last couple of weeks, apart from tying back some tomatoes and pinching out the side growth. On the plus side, all the rain means at least watering hasn't been a problem. Though on the minus again, the weeds will now be mountain high at the lottie... Oh, another plus, I like weeding - kind of a zen like activity. Ahh, the life of a gardener, ups, downs, slugs, then ups again. ;-)

Chelsea 2011: my visit - the Great Pavillion

2011-05-27T22:57:00.002+01:00

The show gardens and the designers get a lot of attention at Chelsea, but of course they would be nothing without the plants. I always enjoy visiting the Great Pavillion, where nurseries display their plants in some very creative ways. I also have a tendancy to salivate and there is lots of I want, I want's...

As mentioned in the previous blog about the gardens, Salvia nemorosa caradona was a big hit in many of the gardens, and it was a big hit with me. I love Salvia's, I love purple, and this is a salvia and it's purple.

on my shopping list

There was Anchusa 'Loddon Royalist', which yes, has been around for ages, seeing it again reminded me how pretty it was, so another 'must have'.

There is a new Astrantia to go on my list, 'Burgundy Manor' from Hardy's, which I will get when it becomes available.

A plant clearly named after me...

Geum 'Princess Juliana'

See, pretty flower, great name, and goes perfectly with Salvia nemorosa Caradona. It's meant to be.

Lavender, lavender, lavender, from Downderry Nurseries. More wanting...

Actually, I picked up some seed from them for the Spanish Lavender, pedunculata, which I look forward to growing.

The elegant Iris Laevigata.

Iris laevigata (from the Literary Garden)

Besides all the wants, I also generally enjoyed some of the displays. Here is an excellent one from the Heucheraholics...

How many Heuchera's can one have? Lots!

And vegetables get a look in too...

W. Robinson vegetable stand. Such fun!

Then there was the totally LOOK AT ME displays, such as this one from Thailand...

whoa!

So Chelsea 2011 gave me lots of enjoyment and many ideas to add to my [plant] pot.

Chelsea 2011: my visit - the gardens

2011-05-27T22:56:00.002+01:00

New Wild Garden, Nigel Dunnett. My favourite show garden

Yes, yet another blog about Chelsea. Yes, there are millions out there by now. And no, my blog won't say anything remarkable or different to anyone else. It's just my record of my visit to Chelsea 2011.

I don't go to Chelsea Flower Show every year. It's too expensive and I like to get visit other flower shows. And part of me thinks (um, ok, knows) that Chelsea is pretty unethical; I mean, all that waste of resources; it couldn't be less Permaculture if it tried. But somehow I'm attracted by the pretty plants and all the pizzazz and I get caught up in the excitment of the plants and show gardens. So I went, dragging poor Kevin along as I need someone to carry all the crap I pick up about gardens and plants.

So, what stood out? The two things that hit me was a) Salvia nemorosa Caradona (above, the spikey purple one) was everywhere, and b) bug hotels were very 'in'.

and another...

It's always amusing to see things that have been running around in the permaculture, green, organic gardening scene for years suddenly become a Chelsea hit. Um, der - we were there years ago... *smug*

But overall, what did I think of the show gardens. Well, there were a few surprises for me this time. Having seen the Cleve West garden (sponsored by bloody Torygraph) on tv and heard all the raves, I think it went over the top as though I liked the garden, I didn't love it as I expected to.

I loved much of the planting, and some of the viewing perspectives, but altogether it didn't quite work. I don't know why. I usually love Cleve West's designs. Not that it wasn't good, but for me, it just wasn't great.

Torygraph garden, perspective

On the other hand, I went along not expecting to like M&G Garden by Bunny Guinness because I'm not that keen on Ms Guinness. I find her comments on GQT rather snobbish at times, like everyone has thousands of pounds to spend on their gardens, and she made a very derogative comment about Guerilla Gardening once, she suggested it was like vandalism - rather missing the point! But prejudices aside, I really liked her potager design.

However, my favourite garden was Nigel Dunnett's New Wild Garden, a picture of which appears at the top of this blog as well as here. For me it brought nature's and human's needs together beautifully, with effusive planting to top it off.

The building is an old shipping container, modified so it could be used as an studio/office in a garden, with green roof added. There is a place to sit in the garden, a place to capture water, and a place for nature to do it's thing. Bug hotels, plants for bees, plants to enjoy, a sustainable design.

Such lovely planting, and great for polinators too.

It got a Silver-Gilt award by RHS standards. It gets a Gold-Star-Plus by mine.

For the smaller gardens, I really loved the artisan gardens over the urban gardens, and my favouite small garden was Jihae Hwang's Hae-woo-so Korean garden. Hae-woo-so is the traditional Korean word for toilet and means 'emptying one's mind'. I love the play on words too!

Hae-woo-so

Other gardens I enjoyed were...

Irish Sky Garden

Diarmuid Gavin's Irish Sky garden, minus the silly Wonkavator that went up and down...

Gavin is apparently the 'bad boy of Chelsea' because he always does something 'unconventional'. Seems more like boys and their toys and egos, if you ask me. But taking away the 'wonkavator' as it has apparently been called, the garden was a cool relaxing space and you could imagine it really bing somone's garden. Not mine, too controlled, but I appreciated it all the same.

I also liked the RNIB garden. Lovely planting, and felt like a welcoming space to sit down and chat with friends.

My 'celebrity' spotting for the day was Carol Klein, being interviewed probably for that evenings tv in the B&Q garden. I love Carol's enthusiasm for growing and got my cheap thrills (as we say in Oz) seeing someone I admire.

So that was my Chelsea. Actually, that's just half, there is still the Great Pavillion to come!

Tasty winning

2011-05-23T20:49:00.001+01:00

Asparagus Tart

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to win VP's cook book giveaway. I was excited not just because I won - though that was very exciting - but because this book was the kind of thing I've been looking for, for a couple of years.

The Garden to Kitchen Expert (yes, part of the very useful 'expert' series, if you ignore their suggestions to use chemicals) has over 680 recipes, covering vegetables, fruit and herbs, plus some jams, preserves and pickles, and some 'toolbox' recipes such as how to make a simple shortcrust pastry or white sauce. Each section is in an A-Z arrangement. Helpful for someone like me who likes her vegetable recipes alphabetically. Must be a hangover from working in the OED for nearly 5 years, several years ago... The recipes are also fairly simple, not long complicated instructions with a zillion ingredients, with half a zillion you've never heard of. Simple recipes suit because I like good food but don't always have time to spend a lot of time cooking.

Basically, a gardener has a heap of one veg bursting the beds, say courgette/zucchini, and needs some recipe inspiration for interesting and yummy ways to cook it. For years I've been looking for vegetable cookbooks that would have a range of recipes for that one bountiful veg (or fruit etc) glut. This does exactly what it says on the tin.

This isn't a broad review of the book - I've only tried 3 recipes so far. But I like what I've tried and I'm keen to try more. Given it is asparagus season it seemed appropriate to start there, hence the picture of my first attempt at asparagus tart. It was also my first attempt at making my own shortcrust pastry, one of the convenient 'toolbox recipes'.

I have to say it was a great success. It took a bit of mucking around to get the pastry right, but that's my lack of skill rather than the book I think. But the end result was delicious. Fresh asparagus from nearby Rectory Farm, some eggs, cream and cheese, and voila! And the pastry wasn't too bad. Maybe wouldn't pass muster in France, but it was light and crumbly when you bit into it, and the asparagus was still slightly crisp and wrapped lovingly in the egg, cream and cheese.

The other asparagus recipe was Asparagus Risotto. Up until now I've used the Abel and Cole recipe, so I was interested to try a different version. I think I like this new version better, though the other is delicious too, as this one has no cream and not so heavy.* I very lightly steamed the asparagus and it was crunchy and mixed well with the white wine, stock and butter. Ok, butter is heavy, but not as heavy as cream to me!

This cookbook gets the big thumbs up and I look forward to trying more recipes as the growing and harvesting season goes on. Thanks to VP for my very tasty winning.

*The Abel and Cole Pumpkin Risotto recipe in the same book is amazingly stunning, the cream and pumpkin were meant for each other.

New lottie pic

2011-05-15T22:58:00.000+01:00

I thought it was about time to update my Lottie picture on my blog. That's the one to the right above 'about me'. It used to be this...

29th November 2008

And now it's this...

15th May 2011

Progress!

But oh - not with the clothing. That's the same top...

I ran my first gardening workshop today

2011-05-12T19:36:00.009+01:00

I ran my first gardening workshop today. Yes, someone actually paid me to show others how to grow!

The workshop was at BarracksLane Community Garden, where I'm the freelance coordinator a couple of days a week. In that role I do everything from organising events like seed and plant swaps to the annual harvest festival, to organising the volunteers, managing the website and doing interviews on BBC Radio Oxford. My work for Barracks Lanes doesn't usually involve gardening itself. However, the opportunity came up to run a women's-only basic gardening workshop.

My work at the garden is funded by the Local Food Programme, and the aim is to encourage more people to grow and buy local food, hence the plant swaps and harvest festivals. We also want to reach people in the Black Minority Ethnic (BME) community in Oxford. After all, the community garden is everyone's garden and we want people from every part of Oxford and every social and cultural group to use it.

So when the Women’s Interfaith Network and Refugee Resource got in touch about maybe doing something together, it seemed like a golden opportunity to give something to a particularly disadvantaged group, refugees, and help the garden reach out to the BME community. The idea was to run some basic gardening workshops, showing women how they could sow and grow herbs and some vegetables on their window sills. The ‘women-only’ element was in respect for some of the religious and cultural needs. Some women who came today would not have been able to attend if it was mixed-sex. So this meant the garden needed to find a woman to run the workshops. Would I like to do this? You bet!

Today was the first of two ‘Sow and Grow workshops for Women’, as I’ve named them. I showed the women how to sow herbs like coriander (the most popular!), basil, chives and calendula, along with lettuce and spinach. I demonstrated the process first, then got the women to all have a go.

Because many of the women were refugees, they have a very low, almost no, income, so I also focused on ways of growing with a limited budget in mind. This meant using tetra paks, used juice and milk containers as pots, and used plastic mushroom and bacon containers as saucers. This is actually a great way of reusing before recycling as much as a way of saving money. I’ve had good success germinating seeds with tetra paks. Use a stanley knife to put in a couple of drainage holes and voila! Here is an example with a used juice container.

This was also the reason for focusing on growing on window sills. Most of the women don’t have gardens, so to ensure it was accessible to everyone I focused on window sill gardening.

