Well the boat didn’t last long – we sold it within a year. And the gardening kinda took over. We didn’t really know what we were doing but we knew we wanted it to be organic, without really knowing what that meant. And for a few years we muddled through, growing vegetables badly and not pruning the orchard – there just never seemed to be enough time. Sometimes the garden looked good, but mostly it didn’t. Too many weeds. But we learnt slowly. I got a job at Garden Organic and started to learn lots more about organic growing and exactly what that meant. But the job took over and my garden still looked a mess. And, working where I did, I really didn’t feel I could reach for the weedkiller while advising the public how to cope without it. But there just weren’t enough hours in the day.

Anyway, times change. Now the little kids are teenagers. Keith still has a busy job, and I do too now – although not in horticulture anymore. In many ways, it’s a blessing not to be involved in the industry now. GO was a difficult place to work – lots of politics. And I have finally accepted that to get a garden this large looking how I want it to, I need a chemical helping hand.

I haven’t gone nuts, just accepted that I’m not superwoman. I can’t hand weed all the hard landscaped areas and keep on top of a large vege patch, a big orchard and do lots of propagating.  So, I bought some glyphosate and some Pathclear. So pleased I did. There are parts of this garden that were professionally landscaped in (we think) the 70s with lots of brick. This year, I weedkillered the grass on top of where I knew the bricks were – they haven’t been visible since about 2000. Here’s how they look now:

Maybe one day we’ll get back to being completely organic, but for now, this pragmatic organic approach is working well for us.

I still don’t use any artificial fertilisers – these are the worst chemicals, environmentally because they are manufactured using the Haber Bosch process which releases lots of carbon into the atmosphere and is a major contributor to global warming. As far as I’m aware, the manufacture of glyphosate doesn’t cause anything like the same levels of carbon to be released.  And I also don’t use artificial pesticides because my garden, luckily, seems pretty well ecologically balanced and the pests are controlled naturally. And if they aren’t, well, so be it – we won’t starve if the crop fails.

For more on what ‘organic’ actually means, and what is allowed and what isn’t, see Garden Organic’s home page – linky on the right.

Hopefully soon, I’ll get round to writing about what we’ve been doing in the garden. It’s been a busy spring and summer and there’s lots to tell.

The big achievements are that I finished pruning the orchard, and moved into the potting shed.

So then, I got on with using the shed. I potted on my tomatoes and sweet peas. Then I sowed runner beans, parsley, Nigella sativa (black onion seed), onions, leeks and lots of flowers – cosmos, chinese lanterns, borage and nasturtiums. I’m really excited to see how the black onion seed turns out. It should be pretty as it’s closely related to love-in-a-mist (Nigella damescena). The seeds are used a spice in Indian cookery but I’m not sure they’ll develop enough taste in our climate. It’s also mentioned in the Koran as a medicinal herb, but I don’t know anything about its medicinal uses so I’ll have to check that out. When I have time.

I’ve loads more seeds to sow but I’m trying to be sensible or I’ll end up with too much potting on to do in a few weeks.

Yesterday, Keith and I went to the Edible Garden Show. It’s one of the new shows to replace the Royal. We weren’t expecting much as it was the first one and it was cancelled last year because they couldn’t get enough stallholders. It was very good and absolutely heaving with people. Great to see it so well supported. I bought a book and some herbs – a pretty lemon thyme for my old herb pot, a variagated sage and a bergamot. Also found some lovely terracotta pots reasonably priced and from a company based in Lutterworth – so we’ll be buying from them later this year.

That’s all for now I think. It’s a busy time so there should be lots more to report next time.

