A Capel Moment: Autumn gold

I don't want to jinx future Thursdays but I'm tempted to say that we've been very lucky with having dry weather on the day I go up to college!  It makes getting out for a walk round the grounds so much more pleasant - and, of course, the colours are more vivid for taking photos!

Being indoors more at this time of year really highlights the beauty of autumn when I can get out so I had two Capel moments this week.  On the way back to the design studio after lunch, the sun popped out momentarily to highlight the beech walk (actually, the trees may not be beech, I'll find out)  - I had to tell the others I'd catch them up as I whipped out my phone for this photo! (Yes, I do tend to lean to the right!)

The second moment was during the ident walk.  Last year, without fail, the class went out every week for a 'plant ident walk'; this is a quick stroll around the grounds looking at and discussing that week's chosen eight plants.  Doesn't sound much, does it?  But by the end of the year, we knew - and, more importantly, could identify - over a hundred and forty plants.

This year, studying 'plants and planting' for Garden Design, the ident walks have been increased to learn ten new plants each week. I'm finding that many of these are old friends from last year but a few of my classmates studied elsewhere before so aren't so familiar with the Capel grounds. It makes me realise, yet again, how fortunate I am to study with access to 35 acres of planting. 

This week we were told there would be only eight plants to learn;  as our tutor put it "there's not a lot going on out there".  Excuse me?  How about this:

The gold leaves are an Acer palmatum 'Sango-kaku' - even without the red berries (and I have no  idea which leafless shrub they're growing on!) and the ceanothus flower, the Acer is stunning. Of course, it will all be over in a few weeks but Acers are very slow growing trees so for a small garden this would be ideal for a splash of autumn colour.

The above photo was modified slightly by Instagram, even so here's the tree in situ:

Like having a little bit of sunshine in your garden!

A Capel Moment: Japanese Niwaki Pruning

There's so much autumn colour around this week but still, on my way to the library, my eye was drawn to the intense red of the Acer japonicum leaves against the red bridge in the Japanese garden.  Moving into the garden for a closer look (and photo!), I was struck by the intense concentration of the gardener carefully pruning and shaping the Juniper into neat layers with one handed shears.

Cloud pruning, as it's become known in the western world. This is when branches of a young tree are trained and cut to resemble cloud layers as it grows. In Japan, pruning (Niwaki) is to enhance the plant and work with nature, often echoing the shapes of the landscape - all traditional Japanese gardens have clipped shrubs or trees but they're not necessarily pruned in cloud layers. It's a style that lends itself very well to English gardens; in my mother's garden, I've pruned and clipped an extremely unruly Forest Flame (Pieris) bush in this style, as well as a Choisya ternata. It's a lovely thing to do and the results are stunning.

I stopped to watch and soon a conversation was struck up. The gardener had initially trained at Capel but then spent time over the years in Kyoto learning the art of Niwaki. In Japan, I was told, it takes years to learn the art of pruning and is taught by having a master gardener as a mentor. We talked a little about Jake Hobson who has mastered this art form and taken it on into 'Ornamental Topiary' to be used in English gardens.  At Capel, small trees in this particular garden are cloud pruned to enhance the Japanese ambience.  Elsewhere in the grounds, ornamental topiary has been used to shape a Cotoneaster lacteus  and Osmanthus x burkwoodii into a mushroom shape. Really eye catching and, of course, small semi-shade loving plants, eg Arum italicum, Geraniums and ferns, can be grown underneath.

But, cloud pruning aside, here's what really caught my eye: the juxtaposition of the brilliantly red Acer leaves next to the glaucous (blue/green) scale needles of the Juniper.  Even on a gloomy, grey skies kind of day, the colour in this planting combination was stunning!

End of Month: June

Veg and herbs to the left, fruit to the right, spuds and edible shrubs in the middle.

So much for posting twice in one day as promised in my last post!  I wasn't happy with the photos that I took on a gloomy 30th June so deciding which to use took longer; suddenly another week has gone by and we're basking in a heat wave!  I'm beginning to think my life is linked to some universal remote control. June certainly came and went on fast forward. The weather frequently rewinds back to early spring (and now forward to summer) and time spent on work (college or day job) shuttles between play and pause. It feels as though we waited such a long time for summer (or even spring) to arrive and suddenly we're past the summer equinox and sliding inexorably towards autumn.

I've had to resist the temptation to garden in the past few months due to other calls on my time. This has been no mean feat as I so love pottering around outside that if I go for a half-hour watering session, I'm likely to reappear several hours later.  I've treated myself to a couple of guilt-ridden gardening days which have, disappointingly, been spent weeding, collecting fox/cat poo or netting beds against pests - so the veg patch has largely had to look after itself, bar the occasional watering or transplanting of seedlings. (Gotta love those rainy days!)