So for a couple of hours, in the warm spring sun (I think I got sunburn – ooops – forgot the sun screen), about 20 women from a variety of countries and cultures started learning how to grow their own food. It’s only a tiny step, but from acorns....

Being my first workshop, it was very tiring. Lots of emotional and mental energy, let alone the physical; lifting 60 litre compost bags – don’t tell my Chiropractor. But it was also wonderful. Though nervous to start with, once I got going - hey, I was talking about my great love, growing food and gardening – the nerves were forgotton and I was so envolved it was just a joy.

There was a great buzz in the garden, women eagerly sowing their coriander and lettuce, asking questions, chatting, laughing. I think they really enjoyed themselves as much as anything. I admit to receiving some very lovely compliments, such as ‘you should have your own gardening show’ (! move over Monty). But the one that meant the most to me came after I answered a question from one of the women. She said ‘you are a great teacher’. This meant a lot because many of the women didn’t speak much English. Sowing and growing is quite visual, physical, and her comment suggested to me that I managed to get past the language barrier and teach, and that they learned. I’m kind of proud of that.

The next workshop is in early June and I’ll be showing them how to pot on their seedlings, and to take some cuttings to grow new plants. In the meantime, I’ll put up some pictures from todays workshop hopefully in the next week, when I’ve got copies from Sally at ReachAbility, who helped out and was photographer.

Wow. I got paid to show people how to garden. FAB!

It's darned windy out there

2011-05-02T19:23:00.000+01:00

It's bloody windy out there. So on top of the almost complete lack of rain, we now have high winds drying out the soil. Ugh.

Kevin and I spent a couple of wind-blown hours at the lottie this afternoon. In mid-March we had set up a frame for protecting the brassicas. However, the wind rather ruined that. Like many allotment sites ours is very open with little in the way of trees or hedges to help reduce wind damage on the allotment. In fact I'm quite lucky, as I do have a bit of a hedge half-way down on one side, and this will offer protection to the future beds that are not yet planted... Back to the frame; a week after putting it up we returned to find it had gone! A bit of searching found it several lotties over and caught up on someones shed. So we rescued the frame and cover and decided to rethink our plan for protecting brassicas.

Thanks to Kevin, we have hopefully come up with a solution. If you look carefully (ok, very carefully!) at the picture above, you will see that there is some white rope from the top of the middle frame going down into the ground. Kevin has tied this to a brick, and buried it deep down. But not just that. He has used really large tent pegs at each corner and also tied these into the frame, also burying them deep down. The frame now feels quite solid and in place. The cover has gone on, this time a fine mesh cover so that it stops the horrid white cabbage moth but lets in air and rain, if we ever get any rain again... This is the final result.

We are really hoping that this has solved the problem. I'm hoping to drop by on Wednesday afternoon to check if it's still in place. If it can deal with the current winds, then it should be ok!

Before putting on the mesh I planted out some of my brassicas, including the stakes for things like brussels sprout and calabrese, which get tall and will also need staking to stop wind rock. I have learned from experience that it is better to put in the stakes at the same time as puting in the young seedlings. It makes it easier to tie them to the stake as the grow and keeps them steady (preventing wind rock).

Stakes next to the young brassica seedlings

Because of the dry and windy weather, I'm planting seedings in a bit of a dip. This is to help contain some of the moisture and give a little protection against the wind whilst it is still quite fragile. This, by the way, is a theory of mine I'm trying out. Time will tell if it actually helps or makes a difference!

By the time we got ready to head home, I thought the lottie was looking pretty good. Strawberries, broad beans and garlic all doing well. Some young chard and spinach just coming up, some brassicas in, as well as some carrots, parsnips and beetroot. And Kevin got another bed ready (the one immediately behind (not beside) the brassica frame) - yay Kevin!

Floral delights at Oxford Botanic Gardens

2011-04-28T21:40:00.000+01:00

Tulipa 'National Velvet'

Tulipa 'Arabian Nights'

Tulipa 'Abu Hassan'

Paeonia Delayayi Angustiloba 'Alba'

Paeonia (tree peony - so dazzled I forgot to check it's name)

Paeonia, with honey bee

Iffley Meadow Fritillaries

2011-04-17T23:17:00.000+01:00

Fritillaria meleagris (snake's head)
and fritillaria meleagris alba (white) on Iffley Meadow

One of the many great delights of living where we do in Oxford, is that we are not far from the Isis Farmhouse, and the Iffley Meadow Fritillaries. Fritillaria meleagris, the snakes head fritillary, is one of my favourite native flowers. It also happens to be Oxfordshire's country flower, briefly flowering each April, and one of the best places to see them anywhere happens to be about a mile away from our place.

Today we met up with Jackie and made our semi-annual visit to Iffley Meadows. First we stopped at the Isis Farmhouse. This is the best pub in Oxford (in my view). It's situated on the river by Iffley Lock, thankfully off the tourist trail so visited and loved by locals. They also make fresh cakes. You never know what is going to be there to try, but whatever it is, it always tastes amazing. I tried bakewell tart there the first time and it was so amazing, that no other bakewell tart has ever compared to its scrumminess. Anyway, I digress.

After a drink and some rhubarb crumble, we wandered over to Iffley Meadow, which the pub backs on to. Usually mid-April is the best time to see fritillaries. On this occasion, the incredibly warm weather in England recently meant they were at the peak of their flowering period probably a week ago. However, though some had gone over, enough remained to delight us all for yet another year.

Fritillaria meleagris

Kevin getting up close

Jackie amongst the fritillaries

Such beauty

Crop rotation and lottie design

2011-04-06T22:47:00.000+01:00

I've been spending a bit of time recently working on my crop rotations for my allotment, with the above being the outcome. Perhaps not the most exciting image you have ever seen, but I'm pretty darned pleased with it!

One of the reasons for it taking me ages is that not all the beds are built yet. The n/a for beds 13 & 14 in 2011 is for those to be built next year. However, beds 8 to 12 are only planned this year - so the rotations are depending on us actually digging in. Even if they don't get built the rotations should still hold.

At least, I hope so. It's been a lot of work trying to make sure that I'm rotating things in the right order. For instance, potatoes and tomatoes cannot follow each other in a rotation as they are the same family, and I have to make sure that there is 4 years between them being planted in a bed before returning to that bed. I use a 4 year crop rotation as a minimum as part of my management of pest and diseases.

There were quite a lot of other things to consider though when planning crop rotations. You need to be clear on what veggies you are going to grow, so that you can ensure that the same families are planted together. So the beans and peas, the legumes, are together, the parsnips and carrots together, etc. I worked out I had 8 key groups:

1. Legumes (peas, french beans and broad beans)
2. Potatoes
3. Brassica (cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts and kale)
4. Roots (parsnips and carrots)
5. Chard (including spinach & beetroot)
6. Garlic (for other people it might be onions)
7. Tomatoes

I made Tomatoes it's own group as they take up quite a bit of room, but considered them and the potatoes together when planning to ensure a minimum 4 year rotation. Things like salads can go anywhere (and I'll mainly be growing these at home as quick growing cut and come again crops), as can corn and curcubits, though for planning purposes they are:

8. Curcubits (courgettes/zucchini and pumpkins/squash)
9. Corn

Other thins to consider are what crops should and shouldn't follow each other. For instance, winter tares (green manure) are rich in nitrogen, which produces strong leafy growth. So they are useful to be sown in autumn to be dug in the following springs, before you plant your brassicas. Brassicas being heavy nitrogen feeders, benefit from the nitrogen released by the winter tares.

However, you don't want to put potatoes in after winter tares, as you don't need to feed the foliage of potatoes, rather the tubers of the potatoes, in order to get good sized potatoes. So my plan in general is to sow winter tares in late summer, after I've pulled up the garlic crop. The tares will grow from autumn to spring, you dig them in, in spring, a few weeks before you plant out (or sow direct) your brassica seedlings.

So that's some of the thinking behind my crop rotation plan. You can download the spreadsheet if you like.

Finally, is there an actual lottie plan to match the crop rotations? Of course there is...

You can see that I didn't include the asparagus bed in the rotation. Being a long-term perennial, the asparagus can stay in that bed for about 20 years. So it's a while before I need to consider it in the rotation (about year 17 I'll start the new asparagus bed).

The strawberry beds are also left out of the main rotation plan. I'm going to dig up a third of the strawberry plants each year, starting this year, and replace them with runners, and rotate the strawbs that way. Apparently that should reduce the chance of strawberry mosaic virus, which can considerably reduce the yield and thereby reduce the amount of strawberry ice-cream I can make and eat. We couldn't have that. Also, strawberry plants seem to only last 2-3 years before starting to lose their vigour, and again, their yields, so another reason to give them a rotation.

Lastly, the shed, comfrey patch, compost bins will hopefully be built later this year, after beds 8-12 have been built and we have managed to win the war against the brambles and bloody couch grass. The greenhouse is my dream to help extend the season and give more more to chose from in winter. But it will probably be a couple of years before we have sufficiently destroyed the brambles and couch grass that are currently in its place. I'll be giving that area the old black plastic treatment. Oh, and a couple more years before I can afford to buy a greenhouse anyway.

Ok, this has probably been my most boring blog ever to anyone but me. But it feels good to have got the rotations and design done and it's my blog. So, well, ner. ;-)

Bonfire of the lotties

2011-04-01T20:40:00.000+01:00

Kevin and I are on hols at home for a week or so. Today we were down at the lottie working very hard to try and dig up couch grass. Frankly, when the revolution comes, it's the first to go. Currently it stands: couch grass - 1,000,000, us - 1. sigh.

However, there was some fun too. We had a bit of a bonfire from all the dried out brambles and prunings etc from last year. We had to wait until 6pm, which is when you are allowed to start bonfires. It started off quite well.

Then went a bit manic and we watered around the edges to keep it under control.

But all was well, and by the time we twilight was just about to start, the bonfire had eaten up all the brambles - yay bonfire. Kevin then watered it as it was dying down to put out any embers and make sure it was safe.

We also cut up more brambles and started preparing for another bonfire in a few weeks. By this point we could actually see our neighbours plot behind us - there is a world beyond the end of our plot!

At the march for the alternative

2011-03-27T22:08:00.003+01:00

Kevin and I joined the WDM contingent of the March for the Alternative yesterday in London. Whilst I have some reservations about the TUC; refusing to let Caroline Lucas speak at the rally and their refusal to work with feeder marches from groups like UK Uncut, for example, I felt it was important to join the mass of solidarity of people around the UK against the governments' cuts agenda and neo-liberal policies.