Before I post my garden pics and a list of what needs doing, I’m going to tell you about a fantastic herbal remedy I’ve discovered. A couple of weeks ago, I went to a Mercia Herb Group meeting at Sarah’s house – her blog is listed on the right there, Kitchen Herbwife. She made some fantastic tea from fresh grated ginger, dried sage and thyme, then added some lemon juice and honey to taste – it was gorgeous. And I’ve been drinking lots of it this past week to help shift my cold.
I’ve also been following Sarah’s advice in other ways – she recommends, if you want to learn about herbs, to pick just a few to really concentrate on each year. I’ve chosen sage, cloves and yarrow to start with. I’m more interested in the gardening/growing side of things than in herbal medicine, but I’m willing to dabble. Yarrow grows like a weed in my herb garden – well, it is a weed to some people, especially in lawns. I plan to make some oil with it, and also to grow some ornamental cultivars. I’ve had trouble getting sage to grow for me so I’m determined to find the right spot for it in this garden. I know I can’t grow cloves in the UK, but I can learn about them. I’m hoping they’ll be included in the new BBC2 series ‘Spice Trail’. When I have enough information, I’ll try and blog about what I’ve learned.

So, I’ve just been into the garden to take some early Spring pics – here they are:

Sweet pea seedlings

Comfrey shooting

Parsley under a cloche

Chives

Hellebore flowers

Snowdrops in the rain

Crocuses almost ready to open

First catkins on the new hazel hedge by the bees

Slowly, slowly things are waking up. And there’s so much to do.

The bed beneath the evergreen hedge needs weeding

This bed by the drive needs weeding and more planting

Things seem to have been abandoned everywhere I look

There's always something needs tidying

Then there’s the Catalpa bignoides to prune, the Cotoneaster to bring down to size, the veg patches to have their green manure rotovated in (spuds are chitting in readiness), the pergola needs more gravel adding, the eucalyptus needs coppicing, the hammock bed still needs planting (I plan to do that in that holiday week in March), the pampas grasses need tidying after being buffetted about by the wind, the naked garden needs weeding and all the herbaceous stuff chopping back. Then there’s new projects.

We are in the middle of erecting a new potting shed – the old one just wasn’t big enough:

Pots not fitting into the pot shed

What we need is more shed space

Place new shed here

Something else I’d like to do in 2011 is to renovate the courtyard at the back of the house. It has some old wooden built-in seating that is rotting away, so I’d like to take it out and replace with beds for white flowered and evening scented plants. Then add some fairy lights to make an evening garden. I’d also like to decide what to do with the back garden – we’ve had a million ideas, none of them quite right. It’s a space we can see from the house, and that we walk through to get in and out. It’s also used for drying washing. But that’s about it. It’s on the north side of the house, a long way from the veg beds and other productive areas. Any ideas?

Right, time to end this extra long post. I feel quite over-whelmed by it now I’ve written it all down. But on the plus-side, I will feel better next week, and I get home just after 5pm, and every night is a little lighter than the one before. Maybe tomorrow we can get the shed walls up?

But for a while I’ve been meaning to put together some kind of month-by-month what to do in MY garden NOW. I’ve thought about various ways to do this and have settled on a spreadsheet – advantages are that I can print it off and tick things off and write notes to myself all over it. I’m very big on lists. Also, it’s easy to alter if I buy a new plant or re-design something. I thought about using a pretty notebook but it’s just not durable enough – I do garden in the rain sometimes, or put stuff down and forget about it. I also thought about making a lovely scrap book – I’ve seen some beautiful ones online and in magazines. But I’m not terribly artistic, and really the point it to create the list, not give myself another project to do.

So, I’ve been thinking about how to organise the spreadsheet and my idea is to have separate workbooks for each month, then colour code the tasks by the area of the garden.

Here’s my task list for October, by garden area, starting at the back gate.
Back garden
Sweep leaves

Courtyard
Sweep leaves
Cut back Fatsia japonica

Herb garden
Final harvest and drying
Collect seeds

Naked garden
Weeding
Pick flowers
Collect seeds
Scarify, aerate and feed lawn
Clear away garden furniture

Work area
Turn compost
Remove finished leaf mould from bin
Trim lavender
Clear greenhouse
Protect worm bin from cold
Tidy shed

Vegetables and chickens
Mulch beds
Tidy up, finish harvesting

Orchard
Harvesting

That doesn’t sound like a huge amount to me. But then it’s a quiet time of year. I’m almost scared to write a list for May! Still, I think it’s going to be helpful – it’s not meant to be a list of what the books say should be done but more what I actually want to do and what I usually do.

