Makeover

If you are a regular reader you will have noticed that I have given this blog a bit of a makeover. Not being very technically minded it took me quite a long time to work out how to do it, particularly when it came to sizing photographs. The air was pretty blue for a while I can tell you. Anyway, I am pleased with the final result, but I do have a confession to make, which is that the picture at the top of the blog is in fact a picture of my old allotment, by that I mean two allotments ago. Perhaps that doesn't matter although I feel it might give a false impression of what my current situation is!

Anyway, having absolutely nothing to take pictures of at the moment, except for pots of compost containing seeds which have yet to germinate, I have made a little collage, a sort of advance preview, of what I HOPE to see adorning my present allotment this coming summer. I have recently sown seeds of cosmos, swan river daisy, marigold, calendula, borage, poppy, cornflower, echium, nasturtium, sunflower, cerinthe, verbena bonariensis, godetia and candytuft. Plus I have planted small plants of lavender, ox eye daisy, fox and cubs, English mace, yarrow and one or two others I can't recall just now. So not only will it look pretty and delightful to humans, but will also have the pollinating insects swarming in from far and wide. So far only the marigolds, swan river daisies and cosmos are starting to come up, but it's early days. Fingers crossed this will be the most colourful allotment year to date.

Springing into Action

It seems that spring has sprung a little early this year. Another beautiful sunny day here, my window thermometer recorded 16 degrees, although I don't know how accurate that is. It certainly felt very warm while I was working up at the plot this afternoon, I was down to my shirtsleeves. There is more warm weather forecast for this week, then we'll be into March - meteorological spring proper. My garlic (above) will hopefully now start to romp away, I weeded round it last week as it was getting a little swamped in chickweed. On the right, in the picture, the two sticks mark where I have put in one row of shallots. It doesn't seem very much, one row, but that's all there was in the packet. Might have to get another one. I have also put in three double rows of broad beans.

I have been aware for a while that my plot lacked a number sign, so I found myself an offcut of plywood, cut out a circle and turned it into this sunflower. I am going to grow a few real sunflowers and use this to support them, later in the summer.

At home, my onion seedlings are doing pretty well now, and the second batch I started have all now come up too. I  have pricked out the celery and celeriac seedlings, and they are now in the greenhouse, developing their first true leaves. A few sweet peas have come up, but I have had to re sow because most of the first sowing rotted off and didn't come up. I have also sown a tub full of salad and spinach leaves in the greenhouse, which look as if they are just starting to germinate. And last but not least I have sown chillies, peppers and a few Marmande tomatoes in the heated propagator a few days ago, but they have not come up yet. Next to go in will  be the red onion seeds, and if the weather continues mild, it won't be long before I can start doing the first sowings at the allotment: carrots, spinach, beetroot etc. Don't you just love the beginning of spring?

Seed Potatoes

I've just got back from my annual seed potato buying trip. It's one of the first landmarks in my gardening year and one I really look forward to. This year it has been even more exciting, because with more space to fill I can now choose an even bigger range of varieties than ever. I went over to Russells Garden Centre just outside Coventry, which is an independent garden centre, where you can buy most of the varieties loose. Unfortunately, one of my tried and trusted favourites, Anya, was not available loose this time, only in very large bags of about 40 tubers. I didn't want that many, so I'm giving them a miss this year.

Before I went I measured my potato patch, and carefully worked out exactly how many tubers I have room for. I decided I would plant four types of maincrops in rows of seven, and seven types of earlies/second earlies in rows of ten. This is what I have chosen:

Maincrops:
Maris Piper
Cara (one of my regulars)
Sante
Picasso

Second Earlies:
Charlotte (another regular)
Yukon Gold
Apache (pictured above)

First Earlies:
Casablanca
Lady Christl
Rocket

The intriguing-looking Apaches were only available in pre-packed bags, so I will have two rows of those. So all except for the Cara and Charlotte are varieties I have never grown before (not that I can remember anyway!)

I shall now start setting them all out in their egg boxes to chit - hope I have enough egg boxes!

RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch Weekend - What did You See?

Recently we have been visited regularly by a group of Redpolls. They are a type of finch, with pinky red patches on their heads and breasts like this one above. (Sorry it's so blurred, I was in a hurry to photograph it before it flew away). Some are more brightly coloured than others, I think it is the males that have more colour. If the first one to arrive had not been so brightly coloured, I would not have been able to identify them. The females are really quite non-descript. I had  never heard of a Redpoll, let alone seen one, so I had to leaf through the bird book until I saw something that matched. They squabble with the Goldfinches who were already regular visitors, so I decided to get myself one of these extra large nyger seed dispensers, with multiple perches, so more could visit at any one time. They still squabble over it, even though there's more than enough room for all of them.


Over the course of my one hour, this is what I saw:

3 Blackbirds
2 Collared Doves
1 Greenfinch
1 Robin
1 Blue tit
2 Dunnocks
2 Crows
2 Starlings
2 Chaffinches
4 Goldfinches
1 Long-tailed tit
2 Woodpigeons
1 Coal tit
1 Great tit
3 Redpolls
1 Seagull

Did you take part? If so what did you see?

