Seeds and weeds

My seeds from Thompson and Morgan arrived at last on Friday, but inclement weather on Saturday (horizontal hail?) stopped me from doing anything out in the garden.

Sunday I got out during one of the brief sunny spells to plant some beetroot seeds (two rows of red, one Detroit and one anonymous supermarket packet and one row of Burpee's Golden). I also threw in some spring onion seeds down next to the gooseberry bush. (So didn't actually use any of the T&M seeds yet!)

I started to weed the shady side of the garden. There was an awful lot of moss there! I have a very untidy carnation that is growing wildly but not happily, as it never seems to flower and so many of its branches seem to be damaged and broken. (Although this could be attribted to visits from the shitzus - more shitzu leavings have been found and thrown back over the fence.) I probably need to apply myself diligently to tying it up or building a little structure for it.

The Lidl pear tree, the Beurre Hardy, is really not looking well. I tested one of the most shrivelledy looking branches and it snapped off cleanly, brown inside, brown outside. Lidl are doing fruit trees again later this week, £9.77 this time. The ones in the picture on the website have leaves on them. I am wondering if I should consider the Beurre Hardy a goner and invest in a new tree?

While rearranging the patio for maximum viewing enjoyment from the kitchen window, I found a small pot with mint growing in it. This is great, because I thought I'd killed all the mint, but it turns out this one was just sleeping. My next thought was - Summertime Mojitos!

I transplanted the little tomato plant that was growing in with the kitchen aloe vera, and moved it in it's own pot into the greenhouse, where I hope it will grow and flourish.

The next anticipated event will be the flowering of the tulips. Some plants have flower spikes already and I can see hints of pink around the green flower buds. I wonder what the chance is on them all being in flower while I'm away on holiday for two weeks at Easter?

Seeds update

A quick check on the seed situation today revealed that the following seeds are sprouting:

• Zinnias (we knew this already but let's continue to rejoice in it)
• Calendula
• Lettuce
• Statice Purple
• Cornflower
• Ageratum

This weekend's weather is not predicted good so I may not get to dig over the shady side of the yard and get more seeds planted out as I had hoped but we will wait and see.

Williams Red at last

Yesterday was the equinox and therefore the first day of spring! (Apparently) So my first action in the garden today is poo patrol. Yes, the neighbour's shitzus have breached the fence and were in my yard yesterday and that tends to mean one thing. I find several piles of what shitzus must be named for and throw them back over the fence. My neighbour was out this morning fixing the holes in the fence, but it's too late to fix the damage to my daffodils, tulips and the brown heuchera that was right in their landing path when they came through.


The evil bully cat (an unneutered male who has been picking on my cat) tried to walk through the yard today but I saw him and ran at him screaming and shouting. He ran off. However I noticed that the back corner of the yard smells strongly of cat pee, so for my one scare-off today who knows how many times he will come back to pee and bully?

On a more cheerful note, my Williams Red Pear tree arrived yesterday (from Dobies: http://www.dobies.co.uk/). It's very tall and looks almost as dead as my Lidl tree (despite costing about 5 fives as much!) Williams cross-pollinate with Beurre Hardy, and I think this could be the variety I got a bag of down at the market once: red pears, possibly the most amazing pears I ever had in my life.

So my main aim for today was to get this tree planted. (I really don't think the pear trees are dead... I just didn't expect them to sleep for so long! Although now spring is officially here, perhaps they will wake up.)
Soaking the roots before planting Planted!

Digging holes for trees is not a happy business. It's painful and back breaking and tedious. Especially in a part of yard that hasn't really been dug over before, although someone must have done some digging there once upon a time, how else would there be so much broken glass in the soil? But the hole is dug, the tree is planted and watered in and we are all happy.

I also plant my Wisley asparagus plant on top of the two Homebase plants (which I strongly suspect are dead) in the asparagus trench. I found a pile of shitzu in there this morning - not happy!

Since my back is holding up and the sun is shining, I do some weeding (want to get those dandelions, creeping buttercups and bindweed) and throw in some spring onion seeds next to the other seeds I listed from last week.


And now, a bit of a pictorial summary of what's going on in the garden now.

