Rhubarb, rhubarb, Let's talk

A neighbour’s rhubarb plant in mid February.  It’s going to get a lot bigger...

Growing rhubarb is easy, you say? A few years ago, I would have agreed, having grown an enormous Glaskins Perpetual from seed.  That plant has now gone, dug up with misplaced confidence that the other two Champagne rhubarb plants would more than suffice - umm, once they got going.

As if to thwart me, those two have never flourished. A handful of tantalising petite red stems appear in February ... and then, every year, it’s game over.  The stems wilt before they get big enough to make a decent compote ... or fruit fool ... or crumble. Or the crowns run to seed with, I have to admit, rather magnificent flower stalks.

I think I know what the problem is.

I trusted the advice that I’d read in some random internet space that rhubarb plants are happy to grow in light shade and so, foolishly, planted the Champagne crowns in the spaces next to my apple and cherry trees. With hindsight, the source of their struggles should have been obvious. They have to compete with the trees for water (I have mentioned the lack of a tap in this area, haven’t I?) and, I dare say, the trees are hogging any goodness that may linger in the soil. Plus, shade.

Time for a change.

At least one of these plants will be moved into the light.  A nice sunny spot in the veg patch with rich earth awaits. Or will do once I can get into the garden, weather permitting.

Meanwhile, I have permission to pick from a neighbour’s plant - the gorgeous beast in the top photo. Every year it produces a wealth of vibrantly red delicious stems, a few of which find their way into my kitchen.  I had the first poached stems of many a couple of weeks ago; they were yummy.

So, here’s little tip for poaching rhubarb.  Instead of using sugar to sweeten the stems, use a sweet jelly such as redcurrant (or other fruit).  I used some of the quince jelly I made last autumn and finished the compote with some pieces of stem ginger and some of the liquid from the jar.  It was very very good - not least for being my first harvest this year. Isn’t gardening just wonderful!

A visit from the Marmalade Cat

I'm not a keeper of cats although they do seem to show up regularly in my life. Many of the local households in this small corner of Camden Borough are home to a number of cats, many of whom patrol the grounds of the flats where I live.  I like to think of them as Top Cat and The Gang. (Remember them? Sixties cartoon hilarity from Hanna-Barbera.)

And the Top Cat in this little gang is definitely the marmalade cat in the above photo.  But there’s also a black/white Piebald (there used to be two, one of which was aptly named 'Bubbles'), one Calico cat (black, white, ginger), a tabby and two black cats with white socks and chest - shall we call them Tuxedo cats?   But it was Lady Marmalade who availed herself of a patch of sheltered sunshine in the garden. (Cats, like people, love to soak up the warmth of a sunny spot.)

I happened to glance out of my second floor window as she sat, eyes closed and face lifted towards the warm sunshine; I have a sneaking regard for this very aloof cat, she reminds me of my grandmother's beloved elderly ginger tom; he was a cat who spent most of his days sleeping, often on the chair outside her kitchen door. And, because my siblings and I were still very young, the temptation to stroke him was ever present. This, of course, was forbidden as much for our sakes as his - he was a cat who did not like to be fussed over. Except by Gran, of course.

Meanwhile, back in the garden, I watched Lady Marmalade move towards the spring border with intent. She slid gracefully around the silver birch and carefully hoofed it through the hellebores. But then a lifted paw started to explore the soil; she'd found the very (freshly dug) spot where I'd recently transplanted a dormant peony. To make matters worse, this area in the spring border is full of snowdrops and awaiting the imminent arrival of crocuses. Aarrgh!

I raced downstairs hoping to head off a potential disaster but, thankfully, all was well - sort of. The area had already been claimed by foxes (need I say more?), no further damage was done, and my feline friend sauntered slowly off the spot to sit facing away from me next to the watering can before slipping out through a gap under the privet hedge.

So now I know where to reinforce the fence, although I’m becoming accustomed to the idea that the local Top Cat gang are enjoying their visits to the garden.  I’m planning on growing Cat Grass and Nepeta, aka Catnip, this summer - I’m hoping it will keep them out of the flower borders where their presents of buried treasure are somewhat less than welcome!

