Dandelions

One thing I like about writing this diary is the way it throws seasonality into sharp focus.

For example: the third week in May is, evidently, a time when I&ndashhaving fallen out of the habit over the winter–suddenly need to start cutting the lawn again. It was untidy in 2010, and again last year. I cut the grass about 5 weeks ago, and haven't managed to do so since (the age old problem of 'no time when the weather's right'), and it's grown more in the past five weeks than the preceding five months.

Still, I managed to cut around the lawn, and at the bottom of the slope, yesterday evening, and finished off with the games lawn tonight. It really needs raking up, as the grass was too long to collect properly in the mower, but that's for another night.

Before cutting, though, I made the most, last night, of the sea of dandelions, and cut a pound of petals to make this year's batch of dandelion wine. This is another seasonal thing: last year was a week earlier, but similar point in the year. The petals, with a gallon of hot water poured over them, will steep until tomorrow night, when I boil them with the peel of four oranges for ten minutes, and then pour into a demijohn over sugar (3lb), with the usual yeast and nutrient.

Rhubarb Crop

The recent weather's suited the rhubarb, and I was able to take a number of stems (4, totalling 900g). The Timperley Early are enormous: the leaves are up to 2' across and long! 

Timperley Early rhubarb stem (© Ian 2013)

Planting Out

A mixed day, of sorting and planting. We've planted sweet peas around the supports in the new flower bed (I'm going to have to think of a better name); about a dozen plants around each of the smaller wigwams, and about eighteen around the large, central obelisk. We've tried to pair the varieties so that they're distinct, but complementary, so we can identify which one the flowers that we like are from.

We also planted the mangetout plants ('Delikata') on a support in the herb garden, and also planted out the snow-in-summer (Cerastium) and centranthus (C. ruber 'Snowcloud') in a different square. Two squares now have asparagus peas sown in them, and we also planted the eighteen decent box plants we have, and about fifty mixed lavenders, on the edges.

That's reinforced our need for a lot more box plants!

In the kitchen garden, we've planted out thirty-odd spinach plants, and a few modules of salad leaves. The potatoes almost all needed their trenches topping up, too. Pleasingly, the onions seems to have almost unanimously found their way through the holes in the weed-suppressant membrane, and their shoots are growing on.

We've potted on forty celeriac, and Brussels sprouts and caulis, to grow on before planting out in the next couple of months.

I think there's some sign, finally, of the wildflowers on the green roof germinating, which is a relief.

Elsewhere in the garden, the second cherry (Stella) has been in flower for a couple of days, which means it's overlapped with Summer Sun -- hopefully that will mean we finally get a cherry crop. The bluebells are in full swing, which makes that bank look lovely, and the pots of tulips are going strong, making a good display from the kitchen window.

We finished the day sowing some more pots of vegetables: swedes (Golden Ball), cauliflowers (Triomphant and Romanesco), dwarf French beans (Speedy and Castendel), some ornamental sunflowers (Bicentennial and Pastiche), and then planted out a few primroses and geums (which have been around for ages: I think they're Lady Strathden, but I could be very wrong).

Spring Creeping Forward

We were visiting Ann and Alan for the weekend, which meant nothing happened in our garden (though we did do a few bits in theirs on Sunday morning, which was rather pleasant (I'm envious of their lovely soil)). However, I managed this evening to walk round the garden, and see how things are coming on.

Spring has not made itself abundantly obvious (still pretty cold), but things are definitely livening up. There are lots of daffodils out (and many going over):

The Copse Bed (© Ian 2013)

Daffodils, including 'Minnow' (orange corona) and 'White Lion' (white perianth, creamy double corona) (© Ian 2013)

Copse bed, looking up past the new flower bed (with sweet pea wigwams) to the Colour Wheel (© Ian 2013)

I made my way down to the kitchen garden, and was delighted to find a bee busily working on the currant and gooseberry flowers. I think it was a common carder bee, but I'm not sure.

Bee pollinating gooseberry flowers (© Ian 2013)

A little further on, the rhubarb is doing magnificently. One or two of the crowns are either small, or missing, but that's not too bad: there are at least two of each variety doing fine, so I can split these later to fill the gaps.

