The garden lives!
Despite such neglect, the cold winds and cooler nights, the rain and sometimes even the hail, my garden continues. We are eating kale every second day and there is still plenty more. My favourite is the cavolo nero, but I am going to stake it next year. I had been assuming that taste from my pumpkins, which grew in partial shade, wouldn't be so great. But last night when I was short of ingredients for my soup, I grabbed the little pumpkin from the windowsill and decided it would be soup fodder instead of a jack-o-lantern. It seemed to taste good. There is hope! Perhaps I can grow pumpkins here after all. I think it is time to get some more horse manure and pile it on my best spot at the top of the garden, ready for another go at pumpkin growing next year. I'll go for Musqee de Provence again - they are so beautiful to look at and eat.
The oldest garden bed is in need of a revamp. The brick path which we laid between two garden beds succumbed to the weeds. The main trigger for this is the birds, who send compost flying all over the place in spring. It is probably them who drop the weed seeds as well. So I dug up the bricks, layered the area with newspaper and pea straw and put a sheet of old roofing iron on top to stop it all blowing away. It can do it's thing over winter and hopefully by spring I will have sorted out where my new paths are going. Because we are blocking off one side of the garden with the lean-to, I need to change the paths to keep access to the beds without standing on them.
Tha yams are starting to fade a bit on their leaves. They are supposed to die off before we eat them. I'm still digging potatoes and picking rocket direct from the open garden. The rocket keeps on growing no matter how much I pick off for my sandwiches. I've also got some bok choy making progress despite the cold.
It is nearly time for planting garlic. We need to start eating our radiccio at a much faster rate than just a few leaves for my sandwiches each day, because it is one of the spots I want for garlic. I move garlic around each year and am aiming for a four year rotation. My rose cuttings have good signs of 'taking' and I have some from out the front to move to the old tobacco patch yet. Garlic will grow all round the two long rose beds of roses. I hope raspberries don't mind garlic because they are going to be neighbours as well. I have noticed that some of my gifted raspberry plants have come with another gift - oxalis. I didn't have oxalis in this bed before now, and had I realised, I wouldn't have been so enthusiastic about the raspberry plants.
I took hydrangea cuttings from my cousin Mary's place yesterday. Her bush of deep red hydrangeas is over fifty years old. I am going to interplant the six cuttings amongst the young flax bushes we have out the front, down one boundary which was bare when we moved in. The flax seedlings were a gift from a friend a couple of years ago. It is going to be wonderful to create an entire border, probably 12 metres long, without spending a cent.
The oldest garden bed is in need of a revamp. The brick path which we laid between two garden beds succumbed to the weeds. The main trigger for this is the birds, who send compost flying all over the place in spring. It is probably them who drop the weed seeds as well. So I dug up the bricks, layered the area with newspaper and pea straw and put a sheet of old roofing iron on top to stop it all blowing away. It can do it's thing over winter and hopefully by spring I will have sorted out where my new paths are going. Because we are blocking off one side of the garden with the lean-to, I need to change the paths to keep access to the beds without standing on them.
Tha yams are starting to fade a bit on their leaves. They are supposed to die off before we eat them. I'm still digging potatoes and picking rocket direct from the open garden. The rocket keeps on growing no matter how much I pick off for my sandwiches. I've also got some bok choy making progress despite the cold.
It is nearly time for planting garlic. We need to start eating our radiccio at a much faster rate than just a few leaves for my sandwiches each day, because it is one of the spots I want for garlic. I move garlic around each year and am aiming for a four year rotation. My rose cuttings have good signs of 'taking' and I have some from out the front to move to the old tobacco patch yet. Garlic will grow all round the two long rose beds of roses. I hope raspberries don't mind garlic because they are going to be neighbours as well. I have noticed that some of my gifted raspberry plants have come with another gift - oxalis. I didn't have oxalis in this bed before now, and had I realised, I wouldn't have been so enthusiastic about the raspberry plants.
I took hydrangea cuttings from my cousin Mary's place yesterday. Her bush of deep red hydrangeas is over fifty years old. I am going to interplant the six cuttings amongst the young flax bushes we have out the front, down one boundary which was bare when we moved in. The flax seedlings were a gift from a friend a couple of years ago. It is going to be wonderful to create an entire border, probably 12 metres long, without spending a cent.
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