Produce From The Garden

February 15, 2016

A week in February

A friend passed on a Facebook challenge to post a nature photograph every day for a week. It has been great fun and a lovely snap shot of a week in February. Below is the compilation of the weeks posts.

Day 1 Hardy Cyclamen leaves growing under a tree in our garden, I think the leaves are more striking than their beautiful flowers.

Day 2 Lichen growing on our Crabapple tree. I love the rich mustard yellow colour of lichen.

Day 3 Broad bean flowers in February, I find that as disturbing as daffodils blooming in December!

Day 4 Artichoke leaves. Young silver leaves with the texture of velvet, an opulent, statuesque must have for every garden. The globes they produce are a summer delicacy, the leaves look fabulous cut and placed in a vase in the kitchen.

Day 5 Our oak tree on this frosty morning. This beautiful majestic oak is the focal point of our garden, it’s the home to many birds, my barometer of the seasons and it’s bows the anchor for my boys treasured rope swing.

Day 6 Muscari (Grape hyacinth). One of my favourite early sping (!) cut flowers.

Day 7 Some daffodils cut for the table. They may be early this year but their stems are weak, breaking under the weight of their blooms in the rain.

February 8, 2016

Hellebores

Hellebores are in full bloom. They’re the sophisticated, slightly shy understated belle of the ball. Hellebore colours are tastefully muted and absolutely stunning, nature has an amazing knack of creating the most perfect colours, not even a Farrow & Ball or Little Greene paint colour chart has a patch on the real thing! To fully appreciate their perfect profiles you need to lift their shy heads up to reveal their complete beauty. They’re a fabulous cut flower at this time of year, instead of popping them in a vase, float them in a bowl to display them at their best.

Hellebores a fabulous cut flower floating in a bowl, fingers crossed the husband not after his pestle and mortar in the next few days!

There were no hellebores in the garden when we moved here; I brought some seedlings with me which are now rewarding me with their gorgeous flowers. Keep an eye out when weeding around Hellebores, they’re generous self seeders. I just dig up the seedlings and replant them somewhere in dappled shade; they will flower in two years time, well worth the wait as sometimes they’re the same as the parent plant but often a completely different colour and form.

A White Hellebore

Pretty pink Hellebores

Stinking Hellebore (Helleborus foetidus), a great acid green colour, yet to noticed the smell

February 4, 2016February 4, 2016

Winter salad

A daily harvest of cut and come again salad leaves from the garden is one of the great pleasures of growing your own produce. Not only do you get beautiful fresh salad, there’s a fabulous range of flavours available from seed which you won’t get in the supermarket. It’s also really easy to grow and as you pick the leaves more shoot up giving you a constant supply. Until this winter, home grown salad was one of the joys of my garden from May to October; I turned to bags of salad from the shop in the cooler months. Last autumn I decided to experiment and see if I could grow year round salad.

Some Rocket just cut from the garden

I sowed several rows outside in my raised vegetable beds and in the greenhouse directly on the earth. The salad seed sown outside was a complete disaster, I sowed in October, the seed packet did suggest September so maybe an earlier sowing or a cloche would have helped. In complete contrast the salad in the greenhouse has been a great success, providing me with daily lunches and sandwich fillers all winter. The crop quality is fabulous, far better than my summer Mizuna salad that has a tendency to suffer pin prick holes in its leaves due to flea beetle (must confess it gets a good wash and we eat it anyway!).

Rocket growing in the greenhouse

My winter salad selections were Rocket, an essential in our kitchen as a side salad or an added flavour boost to a lunchtime sandwich, and a spicy oriental salad leaf mix containing Pak Choi, Mizuna, Mustard Red Giant, Mustard Golden Streaks and Salad Rocket. This has been a really tasty mix, the baby leaves are packed with flavour, you can also use them in stir-fry’s. I will sow a few more rows in the greenhouse which will see me through to May, when I’ll start cropping salad from outside. It’s satisfying to know I’ll never need to buy supermarket salad again.