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By the way .... I actively discourage cats from exploring the veg patch garden by using a makeshift netting fence to barricade the plot. I arrived at this solution after years of frustration at finding cat poo hidden close to my root veg. That was seriously unpleasant and I learned that all gardeners need to be aware of the health risks cat poo can pose to children and other vulnerable people. Best to shift it as soon as possible; I carry a poo bag in my gardening tool bag.

That sweet smell of winter

Let's face it, progress is slow in the veg garden even in the mildest of winters - those little plants know that they’re better off snuggled into a protective blanket of soil, slugs notwithstanding. But if there’s nothing much for me to see, at least there are lots of lovely smells at this time of year.

It wasn’t a day to be outside for long on Friday (or any day this past week) but, walking back from dropping off my recycling, I found myself drawn into the garden by a delicious smell wafting over from the stand of Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn'. And as I tugged a branch towards me to better appreciate its scent close up, I heard the angry buzzing of a disturbed bumble bee. A positive sign as bumbles are the first bees to wake up in spring and good to know that there's food for them.

Someone (not me) planted two of the shrubs a long time ago and their scruffiness irritates me hugely for most of the year. They haven’t been maintained by the contract gardeners so have grown in height and width to cast deep shade over the border until their leaves drop in late autumn.  This shrub should be maintained by thinning out the old wood at the base, thereby allowing the new shoots room to grow; I frequently harbour thoughts of heading out with my pruning saw - my type of guerrilla gardening.

But with the appearance of their dainty pink flowers in early winter, all is forgiven.  The perfume is delicious but strangely doesn’t work indoors (for me, anyway), much better to appreciate it wafting on the wind.

The next border along is a thicket. Our community gardening group (as was) were given this area for food growing but resisted clearing it straightaway; it was a jungle even then but we told ourselves that at least tenants overlooking the gardens had some greenery to look out onto until the food garden was less bare earth. Now I worry that by sorting it out I’ll be destroying a perfect habitat for this urban garden’s wildlife.

See what I mean? Thicket.

It’s now been taken over by Petasites, another (very invasive) winter flowering plant with a strong baby-talc perfume. Staring at it, I started to think about winter plants that brighten up the garden with their scent.

I wrote about Petasites in depth five years ago, in January 2015. At that time I had plans to conquer it, dig it up and relocate a few plants.  Needless to say, that's still on my to do list.  But there's an idea tickling my thoughts - how would it be if the Petasites were transplanted into the Viburnum border?  Good, eh? There might be a bit of sensory overload on the olfactory front, and I'd have to rescue my beautiful ferns first (a very lovely bronze Dryopteris erythrosora), but it’s a plan. When the weather is warmer though.

It's would be a massive challenge as the plant has spread the length of its 30ft long home border.  That whole area needs culling; it's a thicket of tangled dogwood, hebe, Elaeagnus, Choysia, ivy and honeysuckle ... which brings me to my next winter smelly.

This, I love. Like roses, I find it impossible to pass by without a not-so-surreptitious sniff of the scent. The flowers are edible with a sweet burst of nectar at the base; they’re not known as Honey suckle for nothing!  This is a bog standard honeysuckle which has flowered courtesy of a mild winter but there is a winter flowering honeysuckle - Lonicera purpusii-  that has highly scented white flowers from early winter onwards.  Duly noted for when this border is conquered.

And finally (thanks for bearing with me), I have to mention Daphne odora ‘Aureomarginata’. The clue is in the name, a most beautiful shrub with a not-to-be-ignored intense perfume.

I walk in olfactory heaven past a clutch of these most days, planted in a long roadside border outside council flats. I can’t help but marvel at this municipal border as it’s planted up with the most desirable of plants - the above mentioned Daphnes, a swathe of large pale green Hellebore foetida, Euphorbia rigida, grasses, Brachyglottis (aka Senecio or Daisy Bush) and Sarcococca, another excellent shrub for scent and wildlife.

Sweetly scented flowers and berries for birds - what’s not to love!