The Victorian Kitchen Garden

In my quest for substitute gardening activities during winter, I often turn to gardening books and magazines, but what I really enjoy is to immerse myself completely in some full-on gardening fantasy, ideally through the medium of a screen. I had seen adverts for The Victorian Kitchen Garden DVD collection in magazines, and thought it seemed rather expensive, and it recently occurred to me that I might be able to rent it instead. So I popped over to Lovefilm.com, marked it 'high priority', and it landed on my doormat in a couple of days. I was intending to spin out the couple of hours worth of Disc One over a few days, but ended up watching it all in the same day, then watching it again the next day!

It is quite an old production, I'd guess around 30 years old, the presenters are obviously from the Percy Thrower School, jackets and ties at all times. They waffle on a bit here and there, but they know their onions.

This particular kitchen garden belongs to a country house in Berkshire. It is a huge walled garden, with great expanses of glasshouses and coldframes, espaliered fruit trees on every wall, and perfect gravel pathways with clematis-clothed arches dotted around. There are rows of outbuildings, not only potting sheds and tool sheds, but forcing sheds, and soil sheds, and a special building to house the huge boiler which heats the glasshouses. There is a fruit store which looks like a small thatched cottage, and even an ice-house. (Forgive me if I'm confusing this last bit with Chatsworth, which is also featured in the Introduction quite a lot).

The series takes you through the gardening year, month by month, describing the day to day lives of the Head Gardener and his staff: what they would be doing, and how they would be doing it, in the days prior to the invention of plastic pots, bags of ready made compost, nylon netting and horticultural fleece. They had some pretty resourceful methods of pest control! Of course, being right next door to the stable block, they were never short of manure, including the fresh stuff for creating hot beds, but imagine how much time and effort would have gone into shifting all that amount of muck. Just as well they had a staff of around 20 people.

Wealthy Victorians enjoyed showing off at their dinner parties, and liked to impress their guests with the range of exotic produce on offer. If they took a fancy to aubergines, or pineapples, the Head Gardener was expected to produce them himself, on the estate. Not only did they have to produce enough to feed His Lordship and his family and dinner guests all year round, but enough for all the servants as well. The large gardening staff and the elaborate, purpose built equipment would have been essential, as would access to his Lordship's presumably quite generous gardening budget.

This is a relaxing, old fashioned TV series, perfect winter viewing for anyone who is dying to get on with the new gardening season, but finds themselves confined to barracks due to the cold, wet or frosty weather. You will be inspired with all kinds of new ideas. Or, if you're looking for some motivation to get you going again after the winter break, this will certainly help. So far I have watched January through to May, and I can't wait for Disc Two, with the second half of the year, to pop through the door. If you don't want to buy or rent it, you can also watch it all on You Tube.

First Seeds of the Season

It's too cold and frosty to work on the allotment at the moment, and I have been getting twitchy sitting waiting for the season to get underway. So I decided it wasn't too early to start sowing a few seeds. The only one of these I have done before is celeriac. Although the packet says sow Feb - March I normally start these off in January as they are pretty slow growers, and by the time they germinate it will probably be February. I guessed that as celery is very similar I could do the same with this. I know a lot of people sow their onions at Christmas, so I'm pretty sure I'm OK with these too.

They are all in the conservatory so they are well lit, and will all be covered in bubble wrap, and the celery and celeriac are sitting on my heated propagator. Once they have germinated I can move them onto the windowsill and make room in the propagator for the next batch of seeds, toms, peppers, chillies etc.

I have made a bit more progress with the digging during the mild weather last week, so the plot is nearly ready for spring. There is not much more I can do now until next month, when I will be buying and chitting seed potatoes, starting off the greenhouse seeds, pruning the autumn fruiting raspberries and, weather permitting, sowing broad beans.

Christmas Dinner Preparations

I've been to the allotment today (first time in ages) to dig up the parsnips and sprouts for Christmas Day. I would have left it until nearer the time but the forecast is for wet and horrible tomorrow, and today was just beautiful. The sun was so warm I could have sat and sunbathed. However it was a little muddy for that, so I got on with the job in hand. The scale in the picture above is a little misleading, as both sprouts and parsnips look average-sized. In reality the sprouts are not much bigger than peas and the parsnips are monster bully-boys!

I have been busy at home as well, making crackers. They are one of those things which, once you have made them yourself, you never want to go back to shop-bought ones. A bit like growing veg I suppose. Not only can you make them look exactly how you want, you can also fill them with what you want. Party poppers, indoor fireworks (one of which turned out to be an outdoor firework, but that's another story), rocket balloons and chocolates, are just some of the things I have included over the years. I haven't yet done lottery tickets.....

We have also got plenty of lights and greenery festooned about the place of course, and the food shopping is done except for the birds which we will collect tomorrow. We are having a chicken, a duck and some pheasants for a change from turkey this year. 

Well now it just remains for me to wish you all a very HAPPY Christmas (or in some cases, just a bearable one!) and a very PRODUCTIVE new year! xxxx