Rhubarb growing strongly (© Ian 2013)

I remember when it looked like this:

The Rhubarb Bed under construction (© Ian 2011–13)

The first/second early potatoes are doing well, and need earthing up a bit: and the maincrop are now showing above the soil (and so also need earth filling into their trenches). The PSB and cauliflowers are going over, so we need to get them eaten. Almost all of the onions are now poking through the weed-proof membrane, which is very encouraging.

On my way back to the house, through the middle lawn, I spotted two last things. The Japanese Quince is nearly flowering, and the cherry 'Summer Sun' is flowering, which it didn't manage last year. Perhaps this year will see our first cherries, the 'Stella' never having borne any.

Flowers on cherry 'Summer Sun' (© Ian 2013)

Housesitting

Jenny and Philip spent the weekend with Katie, helping sort and decorate her new house, which left us in charge of their house, children, ducks, and dog. Undeterred, we've actually managed to get some stuff done, and even visited RHS Harlow Carr, to take advantage of their spring flowers, a spring plant sale, and the chance to see my parents.

Daffodils at RHS Harlow Carr (© Ian 2013)

On Saturday, I had some child help pruning out the wind damaged shoots on the berberis and similar shrubs in the lower border above the vegetable garden. These took the brunt of the cold east wind that characterized the weather in March/April, and led to a lot of dead, brown foliage. I've cut out the worst of it (there's a bit still to go), and they look better. There's a chance they won't grow back very well, which I'm actually pretty sanguine about: I don't particularly like any of them, so it might just prompt us to cut them down, and replant with something prettier. There are plenty of options!

One of them, in fact, is another rhododendron. We have a few, but none are particularly distinguished, but the pure white rhododendrons we saw at Harlow Carr on Sunday caught both our attention. The bulbs are also looking good, although we didn't see as much of the gardens as we'd like. There's a good drift of Erythronium 'Pagoda' (I think) that was pretty, as well as a number of snakes-head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris), naturalizing happily under the trees.

Snakes-head fritillary (© Ian 2013)

The garden was hosting a spring plant sale, which had a number of different stalls. There were several offering a very pretty white pulsatilla, which I might, at some point, have to track down (Pulsatilla vulgaris 'Alba'), and the holders of the national heuchera/heucherella/tiarella collection, Plantagogo, were there.

Erythronium (© Ian 2013)

This was rather dangerous, as we then promptly overspent our pocket money on five new plants: 'Ginger Ale', 'Hercules', 'Pear Crisp' (all three heucheras), 'Brass Lantern', 'Golden Zebra' (both heucherellas).

Quick Jobs

Just a brief potter outside after getting home tonight. I can't remember where they came from, but we had a pack of fifteen anemones sitting around, waiting to plant. I put them in a tub to soak for a day, and we've now planted these in the wall of the front garden, as a previous planting appears to have at least partly worked. We put a hundred in, in autumn 2010, and although they didn't show in 2011, they then appeared (to my great surprise) in spring 2012, and are back, flowering prettily, now.

I'm not sure all 100 have come up, I have to confess.

Anyway, another bunch are now in the lower bit of wall (towards the garage), in the hopes that one day they'll come up and add some spring colour.

I forgot to note that, on Sunday, we planted fifteen crocosmia ('Lucifer') in the pond garden, where the Christmas trees were heeled in until moving to the hillside two months ago.

Having left them until we could consider them together, we also decided what to do with the 'Stella' cherry and Victoria plum in the pond garden. The Stella had a number of branches from near the base, and so I've removed these. We'll train the leader to a 4-6 foot standard, which it's getting towards.

The Victoria's a bit trickier. It was pruned as a bush, I think, with the header cut at about a foot. It has a number of large-ish branches from this level, but none looks especially promising as a new standard trunk. One or two are nearly tall enough, but have a lot of dead-looking spurs at about the height I'd hope for new laterals, which isn't encouraging. By contrast, there are some lively looking stems, but they're fairly thin, and not very tall.

As plum pruning is safely accomplished until late in the year, we've decided to procrastinate. That is, to wait and see which of the stems shows good growth, and select a new leader based on that in the summer. Then we'll remove (or reduce) the rest, and train that stem in as a new trunk, aiming, again, for a 4-6 foot height.