Both Daphne and Sarcococca are shrubs that are sadly lacking in the gardens here but I’ve Google searched for a supplier several times and my fingers are creeping closer to the ‘click to buy’ button, paid for with my jar of babysitting money, saved for exactly this purpose. Watch this space .... !

It's tulip time!

Hallelujah! Winter is almost over, she shouted.  Okay, that may be stretching it a bit but there are definite sightings of tulip buds rising above the leaves in the veg patch and mini tulips in flower in the car park garden.  This is most unusual, even if we are only days away from March, the meterological start of the spring season.  It all seems a bit too soon, to have tulips in February; I mean, the snowdrops are barely bowing out and daffodils have just hit their stride. So these tulips are most unexpected - but after a long wet winter, I'll take whatever signs of imminent spring I can get.

One of the tall tulips in the Fruit Tree border of the Veg Patch.
Hmmm, thought I’d dug all the yellow ones up ... 

A fact I discovered just recently was that short tulips flower earlier than their taller relatives. Please tell me I'm not the last to know! This I find eminently sensible (even if they do normally wait until late March/April to bloom). Wintry weather, and certainly the wild weather we've had this year, would ravage the taller tulips (the ones the foxes don't trample first!) but I was still surprised to see several of these red/yellow mini tulips ready to open at the weekend.  Especially as I planted only tall tulips in this bed last year and most of those were transferred to pots when I needed the space for my gooseberry bushes. Maybe, like me, they've just got shorter with age.

Springing up in the veg patch

There hasn't been a lot to crow about in the winter veg patch but with the sun shining this morning, I found myself muttering 'This is a lovely day' (despite a 'fresh breeze' as the Met Office like to call it).  A little bit of sunshine makes everything look more promising. Making my way towards home, I diverted my steps for a quick look at the veg garden; every day makes a difference especially after the two recent storms. Plants were noticeably doing their planty growing thing and, with a spring in my step, I resolved to spend an hour in the garden before lunch.

Somewhere between the veg patch and home (only a few minutes walk), I switched to thinking about doing a bit more work on the hedge in the car park garden. (I really must think up another name for that space, Car Park Garden doesn't quite do it justice.) The Euonymus hedge needs some very severe restorative pruning to encourage it to bush up from the base and I need to tidy up the space to see if there's room for a mini greenhouse.

What started as a sunny but breezy moment of pruning soon turned into a battle against a gale force wind. And then it rained. Time for lunch, I told myself, and packed my tools away. I had managed a couple of hours but, admitting defeat for the day, I headed back indoors and turned my thoughts back to the veg garden - surely spring can't be far off, if only the weather would make up its mind.  I'm wondering if I should sow some chilli seeds.

Despite the changeable weather, the UK winter has been kind to us namby-pamby Southerners. On my earlier walk round the veg patch I'd snapped a few photos:

I was surprised to see wild garlic already well under way ...  Wild garlic has such a reputation for spreading that some might think me foolhardy for deliberately growing it. Not to worry, so far it's been remarkably self-restrained and seems happy to occupy just a few feet of soil under the cherry tree. Possibly the lack of regular watering (no nearby hosepipe) makes things inhospitable for new seedlings.

And so to broad beans. A bit of an experiment this as it's the first time I've tried over wintering beans. I set them out next to support sticks last December; tying them in now that they've grown is on the to-do list, although not being secured to stakes might have saved them from being ripped in half during the strong winds of Storms Ciara and Dennis. What I did notice (with not a little excitement) was that flower buds are starting to form on the plants and not a aphid in sight. Hopefully I'm not jinxing things with that last observation.

Kale is one of my winter veg patch staples, a vegetable I add to stir fries, soups, smoothies and, when the mood takes me, an omelette. It keeps going even in the harshest winter and it looks pretty. Even if it's covered with an ugly trellis to keep foxes off.  The Cavolo Nero plant that has kept going for so long has started to form flower buds - these are still edible but this is the second time the plant has run to seed; it has served me well. It feels very fitting that new plants will be raised from last summer's saved seed.

Looking ahead, the weather forecast is looking predictably gloomy (possibility of hail tomorrow!). So any gardening will be in short bursts while I go back to planning my seed sowing calendar indoors.