Strawberries, Orach, fruit trees, sunflowers transplanted to the back.

There is, of course, no such thing as a hands off veg garden; whilst I have masses of orach, strawberries, sunflowers, herbs, broad beans and onions (and fruit) - and all appears quite lush - there are no beets, beans, carrots, peas. Quite a lot has been self-sown from last year or are perennials nurtured through the winter - as with French Tarragon - and then just watered.

I've planted out more flowers and herbs - eryngiums, scabious, geraniums - but the garden's not how I imagined it would look this year.

A few flowers - Echinacea, cowslip, scabious, phlox, purple sage... but the rhubarb may have to be moved!

My college year has now finished so I have an extra day to spend more time in the garden; hopefully it won't be too late to start some more veg off - I'm relying on the weather being about a month in arrears (but this weekend's sunshine may prove me wrong).

I've got a couple of months of an extra day of leisure before I start college again in mid-September; let's see if that will be enough to get the veg patch in shape.

It's all bloomin' lovely!

I've spent the weekend sowing seeds and heaving out weeds.  I was in the garden by 8 a.m. on Sunday morning, appreciating the stillness and warm sun on my back.  It felt really good to be outside without a  woolly hat and warm coat, reconnecting with the garden and taking the time to really take stock of what was going on.

After the big Weed Out: 16.5 square metres of weed free tidiness, ready for planting.

Mostly it was a case of clearing the weeds (Hairy Bittercress and Chickweed) from the fruit tree border - a job that brought me up close to the blossom on the trees as I have to clamber into the walled border.  There's no rain or frost forecast for at least the next 10 days and the warm weather has certainly got the bees buzzing around.  I am therefore quietly optimistic of having some fruit this year.

One of the cherry trees - a Morello - was relocated to a walled corner last year (just seen in the distance, by the steps); its blossoms are already open.

The other Morello has hundreds of buds just waiting to unfurl...

The apple trees, both Braeburn, didn't produce one solitary fruit last year.  This year I've counted 12 clusters of blossom on one tree alone.  I'll keep an eye on these; if they all pollinate, I'll need to thin some of the fruit later on.  It's the same story with the pears and plums which is just wonderful.

Throughout the garden I'm finding self-seeded Orach (Atriplex rubra) also known as Mountain Spinach.

It's both an edible and ornamental, with edible young leaves - salads or cooked like spinach - and the most glorious bright pink seed pods later in the year.  I bought one tiny plant at an NGS plant sale a couple of years ago. Last year a transplanted self-seeder grew to over 8 feet tall; the dried seed pods looked so wonderful that I left them in situ and the wind has done the rest.  The seedlings can easily be pulled out if unwanted or transplant really well. I shall, of course, keep several for my Salad Challenge.

Can I just indulge and show off these two beauties?  The Cerinthe (aka Honeywort) seed blew into a pot of Lemon Balm last year, grew to a foot high, just about survived the winter and has revived itself to flower early.  One of my absolute favourite flowers, I love the glaucous leaves and purple flowers and grow them to provide food for the bees so that they'll home in and find my beans in the process.

And, lastly, an Aquilegia I bought recently - another Morrison's bargain - that has established really well into my new shady border.  I can't get over how pretty it is and stop to look every time I pass by - which is kind of the point in planting up a border previously used as a cat toilet/rubbish dump.

Btw, that was definitely not a 15 minute blog post! Too many photos. Just came in under one hour. Ah well.

Saturday Snap: Calendula Officinalis

All summer long I've been bowled over by the wonderful bright orange blooms of the calendula (aka Pot Marigold) in the veg patch.  The seeds were sown in late May and took a while to get going but have really been making up for it over the past three months and the plants are still flowering abundantly in early November!

The colour is such an intense orange that, despite taking numerous photos over the summer, I've never felt that they've done the flowers justice. This afternoon, just as the light was fading around 3.30 and rain threatened, I quickly tried once more and, this time, I'm quite pleased with the result.  You can just see the start of the raindrops on the petals!

Mine were grown to bring in the hoverflies and bees and did an excellent job but they also, apparently, reduce soil eelworm. They're a beautiful flower to look at, growing to about 18 inches high, but calendula is a herb and I really should have used it in cooking.  (There's still time.)