Plum and Cherry Pruning

Most of the fruit trees were pruned near the end of February. That was while the trees were still dormant (just as well, given the snowy Easter we had), but we left the plums and cherries alone. These (Prunus genus) are particularly susceptible to Silverleaf infection (a fungal disease, Chondrostereum purpureum), which typically gets into the plant through wounds. Routine pruning of these trees should be left, therefore, until they're in leaf. As this was a formative pruning of a young sapling, we've waited only until the trees are starting to break bud.

I worked round the relevant trees this evening: Victoria Plum, Oullin's Golden Gage, Merryweather Damson,  ornamental plums 'Spring Glow' and Pissardii, 'Royalty' crab-apple and cherry 'Royal Burgandy', as well as 'Summer Sun' cherry in the garden. There's another Victoria in the garden, but I need to decide how to treat that, as it had its leader cut out at about 50cm when we bought it (a garden ago): ideally we'd have a 1-1.4m clear stem on it, but that might be tricky.

They've all had all feathers on the bottom third cut right back, those in the middle third halved, and the top third left. A couple of the fruit trees have a leader that's about at the right height, so we can train main laterals this year.

I also had a play with a plan for the herb garden today.

Possible Herb Garden Plan (© Ian 2013)

It could still change, of course. We're currently thinking of having three interwoven boundaries: one of box, one of euonymus, and one of lavender. The 55 sections then have different things in them. Some of them (the 'step-ins') will be rather more sparsely planted, to allow us to walk through them to get access across the garden. The ornamentals are likely to be plants like gladioli; the obelisks are probably going to wind up being  edible legumes, but attractive varieties. What the herbs are is still subject of discussion: the advantage of this sort of design is that each square can have different soil (enriched, impoverished, gritty, damp) to suit the planting, so Mediterranean herbs (sharp drainage, poor soil) can grow next to roses (deep rich soil).

And as for the roses: we'll probably get four varieties, possibly using the Sister Elizabeth and Eglantine roses we have as one group, with three others: I'd like at least one white rose, and one deep red.

Time to turn some more turf!

Herbs and Mulching

Yesterday we finished making the new wildflower/cutting flower bed in front of the quince. We'd lifted the turves last weekend: the ground then needed digging over to removes stones, the damaged land-drain needed repairing, and then it was ready to sow.

We've put four bamboo obelisks in the bed, which we'll plant sweet peas up. As the bed's roughly triangular, that's demarcated three beds, into each of which we've sown a different pack of seeds. One is a pastel meadow mix (gypsophila, Bishop's flower, poppies and cosmos); one is an 'Amethyst and Sapphire' mix (anchusa, salvia, cornflower, verbena); and the last is a combination of several wildflower annual mixes.

Once that was done, we spent the rest of the afternoon starting to mark out the beds for the herb garden. We lifted enough turf to clear a space about 6m by 6m last week, which we've now marked. The garden will be a series of beds about a metre square, set at 45°. Some will have herbs, some will have roses, and we might also include some with spring and summer bulbs in, and some more obelisks with climbers, to add some height.

The edging, we haven't quite decided on. We long intended to use box, mixed with lavender, but this isn't totally fixed. We might use euonymus (probably a variegated form) as an alternative. Partly this is because of the difficulty in propagating more box from the Witley clones, or the cost of purchasing the 500-odd plants we'll need.

Nonetheless, the pattern's more or less decided, subject to tweaks as we uncover more soil, and can lay out the grid, and work out where and how the boundaries fall.

Herb garden outline ( Ian 2013)

Then, today, we've weeded all the fruit beds, and put down a triple mulch: a layer of compost, covered by a layer of cardboard (degradable weed barrier), covered with a layer of conifer chippings. The last of these should mean that the ericaceous nature of the soil is maintained (particularly important with the blueberries), although it'll take a while to break down completely. I shall try to add grass clippings during the summer, to increase the nitrogen content, and off-set the nitrogen lock-up that the carbon-rich chippings will cause.

Hopefully, that should now mean that the weeding of the fruit beds is very easy this year, as well as ensuring that the bushes are well fed and productive.

Flower Bed

Yesterday we worked on removing the grass and thatch from the tops of the turves we cut in the herb garden, and breaking up the turned earth. It took all day, really, to get the square we're working on sorted, which is slow going.

Today's been a bit more interesting: first, I sowed the wildflower seed on the green roof of the wood shelter. It's a mix of thirty-odd perennials and annuals, which should, in the main, cope with the thin, well drained soil of the green roof. I'm hoping that, in time, it'll be awash with colour and insects.