Oriental salad mix growing in the greenhouse

February 2, 2016

Snowdrops

It’s February and the snowdrops are in full bloom, I am no galanthophile, but I do have a beautiful colony of tiny pure white beauties, they pirouette delicately in the breeze under our oak tree. On a bright sunny day they’re one of the great winter wonders of the garden.

January 28, 2016

Brambles and Guinea pig runs

January has been a quiet month for ‘Produce from the Garden’. All child free time has been dedicated to two causes, the first cutting back and clearing brambles, a job I’ve not enjoyed. The result, thorn splitters in my hands (despite good quality leather gloves) and I’ve gained an extra four metres of front garden. A friend did question the merits of my bramble quest suggesting that I’ve now got another 4 metres of garden to maintain and tend, obviously not a keen gardener, who can say no to a bit more space.

My second January cause has been building a guinea pig run for my middle son who’s getting guinea pigs for his birthday in early February. The project was driven by my shock at the cost of guinea pig runs in the shops and the need to go off the shelf to sandwich the run in winter months between my green house staging in the conservatory. As normal I started the project with zest and enthusiasm, unusually my passion waned after a week, by week three, I was ‘completely over guinea pigs’ and in awe of all carpenters skills. Finally the run is finished and waiting for its occupants to move in. I have just realised that guinea pigs are incompatible with the ‘Produce from the Garden’ ethos of garden productivity for the home, I consol myself with the thought that their poo must be beneficial for the compost heap!

Whatever the weather I’m back in the garden next week clearing old compost heaps, oh the joys of winter gardening, roll on spring.

January 17, 2016

A tiny bit of snow

On cue, following my moan about the mild weather, a cold spell has set in. Today, to my three boy’s excitement, we woke to a sprinkling of snow. By 7.30am they’d dressed, put on scarves, hats and gloves and were out in the dim early morning light making the most of what little snow there was. Sadly for them it only stayed a few hours. Hopefully we’ll get one proper day of snow this year. A day off school and 6 inches of snow are the makings of magical childhood memories we all cherish.

On a gardening note I’m keeping my fingers crossed that multiple frosts have put paid to the hungry caterpillars, slugs and white fly who’ve been languishing in my vegetable beds.

January 14, 2016January 14, 2016

Seeds to sow in January/February

Most of my vegetable and flower seeds are sown in March and April, if sown earlier the plants will become leggy specimens whilst waiting under glass for the frosts to subside, when planted out they won’t grow into healthy bushy plants, restricting productivity. However, there are a few seeds which I do like to sow now (January / February) that need a longer growing season, these include, onions and shallots, chilli’s and aubergines.

I always feel an enthusiastic buzz when sowing the first seeds of the season, it signals the start of the gardening year as the dormant seeds spring into life. My youngest son (the 4 year old) was also excited to be back in the potting shed, playing with compost, filling pots and to my vague concern sowing the seeds, some a little deeper than I’d have liked, so fingers crossed for successful germination. After successfully decorating the pots with labels and windmills, we popped them into a propagator, all seeds sown this early do need a little extra heat to give them a kick start. In the next week or so we should see baby shoots appear.

My four year old actually being a genuine help filling the pots with compost

Pots must be accessorized!

Finally put to rest in the propagator.

January 8, 2016

A simple winter posy

A winter posy from the garden. The new fresh green Echinops foliage, clusters of white and pale pink flowers from Viburnum tinus, blue periwinkles and purple wallflowers ‘Bowles Mauve’, intersected with green dogwood twigs. A winter pick me up for the sitting room coffee table.

January 6, 2016January 6, 2016

The Kitchen garden in December (and early January)

Happy New Year! The kids are back at school and I’ve spent a lovely day in the garden tidying winter debris and moving daffodil bulbs. During the Christmas period I’ve only set foot in the kitchen garden to harvest winter salad and vegetables. It was a refreshing change to be back outside, the rain held off and there were patches of blue sky. Sometimes I garden with Radio 4, but today it was to bird song and my thoughts, plotting and planning the next batch of garden projects to be completed over the coming months. High on the agenda is a new composting area and the landscaping of my main lawn.