So let me leave you with this thought - aren't spring flowers just awesome?

Self seeded and so pretty. 

Tulips that I thought I'd dug up last year. Can't remember how many years these have been in.

First forget-me-nots are starting to flower. Some blue, some pink. And in profusion.

Ever reliable cowslips. 
Now I'm thinking I should move some of these to the Car Park Garden

It's that winter/spring thing

So far this winter I’ve remained cozily optimistic about avoiding frost and freezing temperatures, given the relatively mild weather in North London.  Early yesterday morning though, following a beautifully clear night sky, I could just make out a layer of ice etched into the cars parked below from my second floor windows. It’s the first time temperatures have fallen below 45°F (8°C) and I felt the tug to be outside, looking to see if my nasturtium leaves had caved in to the cold. (They hadn’t.)

Before you ask, no I haven’t discovered a super hardy variety of nasturtium; these are left overs from last summer and usually don’t survive beyond November. I ripped out most of the sprawling trip-hazard plants at the end of autumn but a few fallen seeds had germinated so I left the baby plants for salad leaves until winter got them.  They carried on (rather heroically I thought) and, unrealistically, I was hoping that a mild winter would let these plants live to produce early summer flowers. I think my expectations might be misplaced. Although ....

Newly opened and appreciating this weekend's warm January sunshine

This past week the weather has been rather horrid and a sharp reminder that we’re still not at peak Winter in the UK - dark grey skies, constant drizzle, heavy rain, and buffeting cold winds. (Which makes this weekends sunshine all the more appreciated.)  It was the sort of weather that makes you want to curl up under a cosy blanket with your seed box and dreams rather than be outdoors but, undeterred, I have been checking in on the garden.  There’s not a lot happening in the veg patch, understandably, but what there is seems to be ticking over nicely, waiting for spring.

In autumn last year I sowed a dozen Aquadulce broad bean plants in modules. I wanted to see if overwintering (rather than spring sown) gives an earlier harvest; the small plants were transplanted into the garden in early December and now need tying in to their support stakes. My favourite beans are still Karmazyn (slightly sweeter with pink coats inside green pods) but they won’t be sown until March/April.

Onion sets planted in December have started to sprout, kale (pink veined Red Devil), chamomile and chervil are all looking very healthy, having been planted out as I cleared the veg patch in early winter.  The strawberry runners, not so much; I noticed yesterday that they were looking very sorry for themselves but perhaps they'll perk up with some better weather. 

January nights are punctuated by the mating cries of urban foxes; the flats here are next to a railway line, a lushly overgrown 'green corridor',  making it a perfect spot for fox burrows. Most nights several of them like to check out the home turf, looking for food and fun. I can see that foxes have been in both gardens; yep, the usual calling cards are much in evidence!  So all my precious veg has been protected under rescued wire baskets (often see thrown out on the streets).

Safe to say, the garden is not at its most glamorous but all is not lost.  After pinning my hopes of winter flowers on a solitary snowdrop for the past few weeks, I was thrilled to find the violets in bloom yesterday.  These are self seeded having managed to work their way a good 8 metres up the garden path. Recognising the leaf shape when the seedlings were tiny, I left the plants to develop but will move them, probably into the other garden which is, to its detriment, currently a violet-free zone.

But I can't leave without mentioning my Cavolo Nero plant. I love how nature is a constant cycle of surprises! In 2018 I let the original plant run to seed, mainly because the flowers provide late summer food for bees. By spring of last year, one of those seeds had grown into a tiny plant which I carefully  moved to the other end of the veg patch where it thrived to produce good leaves for eating all year. That plant was huge and healthy so I let that one run to seed as well. After harvesting the seeds, I cut the stalk down to about a metre high, leaving it as there were still a few leaves growing from the base. Those leaves have been providing me with food all winter and the plant is still growing. Now that's what I call excellent value.