Here are the blueberries: the expensive Ebay one from Mighty Oak trading, the moderately priced Homebase one and the one from the 99p shop (can you tell the difference?)


Here are the daffodils that are out all over the garden in all their different colour combinations:



The raspberries, the gooseberry and the redcurrent all doing well (yes, even the ones from Lidl!)


The apple tree has proper leaves now! The chard has survived the winter and is still growing strong. The rose hyacinth is looking very pretty indeed.



I got some sweet pea seeds planted after soaking them overnight as recommended: two varieties from a six pack from the 99p store (when will I learn?) and also the wisteria seeds from the pods which have sat in the kitchen for about 2 months now.


In the greenhouse, there is a first sign of life! Some of the zinnia seeds are starting to poke through the soil.


In the kitchen, there is a tomato seedling inexplicably growing in with my Aloe Vera.

Sunny Sunday... and seeds

I love a sunny Sunday. Especially with a good back and two loads of laundry ready to hang out by the time I've cooked and eaten breakfast and washed up! Today's garden adventure started with an inspection first. There are daffodils coming out all around the garden, even in the neglected pot down by the shed. I love daffodil season, to me it says that the worst of winter is over.

My £3.99 Lidl apple tree (Cox Orange Pippin) has broken open its buds and there are leaves unfurling. This is very exciting. My pear tree (the Beurre Hardy) is still asleep, although when I see the branches look stick-like and shrivelled I do have a sinking feeling that it might be dead. But I won't give up hope yet.

My fruit bushes (the new gooseberry from Lidl and the redcurrant from Homebase) are still alive. They haven't grown much but neither are they dying, so that's good. The autumn fruiting raspberries (that fruited all through summer last year) have new leaves forming on the cane stumps (I realise they should have been cut to ground level if they really are autumn fruiting but I just couldn't do it). The other canes (again, from Lidl!) are still more like sticks but I can see there is potential for life to spring out from them. One or two sticks do actually have green showing on them so again, all good. I gave them all a good watering.

No life showing on the oca beds yet (but it's only been a week). One of the beds has been used as a cat toilet (ugh!). The asparagus trench has also been used as a toilet by some animal. I'm assuming it's not my cat - I like to believe he goes and makes his toilet in someone else's garden!

A close check on the wisteria that I hatched from seeds from next door's vine last year revealed that they are not dead, no! They were in fact just sleeping through the winter and are now budding up into life again. This is good news! I thought I'd killed them! I might try hatching some more plants from the seeds I've had stored in the kitchen for the last 2 months. I could probably give them to the gardening club show for sale.

I repotted my new strawberries into bigger pots and put them out by my other strawberry pots. Some of the runners I cut and transplanted are looking a little sickly but I can see at the heart of the plant there are new green leaves coming up on most of them so I don't for a minute believe they are all going to die.

I moved by little plastic greenhouse from it's place of permanent shade by the back door to the patio where it at least gets some sun in the morning. I filled up some seedling pots with compost and put them in there - no seeds yet, but will be handy for during the week if I feel like planting some more seeds.

Ah yes seeds! I grabbed a handful from the seed cache on the dining room table (I really must do something about that one day soon) and did some planting out by the pond and the redcurrant. Rather than write up little plastic markers for them all I just drew a little map and wrote down what I put in:

• Calendula


• Lettuce (salad bowl)


• Statice purple


• Cornflower blue


• Larkspur


• Red Sun sunflower


• "mystery seeds"


• Scabious red


• Aster


• Nemophilia

To stop neighbourhood cats (or foxes) seeing this nicely dug area as a catty-latrine, I've fenced it off with sticks.

Just along from here, I dug out a small area, sieved the soil back in and planted some Parsnips. The seeds are a year out of date, but I am forever hopeful of them springing new life.

I'm seeing Amanda again today - we're going to compare our choices from the Thompson and Morgan £5 free catalogue so we don't duplicate our choices.

A trip to Wisley

Today I had a bonus day off work in lieu of all the overtime I've been doing lately, so since Amanda had the day off as well, we decided to make a trip to Wisley, being that we could get in free with my RHS membership. (Of course, the 2-hour journey there and back, the train fare, the v.expensive bus fare, lunch and the obligatory trip to the plant shop did add to the cost of the day somewhat).