The winter vegetable patch

It’s not all rosy in the kitchen garden though. So far we’ve had a mild and wet winter with only three frosts (yup, I’m counting), the result, my kale is covered in white fly, I’m sharing my spinach with hungry caterpillars and the thriving slug population is munching its way through anything green. Early daffodils which usually flower in mid February started blooming in late December, my Japanese Quince is putting on a beautiful display of blossom, but my snowdrops, generally the first blooms of winter are still little shoots. It is all wrong. I fear that without a cold spell, gardening next year will be an uphill battle, the slugs and snail population will be enormous, pests and diseases rife. My fruit trees have a tendency to attract brown rot, last year we had very little, but I suspect it will be back with vengeance without a cold spell to cleanse our gardens of ills.

All this doom and gloom was soon swept to the back of my mind as the husband presented me with a package this afternoon. He’d been tidying up his studio and discovered my main Christmas present which he’d completely forgotten about, a tripod for my camera. I’m thrilled with it; no more balancing the camera on make shift structures attempting to keep it still and the subject in focus. The husband is definitely in my good books, he’s even finished painting the wood inside and out of my conservatory/potting shed, the colour is Grey Moss by Little Green Company and it looks smashing, a little bit of kitchen garden chic.

The newly painted potting shed/conservatory

Now for the usual monthly garden summary in pictures:

Pelargonium sidoides still flowering in the potting shed

Snow drop shoots

Japanese Quince blossom

Daffodils flowering in December

Hardy Geranium leaves yet to die back for winter, nibbled by caterpillars and slugs

Christmas present from my middle son, in pride of place looking over the kitchen garden

Autumn sown broadbeans growing well in this mild weather, we could be in for an early crop this year – not all bad!

Garlic and Spinach

One of my beds of Green manure, a vetch and rye grass mix

My favourite delicacy at this time of year, Purple Sprouting Broccoli, and it’s pest free!

December 22, 2015

Decorating with Mistletoe and then using the berries to propagate your own

Mistletoe is as closely linked to Christmas as holly and ivy and I love to hang a bunch from the ceiling, the symmetrical branching, silvery green foliage and white pearl like berries make it the most elegant yuletide decoration.

I am very fortunate as my Mother-in -law has vast quantities of mistletoe growing in her apple trees and willows. This year it was harvested and sold for charity, although you wouldn’t know, there’s still masses of it decking the bows of the tress. She very kindly cut me a magnificent mistletoe sphere. It looks fabulous hanging above our dining table, a carefully selected spot, as our ceilings are too low to hang it normally.

Mistletoe in my Mother-in-laws apple trees

A close up of the berry ladden mistletoe

Mistletoe at the top of the giant cricket bat willows

Mistletoe hanging above our dining table

It would be lovely to harvest my own Christmas mistletoe from the garden. So I’m trying my luck at propagation. I have taken a few of the berries, slit the skin and then squeezed the seed and sticky goo out of it. I then stuck the goo surrounding the seed to an apple tree branch which is 3-4 years old. I understand that if the seed germinates the mistletoe is slow to establish and we’ll have to wait at least 4 years for a clump to form. February is the optimum time to sow mistletoe, I will save all the seeds from our Christmas sphere, storing them in the light. In February I will follow same process as above, selecting young 3-4 year old wood for it to establish on. Mistletoe also grows happily on willow, I have selected Bramley apple trees as they are the most established and sturdy fruit trees in the garden, I regularly coppice the willow so mistletoe would never have time to establish.

My attempt to establish mistletoe in our Bramley apple trees, I will apply further berries in February

Mistletoe is steeped in tradition and has been linked with mid winter traditions and the winter solstice, pre dating Christianity and Christmas. Its link with pagan festivals means many churches exclude it as a Christmas decoration. Kissing under the mistletoe at Christmas is a tradition that stems from it being a symbol of fertility, originating from the evergreen mistletoe foliage being parasitic on deciduous trees, representing strong life and vitality. The forking paired branches, paired leaves and berries full of white sticky juice hint of sexual organs.