To sow it, I first watered the roof with the hose, before we divided the seed into approximate fractions, based on the size of each section of roof, mixed the seed with sharp sand, broadcast it over, and raked over. It should take 4 to 14 days to germinate.

That done, we lifted the turves on a flower bed that's planned for in front of the bed with the quince in. This year, we'll be directly sowing annuals: a mix of wildflowers and cutting flowers. We had a surprise when lifting turves: an earthenware pipe running from the spectral beds corner, down towards the kitchen garden. A few possibilities exist: it could be a land drain from that corner, which isn't working very well (it might be blocked). It could be a drain from the track or hillside. It isn't a sewage pipe (fortunately).

If it's a broken land drain from the corner, that could be beneficial: if we can repair the pipe, it might solve the drainage issues in that corner without further work. If it's from the hillside, repairing it might lead to flooding in the garden as the hill drains. We need to track the pipe up into the corner, to work out what it is, and where it comes from, as we certainly can't start digging in earnest before we know what lies beneath the soil.

However, the bed we were working on is now clear, and we've made a start on breaking up the soil.

New flower bed (© Ian 2013)

Oriental hellebores

Ordered a few weeks ago, five new oriental hellebores (Helleborus orientalis) arrived today, and have been potted up. It's howling a gale outside (winds up to 35mph, in the shelter of the vegetable garden), so we didn't loiter. Well, we loitered long enough to sow two more pots of beetroot ('Cylindra') while in the porch.

The Christmas rose hellebores (H. niger), including those we recently bought in Ludlow, are looking good at the moment, although the small ones we bought two years ago are still growing. They're slow, though, and therefore expensive, which is why increasing our own from seed and divisions is so attractive.

I saw something for the wishlist while reading a magazine over breakfast: Dierama, or Angel's Fishing Rod.

Dierama pulcherrimum (image by Ghislain118 (AD), hosted on Wikimedia Commons)

First Cut

This evening, in the last of the light, I managed to cut the lawn. Just the games lawn, and round the pond, that is. On the horizon, now, is the time when that will be almost all the grass there is that needs regular cutting: the top lawn has already started its transition to herb and rose garden; the spectrum garden, once the beds and patio are taken out, has only paths to mow; the copse has started to take shape, and that only leaves a small bit at the bottom of the access ramp, and the aforementioned games lawn and pond garden.

Last year was not a good one for lawn mowing. The last cut of the year, at the start of September, was long over due, but there hadn't been any chance to mow for nearly two months. That's 224 days ago, for those of us keeping track, which does, admittedly mean that I've had three fifths of a year off from this far-from-favourite job.

The lawn wasn't actually in bad shape. It's marginally earlier (a week) than I managed the first cut last year, 24th April, and a bit later than 2011 (20th March). Meticulous record keeping belies the fact that I'm an awful groundsman, but having that much less to mow might mean I get better at fitting it in. Tonight's work only took about 85 minutes, which is entirely manageable in an evening. Before we started reducing the lawns, it was a three hour job—and not a pleasant one. The cold winter has meant that the grass hasn't grown particularly, so this trim only yielded a (pretty full, I concede) barrow of clippings—the first trim of 2012 left me with a compost bay full.

Inevitably, the lawn will look a little yellow tomorrow, and we've had a number of mole-hills in the last month, so it won't look fantastic. I've long promised myself that when I only have a 'small' lawn to maintain, I'll do things like rolling, levelling, feeding, and striping. I might not be far off, which means I might need to start thinking about renovating that petrol cylinder mower that's languishing in the garage.

The spring bulbs are doing really nicely. There's a very eye-catching crocus that's come up in the copse, called 'Ard Schenk': white, and multi-headed. There are also some unexpectedly attractive chionodoxa: they came as part of a pack, and we'd kind of forgotten we'd planted them. The other blue chionodoxa under the berberis at the far end of the top bank (near the oil tank) are also looking pretty. They only emerged when we removed the overgrown shrubs from the top bank, and have been a delight for the last couple of springs.

Chionodoxa (© Ian 2013)

Seedlings

The last of the six cubic metres of topsoil is now cleared from our driveway. Most of the load went on the green roof: we then put a fair bit onto the vegetable beds, which all needed topping up. Two barrow loads went to one side, ready for today's potting-up, and the rest is heaped on the old shed base.

