Grow

With the stream of falling snow elegantly en-robing the garden I have no choice other than to sit and make plans for the days when both time and weather allows to step outside and start the garden work for the first time this year.

Truth is that despite all my favoured books on vegetable gardening offering a variety of jobs to be progressing at this time of year (from the creation of a hot-bed to winter digging) I struggle to get motivated and wade around, bundled up in ill fitting work clothes with hands cracked and numbed by the biting air temperature. Fair weather gardener I am not but equally I’m not a glutton for frozen punishment. Also I err on the side of giving the land a deserved rest. Dormancy has it’s place in the yearly cycle and the ice breaks up the soil and kills pests (or so I’m led to believe – I never saw any reduction of garden pests in the spring following last February’s two weeks of heavy snow and ice).

I have then, decamped to the kitchen table after trudging up to the greenhouse, the frozen door shuddering open on my tugs, taking a minute or so to check my Fig is still alive (Ficus carica) and I was away with the crushed and open card box containing the ripped seed packets that remain from three years of trial and error in the garden.
Before ordering the new selection of seeds for 2010 I decided to check my existing stock, removing any empty packets and with those still worth keeping I transferred them from the damp box into an ugly biscuit tin – not the delightful vintage one I had been hoping to find around the house.

But what of the viability of two, three and four year old seeds that have not been stored in ideal conditions? Browsing around I found both conflicting advice and a confusing list of expected use by guidelines for different types of plant seeds. I’m still looking for the definitive guide for seed use and storage.

A new container for my seed collection – Some packets are half empty, some haven’t been opened.

I’ve chosen Plants of Distinction this year as my main supplier this year, their catalogue being the only one I could find in the house, the others were chucked in a recent recycling purge. Over the past few years I’ve used Seeds of Change, The Organic Gardening Catalogue and a few supplements from Marshalls and Sarah Raven. This may appear as if I’m thoroughly researching and testing the non F1 or heritage seed market, I’m not – there is little method with my choices other than the tempation of a recent catalogue delivery.

This is my 2010 order:

• Brocolli – Green Spears
• Runner Beans – Scarlet Empire
• Carrot – Ideal Red
• Courgette – Pin Stripe and Bambino
• Cucumber – Bushy (dwarf variety)
• Lettuce – Tom Thumb
• Fennel – Finale
• Parsnip – Guernsey Half Long
• Pepper – Joe’s Long Cayenne
• Tomatoes – Beams Yellow Pear, Czech’s Excellent Yellow, Chocolate Cherry and Sioux.

And here are the seeds that will be added to the plot from the biscuit tin:

• Squash – Blue Ballet
• Climbing Beans – Cherokee Trail of Tears and Barlotta Lingua Di Fuoco
• Peas – Feltham First
• And whatever Parsley and Coriander varieties I can find.

The Broad Beans (Aquadulce Claudia) and Garlic (can’t remember the variety) are already in the ground. Now, with the snow deepening, the next kitchen table task is to sketch out my planting scheme.

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On a slope too steep to walk without staggering, where the wild strawberries (Fragaria Vesca) have stubbornly conquered almost half the ground and, prior to this Spring, where hundreds of Spanish Bluebells pernicious in their spread once ruled, stand six apple trees.

This bank of earth, dividing the two garden spaces is too narrow to plant four trees let alone six (seven if you count a stray sapling), their branches overlap, tangled together and this overcrowding must be one of the causes of their suffering..

Twisted and gnarled, they are all sick. Suffering from a history of poor or incomplete pruning with gaping holes that collect rainwater to rot them, limbs that scratch and rub overhead and, clogging up the cracks and crevices from late Spring to Autumn is the sticky white fluff of the Woolly Aphid. All these afflictions can be healed with some judicious pruning, greasing and washing. Unfortunately the tell-tale signs of Canker (splitting bark exposing the hard grey dead wood) I’ve seen of late ratchet up the concern somewhat. I’ve read the RHS Advice on Canker and plan to rid as much as I can this Winter although such is the spread in two of the trees that I have thought of grubbing them out.