Fresh calendula petals can be sprinkled over salads and boiling the petals produces an edible yellow dye that will colour rice, hence the nickname "poor man's saffron". Dried petals can also be used to season and flavour soups and cakes. The petals should be picked early in the morning (preferably on a bright, sunny day but I think I may be a tad late for that) and dried quickly in the shade. As a bonus, the flowers are high in vitamins A and C which I didn't know before and is useful information to have at the onset of winter. Similarly, tea made from the petals will aid circulation (useful) or can be used as a hair rinse to add golden tones to auburn hair. (Not so useful, and unlikely to have me reaching for the secateurs.) Something worth noting for next year is that calendula is a good companion plant for tomatoes.  Wow, I love the idea of all those reds and oranges growing together!

Year on year I get a bit  more organised around planning in the veg patch so it's worth knowing that calendula seeds, like sweet peas and broad beans, can be sown in the autumn to give them a head start for the following year.  If they're happy where they are, they're highly likely to self-seed and I did have one or two from last year so, together with self-seeding sunflowers, nasturtiums, orache and cerinthe, it looks like the veg patch might slowly be turning into the flower garden!

Midsummer Veg Patch view ...

:: Sweet corn 6 weeks after planting out ::

Oh dear, 8th already and the last month has turned without the veg patch progress being recorded. Time for an update, I think; the days are slipping away and my brain is already planning winter veg.

I remembered to snap a few pics a week before the end of June and then took a few more a day or so ago, both of which are a week away from a true end-of-month but between them will provide a useful log of information for next year.  Take these courgettes, for example. Planted out early June, 4 weeks later, leaves the size of dinner plates with a few flowers. Good progress or good horse muck, who knows? Tra-la-la, it works.

:: 5th June courgette, approx 8 inches ::

:: 5th July courgette, approx 3 ft ::

The UK weather in June gave us some sunshine (plus 2 days of heatwave), brisk breezes and plenty of rain - often in the same day! Nights were cool and dawn often gave way to clear blue skies that clouded over by mid-morning. Endless days of buffeting winds made seed sowing and planting out quite challenging. Weeds flourished in the wet and warmth; continuously clearing them off became a necessary chore (which I haven't quite kept up with, despite a 2 hour session in a downpour). Early beetroot and carrots were enjoyed, beetroot tops, spinach leaves and herbs were added to salad (Oh for a few chickens to add freshly laid eggs to this!), french beans were resown along with sweet corn, radishes, spinach and wildflowers. The lavender, oregano and thyme flowers in the herb bed are a sight to gladden the heart on a sunny morning.

Recently though, I seem to have lost the habit of popping down every evening, there's just too much else to do. So, the spinach has bolted and new baby leaves are not quite ready, spring onion seeds are still in the packet whilst I continue to buy from the supermarket, the next lot of carrots are still to go in. Shame on me, most disorganised!

On the bright side, onions, garlic, carrots and beetroot are bulking up, the courgettes are flowering - in fact the sweet corn  is struggling as most of it is hidden under the courgettes (is it too late to transplant, I wonder?).

Sweet peas are now scrambling rapidly up the netting, hopefully there'll be some flowers to look forward to in July as well as peas of the edible variety.  Self-seeding flowers (poppy, cerinthe, borage, honesty, calendula, nigella) added to the patch this year will make a bigger impact next year, but at least they're there.  The sunflowers (unplanned and sprinkled throughout) are a cheerful sight, growing up through the potatoes but the large ones, frankly, are blocking the path through the veg patch. Next year, I'll be more ruthless in pulling them out. (There's that learning curve, again.)

April roundup... Update (2)

Several blogs that I like to read have posted an end of month review and I'm going to follow suit.  I can't think why I haven't done this before as it seems a really good way of keeping track of progress (or, in my case, lack of) month by month.

It pays me to remember that I mustn't compare the state of play in the veg patch with progress elsewhere; after all, it's not a competition but it is really useful to see what other, more experienced gardeners have already planted out or got on the go. It's interesting to see what's happening in different parts of the UK and, in Canada, the Urban Veggie Garden is just experiencing the first flush of Spring. Early sowing can depend on access to a greenhouse (which I don't have) or perhaps having wide windowsills to accommodate seed trays indoors (I'm deficient in that area as well).

I confess, there hasn't been as much sowing progress as I would have hoped (I've been spending a fair bit of time digging out weeds, moving raised beds forward to maximise space and putting a scaffolding plank alongside the path, on the right above). But with this unseasonably warm weather, I have to remind myself that it is only just May so there's still plenty a bit of time.  What I have got is lots of sweet peas in toilet rolls on the balcony (Cupani, Mixed Spice, Perfume Duet), which have recently been joined by Lazy Housewife (kindly sent from Matron) and Cosse de Violette beans started off in pots. Sweet corn (Lark and Sparrow - are those real varieties?) will be started off this weekend, as will courgettes (Striata D'Italia), pumpkins and squashes. I'm experimenting with growing melons this year (soon to be sown in a very warm spot) and have chosen Blacktail Mountain watermelon and Minnesota Midget canteloupe from The Real Seed Company. By the end of May, I hope also to have just a couple of bush cherry tomato plants and some peppers on the go.  It's said, "wishing's one thing, doing's another" so we'll see...