WDM 'Cuts Monster', plus Kevin to left with Green Party placard

It was a massive rally, over 600,000 at least. Of course the media reported a smaller figure, like 250,000, but given we heard police say something like 600,000, and the police under-estimate rally figures all the time, I trust the higher figure more.

Me!

Of course, like all big rallies, it took 3 hours just to march from where we started at Embankment up to Trafalgar square - that's about a mile and a bit.

The cuts are going to get you...

At Trafalgar Square, Kevin and I left the WDM contingent with the plan of joining UK Uncut up at Oxford Circus. We stopped for a quick bite in our traditional rally eatery, St Martins in the Fields cafe in the crypt. Fortified by apple crumble and custard and tea, we headed up to Oxford Circus.

Kevin passing Biggus Bennus/Big Bernadette (as I like to call it)

Part way up Regents Street we had police vehicles speeding past us, and then found a large crowd of people with samba music heading our way. Turns out the riot police were trying to stop UK Uncut, so between that and the large crowd, we never made it to join them.

WDM staff and group activists, including Jeff, St Albans WDM, to right (academic cap)

We ran into Jenny & Mark (fellow allotmenteer) who were heading down to activities in Trafalgar Square. As we couldn't get up to Oxford Circus, we joined the Samba group/anarchists etc and ended up in Piccadilly.

indeed, it is not (Trafalgar Square)

However, by this time more riot police were turning up, and it looked like a show down and a possible kettle was able to take place, so we scarpered.Time to head home.

It was a good day. It was great to be a part of the WDM contingent. WDM has been joining the fight with people in the global south for years to fight the neo-liberal policies that are now being brought to the UK. It felt good to be a small part of bringing these global-local issues together on the march.

P.S. For an insiders view of what actually went on with the UK Uncut actions, including in Fortnum & Mason, visit the UK Uncut blog.

Garden visit: Anglesey Abbey

2011-03-24T23:10:00.000Z

Along the winter walk

It is frequently claimed that the winter garden at Anglesey Abbey is one of the best in the country. I heartily concur. I've visited it several times over the last few years, and it never fails to delight with its warm winter and early spring colours. This years' visit was no exception. The Cornus above (perhaps midwinter fire?), with hellebores in the front, Prunus serrula behind and the gorgeous blue sky as a backdrop was quite breath-taking.

Prunus Serrula

Along with Acer Griseum, Prunus Serrula counts as one of my most favouite trees ever. The bark on both are warm through-out the year, but it is the late-winter-early-springtime when they best show this feature. You cannot but want to stroke the bark and branches. Pure garden-porn!

We were visiting with Audrey as part of a weekend break. Audrey turned 80 on Saturday, so we wisked her off for a couple of days in celebration, visiting Anglesey Abbey, as well as Pensthorpe and a lovely B&B (of which I'll write in another blog). Here is mother and son looking a bit unsure about being photographed by yours truly yet again, in the lovely Birch Grove.

Other beauties to be found on the day...

Tulipa turkestanica

Chionodoxa sardensis through red Cornus

Hellebore hybrid (goodness knows which one, they are rather promiscuous!)

Scilla siberica

If you haven't already visited Anglesey Abbey, do visit. If you have, go again. It's just stunning.

Colours of spring: hellebores

2011-03-24T07:23:00.000Z

Early spring at the lottie

2011-03-15T22:43:00.000Z

With my back much improved and the sun shining, Kevin and I got down to the lottie on Sunday. It was well and truly time to get the green manure beds dug over, which is what Kevin is doing here.

This is Vicia sativa (winter tares) which I sowed late last September. It's hardy, it survived a couple of feet and several weeks of snow, and it's a nitrogen fixer. Digging it in, I'll leave it for a few weeks to rot down and release the nitrogen, and will then be planting my brassica's in this bed. Brassicas are nitrogen hungry, so hopefully this will help them grow big and strong.

Whilst Kevin was digging in the green manure, I was trying to rescue my strawberries from encroaching couch grass. I also grow narcissi with my strawberries, so I have some early spring colour to lift the spirits and make me feel the growing season is really starting.

The garlic is coming along nicely, as you can see here. Over winter, I have been trying out the many different varieties I harvested last year. Some, such as Irkutsk, are way way WAY too strong even for me, and I love garlic (no, really?). We used a quarter of a clove in an omlette and it was not only overpowering, we had garlic breath for days! Most aren't that strong and it's been fun trying them out in key dishes (ie. pasta sauces) to see what difference each makes. I'll update the garlic varieties record sheet in the next month or so, which will include how they are storing.

The lottie next to us has an unintentional pond. An 'unintentional pond' is a hole that started as a, well, hole, and then started collecting water and then frogs started spawning and so then Tess, the lottie holder, decided to more intentionally turn it into a pond. The black clump to the top middle-right is this years frog spawn. We do get lots of frogs around our beds, which is great as they eat the slugs. However it can be a little nerve-wracking at times, nearly putting a fork into a froggie! I try and return them to the pond, however they don't seem to get the message and it's an ongoing saga. In summer the pond can dry out a bit, so we help out adding water to keep the frogs from being parched.

By the end of a couple of hours work, the green manure was dug in, I rescued most of the strawberries from couch grass, gave the asparagus bed a bit of a mulch (furthermost right), and got up my new polytunnel. At the moment this is over the broad beans to help them along a little, but mainly it's going to be for the brassicas. It will protect them from blasted pigeons and the dreaded white cabbage moth. Learning from previous experience, I'm going to mollycoddle my brassicas and keep them protected all year round. It will be me eating cauliflowers, cabbage, kale, brussel sprouts and broccoli and not the naughty beasts!

Colours of spring

2011-03-03T10:44:00.002Z

Garden visit: Welford Park

2011-03-01T20:44:00.000Z

Every February I like to visit at least one snowdrop garden. In the past I've been to Painswick in Gloucestershire and Kingston Bagpuize in my own shire (Oxon), this year it was Welford Park in Berkshire.

snowdrops and aconites in front of Welford Park house

I read about Welford in the RHS journal. It's known for it's carpet of over 10 million snowdrops, the common Galanthus nivalis. The idea of a carpet of snowdrops intrigued me, so we made it our snowdrop destination for 2011.

a carpet of snowdrops

And what a carpet! I've never seen so many snowdrops in one place before. It was impressive. However, also a little disappointing. They have a fence around the main snowdrop garden, which means you cannot walk through the snowdrop carpet. I found this really disappointing. I yearned to stroll through the snowdrops and it felt like a 'keep of the grass' sign. It really wouldn't be difficult to have a few paths go through the snowdrops and would make such a difference to the experience.

the shadow to the bottom left is the fence that prevents you from tip-toeing through the snowdrops

So although it was an impressive sight, the snowdrops at Kingston Bagpuize remains my favourite snowdrop haunt. Kingston Bagpuize has no fences, has a large variety of snowdrops including their own Galanthus Bagpuize Virginia, and you can get up close and personal with them.

Oxford's Seedy Saturday

2011-02-24T22:52:00.000Z

Over the winter I've been very busy planning events for the coming season at Barracks Lane Community Garden. We have exciting plans for a variety of workshops over the coming months, such as making willow plant supports, plant swaps, foraging workshops, as well as our annual Harvest Festival in September. First up though, is the reopening for the season on 5th March, and we are starting the year with what is now the 6th annual seed swap at the garden.

Ours is a 'Seedy Saturday', rather than a traditional Seedy Sunday, but the idea is the same. People can bring along their spare seeds, or seeds they have saved themselves, and swap them for other varieties. I'm bringing along a few packets of my favourite pea, 'Latvian' to swap.

We are also running free basic gardening workshops on seed sowing. I frequently met people at the garden last year who were keen to get growing, but expressed an interest in learning more about some of the most basic things, like how deep do you sow a seed, how often do you water, etc. So that sparked an idea that I should include some gardening basics workshops when I organise the seed swap this year. We are going to also be having a plant swap in May, and I've also planned some follow-on workshops on potting up and planting out for that event.

On top of all this, we also have Vicki Cooke from the Heritage Seed Library coming along to give people an intro talk on seed-saving. Having heard Vicki speak on the subject a couple of times, she speaks accessibly and with enthusiasm, and along with her wealth of knowledge I'm hoping it will encourage a more people to start saving seeds. It will be both a skill and necessity in the coming years as climate change really kicks in and effects the growing seasons, and what we grow, more and more.*

So if you happen to be in the Oxford area on 5th March, do drop by the garden and come and pick up some new seed varieties to try!

*If you want to know more about why saving your own seeds and having local seed networks is important, Patrick over at Bifurcated Carrots is the place to go... it's the place I go for my' seedy news'.

Flowering: Galanthus Bagpuize Virginia

2011-02-14T19:59:00.000Z

I must confess a slight galanthophile tendency. I'm not sure if it's because snowdrops are the first flowers of the year after a long cold winter, or the fact there are so many and they are so delicate and beautiful to look at, yet tough as old nails and can survive any weather thrown at them. Ahh, perhaps all three.

I love seeing new ones that I haven't seen before. Each one more exquisite than the last, each one a 'must have'. However, I don't have the budget for being a true galanthophile and have to pass at £75 for a single bulb.

A favourite snowdrop place to visit is Kingston Bagpuize gardens, about 20 miles or so west of Oxford. They have lovely grounds and a great snowdrop collection. They also sell some 'in the green' each year, from galanthus nivalis, surely one of the most beautiful 'bog standard' bulbs there is, to one of their own, Galanthus Bagpuize Virginia.

Two years ago Kevin and I visited Kingston Bagpuize at snowdrop time. It was also a snowy time, so the flowers were a bit of work to find, but find we did. I was admiring the garden's own flower, the aforementioned 'Bagpuize Virginia', but they didn't have any for sale. However, the wonderful owner said no problem, and promptly dug up a few for me!

Snowdrops can take a little time to settle and last year I got the greenery but no flowers. But this year...

Gardeners are so generous. I think if the world was run by gardeners it would be a much nicer place. Muddier, but nicer.

Success with reticulata irises!

2011-02-08T16:44:00.000Z

Iris reticulata 'Purple Gem'

I'm so excited! After many years of trying and failing, and killing many plans in the process, I have finally managed to plant a reticulata iris in the right place for it to then come up and bloom the following year.

When we lived in Witney (c. 14 miles west of Oxford) our soil was very heavy clay and despite trying several varieties of reticulata irises in several places, I found after planting they never returned the following year. My garden in Oxford, though clay-ey, has been frequently worked and mulched and as a result is a much lighter soil. I planted this iris last February under the damson tree, an area that lower down is in part-shade, though the branches of the tree (higher up) get sun for longer periods of the year.