The old men of the garden gave a great sulk this year. The crop was shamefully light — six trees and only a small basket of fruit. Last year I decided to reshape the trees to begin cutting out the canker and inward growing branches (plus all the usual twiggy pruning). I’ve since learned that a tree’s store of energy is matched to support the growth of the size of tree before pruning. If a large amount of growth is removed then the excess energy feeds the vigorous growth of whippy stems, suckers and water spouts (thin branches that usually grow straight upright) instead of fruit or spur growth.

As for the fruit, four of the six share the same variety. I searched through the list on Orange Pippin resource and narrowed it down to either the Catshead or the Calville Blanc D’Hiver. I’m plumping for the Catshead though, certainly the apples match the variety’s angular, ugly ridges and coarse texture. Originating in the 17th Century I’m pleased that they are a heritage variety despite being diseased and not especially attractive. The other two trees produce apples that are larger, have an orange blush on one side and again are not an eating variety but their identification eludes me.

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Arguably the most delicious of all our native berries the desire for a productive Raspberry plot led me to dig in several bare root canes last year. Unfortunately the mistakes made with the planting depth and incorrect pruning leaving my collection of canes in an unenviable state.

The distinction between Summer and Autumn fruiting canes was clearly lost on me as I chopped several bushes down to the ground after fruiting in July only to discover that Summer canes fruit on growth from the previous year. And for no reason I can recall I opted to leave several canes, that I later discovered were Autumn fruiting unchecked.

Despite five of the plants growing on to crop (they are supposed to be one of the best low-maintenance of the fruiting plants) I was disappointed with the number of berries. Either they need to establish a good root system before fruiting handfuls of berries or the planting depth wasn’t right. That said, I have plans to lift and replant the fruiting area of my L shaped raised bed but wonder if this would disturb the roots?

Undeterred I’m going to order a few more Autumn fruiting canes (likely to be the Autumn Bliss variety), prepare supports where necessary and start again. Possibly because I’m impatient for a garden task to lose an hour to or rather it’s likely to be far more enjoyable experience than say, sorting the mess of the compost heap or the despondent clearing of the pigeon-pecked cauliflower seedlings. And this time I’m going to label them clearly.

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I’ve taken a gamble this year and stuffed the garden full of bulbs. It’s part of the long term plan to introduce flowering plants into the garden after two successive years of pulling up, scrubbing out and lifting all of awkward looking shrubs and digging over ground that, in it’s dormancy, given safe haven for the rampant Spanish Bluebells. I’ve tried to keep to just two bulb species, the Alium and Tulip. Choosing from these several varieties that I hope will start to define many of the borders and corners around my disjointed plot.

I’ll admit the Aliums I bought in are a predictable bunch. Forty of the ever popular, striking Alium Hollandicum ‘Purple Sensation’ bulbs have been pushed into the clay rich soil at the front and dotted in between the ailing Hydrangea Annabelle plants (they battled throughout the growing season against slugs and a persistent wind) along the side boundary. Fifty Allium Sphaerocephalon, arriving as part of a cheap bundle, were quickly despatched to a shady, dry strip neath a hedge. I don’t hold much hope for them. And a small packet of Allium Ostrowskanium were quickly spread throughout the patch of Echinacea White Swan that seem to be bulking up well. I took more care with the placement of the fifteen or so Alium Caeruleum bulbs that I had mistakenly ordered but after a little research discovered that their rarity, being a mid blue Alium, and an heirloom plant from 1830 that surprisingly shoots up stems of around 24 inches despite such tiny bulbs, deserved to define the walk up from apple trees to the vegetable garden. They should look rather regal rising above the charming but common Cornflowers, Geraniums and Campions that are starting to knit together beside the stone steps.

Opposite to the abandon of formality in planting the Aliums  I took to planting the satisfyingly firm, chunky Tulip bulbs with more seriousness. All were from the ‘Lily’ class of Tulip, admired for their elegant, tight blooms, and chosen to compliment two new border areas that I’ve spent a few days working on improving over the Summer. White Triumphator, with it’s distinctive reflexed petals, arched and pointed, should burst up in neat contrast to the messy white border on the low edge of the orchard slope. The clean whites of the Triumphator have been paired with Sappora with it’s promise of primose yellows and frostier greens. Several more Triumphator Tulips also line the top edge of the orchard slope that has only recently been cleared, ready for a gravel path and a low hedge of Rosemary (although this may need to be rethought given the achingly slow growth of the wiry Rosemary plugs).