I start my new job in 10 days, and this is such a quiet time of year in the garden. I may not be back here until the spring.

Well, things didn’t go as planned this summer – we realised quite early on that our kids needed lots of support through a tough exam year and the house needed lots of tlc too. Time to put the garden on hold, we said – just do what must be done. So, the kids passed their exams, the house looks great with lovely makeover for the new sitting room complete with new floor, redecorated kitchen and a waterproof window in our bedroom. The lawns got mowed, the chooks fed, some of the orchard pruned – but not much else happened in the garden.

But the roses flowered well, the plums fruited for the first time, the herb garden looked great and the weeds multiplied in the back garden. Also, my friend, Sam, from herb group, moved her bees into our orchard – and they swarmed and swarmed and swarmed some more! I discovered that I have a bad reaction to bee stings as I swell up really badly – the doc says it’s not an allergy, just a normal reaction, but a very extreme one. One bee sting caused me to have a day off work because my eye swelled up so big I couldn’t see to drive – I wouldn’t mind, but the bee sting was in my hair.

Oh yes, that’s what else was going on – I applied for lots of jobs. Finally got offered one last week. Yay. So I’ll be moving to work for the NHS in the next month or so.

Anyway, I thought I’d post some pics of the garden from this year. Hopefully, by next month, I will have a plan for the new bed in the naked garden and can write about that….

Sam's first beehive arrives

Honey bee on apple blossom

New improved chicken run after last winter's snow destroyed the old one!

Pretty chooks

Herb bed

Herbs and roses - the scent was great

Looking down into the naked garden through the rose arch

Tidy veg plot ready to sow some green manures later this month

Looking up towards the house from the hornbeam hedge

We planted the pond up this spring - but lots of turf around the edges died in the hot summer

From the naked garden, looking over the evergreen hedge into the work space and veg plots

Shady pergola

Most of what I need to do is renovation pruning because the trees have been neglected for years. I was taught how to do this by my old boss, Bob Sherman, at Garden Organic. These are his instructions.

1. Start by identifying 5-6 scaffold branches for your tree. The ultimate shape should be like a wine glass with an open and airy centre. Look for 5 or 6 branches that can form this goblet shape.

2. Taking each scaffold one by one, follow it to it’s end and identify a ‘leader’. This is the part of the branch that will be allowed to continue growing. It should be pointing outwards, rather than upwards and preferably high enough not to obstruct where you need to walk.

3. Prune the leader back by half of last year’s growth to a downward facing wood bud.

NB This is a good point to explain that apple and pear trees have different
buds that will go on to produce either wood or fruit in the coming year. Wood buds are small and flat – like this:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4. Remove any competitors – other small twigs that could have been leaders.

The plan is different now for apples and pears.

Apples
1. Work back towards the trunk, taking each lateral (branch leading off from the scaffold branch) one by one. If the lateral is more than 4 years old, chop it off.
2. Prune out any vertical shoots whether they are growing upwards or downwards.
3. Remember that if you prune back to a fruit bud, growth will stop.

Pears
1. Work back towards the trunk, taking each lateral (branch leading off from the scaffold branch) one by one. If the lateral is 2 years old, prune it back to six fruit buds if possible – pear fruit buds look different to apple fruit buds, but I don’t have any images. Use google images to find some good pics.
2. If the lateral is 1 year old, leave it as it is.
3. If the lateral is more than 2 years old, chop it off.
4. Prune out any vertical shoots – those growing straight up or straight down.

As you might imagine, pruning a very overgrown tree is quite a drastic and scary business. Here are some before and after photos of a large and overcrowded Bramley:

Once you’ve done this renovation pruning, the next stage is maintenance pruning – this is done each summer (July) and winter (November – March).

In summer, take off most of the ‘water shoots’ that will sprout from wherever was cut last winter. You may wish to leave some to form new branches or fruiting spurs.

