Wednesday, 19 February 2014

Out with the old, in with the new

In love with leeks

Leeks are great food to grow, no trouble in the ground and I get lots of them from a very small area. They are easy to grow in the UK's not too dry and not too hot climate. I love growing them - they taste so much better fresh from the garden and as they are expensive to buy. Seeing them standing, so resolute and  so exhberant makes me smile.
I normally grow about 50 a year, this guarantees me enough leeks in the autumn and winter to eat about four a week.

A few weeks ago I planted a whole pile of seeds in trays and put them in the cold greenhouse and they have already germinated.

Seed trays with leeks - you can't see them yet,
but they are there - tiny weeny little leeks just
unfurling from  their seeds. There are also broad bean
 seeds in the toilet rolls. 


New bugs  make growing things very difficult

As the climate in southern England changes we are becoming home to all sorts of new pests and plant diseases. Leek moths are one of them. 
I've never seen a leek moth, but I'm not impressed. They lay their eggs on leeks and when they hatch the maggots eat tunnels back and fore inside the leek and spoil them. I lost all of my leeks to this pest this autumn. No leeks to harvest this autumn and winter just gone.
:-(
It seems the only way to guard against leek moth it is to plant leeks in ground that has been free of leeks for at least 5 years. The only area of my garden that hasn't grown leeks in the last 5 years is my strawberry beds. So I am digging out one of my strawberry beds to grow leeks.

Out with the old

Its no big deal, old gardeners wisdom says that strawberry beds should be dug out every third year or so. As the plants get older they become woody and more prone to throw out runners instead of fruit. My oldest strawberries have been in for six years so I am going to dig out that bed and grow leeks there.

My strawberry beds are the two closest
beds after the first bed (flowers)
 Here they are netted to protect the fruit from birds

In between one rain storm and another I dug through the oldest bed of strawberries. Strawberries are very tenacious plants. Just like their cousins buttercups, they grow deep woody roots with loads of fibrous offshoots. Its very difficult to pull them out so they have to be dug up.

I chose the right hand bed to dig out as this
bed has been in the longest and was
 overcrowded with old plants


The woody roots of strawberry plants.
They all went in the compost

All gone!

In with the new!

The baby leeks won't be ready to plant out for at least two months, so instead of leaving the bed empty I will plant some mini broccoli as soon as the soil is warm enough, fingers crossed for the the middle of march. To help the soil warm up and dry out I'm cheating - I'm covering the soil with a black plastic sheet to keep off  any more rain and absorb heat from the sun.

These mini broccolis (called sprouting turnip tops here in the UK) are quick to grow, I'll be eating them at least a month before the standard type broccoli will be ready to harvest. Yum! they are delicious and I have never seen them for sale in the shops.

These grow 6 to 10 inches tall . They are cool weather plants, one
variety for spring and one for autumn sowing.

Monday, 17 February 2014

The death of a cherry tree - and "oh god my back aches"

Sad news of an old friend going.

I lost the old cherry tree outside the front of my house. Months of brutal high winds and rain this awful winter took its toll, causing a split in the trunk and dropped branches. I will miss it this spring - the blossom was beautiful.

Blossom from the cherry tree from spring 2012


Silver lining in the black cloud

In between one storm and another, our local council sent some people to cut down the tree, chip the branches.and remove the logs. It was my day off work - Luck that I was here when they started the job!
I bribed the workmen with big mugs of builders tea and they were kind enough to dump the spoils outside the allotment garden gates.


Me and my mate Doug spent the rest of the day moving wheel barrows of chippings the 500 metres or so from the allotment garden gate to various places in our gardens. 26 loads later...... God my arms and back ached the next day.

My old wheelbarrow - Dave, on top of
a pile of wood chips

I have a love/hate relationship with my wheelbarrow. It's a very old, solid wheel type. Its made from spot welded galvanized steel sheets - indestructible (which is why I love it) and heavy as hell (which is why I hate it). It was left to me by the old guy who had my garden before me and is named Dave after him.

Using the wood chippings

I spread a good two inches of home made compost first, and then used some of my share of the chippings to cover my two raspberry patches and the soil at back of the pond with a good 2 inch (5cm) layer.
Wood chippings like this make a fantastic weed suppressing layer (Posh word is "Mulch").
Mulch works by stopping the light getting to weed seeds so they don't grow.
The chips will slowly rot away and leave behind a layer of light soil full of worms. Great stuff.
I expect this layer to last a year or so, depending on the weather.  

my two raspberry beds

I have two raspberry beds. 
  • The nearest one is autumn fruiting and the new canes will pop up some time in March. I cut the old canes down in early December after the last of the leaves had fallen
  • The furthest bed is summer fruiting and these canes came up in late summer after the old canes had finished fruiting. I cut out the old canes in August so all the growth would go into the new canes.

Raspberries are woodland margin plants in the wild and they like light humus rich soil. (Humus is the posh word for rotted down plants)  I normally mulch them with a two inch (5cm) thick layer of leaves in early spring, These wood chips will do the job just as well.

