The Real End of Month View for March, in April

At the weekend I wrote about spring flowers that are currently blooming around and in the veg patch but didn't look at the wider view of what else is happening. It's easier to focus in on the detail when skies are grey!  So, for a proper end of month view, I took another wander around the various little patches that I manage here - the veg patch, the shady border, the washing line border and the middle garden. (Yes, my patch has spread outwards over the years!)

The Veg Patch

~ After the tidy up ~

~ Spring growth - rhubarb and ransoms, tulips and fruit buds ~

Spring weather has been challenging for us gardeners - a bit of in/out, in/out, but don't shake it all about (seeds, that is!).  I resisted the urge to sow during March - mainly because my balcony is off limits at the moment, and it's too dark inside for seedlings. That worked in my favour as the weather was brutal at times. I risked sowing a few broad beans and sweet peas back in January. The broad bean plants have been sitting in the veg patch for a week now waiting for me to plant them during a break in the rain (and not being distracted by other jobs) while the sweet peas grow ever taller on my balcony in the shade of the scaffolding boards above.

#mygardenrightnow - progress in the middle garden

Ooh, look! It's me!

There's a garden bloggers meme running - for this weekend only! - hosted by Michelle at Veg Plotting blog.  Come join us and check out what other garden bloggers are up to this weekend!

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It might not look like much but progress was made in the middle garden yesterday. This is the little garden which I look out on from two floors up and which I started to clear last year.  I've been taking my time as there was a lot of ivy and other stuff that needed to be got rid of (mostly on the occasional day off work) but, finally, I'm redoing the layout.

As with all garden design, it was important to get this step completed first before I could introduce new plants but over the last year, I've acquired lots of plants for this space - some bought, some given, some adopted from my mother's garden.  These plants have been shuffled around the garden in their pots while I deal with one area or another but timing is now crucial.  Spring is here and these plants need to be in the ground, so the layout has to be finished. Yesterday's task was to level off the soil where I'd dug out weeds, bricks and tree roots, hack back some more ivy and clear under the Euonymus (spindle) hedge ready to chop it back more. All done by 6pm, just as the light was fast fading.

Luckily, when I got in, I spotted Michelle's weekend meme #mygardenrightnow; photos were needed so, at 8 am this morning, before taking my garden waste to recycling in the rain, I snapped a (rare) quick pic of me in the garden.

13 months ago - 7ft wide hedges and ivy creeping up to the tiny weed filled oval of gravel.

What a difference a year makes! This morning (when the sun briefly reappeared from behind rain clouds)
I'm still deciding whether to keep gravel in the centre or replace with grass or chippings. 

Torn between two gardens

Photos from late April: Honeyberry blossom, pear blossom, blueberry buds. 

I make no apologies for my absence here on the written page because, yet again, the gardening year has pounced before I'm completely ready.  One blog post a month? Shame on me! Still, all in a good cause - both the veg patch and the new 'middle garden' (so-called as it's bang-slap in the middle of the flats where I live) have both been dominating my time out of work hours, right up until the sun sets in the evening - but only on the evenings when I have the energy to garden after working a 10 hour day.

I thought the hard work in the veg patch was over and done last year when I fenced around it to keep cats and foxes out.  But, with me, there's always another good idea lurking - which is not to say that good ideas and the time available are necessarily compatible. That said, this spring I've reworked the veg patch: a perennial flower border has been created plus a new run of Polka raspberries; old rotten raised beds have been chucked out and replaced (with some neighbourly help) with scaffold board edging. The herbs have been dug up and replanted together into one area and a dozen or so Rosemary Beetles have met a terrifying early death under my boot. I'll spare you the view of the carnage. (By the way, keep an eye out for these pests because they'll swiftly decimate not only rosemary but also lavender and sage. I've previously written about them here.)

The above mentioned fencing project of last year is, by necessity, back on the agenda as the idea was sound but some of the bamboo canes weren't up to the task and have bent.  I blame small children leaning in to reach for the raspberries. Anyway, a nice chap up the road donated four tall tree stakes when he heard about the garden and these will be used as replacement corner posts.  One is in already as I had a chance to dig deep into a corner when I put up the trellis for my sweet peas a couple of weeks ago. The others will have to wait as excavating London clay is no laughing matter for my back.

Despite all this (and more), there have been many evenings and weekends when my first love has had to give way to the usurper - the middle garden. The vision for this garden is to bring it back to life as a welcoming space to relax in, preferably with dozens of flowers-for-cutting among nectar rich shrubs and perennials.  I know what I want but it will take a long time to get there -  no quick three week Chelsea build for me!