In winter, follow the instructions for renovation pruning, but as you look at any new laterals that have formed and been left after summer pruning, try to encourage them to produce new fruiting spur networks. To do this, you simply need to cut it back to about 3 or 4 wood buds. The upper buds will grow into new wood, but the lower buds should change and form fruit buds by the next winter.  Each winter, cut back to wood buds to 3 or 4 and some new fruit buds should form.

So that’s about it – it can sound very complicated, but take these instructions with you to the tree and follow it step-by-step.

Finally, some rules about hygiene:
1. Always use sharp tools – you’ll need secatuers, a pruning saw, and maybe a bow saw. Loppers should not be necessary.
2. Use ladders where necessary so as not to over-reach.
3. Clean your tools between trees so as not to pass on fungal diseases from one tree to another. I keep a jar of white spirit and an old toothbrush in the shed and simply give the blades of my tools a quick scrub as I finish each tree.
4. Tidy up the prunings as you go. Fruit wood burns well after seasoning so can be passed on to folk with wood burners. I have also discovered that prunings are much loved by rabbits so you can pass on prunings to any rabbit-owning friends.

I decided last winter that I wanted some Light Sussex to breed and raise for meat – these rare breeds are pretty and a good dual purpose bird. So, I decided that we should go to Melton Mowbray auction in March and buy a breeding trio (2 hens and a cockerel). We spent an interesting but freezing day at the auction and came away with Hugh, our cockerel, and 2 females. Sorrel and Alex bought their Wyandottes there too. Just as well, as it turned out.

The plan was to save about 6 fertile eggs and wait for one of the hens to go broody. All through spring and into summer, I kept saving eggs, sure that they would go broody sooner or later. Then a freecycle visitor said that she wasn’t sure they were Light Sussex and that she thought they might be some kind of hybrid related to LS – hybrids don’t go broody. Hmmm, that would explain it. Meanwhile, Sorrel had more broodies than she could handle. When hens go broody and you don’t want them to, the thing to do is kick them off the nest every morning and shut them outside. This usually works. However, Wellie (Sorrel’s hen) was so vicious that they couldn’t shift her off the nest. It seemed so easy to borrow her and pop a few eggs underneath.

So, in July, Wellie began to sit on six of our eggs. After about 10 days, she destroyed 3 of the eggs – presumably because they weren’t fertile or developing properly. She continued to sit on the 3 remaining eggs and successfully hatched them in August. She was a brilliant mother and the chicks thrived.

Wellie and one of her babies

Mum and babies were all fed on chick crumb, then on growers pellets. Eventually, the chicks were as big as their adoptive mum.

And they kept growing. The time came to send Wellie home. The plan was to return her to her original companions at night time so they’d all wake up together and assume this was normal. Advice on how to reintegrate chickens varies, but this seemed easiest as Sorrel only has a small garden and one house and run. But when Wellie was returned, all hell broke loose. There was a major fight and the end result was two chooks in one house and run, Wellie in another house and run, and one other chook in yet another house and run. This almost filled the garden. This was in October, and they still haven’t completed the reintegration as the fights keep happening, although they’re less vicious now. We won’t be borrowing a broody again.

As the chicks grew, it became clear that 2 were cockerels and these were definitely bound for the pot. The fate of the pullet depended on how we got on killing the cockerels. The time came shortly after Christmas, and so did the snow. They were given a reprieve as killing and plucking is an outdoors job and it was just too cold. Then the weather warmed up a little and we headed down to the run to grab our cockerels that we had securely shut in their house. However, as soon as we opened the door to get a hand in to get them, they made a run for it. We couldn’t catch them so it had to wait another weekend. This time we decided to catch them at night when they are sleepy and put them in a cat basket until morning when we could kill them. This time we managed to catch one, but the other one escaped. Still, a bird in the hand… Or cockerel in the cat basket….

The kill was quick and easy. Then we started plucking.

This was messy and the feathers blew everywhere even though there was only the slightest breeze. Gutting the chicken was the scariest part as we had no idea what to do, but found some excellent instructions at http://butcherachicken.blogspot.com/

Then we had an oven ready chicken, which we wrapped and stored in the freezer.

The next weekend, we started all over again with the remaining cockerel. However, I don’t know if he hadn’t been getting his fair share of the food or what, but he was very skinny. We didn’t bother to finish the plucking as it didn’t seem worth the effort.