The last set of Tulips have been shoved into the awkward sticky clay bank above the pond where I have part ruined through clumsiness and part saved over a couple of frantic gardening hours that were devoted to near impossible attempts to remove a horrible looking variegated grass and some indeterminate narrow leaved shrub. The intention was to replace the unwanted planting with a bed of Euphorbias and this has been mostly successful however their companions (a few Gaura Lindheimer and Hellebores) seem less capable of settling in the ever present ferns are starting to spread again. It’s the Euphorbias I want to thrive however and have placed twelve Tulipia Spring Green bulbs within their reach hoping that their fresh white green feathery petals will play against the thickening Euphorbia spikes and lead the much needed regeneration of the garden focal point.

As is more often the case much of the planting was done in haste. Only afterwards did I spend a short while reading around techniques for planting bulbs and found that Sarah Raven challenges the standard ‘double height’ recommendation, planting her Tulips at a 10″ depth.

In the bulb fields of Holland, they are planted near the soil surface to encourage them to reproduce. The higher soil encourages reproduction of the bulb, with the mother bulb developing satellites, or bulbils around her base. Once this has happened, most of her energy goes into these offspring. The mother bulb will almost certainly not flower the following year and the bulbils will not be large enough to flower for two or three years after that, resulting in a blind bulb.

Despite being beholden to the seasons and the slow motion life of plants, much of gardening can be about instant impact, be it pruning, planting in new specimens or clearing spaces. The act of planting bulbs returns us to the contemplative, patient source of gardening. So as the garden melts into Winter, hidden beneath the mulch of brown herbaceous fall out, rotting leaves and sodden soil is over a hundred sleeper cells that should leap up and revolutionise the spring flowering to guide and inspire the activity around the garden next year.

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I waited until they betrayed themselves. In the past fortnight hundreds of green sentinels had stabbed up through the soil’s winter skin. In a few weeks time the whole embankment would be a mess of fleshy leaves but now the fingers of bright, base green grouped in clumps made it easy to spot where to dig.

I love this type of gardening; A simple, repetitive task and my progress immediate and obvious, laid out before me. I took to the slope with a two forks and a trug. Expecting to yank out the bluebells whole with the minimum of fuss I was surprised to find how deep the colonies were rooted.  I was pulling up fistfuls of the white balls but getting down to their layer wasn’t easy. The bulbs squeaked and ripped if my fork pushed into the pulp, I  pushed and prised open the ground and then took to my knees and used my hand fork to scrape and dig down.

Bare earth beneath the apple trees.

I chucked the stems and bulb waste into the trug that I dragged around with me and when this was full I tipped the mass into one of the large garden waste square bags. I’ve found these to be really useful in all of my heavy garden clearance work. I can heave and drag the scratchy plastic bags down steps and over the ground, only one has torn to date.

Hours later the orchard bank was a mess of overturned soil with  several deep pockets where I hadn’t smoothed over or filled in with spoil but satisfyingly there were no bluebell shoots.

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I’ve lifted the woven clods of loam that were slung on the new raised beds and raked out the excess soil. From the four lines of garlic sown in early November only three plants survived the five day build project. The construction of the new raised bed – a chunky ‘L’ shape now taking up half the top garden and laying of paving was less intrusive as I feared but there is still plenty to clear up and prepare for the planting season. At least I’ve started – making good use of this mild tail end to Febraury – Incredible to think that only a fortnight ago I was hacking away the inches of crusted, icy snow from our steps.

Last year I stalled early on as I struggled with first finding the time and then the gumption necessary to construct my greenhouse. To cap it all I spent too long deliberating over the layout and materials of the vegetable garden settling for a half-hearted attempt to cover the grass with bark and some shoddy square beds. The grass grew through the chippings all too quickly and the beds, whilst functional were never loved – looking as if they were dropped on the ground and not grown out from it.

I’ve started to dig in manure and rake over to remove the larger stones but the vegetable bed isn’t the only area that calls for attention. I have to make a start on the culling of the Spanish Bluebell horde before they riot through the the garden. Then there is the pond and it’s unloved, rose and fern bank surround, the tired and worn grass square, another L-shaped bed empty save for clay and weeds and finally I’d like to cut the grass verge near the roadside to neat, clipped edge. And for that I’m going to invest in a new tool – An edging spade.

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