Behind the pond

I'm not sure that mulching behind the pond was such a good idea. I covered over a whole load of bulbs that were just showing. They'll now have to fight through a thick layer of chipping which may hold back their growth or swamp them, some might be too small to push through - especially the small crocus and iris


chippings covering the bare soil behind
my new pond

Waste not want not

I'll use the unused chippings underneath my fruit bushes to do the same mulching job..... Just as soon as we get a break in the weather.

I have no idea what I am going to do with the logs, but there will be a home for them somewhere.They are such a fantastic colour and given a few months to start rotting into the soil, will become a great home for bugs to feed my birds.

Fantastic bright orange cherry wood logs 

Sunday, 16 February 2014

"If you can't go up, then go down" - the no dig pond.


I always wanted a pond on my allotment garden. Trouble is I have a huge tree that takes up a lot of my space and the tree roots make it very difficult to dig a deep enough hole. So instead of going down I went up.

This pond took me almost three years to do. Finding enough soil to use to make a bank and enough bricks to make the wall took me ages. I finally managed to finish it with a lot of help from my friend Shanti in October 2013. Just in time to plant the bank with some spring bulbs.
The amazing winter rains have filled it, so all thats left to do is find some toad spawn this spring and cross my fingers...


my lovely finished pond

In the beginning

It all started with somewhere to put the sticks and wood, you know, all those branches that are too thick to put in the compost and too much bother to cut with a saw. I stacked them under my big tree on a slight bank, where it was too dark and dry to grow any food.

Feed the birds

As the pile grew I noticed that it became a haven for small birds, especially wrens, robins and sparrows. They feed off the small insects that live in the rotting wood. 
I deliberately collected wood for the hedge and over the last few years I've created a very substantial stick hedge. It's a natural bird feeder and windbreak for the cold east wind. It also blocks the view of some ugly buildings. 
You can see the hedge in the background of the following picture. 
I've pushed some very large branches through the hedge and its stable - still standing firm after all the wild windy weather this winter. 

Finished! I had just enough bricks.

Toad envy

I've always wanted a pond somewhere in the garden. For the toads. Toads are the best slug replant there is, they can eat their own weight in slugs every day in the summer months. Even though I'm an organic gardener I've only ever seen one in my garden. 
I'm not killing them with sprays or pellets but its difficult to keep them as they won't stay in a garden unless there is a year around water source.  

The pond problem

Putting the pond under the big tree is the best place for me. Its such a large piece of unusable ground. The tree takes all the moisture from the soil in the summer and nothing much grows other than woodland flowers. But there was no digging down. My god - the tree roots! And the last thing I wanted was to stress my lovely old tree by sawing through roots. 

A problem shared

A friend suggested that I build up instead of down and I started collecting soil and bricks to make the bank in front of the stick pile wider. I built the wall and the bank bit by bit over three years! Finding free wheelbarrow loads of soil was not so easy.
As I built I tilted the bricks backwards into the bank and stepped them into the bank as the wall got higher. This is an old way of facing a bank and means that the bricks needed no mortar to keep them in place.
The pond is ridged. Formed of a big plastic pot from a tree which made it much easier to build around.
Its lined with builders damp proofing plastic sheet. 

the brick spacing is not perfect,
 but then very few of them are the same size and I'm not a bricky!

The final touches

The top layers of bricks gave me a bit of a headache. How to stop them slipping into the pond? Backwards tilting bricks into the soil at the back of the pond worked very well, but wedging the front ones together is a bit flimsy. We'll see how that holds up over time.. 
Later in the year when I have some money I will plant the pond with water iris, rushes and grass. :-)

The top bricks
 all I need now is some plants to soften the edges

I'll plant house leeks and
some other wall lovers  in between the bricks






The Sprung Spring - cheerful early bulbs show themselves in between the rain storms

This week the early spring bulbs popped their heads up and opened out in the fleeting sunshine between the storms.

The very very first flowers

Snowdrops. 
I don't have many - these few delicate little lovelies were planted before this garden was in my care. I promise myself more every year and so far have forgotten to buy and plant more each autumn.

This year has been exceptionally wet (luckily here in my part of Isleworth we are up on a small hill - so no flooding) but also very mild. Only the lightest of frosts, so all the spring bulbs are flowering early.



And then

Early miniature Iris
These are one of my favorite early spring bulbs. They spread themselves a little further each year. Beautiful blue with yellow accents. Just lovely.

This Iris has just opened out
 in the bright  morning sun


Later in the day - a carpet of mini iris
all just 3 inches tall (8cm)

In a sunnier area of the garden 

Crocus
These are very early, They are usually at least two weeks after the iris, but this year they are flowering at the same time. They do look lovely together! 
:-)

light purple - the yellow in the middle is so
bright against the purple flower
Sunburst of yellow

Waving from the back by the shed

Golden daffodils in the last of todays days sun. I love daffs - beings a Welsh woman they remind me of home.