Kevin and I were doing some end of winter tidying up on Sunday, when I discovered that my reticulata iris was flowering again. I'm so chuffed. Here it is again, where you can see the lovely markings on the underside a little better.

What a beauty!

Garden visit: Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens

2011-02-06T22:23:00.000Z

During our Dorset holiday, Kevin and I visited Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens. It may seem like an odd thing to do in the middle of winter. However, I often find winter a great time to visit a garden to see the structure and appreciate some of the less obvious features that drown in Spring, Summer and Autumn's floral displays.

As you can see from the view below, Abbotsbury gardens is nestled in between several hills. This gives it a specific microclimate that allows them to grow more exotic plants than can be grown just over the hill.

Looking down from the top of the Magnolia avenue

I don't think my photo actually gives the view justice, as it was really quite lovely with all the naked trees and their twisting branches, and the hills in the background.

view of St Catherine's Chapel from the gardens

As the picture above alludes, lush tropical palms are planted alongside Australian gum trees (eucalyptus) and English birch. Being the dead middle of winter, many plants had died back, such as the enormous Gunera, of which below you can see the orangey-brown remains. Leaving the dead foliage until spring helps protect the plant from frosts and heavy snow.

Julieanne on the bridge of the Bog Garden

Yet there was plenty of lush movement from the bamboo, that even in the middle of winter gave you a hint of the subtropical delights that would be found once spring would emerge.

One of my favourite 'discoveries' was this lovely tree trunk, sculptured with animals and seating places. On it, grew this beautiful orange fungus (below) amongst the wood and moss. I love that rather than just chopping it all up, it was turned in to something both beautiful and functional, and that also had created another habitat.

Abbotsbury is not necessarily a winter garden, and they did not have much in the way of bulbs or early flowering shrubs to give it 'interest' and colour. I will definitely return sometime to visit in late spring/early summer, when growth will have exploded and you would feel more like you are in a subtropical garden. However, I'm glad I visited in winter. Kevin and I pretty much had the place to ourselves and it was lovely wandering around and enjoying these quieter beauty's.

Potato day 2011

2011-02-04T16:55:00.001Z

Yep, it was the annual trip up to Ryton for Potato Day last Saturday.

This years choices are:

Foremost
Lord Roseberry
Red Duke of York*
Anya
Casablanca
Charlotte*
Shetland Black
Ulster Sovereign
Ambo
Mayan Gold
Mayan Twilight
Sante*
Cara
Pink Fir Apple
Ryecroft Purple*
Highland Burgundy Red*
Arran Victory*
Blue Danbue*

Those with * are old favourites. The rest are experiments. I love trying out new taties.

You can see them above now chitting. Apparently other people chit their taties in sheds and greenhouses. I like to keep a careful watch, so mine are on the book shelves in the lounge room... It's not sad, it's cute, ok!.

errant blogger finally returns to talk about holiday...

2011-02-03T21:33:00.000Z

Ugh. It's been an age since I've blogged. I did start the year promising myself that I'd try to blog at least once per week. How quickly that promise was broken! Somehow January got away from me and good grief Charlie Brown, it's already February. So here is a quick catch up, in particular, about our short holiday to Dorset.

Kevin and I finally got over our respective bugs in time to be able to go on our short break to Dorset mid-Jan. We had a very relaxing time staying in a cottage a couple of miles away from the coast. We visited places such as the Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum, Chesil beach and Abbotsbury Sub-Tropical gardens. I'll write about Abbotsbury in a separate blog.

On our way down we stopped at Shaftsbury for a few hours. It has a particularly lovely ye olde quaint cobble-stone bit:

Visiting Tolpuddle, what I found most interesting, or is it depressing(?) about the story is that how many issues the martyrs faced that we still face today. Ok, we don't get transported to Australia for 7 years for being in a union these days. (I wonder if Australian unionists were threatened with being transported to England?!) But workers have been facing increasing anti-union activity from the current and previous governments, as well as some companies bringing in US union-busters to dissuade workers from joining a union (Kettle Chips did this in 2007). True, in the UK we don't (yet) have to fear being shot for being in a union, as Colombian workers have experienced. We only have to worry about the constant attack on our wages and conditions... Visiting Tolpuddle was a good reminder that solidarity and working together to defend our rights and working conditions is as important today as it was in 1834.

Chesil beach (Abbotsbury end) was both beautiful...

And fun. Where's my foot gone?!
Did you know, if you run along Chesil beach, the pebbles make the most fantastic sound that sounds just like Cybermen marching? So cool. Also, really hard work. Running along pebbles is quite hard work and we quickly disabused ourselves of the idea of doing much of a walk along the beach. For every two steps forward you take a step back if you are going up the sides, and along the top the pebbles make every step drag. Chesil beach and the surrounding area was very beautiful, and it's an amazing natural phenomena. Amazing, not in the least, because humans have managed not to screw it up...

Kevin... On Chesil Beach...

We managed a short visit to Lyme Regis.

Once again, I walked the steps where Louisa Musgrove fell. You cannot see the Cobb that well from this photo (it's at the far end). I just liked my pic. And you cannot mention Lyme and not mention Louisa Musgrove!

On our way home we stopped at Sailsbury to see the catherdral. It was one of the first places I saw when I first came to England in 1988 and I recalled being quite impressed by it. Before arriving, I wondered if I would still be impressed, having seen so many beautiful catherdrals and ruined monasteries since. No worry, it still was very impressive.

My favourite part of the catherdral was actually the amazing medieval clock (right). Made c.1386, it is one of the oldest clocks in the world. It certainly doesn't look digital, or even clock tower like! In fact, you might find it hard to believe it is a clock. It worked with weights and balances and struck a bell on the hour. Apparently when working it's time-keeping is still quite accurate. We wanted to see and hear it work but it turns out that they stop it from ringing it off as it would disturb church services. *sad face*

* * * * *

The Dorset countryside is very beautiful. Classic English chocolate box cottage in many parts. The view from our cottage was lovely.

Even in mid-winter, it's moody and ethereal and it was a lovely place to zen out for a few days.

Happy Gardening New Year!

2011-01-01T19:26:00.000Z

Well, 1st Jan and the gardening year starts off well. After weeks of being unable to get into the garden or down to the lottie, first because I had a bad virus and 2nd because everything was covered under 8 or so inches of snow, today I was able to get out there and put hand to soil.

I mainly did some tidying up and winter pruned the pear trees and some way over grown rose bushes and climbers that I inherited when we moved in. I didn't tidy up too much of course, got of leave some 'mess' for the creatures. I accidentally disturbed some ladybirds, and carefully moved them to a safer place. I.e. out of the way of my trowel and pruning secateurs.

Although it is very late, I potted up some more bulbs and planted some Fritillaries. This is one of my absolute favourite flowers, so I've put them in the beds near the back of the house so we will be able to see them from the kitchen window. I know it is very late, but I figure they should grow, will just take a little longer to get going.

I'm hoping all this activity on the first day of the year is a good omen and 2011 is a fruitful year. Here's to a happy and abundant gardening year!

my letter did get published!

2010-12-18T12:35:00.000Z

Very excited as Oxford Times have now published my letter regarding the closure of 20 libraries. And they didn't change the text. Don't read the letter also published, from Keith Mitchell*, unless you want to get really seriously pissed off...!

*leader of the Tory dominated County Council and all round bastard.

Tories now closing 20 local libraries

2010-12-11T18:20:00.000Z

This is the letter I wrote to the Oxford Times, in relation to an article published on 2nd December, about the fact the County Council is going to close 20 local libraries. It wasn't published, but luckily a letter by someone else who made similar points was published.

Madam/Sir,
The County Council is making library staff at 20 libraries around the County redundant, and threatening the communities with closure of these libraries unless volunteers come forward to replace paid staff.

The County Council should not be blindly accepting the cuts from central government. It should be fighting the cuts to keep important and already over-worked and underfunded staff and services such as libraries, schools, hospitals and social care, open and accessible to all. In fact, these services need more investment, not cuts. But our County Council is dominated by Tory ideology of ‘small government’.

The Tories are using 'Big Society' as a cover for their small government ideology. As expressed by volunteers themselves in last weeks’ article, these, like many other cuts planned for by the County Council, are jobs that require trained professionals.

And what will happen to all the staff who lose their library jobs? They will be forced to go on benefits, and then work for their benefit. I can see it now, trained library staff being forced to do a job they once were paid for, to now work as a ‘volunteer’ so they can keep their benefits. The so-called ‘Big Society’ isn’t about us all working together as Mr Cameron, his government and the Country Council claim, it’s about coercion and slave labour.
Julieanne Porter, Oxford

Just really pissed off at the ConDems. Thankfully UK Uncut is coming to the rescue and giving us a place to direct our anger and get out there and stop the cuts.

Winter visitors

2010-12-03T14:03:00.020Z

As winter has come early, with snow on the ground in late November and going to work in -4 degrees, my spirits have lifted by a new visitor to my garden bird feeder.

Hummmm, time to steal the other birdies nuts...

Ummm, where are the nuts?

Ah-ha, there they are.

Don't ask me if it is a Lesser or Greater Spotted Woodpecker, I haven't got the foggiest!

BTW: so far this has been the only nut feeder that the blasted squirrel hasn't broken; it's broken 3 of the wire-type ones this year. In fact it seems to have given up and goes to the nut feeder closer to the house, which is good because I get to laugh at it's acrobatics in it's desparate attempt to get to the nuts. Must photograph it some time when I'm not laughing too much. tee hee.

Certificate in Permaculture Design

2010-12-01T15:45:00.001Z

I'm a proud bunyip. On the weekend I completed my Permaculture Design Course and now have a Certificate in Permaculture Design.

I've learned so much from the course, especially the tutors Hannah, Phil & Pete and Peter, who have a phenomenal amount of knowledge and a generous willingness to share and 're-explain' when you are a bit slow! I also learned much from other course participants who come from a wide variety of backgrounds with an enormous breadth of skills.

Unlike organic gardening which just focuses on the gardening side of growing and nature, permaculture is much more holistic, designing ways of living that is sustainable and appropriate for the environment in which you live. I like permaculture as it brings the many aspects of my life together: gardening, nature, feminism, political activism and designing sustainable future. It has a very positive approach to everything and sees problems as solutions waiting to happen!

Each participant had to do a design and present it in order to complete the course. A couple of class-members were very brave with rather large designs. Toni, focused on a permaculture design for the whole of Florence Park, a large park that my house backs onto. And Sarah presented a design for a community garden/orchard for her village, Blewbury.

