Garden Diary: March

The garden this morning. It's just starting to come to life after the winter:

This was taken not much more than a month ago.

After doing lots of pruning through the early spring, it's now time to get sowing! Last week I went and bought a mini-greenhouse, which I'm very pleased with. Much warmer than the garage.

It currently contains Genovese Basil, Dill, Marjoram, Sage, Thyme, Aubretia, Helianthemum, Campanula carpatica, Arabis, mixed salad leaves, May Queen Lettuce, French Marigold, Dwarf Phlox, Nasturtiums, and Tomato 'Gardener's delight' and Leek 'De Carentan' sowed today. It occurs to me that this is a rather weird collection - it's just because they are the ones which can be sown in March of a large collection of seed packets. Many of these are old seed: I am giving them 'half a chance'. I also got a bit carried away in Lidl a couple of time as their seeds are 28p a packet. Will report back on the success of these.

In the Autumn I sowed some seeds which can over-winter. I sowed all of them a bit late, but as they were old seed thought I'd give them that 'half chance'. Lettuce 'Valdor' didn't do a thing, and the Perpetual Spinach popped up but is still not doing much. Soon I will hoof them out and plant spuds in that, my biggest pot. However the Tatsoi sat there an inch or so high throughout all the cold weather underneath a bit of old plastic sheet then a month ago started to make growth. I've tried to transplant some into the empty half of the pot where the 'Valdor' was, but they aren't keen. Will start eating them soon, and will definitely sow some next back end. The seemingly empty pot has garlic in it, sown earlier this week.

Herbs in a strawberry pot, and a collection of rescued and divided plants. The herb pot has a plastic milk bottle with holes in it sunk into the compost behind the top-most thyme. I'm hoping that this will mean that I can get water to all the plants.

I can't resist taking cuttings when I prune, even if it's the wrong time of year. Here's a tray of Hebes waiting to be potted on - when there's room for more pots! Also Rosemary, Red-, Black- and White-currants, Gooseberries and various others. I brought some of these into the garage in the coldest weather, but most seem OK. Cistus and Strawberry Sage cuttings are looking slightly peaky, but these are not very hardy shrubs.

This is where the herb and veg plants are going to go, if not into containers. It's a little plot about 2m square on our very fertile clay. I've just cleared it of perennials, which are waiting in basins to be re-sited. I realised the other day that this part of the garden is almost exactly where I had my first garden, an alpine garden, back when I was 10 or so. I loved the Latin names: Ajuga reptans 'Rainbow' (even if I thought it was Ajuga 'Reptan's Rainbow'!) and the garden did pretty well for an alpine garden on heavy clay.

There are still alpines, but in containers where we can (theoretically) maintain the correct soil conditions. I weeded this one after taking the photo, but it really needs everything taking out and new compost and grit added. When I've time.

Return of El Gordo

Back in January I blogged about 'our' squirrel, El Gordo, and my efforts to stop him eating the peanuts put out for the lickle birdies. I made three squirrel baffles from plastic bowls, and they worked pretty well. El Gordo disappeared. We actually got a little concerned, particularly as the weather changed for the worse. But then the frost split one of the baffles - enough for him to take heart and renew his attack. Over the last week or so he has been seen pulling at it, jumping on it, getting another squirrel to help and even trying to get the local fat pigeon in on the act.

This is the result:

Baffle baffled!

So we've decided that we actually quite like our squirrel, and so long as he's not eating the actual birdfeeders any more (bit expensive) we'll let him eat the peanuts when he can. But I have mended the baffle...

"Oh yeah?"

The early bird...

...caught by an Evening Post photographer catching a worm!



Seems I have found myself to be Nottingham Organic Gardeners' publicity officer!

SOOOO busy!

Too busy to blog!

I've got some work as a sessional tutor by our local college to teach gardening to community groups, and this week I'm starting three courses on growing veg from seed. So I've been getting my head around lesson plans, teaching schedules, enrolment forms... until my head hurts. But it's great to be able to plan learning around something I love and feel I know enough about. I realised the other day that the best thing about this sort of teaching is that I can be me. When I was doing secondary teaching I always felt I was pretending to be someone else.

I'm also doing lots of gardening as well as talking about it, and a couple of years after swearing I'd never do events again, I'm getting mixed up in organising events connected with Nottingham's Transition Town movement. The Great Spring Sowing has so far involved meetings which manage to be unstructured, well-organised and enjoyable all at the same time. Chair? Shmair!