After lots of staring at the garden from my second floor window, I realised that until I cleared the extensive ivy and hugely overgrown hedges, it would be impossible to realise the garden's potential.  17 large bags of garden waste, a pile of brick rubble and 7 huge mounds of hedge prunings later, I feel we're getting somewhere. (As luck would have it, a neighbour is also enthused about the idea and her gardening talents have been well deployed.) There will be more details in my next post but at last I can now measure the garden so I can start planning! It's taken quite a few long days over many weekends during which time the veg patch has had to make do with just an evening or two of weeding.

There's two lessons that have come out of this - one, never ever plant ivy in a small garden unless you have time to maintain it and, two, weeding is probably the most important task to keep on top of in the garden. A bit like painting the Forth Bridge but, nevertheless, essential.

Back soon ... hope you're all enjoying the Chelsea Flower Show, in person or on tv.  You'll notice that I didn't go this year as I stupidly missed the deadline for both tickets and a press pass.  Duh.

Capel Manor: Naming of names

My favourite image from last Friday's course:  The Castor Oil plant (Ricinis communis).
(Not to be confused with Fatsia Japonica, the false Castor Oil plant!)

So, back to Capel last Friday and this week we got going with the good stuff.  Plant identification builds week on week so that, with practise and a well-exercised memory, my fellow students and I should be able to confidently - and correctly - identify at least 150 plants with their Latin names by the end of the year.  Sounds quite a task to me but I imagine that most of us gardening folk know quite a few plant names already without realising it.  Or maybe that's just me being a bit of a plant geek and having a penchant for being able to spout the Latin names of my favourites;  I find it helps to monitor how many of my brain cells have apparently died; I frequently find a complete void in my memory where peoples' (and plant) names and significant events used to reside.

This week another 8 plants have to be instilled in my memory bank before next Friday.  It's said that the best way to learn is to use several senses at once: students get walked (in all weathers) through the maze of gardens to the relevant plant, told all about it (type, aspect, soil, habit, role in the garden, features, etc), have a quick line sketch and/or photo, touch the plant (well, I do) and - whoosh! - onto the next one.  I was so absorbed in sketching the Sedums that I momentarily got left behind and lost the group, thereby missing out on fascinating titbits about Japanese windflowers.

The rest of the morning was spent having our eyes opened as to the meaning of plant names, how and why they're constructed (grouped) and a short potted history of the Binomial naming system.  The tutor is excellent - and, believe me, I've sat through some real duffers.  She's friendly, passionate, interesting and interested; pretty much what's needed to get the message across.

So, if you'll just bear with me while I get my visual reminders in place, these are the plants that I have to remember for next week:

Sedum 'Herbstfreude' aka Ice Plant. (You either love them or hate them. I'm with the first lot.)

  

Abelia x grandiflora (a bit of a misnomer as the flowers are tiny!). Domed shrub.

  

Dahlia 'Bishop of Llandaff'


Anemone x hybrida 'Honorine Jobert'
  

Macleaya microcarpa 'Kelway's Coral Plume'. Large perennial.
  

Ricinis communis (Castor Oil plant; fab leaves, highly poisonous, large)
  

Stipa gigantea ... as the name suggests, a large grass with golden oaty plumes.
  

Stipa tenuissima ... a short grass with fluffy plumes
  

I'm a visual learner so looking at the information on paper then matching it with my photos seems to be working ... so far. (I'm putting more information about the plants with the photos on my Flickr page for those that may be interested.)

The afternoon was equally absorbing; we spent much of it drawing upside down! (Not the students, the image. I had a sudden mental image of 15 students hanging, bat-like, from the rafters with pencils in hand!) It's a creative technique to get the right side of the brain to dominate during sketching activities - or, as I would call it, walking before you can run. It's taken from the book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" which has spawned a decade of workshops in New York.  I had a quick look at their website and, especially, the 'before and after' gallery, from line sketch to tonal sketch with most of the self-portraits seemingly of desperados from a John Wayne Western!   Luckily, for homework, we can have a go at doing our line drawings the right way up!

It's another dry day here in London so I'm going to spend a couple of hours in the veg patch - my spaghetti squash has formed another 2 fruits, only 4 inches long at the moment, and growing among the branches of the plum tree. If these grow to maturity that will make FIVE spaghetti squashes!  I've had another Sicilian courgette from my balcony plant but the peppers are struggling - I'm likely to bring those indoors to ripen up. I keep having to remind myself that the green pepper on my balcony is really an Orange Bell pepper!

If I have time, I also need to remember that NOW is the time to be planting bulbs for spring, as well as broad beans, onions and spring onions, and a host of flowers for an early display next spring (marigold, cornflower, nigella, nasturtium).  I've had the first of my seed catalogues (Thompson and Morgan) so I should be thinking about what to grow next year;  how about everyone else?  Keen to put this year behind you and plan for next year?