My design was much smaller in scale. I did a design for one end of my back garden, the 'kitchen garden'. At the moment it comprises of beds around the edge, a crooked-in-much-need-of-repair fence, and large strawberry patch in the middle, (the kitchen garden starts just past the arch):

As it is the hottest part of the back garden, getting sun all year round, I knew I could do more with it to maxamize the yield of a not very large space. My design aim is to create a productive and attractive space in which I can grow some veg and also relax and chat with friends, and to include a greenhouse to use to trial a small veg plant nursery.

The idea for the latter, which is my kind of little business idea, is to sell the veg plants on at the local farmers market in Spring. I've liked the idea of having my own plant nursery for a while, and earlier this year discovered that there are more people wanting to buy veg seedlings than are available. So I want to trial the idea of a veg plant nursery (which, by the way, will be with heritage varieties, not awful F1 patented we-own-your-DNA-and-the-air-you-breathe varieties) and see whether it might be a viable scheme to scale-up more professionally at a later time.

I did a base map of our whole property (left), then an overlaid micro-climate map (right), specifically focusing on the sun and shade patterns throughout the year:

With Kevin's help (because I cannot for the life of me do this kind of math and he has a Physics degree so why not tap into that skill?!), I also did a site elevation map.

From the elevation map you can see that the last bit to the right is not that effected by shade. This is where the kitchen garden will be. And here is the plan for the new design:

You probably cannot see the writing, but the little kind of rectangle above 'D' is a fold down seat. Fold out for sit on when enjoying the space with friends, fold down when I'm working on that bed and need to get to the middle easily. Voila!

The pergola will have grape vines growing up either side of the seat in the centre. Being deciduous, these will give light to that area in winter where I'll be able to grow some winter salads, and shade and fruit in summer. E - the east facing bed, using the principles of a forest garden, will probably have a couple of hazelnut bushes, some lower growing fruit for the middle layer, and low growing herbs such as thyme for the bottom layer.

I'll be starting to work on implementing the design in January. In the first instance, I'll be using bits of planks and breeze blocks from skips to make the greenhouse shelving, and purchase some clear plastic from B&Q - this will make a temporary greenhouse. It allows me to trial it and the veg plant nursery out with minimal expense, to see how it works. The final greenhouse will be built bespoke, along with the pergola, but probably not for another year due to financial reasons (!). I am hoping to build the raised beds and paths during next year (depending on Kevin's and my time). I will go for the same type of raised beds that is in the front garden. These look good, and give some coherence to different parts of the overall garden space on our property.

Importantly from a permaculture perspective, if the plant nursery doesn't work, it won't effect the overall design. I still want and need a greenhouse, and the bespoke greenhouse will be designed to have adjustable shelving that can be moved around. I'll be able to put tomatoes and aubergines in pots and grow them in the greenhouse, giving a longer and hotter fruiting period, and adjust the shelving so that at the plants get bigger, there will be more space for them.

Another reason for holding off doing the permanent greenhouse and pergola is that we also need to repair or replace the fence, and it of course makes sense to do that before building these two permanent items. The raised bed in the middle and the paths are not dependent on the state of the fence. And that's what the course taught me. The incredibly useful value of carefully studying your site over time, thinking about every element to be considered and resources available, so that you implement a well thought-out design that is practical, sustainable, and beautiful.

So yep, I'm a happy bunyip. Got my design, got my certificate, got a well-rounded outlook to go forward with. It's all good.

Garlic varieties - November 2010 update

2010-11-24T23:11:00.001Z

I finally got around to pulling together some notes and photos from my garlic harvest. Rather than writing a long blog about each variety, I'm linking here to my Garlic Varieties record sheet (Nov 2010 version). This has a photo of each variety I have grown, plus comments about using each in cooking.

This is a work-in-progress, as I haven't cooked with all the varieties yet! I'll update every now and then. I'll also be keeping a record of the storage viability of each. Many of the ones I am growing are Hardnecks, which don't necessarily have long storage traits (Softnecks store for longer*). I found it hard to track down information on most of the varieties quite difficult to non-existent, so hopefully keeping a record of how I have found growing, storing and cooking with each variety might be of use to others.

When it comes to taste, remember, this is all just my personal opinion, and my taste buds may be quite different to yours!

Thanks again to Patrick from Bifurcated Carrots for giving me many of the varieties that I now have to play with!

And here is the list of varieties you'll find in my record sheet:

Arno
Burgundy
Estonian Red
Georgia Fire
Georgian Crystal
Gypsy Red
Irkutsk
Martin's Heirloom
Metechi
Music
Persian Star
Purple Glazer
Rosewood
Silver Rose
Solent Wight
Susan Delafield
Vekat Czech

*For more info about Hardnecks and Softnecks, garlic varieties, pests and diseases, and storage, I find Bifurcated Carrots (search 'garlic') and the Boundary Garlic Farm websites useful.

Garden visit: Audley End

2010-11-21T11:33:00.000Z

Last weekend we were in Cambridge visiting Audrey, and the three of us ventured out to Audley End to enjoy some late autumn sun and see the gardens. As you will see from the photos, the sun disappeared by the time we got to Audley End! However, it was lovely to be out, even if it isn't really a winter garden.

I was most interested in Audley End because of the Kitchen Garden which is run by Garden Organic, of whom I am a member. Of course, it wasn't exactly the right time to see a kitchen garden, being the end of the growing season...

So I'll clearly need to go back in summer. I still found some things of interest though. I was fascinated to find some apple trees that still had all their leaves on, like it was early autumn and not nearly the end of autumn.

This is a Wanstall Pippin, c. 1800s. I don't know anything about why it still had all it's leaves, when almost all other apple trees had lost theirs.

I was also intrigued by the clearly very old grape vine. It's base and roots were growing on the outside of the greenhouse, with the rest of it, ie. the fruit-producing parts of the plant, on the inside.

Turning to the rest of the garden (ie. non-kitchen) at Audley End. I'm not someone who likes topiary. As someone who is a bit of a control freak, topiary is an step beyond even my control freaking ways. There is something about the deliberate attempts to squeeze nature into oversized representations of rabbits and Roman columns that I find a little frightening. Some would say all gardening is an attempt at controlling nature. There is some truth in that, but good gardeners, in my view, work with nature, not torture it. So given my opinion of topiary, it was interesting to see Audley End's interpretation of a hedge-come-topiary.

Although I wouldn't want it in my house (ok, the hedge is bigger than my house, and garden...), I found it interesting, kind of arty and tactile, in the way it's been shaped. It's not quite topiary, but it's more than a hedge. I'm not quite sure what I think, to be honest, but it didn't bring a chill to my bones, which is what topiary usually does.

The parkland at Audley End was designed by, yawn, Capability Brown. I have little time for the 18th century landscape movement, of which Brown typifies. I'm sure admitting to dislike of Brown and his ilk is probably sacrilegious amongst much of the English gardening world, but there you go, so be it. It bores me. Stowe - big yawn. So it's not surprising that the part of the garden that I really enjoyed (outside the kitchen garden of course), was the Elysian Garden. I suspect that was because it was the most 'natural' part of the parkland.

At one end of the Elysian Garden is the 'Temple of Concord', seen here graced by Audrey's and my presence.

However, it was the stream and autumn leaves that really appealed. I suspect this is because it could be a view of any pretty part of the English landscape in autumn, that I love.

What is it about autumn leaves that is so beautiful?

Behind the house, (or is it the front?), is the parterre. I read it was a must-see, but I didn't feel that way. I think the beds of not-yet-flowering polyanthus rather put me against it. I don't like polyanthus. Give me primula vulgaris any day. I think they really should add some plants with structure to help hold interest during the late-autumn and winter months. Under the bluey-grey sky I found it a little bleak and flat.

The verdict. Apart from the 'interesting' hedge, and the 'natural' Elysian Garden, I found the parkland rather uninspiring. Though that's not surprising given I'm fairly anti-Mr Brown and his lot. However, even at the end of season I still found things of interest in the kitchen garden and I do want to go back and see it in summer. They grow quite a lot of heritage vegetables and I would be interested in seeing them in full bloom and fruiting.

I picked up a couple of very interesting looking heritage pumpkins/squash from the Audley End shop. The shop sadly didn't know what varieties they were, so I've taken photos of them and will send them to HSL for identification. I'm going to make lots of yummy pumpkins dishes, gratins, roasted, soup, and will save the seeds and try growing them myself next year.

Despite the parkland and parterre, the final scene as we were leaving, was quite peaceful, and reflected the point that we did have a very enjoyable few hours walking around Audley End.

Yoghurt lid day

2010-11-19T17:27:00.000Z

Merlyn loves yoghurt*. He cannot hear us call out to him to come in at night, but can hear a yoghurt pot opening from a mile off.

Of course, you are not really supposed to give cats dairy, even though they really love it. So what we do is just give him the yoghurt lid. About once a week, when I've finished my breakfast yoghurt pot, rather than scraping the yoghurt off the lid for me, I give it to Merlyn. Merlyn loves yoghurt lid day.

Mmmm, yummy yoghurt

Hey - it's trying to get away and there is still some yoghurt left!

Get that damn camera out of my face and give me more yoghurt!!!

*which for some bizarre reason, English people call "yog-it".

Garden visit: Savill Garden

2010-11-02T20:55:00.000Z

For my birthday this year Kevin and I took the day off and visited the Savill Garden down on the Surrey-Berkshire border. As my birthday in England corresponds with autumn, it's become a 'tradition' to visit autumn gardens as my treat for the day.

Savill Garden is purely an ornamental garden, i.e. no kitchen gardens or veg patches. Autumn seems to have only just arrived from a tree point of view in the last week or so, somehow seems later than previous years. We had a cold snap early-mid October, maybe that slowed the trees down. However, plenty of the Savill Garden trees did put on quite a show. Here's my favourite, a composition of the different colours of autumn in southern England.

It is so rich and warm, it takes the chill out of the approaching winter air.

Next to the Rose Garden was beds of Molina caerulea 'Heidebraut' which I found especially beautiful.

My garden isn't big enough for a whole beds of the grass, but I'm sure I'll be able to fit in a clump or two. Kevin took a 'Gwenfar in her natural habitat' pic...

The biggest surprise for me, and my favourite area of the garden, was the rose garden. I'm not keen on roses or rose gardens. Don't get me wrong, scented roses can be beautiful, but on the whole, they require way too much attention. Between black spot and aphids, and the fact they often only look good for a few weeks in a year, I consider them more effort than they are worth. I love flowers, but I want them to largely look after themselves whilst I focus most of my energies on growing veg. Roses don't really meet that criteria. The Savill Garden have done something interesting though. They have mixed the roses with grasses, such as the Molina, and Miscanthus sinensis 'ferner osten' and with great effect.