The one chicken we had in the freezer has now been roasted and eaten, with some soup and stock back in the freezer for a later date. It was very tasty – but not more tasty than the free-range chicken I usually buy from our excellent butchers.

So, on balance, we’re glad we did it and know how to kill and cook a chicken. But it doesn’t seem worth the effort to us as we have such a good source locally. If we wanted to take this forward, we’d need to redesign and build the run to save the messing around trying to catch them. We’d also need to buy more stock that will actually go broody. The hen from the batch is now living with the original three chooks from Melton Mowbray and the one remaining warren.

So, what now? Well, although I’m quite keen to get some more laying stock and have a lovely multi-coloured flock, I’m not sure that this is the right time. I’m working full-time for the first time since 1992 and I hope that will develop into a proper role by the end of 2010. Keith is still contracting and although he is still at B&Q, there’s no guarantee how long it will continue and he can’t be relied on to be around when I’m not. I also hate it when something goes wrong and I don’t know what to do – with the chooks, I mean. So, I think my current plan is to bide my time, spend any money I might have spent on more stock on education for myself so I know what to do when things go wrong and maybe understand a little more about pasture management (I don’t really manage anything at the moment). But the Melton Mowbray sale is on March 27th so I have until then to decide.

Hugh in the middle of his moult, looking rather scruffy.

January is a great time for making garden plans – especially this year as there’s been so much snow so it wasn’t possible to do much gardening. And there’s more snow forecast for next week. The coldest winter since 1963, apparently.

So, anyway, I thought I’d start by putting a plan of the garden here so any readers can have some idea of how it all hangs together.

1 - back garden, 2 - office, 3 - garage, 4 - house, 5 - patio, 6 - herb garden, 7 - woodland path, 8 - naked garden, 9 - compost bins, 10 - greenhouse, 11 - shed, 12 - hazel hedge, 13 - vegetable beds, 14 - chicken run, 15 - hornbeam hedge, 16 - allotments, 17 - orchard, 18 - raspberries, 19 - pond

It’s late now, so I’ll come back and edit this with the plans for the year later this week…..

So, plans for 2010…

Each year at this time we invite friends over for a slap-up full English breakfast and a work party. The plan this year was to fill the gaps in the hedge on the west side (the left side of the plan). The other side of this boundary is lots of new housing.  However, the weather has meant we haven’t cleared the area of brambles yet and the hedge supplier hasn’t been able to lift the saplings. We think the plants will arrive in time, but the work party will probably be clearing brambles rather than planting. The newly ordered saplings are a native mixed hedge including hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, dog roses, spindle tree…

I plan to add more culinary herbs in 2010 – chervil, sage (the one I planted last year died). Also some Nigella sativa for the spice seeds and Echinacea because it’s so pretty.

This year I will try again to clean the pond in the naked garden – this job should be done on August bank holiday. The theory is that all the wildlife has finished breeding, but the weather is still warm enough to get really wet. except for the last two years it has been cold and rainy – and I have been too busy. Also in the naked garden, I hope to get the east border planted. Here’s a piccy of what it looks like now:

I should explain that it’s called the naked garden because it’s not over-looked so you could sit naked in it – not because we are in the habit of sitting naked in it.

The main focus for 2010 is to grow better veges than ever before, so that will be happening in the vege plots. I had hoped to continue the orchard regenerative pruning, but that may difficult if my back/shoulder doesn’t improve soon. But hopefully this will happen and is the planned subject for a proper post all of it’s own later in the year.

We’re not sure what’s going to happen with the allotments in 2010. Al wants more space, but Sorrel and Alex have found it hard to keep on top of theirs. They are house-hunting for a place with more land so they can have a vege plot right outside the back door. They also want to keep more livestock. So it looks likely that Al will take over his sister’s plot.

Oh yes, we need to add more pond plants and enjoy the lovely new pond. This was paid for with a small inheritance from my Nan, who died in 2008. I think of her everytime I go down there. It’s looked great in the cold weather.