Liz had a fantastic idea, while we did this: re-purposing the old coal bunker as a soil bunker. We typically need quite a bit of soil over the course of a year, for potting things up. There's nowhere neat and tidy to store that much (after all, we're talking about the equivalent of at least a dozen garden centre bags of compost), but it's cheaper (and easier) to buy in bulk. At the same time, we've been eyeing up the coal bunker outside the back door, and thinking 'What use are you?'.

Liz put these two trains of thoughts together, and so (as ever) when we get round to it, we'll empty the coal bunker of the rubbish that's in it (some coal, some kindling, some real rubbish, I expect); I'll construct some sort of better-suited hatch, and we'll start using it to store potting-type compost. Garden compost, of course, will stay in the composting bays until it's needed, but potting compost, which gets brought on-site, can live here.

Having moved the soil, we decided that it's warm enough to plant out the potatoes and onions. For the last two years, we've done this earlier (potatoes on 2nd April 2011, and 1st April 2012: onions on 27th March 2011 and 1st April 2012), but the weather's been so perishingly cold that we've waited. It's now warming up, and looking like it'll stay warmer: it's been averaging about 4°C for the last month, and we haven't wanted to put these into cold soil.

As before, we've done the potatoes in trenches, which we'll fill up. I'm not sure it has any practical impact on their success, but it's nice to be able to keep an eye on how they're growing, so we persist. The trenches are, as before, 18" apart, but we put four tubers in per row, as they haven't felt like the extra space (three per row) was needed in previous years. For now, it's just the earlies: Swift, Lady Christl, and Kestrel. The first and last are new to us; Lady Christl has long been a favourite. In a week or two, we'll put in the maincrop Druid tubers, which get more space: 30" between rows, and three per row. Our experiment in 2011 suggested that this spacing increased the yield (in kg/m²), which is what we're after.

The onions have previously been planted straight into the ground, which has worked fine in many ways, but leads to a very time consuming and tedious job of weeding. Spaced just 6" apart, there's not space to hoe, but onions suffer badly if they're swamped by grass and chickweed and buttercups. Which they get, unweeded. To try to combat this, instead we have planted them through the weed-suppressing membrane with which we've been warming the soil for the last couple of weeks. I worked down the sheet, cutting a cross every 6" by 6", and planted through these. Weighed down along the edges with stones, the membrane seems to be holding in position (necessary, if the shoot of the onion is to find the hole!). We'll now have to see whether (a) it cuts down on weeding, (b) the foliage escapes and grows well, and (c) the membrane interferes in the bulb swelling. Anyway: a hundred of each of Fen Early, Red Fen, and Rumba. The over-wintered onions (Radar) and Germidour garlic, along with the Elephant Garlic, are all doing reasonably. They've been in since September, and although they took a while (the Elephant especially) to get going, they all appear to be doing well. Inevitably, we've lost some Radar to the cold weather, but the garlics appear (at last count) to have all survived.

Today was a mammoth pricking out and potting up exercise. The petunia seedlings are the worst, so we started with them: probably a hundred seedlings, and I only sowed three 3" pots. They're tiny and irritating, because they have almost no root, which also means they almost unfailingly wilt, and I worry about whether they'll survive. Better were the achilleas: A. millefolium, and 'Summer Pastels', which were pleasing plantlets. The tomatoes (also very wilt-y) are now in individual pots, as are the chillis and peppers. We didn't get to the cineraria, but managed the brassicas (couple of dozen sprouts, and about 50 kale, not all of which will be planted out, or will be eaten as greens when small). The celeriac have finally germinated (I think they were too cold to start with), and we're going to have loads of seedlings. We weren't sure the seed would be viable next year, so I sowed the lot, and there are probably about 200 seedlings. I don't like celeriac quite that much, so we'll thin them gradually to the strongest seedling in each module, for around 35-40 to plant out. The sweet peas are now all potted on, and outside with twigs to clamber, except a few that aren't quite as hardy.

We've then sown some more seeds: leeks (Prizetaker, again), peas (Delicata mange-tout), salad leaves (a spicy mix, a more mellow mix for me, Lollo Rosso, and wild rocket), courgettes (a pack of five, of three varieties, which look fun), purple sprouting, 'Mystique' cauliflowers, carrots (Early Nantes, Amsterdam Forcing, and Autumn King), and Festuca blue grass. (No, that's not a vegetable.)