I'm curious about what they have done, in that the roses are quite bushy, instead of the usual sticks with lots of soil showing, and they are still flowering even though we have had some hard frosts. Though maybe they didn't have the hard frosts in Surrey that we had in Oxfordshire in October?

They also had this wonderful viewing platform, which gave great vistas over the garden, as above, and looked great from the paths looking back at it.

Kevin and I had a bit of a Titanic moment when on the platform. Minus the iceberg.

As well as foliage, autumn tends to bring the bark of many trees to the fore. I was rather taken with the bark on this Arbutus x andrachnoides.

Although Savill Garden doesn't have a veg garden, they had a great display of pumpkins and squashes, some of which were grown by local children. After having such a poor pumpkin harvest myself (a total of one medium and one small pumpkin), I was in a fit of jealously about this bunch!

The Savill Garden is a good autumn garden to visit if you are in the area, and I really recommend it just on the rose/grass garden itself. It was relaxing, I enjoyed turning 42 again, and we had some fun with the grasses.

October round-up

2010-11-02T14:26:00.001Z

October was rather busy with work, and my back continued to give me problems, hence the lack of blogging. Here is a round-up on a couple of things that I/we got up to.

Earlier in the month Kevin, Jackie and I went to Waterperry Garden's Apple day. Apart from taking one of their tours around the orchard and learning about the process of making apple juice, we (Jackie & I) also bumped into an ex-Fam (ex-Oxfam) friend, Alison. Alison has set up her own small business, Felt Special, and she makes rugs from the fleece of rare breed sheep and lovely hand-felted wool and silk scarves.

I bought a scarf not dissmilar to the one showing here, only mine is more teal/purple. It looks smashing on me!

Kevin and I were delighted to catch up with our friend Suad, who was over from Santa Fe. Kevin originally worked with Suad's partner, Scott, at CSIRO in Melbourne. We've all moved on, us to the UK and Suad & Scott, first to San Antonio and now to Santa Fe, but managed to stay in touch and manage to catch up once every few years.

Scott's schedule meant we couldn't catch up this time, he had various scientific conferences to attend, but it was great to see Suad again. Just as cheery and lovely as always, and doesn't she complement my garden!

My reading group was at our place this month, and it was interesting seeing 11 people plus cat squeeze into our lounge room.

Merlyn was quite determined to sit in his usual place despite the number of people trying to crowd him out.

It was my birthday on 28th October, and I turned 42 again. Again?! Yes. I've decided to stay 42 until I get to 50, because 42 is the answer to life, universe and everything it means I'M THE ANSWER to life, universe and everything. Cannot fault that logic, right?!

Kevin and I took the day off and we visited the Savill Garden. It's becoming a bit of a tradition that for my birthday we go and visit a garden. Last year it was Painshill and Westonbirt.

I'll write a separate blog about the garden visit itself, but I can say we had a lovely day and suitably celebrated being 42 again.

Food Speculation and Worst Lobby Awards

2010-10-27T21:49:00.000+01:00

Back in June I mentioned WDM's new campaign on food speculation, Stop Betting on Hunger. I've been meaning to write more about it, but have been so busy with work and my naughty back playing up, that I've not had a chance to blog much recently, let alone about this campaign. Anyway, now I don't have to, because Kevin has blogged about it, and as he has covered it so well, I figure it's better to direct you to his blog about Goldman Sachs and food speculation.

His blog conveniently links to the EU Worst Lobby Awards, where you can vote for the worst lobbyist in the EU. And rather unsurprisingly, who turns up on the list of Worst EU Lobbyists, but Goldman Sachs. I urge you to vote because by being part of the Worst Lobby Awards, you are helping to highlight the issue of the behind-the-scenes lobbying by corporations and their industry bodies in the EU. And how fun would it be to see Goldman Sachs trying to avoid being given an award for worst lobbyist!

West Papua - Cameron replies

2010-10-07T21:35:00.002+01:00

Back in July I blogged about the West Papuan's who hoped that David Cameron might be the hero they were looking for. Cameron let the West Papuan independence movement believe he supported their aims. I finally received a response from Cameron's Foreign Office*, via my MP Andrew Smith, a copy of which I'm inserting here.

Sadly, though as I expected, Cameron and his government have no intention of supporting the West Papuan's in their call for independence. The letter makes it clear:

"The UK supports the territorial integrity of Indonesia and does not support the calls for independence of the provinces of Papua and West Papua. This has been the policy of successive governments and it remains unchanged by the current Government."

So no, Cameron isn't going to do anything about the terrible situation in West Papua. And Indonesia can continue to attack and destroy West Papuan's and their homes, or just outright murder them.

*The letter comes from Jeremy Brown, Minister of State, on behalf of Cameron and his dodgy government.

Harvest Fame

2010-09-28T22:11:00.000+01:00

After blogging about the Harvest Festival on Sunday, I was called up by the Oxford Mail (no correlation, I doubt the Oxford Mail reads my blog!) and interviewed me about the festival. An article is going in tomorrows paper, and even has a dorky photo of me. It's already online. My first 5 minutes of fame used up...

My one gripe is that I'm NOT a Miss. Ugh! It's MS PORTER. And yes, it does matter. I'll define myself, thank you very much. grrrr

Harvest Festival

2010-09-26T16:53:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was the harvest festival at Barracks Lane Community Garden. I don't know why I haven't written more about the garden before, given I love it and I work for it two days a week! Somehow I've never got around to it. Anyway, I'm working as a freelancer roughly 2 days a week, particularly working on their Local Food Programme, ie. organising workshops such as how to keep chickens or bee-keeping, and events such as plant swaps and yesterdays harvest festival. It's basically my dream job, someone paying me to work and talk about gardens and growing! How cool is that?!

I pretty much organised everything, and was lucky enough to have some great volunteers to help pull it together on the day. My lovely friend Jackie, seen here on the right, helped out with the refreshments for a couple of hours. As well as tea, coffee and biscuits, we had baked potatoes, baked in the garden's tandoor oven, and had gorgeous carrot and coriander soup from the Magic Cafe (great veggie cafe in East Oxford).

One of the most successful parts of the day was making apple juice. Lots of people brought apples from their gardens and allotments, and we were kindly loaned the use of a 'scrattle' and press from Braziers Park.

Making apple juice is fairly straight-forward. Cut up the apples (eating/juicing apples, not cooking apples) a bit then throw the pieces into a scrattle (or scratter). This helps break it down to pulp, which you then put in the apple press, press down and voila! Fresh juice. And it tasted amazing. The perfect mix of apple sweet, but not too sweet, no sickly over sugaring as you get from shop-bought apple juice. Kids really enjoy it and I loved seeing them use the scrattle then get excited about drinking the juice they made. It is a very effective way of bringing local food to them in a fun and healthy way.

We also had a 'fruit and veg swap'. This is something I made up, it came to me when on holiday in Shropshire in July. The idea was that people would bring some of the fruit and veg they had grown, or turned into jam etc, and swap it with something else they didn't have. We collected it all together for a couple of hours, then at 2pm did the 'swap'. It was quite lively, lots of people chatting to each other. I had brought some carrots, tomatoes and garlic to swap, and luckily picked up some Damson and Apple jam. Damson jam, my favourite!

The little round carrots in the picture above is Paris Market, which I grew for the first time this year. They are great for pots as they are short and wide rather than long and thin. I was quite excited to pull them up and find they looked just like the picture in the Organic Gardening Catalogue. Score!

I also gave away some of my garlic and managed to enthuse quite a few people are how easy they are to grow. Most people don't seem to realise that you plant one clove, and get a whole new bulb with lots of cloves the following year. So it was fun to chat about this with people, and some seemed very keen to get growing. See, I get paid to talk about growing garlic!!!

We also had a winter veg plant swap. This pretty much turned into a plant giveaway. For some reason most people find the idea of plant swaps odd. It seems if money isn't involved, people don't know what to think. My idea was rather than the usual plant swap, which is usually help in April/May and includes lots of plants to grow over summer, that we have a 'winter veg plant swap', just focusing on plants that grow over the cooler months and can be harvested in winter. So I brought along a bunch of seedlings including spinach, chard, kale and winter lettuces. Although people were shy initially about taking plants, I sweet talked many around and again got some people keen about growing some veg for winter.

At the end of the day, I was pretty much shattered, and still feel pretty tired. But also very happy. We were blessed with stunning autumn weather and lots of happy chatty people, and yummy food. I wrote a short press release where you can read a little more about the day, and uploaded some further pictures on the garden's Flickr album.

Pretty picture

2010-09-10T18:42:00.000+01:00

I've not have time or the energy to blog in the last week or two, so here's a pretty picture of something* flowering in my garden at the moment.

Don't even ask me about the lottie, I haven't been about to get there for nearly 3 weeks now (been ill with a virus). I dread to see how it is looking. Hoping I haven't lost my beloved potatoes to blight. Hoping to get down there on Sunday to survey the damage.

*Cyclamen. I think it is Cyclamen hederifolium. I've had a particularly good display this year. And we can see them from the kitchen window as we do the dishes. *smile*

Merlyn minds the veg

2010-08-31T18:55:00.000+01:00

Front garden - brief update

2010-08-22T22:36:00.003+01:00

Since completing the redesign of the front garden back in April, it's been coming along slowly but nicely. I've already had in the raised beds broad beans and lettuce growing, eaten and removed and since sowed more vegetables, such as kale, spinach and chard. My pear trees are growing well, but being only 1 year maidens, they don't really show up much in photos yet! However, you can see the lovely Merlyn, having a snooze by the rosemary.

I'm pretty pleased with how it's going, and have been most gratified by people passing by stopping to say how much they like what I've done. I just hope it inspires them to grow veg!

One of my favourite flowers, for it's beauty and long season, Helenium 'Moerheim Beauty', has been flowering non-stop since June. I've dead-headed it occasionally and it just keeps sending up more and more shoots and new flowers. Here it is. What a beauty!

Garlic harvest

2010-08-16T19:27:00.001+01:00

Dug up all my garlic on the weekend and its now drying in the Lemony. As you can see, I've carefully separated out each variety so I can continue to collate information about each. I plan on saving the ones with the best qualities to plant next year. That will be this year as all these are autumn planting varieties. Or if they aren't, I've made them so!

However, before I save them, I have to taste each one. So the next stage will be trying each one out with a couple of my basic recipes, such as a simple pasta sauce, to see how they taste and compare. So only the varieties I really like, and which have show good characteristics will actually be planted next year.