I've also - unusually for me - been watching quite a few telly programmes. For some reason the period after Christmas always seems to be good for telly. I've been enjoying the 'Round the World in 80 Faiths' programme. I thought that the presenter, Peter Owen Jones, was going to be pretty irritating, but warmed to him as he gave most things a go, getting into some rather harrowing situations and some very moving ones too. I'm amazed how many different faiths there are, and I imagine the programme could have wound up some people either by leaving out their particular faith , or by showing a too-quick snapshot of it. I was a smidgin annoyed at the example of atheism - but then I realised that this was just the sort of response that all the other 79 were creating in someone, somewhere. I'm also enjoying the series 'Christianity - a history', each episode of which is presented by different people so each one is very different from the others. I feel that the programmes presented by atheists are more acute and bolder in their approach, while the others tend to be descriptive - but still interesting. Cherie Blair next week on the future of Christianity... So television is rubbish these days? Not in my opinion. Let's hope that the BBC and Channel 4 do manage to carry on producing such good stuff.

Similar but different: the current bevy of Darwin programmes are looking promising. The recent Attenborough one - 'Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life' - was terrific. No longer on i-player but the tree of life animation (a bit devoid of plant life! But still stunning) is here. The first of Attenborough's Natures Great Events series was heart-wrenching. Not looking good for polar bears... The Natural World programme 'A Farm for the Future' was cracking. Even though I know a bit about the subject matter there were plenty of shocks. There was a more upbeat message too: it included the best short descriptions of permaculture and forest gardening I've seen, and demonstable links between older farmers and the younger ones trying to cut their energy use.

Which kind of brings me back to where I started - growing food. Quite important really.

Green in Snow

I’ve been helping out at a super project - FRESH is part of EcoWorks in the St. Ann’s Allotments. It’s a social enterprise, one arm of which supplies fresh vegetables to discriminating cafés in the city. So what can FRESH provide fresh in winter?

Claytonia (Claytonia perfoliata) (above) is a plant originally from the west coast of North America where the miners used it to prevent scurvy. It’s got lots of vitamin C and is also known as Miner’s Lettuce. It was introduced to Britain and grows wild where it is known as Spring Beauty. It takes to polytunnel life very well, popping up all over the place. I’ve noticed that some has started flowering, despite the cold.

Cornsalad (Valeriana locusta, also known as Lamb’s Lettuce) is also found wild, but with much smaller leaves than the salad variety. Also like Claytonia, it has high vitamin C levels and can even be grown outdoors. It's the dark green rosettes in the middle of the photo (taken before the snow meant more urgent tasks were impossible and we did a lot of weeding!)

American Land Cress (Barbarea verna) tastes like watercress but is easier to grow. Apparently it’ll even grow under Jerusalem artichokes, runner beans, corn, etc. Like the above, it has naturalised in Britain.

You know that mustard you grow to put with cress in an egg sandwich? This is what it looks like if you let it grow:

Each leaf is about 30cm long and wonderfully hot. It’s called ‘Giant Red’, and is a form of Mustard Greens (Brassica juncea). Its Wikipedia entry has interesting information about its role in Soul Food and remediation of contaminated soil. Also nice in salad, and I believe that mustard greens are the ‘methi’ in Indian food and appear in far eastern dishes too.

Green in Snow is Giant Red’s less powerful brother but still packs a punch. We've a whole greenhouse full of it!

FRESH also have Pak Choi, Tatsoi, Mizuna, Mibuna and various other tasty leaves.

Seeds and more info from the nice people at RealSeeds. Cultivation info on all these on the RHS website or BBC Gardening.

I'm sno' angel

Pictures from my local park. Not quite as many as there might have been, as the camera batteries kept packing up and I had to keep warming them in my hand. It's to do with the slowing of the rate of reaction in the batteries in the cold (said in a science-teacher voice...)



Dog was very unsure about this strange creature!

The snowman had disappeared by the time I walked back: a bunch of teenagers had dismantled it and were trying to make even huger snowballs. It's been nice today to see kids like them have a great time sledging - they've mostly never had a chance to do it before, at least not in their local park. Whereas back in the day it snowed EVERY CHRISTMAS.

New bike!

It's been getting more and more obvious that my current bikes are both too big. The tourer, a rather nice Raleigh Touriste, is much better now I've got flat bars, but the mountain bike (Hawk Trakatak) which I use around town is very heavy, and my knees have been creaking a bit... So, time for a new bike. I had fun looking at bike websites and getting a bit cross about the lack of decent budget bikes in a small size and not pink!!

I'd got my eye on an Edinburgh Cycle Co-op bike as I like the bikes and their outlook, and a few weeks ago saw that they had Revolution Trailfinders reduced by a nice amount. So I ordered one - my first new (really new) bike for nearly 20 years! It arrived all nicely packaged and nearly ready to ride, with some extra goodies with 'Revolution' and a big red star on them which was all good. But doh! I'd ordered a size too big... even I cannot get used to how short my legs are! Anyway, the really nice chaps at ECC sorted out collecting it and sending another one. Hardly cost anything extra. Lovely Scottish accents too.

Here it is:


I think you'll agree that it is a nice sensible commuting/canal towpath/days out bike. And it's not pink.