Initially we were a little disappointed - after all, this is not the right time of year to be going to visit gardens, and a lot of the plants were still asleep or just beginning to bud up. But we did find some attractions, like the Glasshouse with its fabulous collection of orchids, which in a way made up for the lack of other flowers outside. We spent much time faffing about in here, photographing the flowers and sniffing at the flowering jasmines.

The fruit and veg section was also quite inspiring - again, most of the fruit trees were still asleep but it was great to have a good look at fans and cordons and espaliers and dream about one day having trees that would follow these shapes. The varieties of trees available were also quite amazing - the orchard where every second tree was a different variety of apple makes you realise how narrow and mean the choice in supermarkets is. I was happy to see that the Wisley Beurre Hardy pear trees were also still asleep, so maybe mine isn't dead, just sleeping. The berry collection made us wonder if instead of the "let it grow" method we have previously adopted, whether we should be following the Wisley example of tying up the raspberry canes to some sort of structure.

And of course it made me long for a much bigger piece of land to grow things on!

We got out lightly from the plant shop - one asparagus crown and two strawberry plants each. We have four different strawberry varieties between us (mine are Honeoye and Pegasus), so that at the end of the year when we've got established runners, we can swap and have all four. A bargain. And plants from Wisley come with a two year guarantee (if we could be bothered to pay the train and bus fare to get back down there again for a £1.50 strawberry plant?)

I was feeling quite a bit inspired when I got home, so I earthed up some more seed trays and planted some more seeds: celeriac, echinacea, rudbeckia and ageratum. And a few more of those chilli seeds that have been lying about.

The lovely people and Thompson and Morgan have sent me a voucher for £5 to spend on items in their limited choice catalogue. I got this same offer last year and never did anything with it but this year I'm going to take advantage. I've shortlisted five types of seeds to consider: achillea, purple sprouting broccoli, scarlet kale, sweetcorn and cucumber (now I've discovered I can eat cucumber after all - so long as it's peeled). Of course I will end up spending more than £5! But that's the magic of the special offer I suppose.

Sowing the seeds of ... chillies and tomatoes mostly.

The doc says my back pain is muscular. So what could be better for it than...
- tea and doughnuts in bed?
- a nice glass of red wine?
- planting up the first seeds of the season?

I think the seeds have won it.


From the collection that have been sitting on my dining room table for longer than they should, I start to pick over the packets and make my choices. First packet is the asparagus - purple passion. These seeds are probably two years old but I'm not one to go by use by dates too much. I'm also supposed to plant them out in the ground but without knowing whether the seeds will sprout or not, there's no way I'm digging an asparagus trench!

I've got a little bit of space at the end of the seed box so I decide to throw in some basil. Lots of little basil seeds, I don't mind if I get lots of little basil plants. I can always take any extra plants along to my garden club show in July. (Not to display, mind, to sell!)

Next up, the aubergines. I had an issue with Thompson and Morgan when I first bought aubergine seeds from them. The packet promised an "average content 40 seeds". When I opened my packet and counted 14 seeds, I was not best pleased. To give them credit, they did apologise and sent me a complementary packet.

I didn't have much luck with the aubergines last year so these seven precious seeds are my last!

My next choices are a bit random: teasel and zinnia. The teasel seeds are probably a few years old now. I tried sowing them direct to ground once before with no luck which put me off trying them again. However I'm having another go this year, a little bit in part because they're supposed to be a good bird plant and I want to do a little something for birds. (I've already got a bell on the cat - that may save some lives this summer).

Zinnias I love. I know they're old fashioned and not terribly trendy but that's what I love about them. They're a plant I remember from gardening with my Mum and Dad when I was a wee young thing. And who can resist the bright cheerful colours?

At my recent seed swap with friend Amanda, she passed me on a mixed bag of chilli seeds. Of the 20 or so seeds I've got, there may be five or six different types: chocolate chilli, chipotle, jalapeno, birds eye... or perhaps none of these but some others! I've planted them, I'll see what grows and take them all as a blessing!