The other qualification will be storage ability. As I am allergic to and intensely dislike onion (I guess 'cause it makes me ill...), garlic is my substitute and my aim is to grow enough to keep me in garlic throughout the year, so I don't have to buy the bland shop-brought varieties. It's hard to believe that you could buy garlic with so little taste, but multinationals have achieved this with gusto.

Will update you on the taste testing in due course!

The Potato and Tomato must have - Blightwatch!

2010-08-13T22:13:00.000+01:00

Thanks to VP for alerting us gardeners to Blightwatch. If you grow potatoes (me, 17 varieties this year!) or tomatoes and worry about blight, then this is the service for you. Read all about it on VP's blog and then sign up.

Ok, maybe not much use to my Aussie and Kiwi pals, who probably dream of having such exotic problems like blight whilst they battle drought after drought. But for those of us in the UK and Northern Europe, just the info we need!

Garden visit: Wollarton Old Hall Garden

2010-08-04T14:02:00.000+01:00

The second garden visit of our Shropshire holiday was to Wollerton Old Hall Garden in North Shropshire. Unlike the Dower House Garden, Wollerton is more like a pleasure garden. For me, the difference is that Dower House Garden includes food production, where Wollerton does not. However, as much as I prefer gardens that include fruit and vegetables, it does not follow that I do not enjoy pleasure gardens; I do! And Wollerton gave plenty of pleasure.

Vista from the Lanhydrock Garden back through the Sundial Garden, towards the house.

There has probably been a garden at Wollerton for 500 years, but the current design began in the 1980's. This is a garden of vistas and garden rooms. Vistas such as the one above, which dissolve into rooms as you move forward into, as depicted in the photograph of the Lanhydrock Garden and Rill Garden's below.

Lanhydrock garden, detail

Rill Garden

Although I do not have the inclination, time, or money for designing and maintaining large borders myself, I do admire those who do. Wollerton's main perennial border was lovely.

Wollerton is also a plant persons garden, and for me, it's collection of Salvia's gave great delight. Blue and blue-purple Salvia's are figure amongst my favourite flowers.

Salvia patens (Cambridge Blue?)

Salvia nemorosa variety

mauve Salvia patens variety

Other plants I also feel I must obtain for my garden include:

Dahlia 'Bishop of Auckland', enjoyed by hover flies too

Dahlia 'Ragged Robin'

Clematis 'Black Prince'

Echinacea 'White Swan'

Kevin and I found ourselves wandering around, stopping for a cup of tea and scones, then wandering around again only to discover something we missed the first time around. I suspect if I went back the next day, there would have been further plants and glimpses to discover.

I do feel Wollerton could have done with a lovely vegetable garden, I'm sure they would do it quite beautifully! But that's just my personal preference for gardens to also be productive. Wollerton is definitely a pleasurable garden to visit and I would return again.

Garden visit: Dower House Garden

2010-08-04T12:21:00.004+01:00

Dower House, Morville

One of the reasons for choosing Shropshire for our holiday this year was in part inspired by the book: The Morville Hours, which I first read a year ago. The book, which is about the creation of the Dower House Garden at Morville, managed to encompass so much of what I love about England and my life here. The history, the landscape, our gardens and seasons, and how these things interconnect. The author, Katharine Swift, beautifully encapsulates all this within a journey of self-exploration about her own past.

The garden was created with different areas reflecting the people who lived at Morville over the centuries. So there is a Cloister Garden beautifully created in Yew to represent the old priory that was sold off in 1540 at the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

I loved the Elizabethan Knot Garden, created with herbs such as germander, sage, wild strawberries and lavender, rather than box. It's cleverly placed near the house so the fragrances can be taken best advantage of during the summer when the windows and doors are open. I've been wondering how I might create something like this at home, or some elements of it, since I simply don't have the room for a knot garden. I'm thinking perhaps more herbs near the front door, that guests can brush against when they visit. Mmmm.

One surprise for me was the Canal Garden, representing the more formal tastes of the 18th century. To say I'm unenthusiastic about the 18th century landscape movement style of gardening would be an understatement. Frankly, I cannot stand it, it's attempts to control nature and the willful destruction of villages and people's lives, as happened nearby to me in Oxford, at Nuneham Courtenay. So I wasn't really expecting to think much of this part of the Dower House Garden.

However, I was mistaken, it's quite lovely. This is perhaps because it's on a small scale, so not really landscape gardening. But also because Katharine has allowed nature to rebel, allowing plants such as one of my favourites, Verbena Bonariensis to self-seed itself where it wished, giving nature a say in the garden.

I've increasingly come to the realisation that when it comes to gardens, I tend to love the ones that incorporate food into the design. I guess I like bringing together both beauty and practicality (food!) in a garden. The Dower House Garden does this specifically with fruit, such as in the Vegetable Garden with it's criss-crossed tunnels of pear and apple trees, though there are vegetables in the Vegetable Garden too!

The pear tunnel, needing to be held up by stakes as it's overloaded with fruit

There are a large number of varieties of English apples and French pears. I was delighted to see the apple Catshead. This was recommended to me a while ago by George, a friend of my friend Jackie, with whom I got into a long discussion about apple varieties and other vegetables at her last birthday dinner. Notable because I don't often find someone I can talk to in such depth and at length, almost to the exclusion of all others, about such things!

After George's recommendation, which included that it has a very long storage life, up to March the following year and being good for eating and desserts (apple crumble!), and having finally seen the apple for myself, I'm now resolved to obtain a tree for myself, if I can find a place to put it. Although maybe I should try and find one to taste first, just to make sure?! It does look yummy...

I picked up an interesting trick on growing pear trees at the garden. I have planned on growing my pear trees in an espalier fashion. Katharine has done this, but with a slight twist.

I don't know if you can tell (I can, but I took the photo so know what I'm looking at!), but rather than a series of rows off from a central upright branch, these have been trained to curve around. This creates the appearance of several branches coming out from the centre, when in fact they are two long branches that have been trained to curve across, up and around repeatedly. It's quite elegant I thought, and I like the style of the weaved branches.

A fun element in the garden was the Turf Maze. I learnt from the book that this is a unicursal maze, or labyrinth. This has just one path with winds around to the centre, unlike puzzle mazes where you can take various paths.

The nature of the turf maze leads you to follow the path around and I found once I got to the middle, rather than walk straight over the maze to my wait out, I felt compelled to walk back through the maze to the exit/entrance. I don't know why, just felt like the thing to do.

Kevin didn't feel such a compulsion and once he got to the middle (you can see him above carefully following the maze through), he strode out across the maze to another part of the garden. I cannot decide if this is a gender thing, or laziness on his part...?!?!

I enjoyed visiting the Dower House Garden. Even though we were visiting at a time that Katharine described to me in an email enquiry as 'not at its best', I still found lots of discover and much beauty. I would like to return again in Spring. The descriptions of the garden in Spring in the book, along with my own observations, suggests this is a garden to visit all year around.

Shropshire holiday

2010-08-01T21:03:00.003+01:00

Kevin and I got back from a week in Shropshire yesterday. Perhaps not an exotic holiday, but a lovely and relaxing one which was just what we needed. We did some walks nearby (see below), and hired a car for a couple of days so we could visit a couple of gardens that were hard to get to by public transport. These were the Dower House Garden of The Morville Hours fame (and a very strong reason for choosing Shropshire for our holiday this year), and Wollerton Old Hall Garden, both of which I'll blog about separately.

We stayed in Ludlow, a pretty town with lots of historic buildings, some dating back to the 15th century, and the castle which dates to the Norman Conquest. A hilly town, because you build your castles on a hill, don't you know, but well worth it. The photo below is of the market square.

We took the opportunity of a guided walking tour so we could learn more about the history of Ludlow. The guide was clearly keen on architecture and buildings, and that was the main focus, rather than social history, which we prefer. However, it was engaging and one particularly interesting fact is that some of the 'Georgian' buildings you can see on the square, actually date to the medieval period. The owners, in an 18th century version of 'keeping up with the Jones's', couldn't afford to pull down their house and rebuild completely in the Georgian style as was the fashion of the time, so they just had the front refurbished to look Georgian, whilst inside the rest of the house remained medieval!

And of course, it has a castle which dates back to the Norman conquest. The 'of course' is you can trust a Gwenhwyfar to find a castle to play in on holidays if she can!

The first picture is a view of the castle from the river side, and the second below, from inside the castle. Unfortunately the castle isn't being looked after by English Heritage who are pretty good at keeping castles and ruins in good repair, but is privately owned by some Duke or Earl dude with an eye on profit. It shows. Part of the castle has been closed off to the public and 21st century private accommodation added at a nice exclusive price, the cheapest being £480 for 3 nights. And what you can visit, isn't very well looked after. There were trees, one at least over 5 ft, (sycamore I think) growing out of the top of some walls, the roots of which will destabilise the mortar and could lead to walls falling down. The remaining old iron-wood doors, must be about 15th century, are almost coming off their hinges, and pigeons are nesting and shitting all over the place. You have to be careful where you step.

I think my pictures might make the castle look in better repair than it is!

One of the particular reasons for choosing Shropshire was to do some walking in the hills of South Shropshire. We walked from Church Stretton up to Caer Caradoc. This picture of Caer Caradoc (the hill to the right of the picture) was taken from the Long Mynd the following evening.

Not a long walk, about 6 miles for the round trip, but very, very, steep. Well worth the effort though. The views from Caer Caradoc were breathtaking. We could actually see as far away as Hay Bluff in the Black Mountains. It was a good place to view the Long Mynd (below, with Church Stretton in the valley) to the west, the Wrekin to the north, and Clee Hills to the south-east.

Here are some sheep pretending to be goats up on top of Caer Caradoc.

My photographs in no way do the view any justice. It was a hazy day, and frankly, I don't think it is easy to capture the breadth of the views on camera. Or maybe I'm just not a good enough photographer?! I did manage to capture this Kestrel hovering, which I'm pleased with.

And here I am having a rest in the heather, just before we began the steep walk down.

We slacked off a bit the next day, and took advantage of the hire car and drove rather than walked up Long Mynd. Again, more beautiful views of the Shropshire hills. I think my picture of the wild ponies on Long Mynd captures the sparse beauty of the hills, reminiscent of Dartmoor. And isn't the foal cute!

Other wildlife we saw on the holiday was a hare, too quick for me to photograph, and Red Kites. Yes, we have Red Kites flying over Oxford these days, but they are still amazing birds to see.

In Much Wenlock, I snapped this sign that we found amusing on the wall of the old telegraph office, reminding us that every age has its 'hoodies'.