I think that’s all the garden plans for next year. Watch this space to see what really happens. Hopefully next month I’ll post on time because my back won’t hurt. And it will be getting lighter every morning, spuds will be chitting and spring will be in the air.

Wreath, almost finished

Wreath in progress

I love the pale holly used on this one

Sam, Debs and Sarah behind a pile of dried 'love in a mist'

Another lovely finished wreath

However, I never feel like there’s enough time at herb group, so I took my willow hoop home and had another go a few nights later. I spread a tablecloth on the living room floor and got my dried ‘love in a mist’ and oranges, along with some dried seed heads of St John’s Wort and some wheat that had been sown by the birds. Here’s my finished wreath, hanging on my front door:

And here’s some images of the work in progress:

Use florist's wire to attach small bunches of dried seed heads and dried ornage slices

Close up of the seed heads

Finished wreath

The great thing is that after the season is over, the whole thing can be composted – but I usually hang it on the door of the chicken run until it disintegrates so I can enjoy it a little longer.

The weather this week has been incredibly cold and frosty, with some snow falls too. We may even get a white Christmas! My kids are ridiculously excited for teenagers and we have spent a great day today sewing a Christmas stocking for Erin, baking mince pies and starting to prepare some of the vegetables and accompaniments for Friday’s feast.

Merry Christmas!

Vegetables

This is a great time to reflect on what we did on the vege plot in 2009 and what we’ll do differently in 2010. The summer was a hectic time for me and Keith and the garden was, it must be admitted, neglected. The weeds grew and grew.

More weeds than peas!

We harvested potatoes, onions, beans, peas and not much else – oh, there’s still spinach coming. The brassicas are still waiting to be cut but everything else has gone over now. Still I did earn quite a good income from the business and pass my RHS Advanced exams -  does that count as a harvest? Next year we have resolved to spend much more time on the vegetable patch. I have decided on some ground rules limiting how much time I commit to the business, and we are resolved to avoid any major new projects like organising wildlife ponds or erecting greenhouses. We have also decided to increase the area available for vegetables by removing some of the high maintenance grass paths and edging the beds. This will cut down on the mowing needed and mean the edges are clearly defined, making weeding easier. We started this on one of the four beds, thinking we’d just experiment with it and see how it goes – but we are so pleased with how it looks that we have started on bed number two.

Doesn't it look lovely?

Next year, I want to improve my preserving skills  – we have lots of root vegetables in store right now and that’s something to be continued next year. Keith bought me a dehydrator for my birthday back in June and that’s been great for drying apples and herbs – must do more next year. I also want to get better at picking and freezing our produce at its best. We plan to grow lots of staples in 2010 – Rooster potatoes, onions, carrots, swede and parsnips, salad,tomatoes, chillies, more culinary herbs and lots of beans and peas. Oh and shallots for pickling too. So, lots of ambition there.

Other news from the garden

Since my last post we have also had to deal with a dead hawthorn tree that blew down – there was so much ivy on it we didn’t realise the tree underneath had actually died. We simply moved into the gap beneath the hedgerow it came from as dead trees are a wonderful habitat for all kinds of invertebrate life – it was alive with insects!

The new wildlife pond is looking lovely and glassy in the subdued November light – I’m sure I’ll write more about that next year as it develops.

In the greenhouse I have some perennials I grew from seed that need potting on, and lots of chillies still ripening. The orchard has lost almost all the leaves and pruning must start soon – another topic for a longer post.

Poultry news – we hatched 3 chicks back in August and they are now 13 weeks old. The time to kill and eat them is approaching and we’re both a little apprehensive! But the success or failure of that project will help us decide where to take the poultry project next as we want to build a better run for them, but the size of it depends on whether we decide to continue raising poultry for meat or just keep them for their eggs. Other poultry news is that we lost one of the Warren hybrids this month as she became very ill with a compacted crop. So now we have just one brown Warren, 2 white sussex hybrid hens, plus a cockerel of the same type – he is called Hugh and is the only chook with a name. Then there’s Wellie, the broody bantam borrowed from Sorrel, and her three edible adopted chicks.