My hero Nero

A good day at the library

This wonderful mosaic tiled floor at the entrance to the Lindley Library

A visit to a library is always a good thing.  When that library has shelves dedicated to all things gardening, it becomes a really good thing.  Yesterday I set out for my old stomping ground, Pimlico. I lived and worked there before I had my now adult son and always enjoy a wander down memory lane.  It was a wonderful place to live, just a short walk to the Tate and Hayward galleries, and the National Portrait gallery in Trafalgar Square; even Chelsea was just a quick hop by pedal power. My flat was 5 minutes walk from the Horticultural Halls but I hadn't discovered gardening ... yet. Yesterday’s mission was to return books to the RHS Lindley Library, equidistant between Pimlico and Victoria tubes but I prefer to avoid the hurly burly of Victoria's busy station and streets.

Just for starters ... 

I love gardening and I love books so when my twin passions collide, I’m in heaven. And this library is filled with joy for the gardening bibliophile. Shelves filled with gardening books of every topic, garden mags to read in comfy chairs, desks for quiet research and an archive of precious books, papers, artifacts, prints and manuscripts dating from the 15th century.  Add to that friendly helpful staff, a quiet atmosphere and regular small informative exhibitions - I find I don’t need much of an excuse to pop in when I’m in the area. (The RHS also has libraries which I've yet to visit at their Wisley and Harlow Carr gardens.)

Title page of John Gerard's 'The Herball', 1597 - predating Culpepper's herbal by 120 years
Metal engraving had replaced woodcut printing, used to beautiful effect here.

My first encounter with the library was the result of a talk offered at one of RHS London shows; those shows were always wonderful and sadly missed.  Shamefully, I can’t remember what that talk was about but can clearly recall the very beautiful old books brought out from the archives for the group to look at. I think the talk may have been to do with early plant use as one of the books was an original Gerard’s Herbal. (1597! That's over four hundred years old and no white gloves were required. Perhaps that was an oversight.) Incredibly, to my mind, the archive is accessible to all by prior appointment which seems very generous.  (Currently Tuesdays and Thursdays due to staffing levels.)

At the time of that talk I thought the library was exclusively for serious writers and researchers but one day, following signs to an exhibition (The Healing Garden, I think) I tentatively went inside and discovered over a warm welcome that the library was open to everyone (not just RHS members, although I am) and that I could join and take books home. That made my day I can tell you and has helped my book buying budget no end. I always check the online library catalogue now before buying a gardening book.

Making the most of a small plot? I could do with that today! 

I've been to several of the mini-exhibitions since - Dig for Victory last October was memorable with artefacts and photos illustrating the social history behind Britain's wartime food growing, supported by the government and the RHS. On show were maps and cloth bags used to send seeds over to prisoner camps, leaflets on success with veg, and photos of allotments (in Hyde Park!) and back gardens being turned over to veg growing. (I remember being told by one of the older residents on my estate that the gardens here were dug up for food growing but returned to shrubs soon after the war was over for practical reasons.)

 Stunningly beautiful up close. I'd be happy to give it wall space.
William Van Sommen, autochrome photo.
(All photos are protected with a glass frame so apologies for the quality
but if you look closely my reflection is at the lower left edge of the bowl)

My visit yesterday was intended to be a quick turnaround to return some books and head home empty handed. After a friendly chat with lovely staff at the welcome desk, it would have been rude to leave before having a look at the display of William Van Sommen’s autochrome photos, and from there it was just a quick step to the library shelves and magazine racks.  Gardens Illustrated, Kitchen Garden, Grow Your Own and the latest Permaculture editions (and more if I'd had time) awaited.

So, funnily enough I didn't leave empty handed as planned but came home with a small selection of books on urban growing, Beth Chatto’s drought resistant planting and wildflower gardening. Oops.  And I get to take them back in a month's time.

😄

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Colour in the Garden is on until 24th January at 80 Vincent Square. The library is open Monday to Friday, there are loos on the 4th floor, a lift and wonderful views over the Westminster School playing fields on the way down.  More about what the library offers here.

The two RHS London shows this year are in April, free for RHS members; I'll be there, will you?.

• 7th-8th, Spring Launch and Orchid Show
• 17th - 18th, Botanical art and photography show