And for funniest village name of the trip, in the manner of Douglas Adam's Meaning of Liff, Diddlebury. Kevin and I thought this sounded like the kind of word you might use to describe someone who is a bit absent minded and does silly things getting themselves further into a muddle. "What a diddlebury, I've just put the cat in the fridge and the milk outside the back door... Argh!!!"

The holiday hasn't ended, we now have another week off at home, pottering about and maybe going for cycle rides. And blogging about our garden visits in Shropshire.

French Bean 'Ice Crystal'

2010-07-22T08:22:00.000+01:00

I love French beans, both climing and dwarf. One of the varieties I picked up when I attended Patrick of Bifurcated Carrots seed saving event last October, was 'Ice Crystal'. This was given to me by Dr Simon Platten who also attended the event. He is doing some interesting research on British home gardens and the levels of diversity in them.

I picked up several other Dwarf varieties and sowed some bog standard ones (ie. that you can easily get from garden centres or online), but so far these ones have been the most successful.

Even though the plants are not in the best position, they are in partial shade, they look incredibly healthy, as you can see. They are also quite prolific. Given I only planted five plants, in a week I've had two meals off of them (one for two people, another for three) and plenty more are growing.

They are unusal looking, in they are quite a pale green.

They might look a little anemic, but they were crunchy and juicy, a delight to taste. They went very nicely with my freshly dug Pentland Javelin potatoes and some honey mustard dressing, though just lightly steamed on their own would have been just as good.

I haven't always have the best success with French beans in the last couple of years, being so wet; French beans (dwarf or climbing) do like regular warm sun to get going in my experience. Other standard varieties you can get at garden centres or online, like Maxi and Tendergreen, planted close by, haven't done near as well, I guess they need more sun. I like that the Ice Crystal have done well under partial shade, as it suggests they might be a good variety for indifferent English summers.

I'm so pleased with them that I've decided to not pick any more, but just let them go to seed so I can save them and grow lots more next year.

Butterfly cakes

2010-07-22T07:55:00.000+01:00

My first attempt at Butterfly cakes:

They tasted great too!

In the wars, and parsnips

2010-07-14T18:03:00.001+01:00

No, not the Split Enz song.*

The lack of blogging is due to not just being too busy with two jobs, but also because the last couple of weeks have seen me in the wars. I, a) put out my lower back again, b) have my left elbow clicking out of place and therefore put all the muscles into spasm and causing constant pain and c) then got my left fingers burnt. All of which has meant I've had to limit computer time to just work instead of blogging. Thankfully, the lower back is ok now and the burns are healing. My arm is still giving me hell, so I'll make this a short blog.

The point of this blog was not necessarily to complain, although I did manage to sneak that in. Did you notice? I wanted to share some good news. Gardening news that is. Kevin and I pootled down to the Lottie on Sunday to do some watering. Well, Kevin did the watering, and I directed - cannot lift anything coz of my arm you see. And I got a nice surprise. Parsnips.

You see, I was pretty much giving up on having much of a parsnip crop this year. I have sown quite a few rows at home and on the Lottie, but apart from the 10 that I specifically germinated and planted individually as a trial, nothing was germinating. About a 6 weeks ago I gave it one last shot, sowing some Turga, Tender & True and Kral Russian (from the Heritage Seed Library). I didn't really expect them to germinate, particularly with such warm weather. You usually sow parsnips between about February and May, so mid June in the heat seemed like hope over what's on the seed packet.

But to my great delight, there the little buggers were - growing! Real little parsnip leaves and everything. I forgot to take my camera, so you'll have to take my word for it. But boiling weather and no rain and I got parsnips to germinate and grow. Well I'll be...

So not plant pics, but here's me looking cheery at Bee Day last Saturday at Barracks Lane Community Garden.

*As a teenager, and in fact still as an adult, I loved/love Split Enz. On their Corroboree album is a song 'In the wars' and immediately I hear Tim Finn singing it in my head singing every time I hear the words 'in the wars'... So couldn't resist putting it in the title.

David Cameron & West Papua

2010-07-14T17:29:00.001+01:00

It's not often that West Papua gets on the news. Rich in resources and a highly biodiverse environment, but controlled with brutal violence by Indonesia (largely because of those resources), the West Papuan people undergo daily human rights abuses, and have no say in the governance of their country. Most countries and the UN quietly ignore what's going on in West Papua, and have done for over 40 years. So it comes as a surprise to find that David Cameron is a hero to West Papuan people.

This ITV news piece explains why Cameron is considered a hero in West Papua. They believe him being PM of the UK will help them gain their freedom from Indonesia. On the one hand, getting West Papua into the news is good, because it raises the profile of their occupation and abuse. But Cameron a hero? The man is very good at speaking without saying anything, let alone commit to anything, unless it's free trade or no taxes for the rich. (I guess he is a hero to the rich.) I hope he doesn't disappoint the West Papuan people and their faith in him. So let's step up the pressure on Cameron and the UK government.

The Free West Papua Campaign is asking people to write to their MP and ask her/him to write to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and remind him of the hope West Papuans have of Cameron's government. Ask what action the UK Government plans to take towards achieving self-determination for West Papua. I suggest you also write to David Cameron with the same question too.

Just before the May elections, Cameron described what what happening in West Papua as a terrible situation. Fine - let's see you do something about it then Cameron.

WDM conference & 40th, and a walk in the Peak

2010-06-22T22:39:00.007+01:00

Kevin and I were in Sheffield on the weekend, at the WDM Campaigner Convention and AGM. It's also WDM's 40th year. Yay WDM! The picture is of a celebratory cake made for a recent Oxford WDM group 40th celebration. Made from Fairtrade ingredients of course!

The best part of the conference for me was the launch of the new campaign on food commodities speculation, Stop Betting on Hunger. The gist of the campaign is that investment banks, like Goldman Sachs, are betting on the price of staple foods, like wheat, maize and soya. This is causing food prices to rise and making people go hungry. Betting on food was one of the things that lead to the food riots in 2008. The new WDM campaign will be calling on the UK government to stop food commodity speculation.I'll write more about the campaign at a later date, but in the meantime, go to WDM's website to take action.

On Sunday, Kevin and I joined a large group of WDMers for a 5-mile walk in the Peak District, walking between Hope and Edale, passing Mam Tor. It was a stunningly beautiful day and great company. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking...

The peak looming over Castleton.

From a field of buttercups to Mam Tor.

shadows and light

(WDM) Group photo!

I made it to the top. Hollins Cross, on the ridge between Hope and Edale.

Kevin striding towards Edale. "We have a train to catch, stop taking pictures Gwenfar".

Happy Gwenfar. And thanks to Sarah from WDM Sheffield for organising such a beautiful walk.

More pictures on my web album.

Of broad beans and black fly

2010-06-16T22:24:00.000+01:00

As mentioned previously, I'm experimenting with not pinching out the tips of broad beans this year to see if it makes any difference with black fly. So far my experiement is going well. I've had some black fly on a couple of plants, but after spraying with my steely soapy water squirter, the black fly have died and my beans continue to grow very nicely. The ones in the front garden are about 4 ft high!

Someone mentioned to me that the other reason for pinching out tips of broad beans is it encourages the beans lower down to grow. Well, so far the beans lower down are growning just fine. I expect next week I'll have my first harvest of broad beans.

I don't know how representative this year is of every other summer when it comes to my small experiment. It's warm, but with cooling winds quite a bit, so maybe not humid enough for the black fly to really take off. So I'll continue with my experiment this year, and try the same again next year and see what happens.

In the meantime, only a week to go (roughly!) for my first broad bean harvest. yum yum yum - my taste buds are tingling just thinking about it!

Digitalis 'Pam's Choice'

2010-06-11T19:45:00.001+01:00

My favourite flower in the garden at the moment.

What's growing down at the lottie?

2010-05-26T22:14:00.001+01:00

It was unbelieveably hot last weekend. Still, the taties just HAD to go in, so Kevin and I slapped on sun factor 50 lotion and silly hats, and went down to the lottie. Mark (co-lottie partner) and Jenny (Mark's partner) were already there when we arrived getting their taties in. Nice to know I'm not the only late one.

I gave my silly hat to Jenny to wear for a while. Stylish huh.

We sweated away in the burning sun, but darn it, we got those taties in. Finally.

I got a bit of a shock really, because I've not been down to the lottie for a couple of weeks. Everything had grown. Just look at the garlic! Oh, and Kevin in his silly hat.

The red veg is a red Romano lettuce. It's a great colour, and stays crunchy even a day or two after you have picked it and made up a large bowl of salad. Bonus.

Because of the warm weather, the spinach is now bolting, so I need to pull it up and sow some more. Once it bolts it becomes bitter. It's like the plant is protecting itself and saying, hey, I want to set seed so to stop the bloody human from constantly picking my leaves I'm going to make myself less tempting. Well, that's fine spinach, it's lettuce eating time anyway. So there.

The bit of empty earth is where I'm going to sow some carrots and parsnips. I was going to sow them on Sunday, but the heat got just too much and we were wilting, and decided heading home for a cool drink was a better move. Before we left, we finished off giving some of the plants a drink too. As you can see, I'm quite the fashion statement at the lottie. Oh yeah.

Where to old clothes go when they are dying? Down the lottie.

Damsons and broad beans

2010-05-24T21:16:00.002+01:00

I'm very excited because my Damson, Shropshire Prune, not only flowered this year, but has it's first fruits now growing! I did see lots of bees around the blossoms in April but didn't really expect to get fruit as the tree is only 2-3 years old, and was just planted in this place in the cold of January this year.

Damson jam is my favourite, and it isn't always easy to buy, so I figured I'll grow my own damsons and then I'll always have my own jam. Well, the growing part has started.

I'm also experimenting with a kind of forest garden concept, also imspired by Alys Fowlers' Edible Garden, and am growing broad beans under the damson tree this year.

As the Damson is young it's root system isn't that deep or far. It is a fairly sunny and protected, so rather than just putting perennials underneath the tree, I thought whilst the tree is small, I'd try veg. These broad beans are Masterpiece Green Longpod, I'm trying them for the first time this year. They are growing really well so far, so both tree and beans are working ok to this point. Will be interesting to see how they continue to grow and fruit.

The other little 'experiment' I'm trying is NOT pinching out the tips of the broad beans. Every year I diligently pinch out the tips of the broad beans, as this is supposed to stop black fly. So all the garden books and experts say. Well it bloody doesn't! They still rampage all over my broad beans and I have to fight them with my deadly washing-up liquid squirter. Usually they get half and I get half. Ok, maybe the squirter isn't that deadly. To add insult to injruy, by pinching out the tips I loose potential beans too. So this year I'm not going to pinch out the tips and see what happens. I suspect I'll still need my not-so-deadly squirter...