Back outside, Onions (Hyred and Snowball, above) have been growing in the veg patch for the past month, with Fiorentino Spinach planted in between the red onions (below). The first two rows of Spinach are ready to be picked as baby leaves and the next two rows of seeds were sown over the bank holiday weekend:

Potatoes (Blue Danube, Charlotte and Vivaldi) have sprung up from potatoes mistakenly left in the ground last year (gosh, I feel I'm really baring my soul here! - the veg patch has practically planted itself) but I have actually myself sown three varieties of beetroot (Perfect 3 and Cheltenham green tops for myself and Chioggia for my friend who runs our local deli and likes this variety, which I don't.) The fox chased a mouse over that bed last Friday night, scattering the soil, so it will be a test to see if I can tell the difference as (or if) they grow!

I'd like to have shown the progress in the garlic bed, with 3 rows of Amsterdam carrots companionably sown in between. Sadly, this is not be just yet as a fox (the same one?) dug deep into the bed last Monday and disturbed all the planting. It would seem he was (successfully) after a bird that had probably flown down to pull up my garlic! I guess that's nature for you and, judging by the wing feathers, I think it was a blue jay.  Very beautiful. (Sorry to be so macabre with the photo. I didn't know what it was and wanted to identify the bird, so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)

The disturbance has blown my garlic experiment out of the water: I'd planted a row of cloves saved from last year's home-grown garlic, a row of store-bought Porcelain Garlic (Music) and a couple of rows of T&M Sicilian Red garlic. I'd hoped to compare the success rate of the different sources. Now who knows what will pop up where? Fingers crossed it isn't as bad as it looks!

I have a couple of beds waiting to be planted up at the end of the month with the courgettes, etc, and buckets of rescued red orache (atriplex rubra) - self-seeded from one tiny garden sale plant. The seedlings were carefully transferred to recycled flower shop buckets before I dug over the bed. (I hate abandoning plants, and will do the same with my beetroot thinnings.) The intention is to replant these around the raised beds with plenty of other flowers to liven up the view.

I've previously written about the rampant growing going on in the herb bed and now the horseradish has flowered (above).  Oh my goodness, whatever next! I have no idea what this plant will do next but have read online of people mowing it down to keep it under control - which seems a bit drastic! Equally, I don't know if this is what should be happening with a second year plant and if the roots will still be edible.  (If anyone does know, I'd appreciate the advice.)

Elsewhere in the herb bed, evidence of last year's self-seeding is apparent:  parsley, coriander, fennel and sunflowers mingle happily together with a few strawberries (from runners).  Actually, I rather like this - at least for now!

That's probably enough for today.  I'll save news of the fruit and flowers for tomorrow but I'd like to leave you with this photo which fills me with hope:  if I'm right, those are ladybird eggs on my fennel so the greenfly on my red Orache had better watch out!

By the way, credit where credit is due:  I was inspired to write this End of Month View by Helen/The Patient Gardener, Janet/Plantalicious, Karen/The Garden Smallholding and Flighty/Flighty's Plot.

Cardoons (I think)!

 Found on a recent walk round …

Okay, I may be getting a teeny bit obsessed with seed collecting.  My eyes now rake across the content of other people's gardens and process the location of any seeds worth gathering.  This beauty stopped me in my tracks a couple of days ago.  A seed head about 9 inches across, fluffy and spiky.  What a beaut! But still standing up (and in someone's front garden) so off limits.  However … on the return journey I noticed quite a few seed heads lying on the ground within easy reach (Yayy!) - and quite obviously neglected by the householder.   So I've rescued one and have since been dissecting, pulling and photographing.

 

I didn't know what it was but after a very satisfying flick through 'RHS Garden Plants and Flowers', I have my answer: it is a Cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) or, possibly, Wild Thistle Artichoke.  

Apparently it's almost a weed, grown for architectural interest in UK gardens, loathed by farmers as its parachute seeds (plumose hairs with achenes attached) settle happily into their crop fields.  See what a little bit of reading will do?

Forgive my naiveté, and stop laughing seasoned gardeners, but this learning curve is what makes gardening so compelling.  And imagine my surprise when I found out from Sarah Raven's book 'The Great Vegetable Plot' that you can eat the stems! Awesome. Apparently they do it all the time in the Mediterranean.  

Yes, you're right … I really should get out more …

Achenes (ahem) on blue linen