So that's two trays of seeds... but I want a third. And this one is dedicated to tomatoes. Again, courtesy of Amanda's collection I plant Roma, Alicante, Super Marmande and the "nice red one". Amanda also has seeds from the Black Russians I tried to grow last year but I didn't take any of these.

I feel quite virtuous - three trays planted, that's one shelf of my mini-greenhouse full. I make sure I breathe into the greenhouse when I put the seed trays in to warm it up a bit. This is my first try of using one of these flimsy plastic structures - they're supposed to work quite well so let's wait and see. At least it spares me having every window sill in the house crammed with black plastic seed trays.

So seeds planted, and as you can see from the photos, I got my glass of wine as well. Such civilised gardening!

Get the oca in

I didn't really need a gooseberry bush. But I had gone all the way to Lidl and they had fruit bushes going cheap and I already have raspberries, blueberries and a solo redcurrant stick, so the gooseberry was calling me. I will admit a lot of it has to do with sauvignon blanc - people always say it tastes / smells of gooseberries. I don't ever recall consuming a gooseberry so I figured this was one way to become better informed about wine.

So for whatever dodgy rationalisation I used, I now own a gooseberry bush, which means I had to find somewhere to plant it. My library book of the month (Carol Klein's Grow your own fruit) seemed to advise that gooseberries grow well alongside fruit trees, so I dug a hole next to the pear tree and planted the gooseberry there.

(The pear tree is still asleep. Shouldn't it be starting to show some life by now? The apple tree that I bought at the same time is budding up in a healthy way - I'm getting concerned I've ended up with a dud pear tree!)

As it was still sunny, I carried on with a bit of weeding - having a go at the creeping buttercup that is starting to spring its evil self back into life. Very satisfying it was too, to remove it. And I found some chunks of bindweed root too - ha! Take that, evil bindweed.

I was getting a niggling pain in my lower back so was about to call it a day when I realised that the Oca was still sitting in the kitchen, waiting to be planted. When I'd tried to get my boyfriend interested in the garden last year, I asked him for suggestions on what to grow. His only request was yams like he used to have in New Zealand. It turns out these grub-like yams are of South American origin and also known as Oca. I was happy to find a UK supplier and ordered in a selection in November 08, and the tubers have sat patiently in the bottom of the cupboard ready for the spring planting (Oca purchased from highly recommended Real Seeds: http://www.realseeds.co.uk/).

So back into the garden I go. Now, the oca instructions tell me to plant the tubers 30cm apart. Finding that much space in the yard for the 20 or so tubers I had was tricky. So the first batch, the orange - white eyed oca, went up the back near the garlics and the bicycles. The second batch, the white oca, went in amongst the chard. The third and final batch, the pink - white eyed oca, went in at the back on that raised piece of land with the moss problem. If oca serve the same purpose as potatoes - to break up the earth - then maybe the moss won't be such a problem next year.

By the time I got the last tubers buried, the once-sunny sky had clouded over and it was definitely going to rain soon. It took me a while to clean up and put everything away - not being able to bend over without shreiking didn't help. But I got inside to have my lunch just before it start to pelt with rain.

I picked over my seed collection while I was eating. Getting seed trays organised was also on my list for this weekend - might not happen now if I have to bend over to get the compost! I picked out tomatoes, chillies, aubergine and a few others to start off in pots. And for sowing direct to garden, I've got lettuce, beetroots, spring onion, parsnips, carrots and more. The direct to garden sowings will probably wait a little while (next weekend) when my back could have recovered a bit. I only had my 1970's St Michael vegetable book to refer to when trying to judge planting times. So several of the seeds I have don't rate a mention - no-one was growing Borlotti beans or chilli or mangetout in the 70s!

I found a cluster of snails while I was weeding by the pond and put a sharp and sticky end to their lives. This year I will not lose my plants to evil gastropods! The purpose of keeping the pond was supposed to be to keep frogs who would eat the snails for me. Bless 'em - they're not the brightest of creatures, frogs. But they have certainly been busy judging by the big pile of frogspawn now piled up in the pond. I hid by the pond and made croaking noises until the frogs in there croaked back at me. I don't know why it makes me happy, but it does.