The window-sills are pretty packed, already: that greenhouse is looking more necessary every spring.

Lastly: today is Daffodil Day -- that is, the first daffodils are open in the garden.

Spring bulbs in the arbour corner (© Ian 2013)

Filled

It's been several days of hard work, filling trugs with sandy topsoil, barrowing them to the kitchen garden, lifting them onto the green roof, and spreading it out on top of the vermiculite and weed-proof membrane. A couple of hundred of trugs, in fact. The trugs are invaluable tools in the garden, as they make jobs like this possible. Bucketing the soil up onto the roof would have been technically possible, but it would have been more like five hundred trips up and down the ladder, which would have been wearisome.

I mean, more wearisome, as we're pretty weary as it is.

Green roof, filled with soil and ready to sow (© Ian 2013).

However, the green roof is now ready for sowing, which will happen in a few weeks, once it's warmed up properly. For now, there's about 9–10cm of soil, which should settle and compact to 5–6cm, waiting. Getting the wood shelter's wild-flower roof finished has taken a large chunk of this week, but it's good to have it done, and it looks good.

Readying the Green Roof

We left the wood shelter almost finished last autumn: watertight, and complete as a wood shelter, but the intended green roof wasn't done. We've spent the last couple of days working on that, though: adding the fascia boards that will edge the soil, and adding some more struts, braces, and supports. It's now ready to have the vermiculite, weed membrane, and soil adding.

To take a break from this, we've spent today digging turves on the top lawn, outside the sitting room window. We've now cut and turned turf covering about a 7m square: it needs breaking up, though, before we can plant anything. The soil for the green roof arrives tomorrow, though, and I expect it'll take the rest of our holiday to shift the couple of tons we need onto the roof.

The top lawn (© Ian 2013)

Cutting and turning turves for the future herb garden beds  (© Ian 2013)

Easter Weekend

We've had a difficult week, with lots of snow remaining: that's made for long journeys to and from work, for one thing. There's still a lot left, and there's no way we could have been working in the garden, so we've had Easter weekend off. Well, inside. We've done a lot of baking, and entertained children a bit.

As we're on leave this coming week, though, I'm hoping we'll get some things done over the coming days. Until then, you'll find me in front of the stove, eating walnut and Stilton bread, and hot cross buns. They're very tasty, and if I finish marzipanning the Simnel cake, that'll be next.

Drifts

We've had a pleasant weekend in Ludlow, although we were a bit house-bound due to the snow. Nonetheless, we got a few things done, and managed to make it to the market (nine new hellebores (H. niger), as I can't resist the stalls).

We've now struggled home: roads are fine until you come off the motorway, and then they deteriorate rapidly. The car's parked in the village, and we've walked the last two miles home: the lane has enormous drifts, up to six feet deep, and twenty long, and there are bigger ones on the uncleared roads around us. Fortunately, Chris has used his tractor to break a path through the lane, which makes it passable on foot, although I wouldn't try the car.

Commutes this week are going to be a little tiresome. Spring can't break out soon enough!

Tidying

The weather this weekend has been surprisingly good. We were expecting rain, and clouds, and cold temperatures. It has been cold (but not freezing); it has rained (but only overnight); and the cloud has been broken by patches of glorious spring sun.

Yesterday, we planted out the replacement willows to either side of the septic tank. The original plants (from last summer) didn't all survive: mainly attention from deer, we let the bed get rather grassy, which almost certainly weakened them. There are now about eight willows (red, gold, osier) down each side; the willows to eventually form the arches into and out of the pond garden are also planted. We realised we'd miscounted, so we needed to steal a few willows from the stand on the hillside, but that made space to plant the three sweet chestnuts that didn't fit, previously, in that space.

To start today, we sawed, split, and stacked a load of hardwood (mostly laburnum, with some birch), and then continued doing some tidying and clearing that began yesterday. We pulled up a load of grass from around the spring bulbs on the back bank, as well as around the daffodils in the copse.  The berberis outside the workshop patio has been getting in my way, so I trimmed that, and the neighbouring holly, back. We've liberated the Japanese quince from nettle, grass, and bramble grasps, and cut down brambles from along the lower bank. Hard, prickly work, and the compost bills are massively over-filled, now, but the garden's looking a lot tidier.

Lastly; another sowing of beetroot, in a pot, as the previous pots haven't germinated all that well. We're also still waiting for the celeriac seed to come up (sown 3rd March, so two weeks ago): if they don't show soon, we may need to order new seed. That said, I think they're expected to take up to 21 days, so all is not yet lost.

Seeds

It being March, we always have seeds to sow. Today was a number of vegetables, as well as some ornamental plants, including some that came via the RHS seed collection service. These—hellebores, cyclamen, and camassia—need some work before they germinate. The cyclamen and camassia are in seed compost, in trays in the fridge, to (try to) break their dormancy. They'll then come in and sit on a windowsill to get going. The hellebores are outside, under a pane of glass, to be exposed to the elements for a while. They take up to eighteen months to germinate, so it's a real waiting game. Hellebores are an investment of optimism and time: after the eighteen months (potentially) to germinate, it'll still be three or four years before they flower, and we can see whether they're pretty and garden worthy.

Less demanding are cineraria, petunias, and the vegetables: more beetroot ('Globe'), leeks ('Porbello', to go with the already germinated 'Prizetaker'), and spinach (more 'Lazio'). The broad beans we sowed last week have started to come up, and all but one tomato is germinated. The chillis and sweet peppers aren't doing as well, but they can take a couple of weeks, so they're definitely still in progress.

Today wasn't a day for being outside (sleet, snow, rain), but we had a productive day yesterday, planting seven of the sweet chestnuts, and fourteen willows (scarlet, golden, and osier). The rest of the willows we bought (ten of each of those) are going around the garden, to fill in the living willow screen next to the septic tank, and form the willow arches around the pond. Passing deer inflicted quite a lot of damage on these last winter, so there are gaps. Fortunately, this year hasn't seen as much deer damage, possibly because we think they came into the garden where the wood shelter is now, which blocks their access.

The clearing which the chestnuts and willow are screening does, however, definitely have deer wandering through. There are at least three clear animal tracks, and a damaged section of dry stone wall where they obviously cross. To stop them killing the saplings, the trees are inside an 8x1.5m chicken wire enclosure, which will hopefully make them either inaccessible, or sufficiently unattractive. The last three sweet chestnuts are in pots, and will probably now be planted out in the autumn.

Boundaries

Yesterday, along with Peter and Sara, we put in the posts that mark the boundary where we split the hillside when we purchased it from Bob. There are about a dozen of them, all 2.5" posts (5'6" long), driven into the ground along the border. Five in the lower section, and then going up the hill, between the trees, to the stone wall at the top. It went surprisingly well, with Liz holding a ranging post at the 'corner' half way up (the post giving the height to see over the trees), and me at the top sighting down, while Peter and Sara positioned the posts coming up.

We have a slightly larger patch of blackthorn that we realised, having now clambered through it: almost certainly more than we need, so we may cut it back to a thinner, more hedge-like extent, and create space for another couple of fruit trees. Putting in the markers only took us until lunch, so we managed to get some tidying and clearing done, too: some renovation pruning on what we believe to be an unproductive few apples at the bottom of the tree line (if they show no sign of fruiting this year, they'll probably come out), clearing blackthorn and brambles around their bases, and finally clearing the driveway of the rubbish that's been accumulating (mostly firewood and abandoned cement blocks and stones: fairly unattractive). While Liz did some of that, I climbed onto the garage roof, and have repositioned and secured the roof stones that have slipped out of position. The pointing at the ridgeline is in a sorry state, and I'll have to spend a day on that over the summer: not my idea of a fun job, but there you go. The coping stones are all in place, but the pointing between them and the top run of slates is weak, broken, and patchy.

Having got the deciduous trees in two weeks ago, we've now also planted the Scot's Pines, in the spaces we'd marked out. With the holes already dug, planting the 24 trees was a day's work (just!), with most of the time spent cutting the turves from the holes up to be able to refill. The last pine (we bought 25) was intended for the hillside, but the lowest hole is impossible to drain. It lies so low, we'll have to plant a willow there, which won't mind the waterlogged soil. That pine will go somewhere else, but there wasn't a hole dug for it, nor time to make one.

In the fading light (aided by the light in the storm porch), we potted up three peonies that arrived ('Sarah Bernhardt', 'Karl Rosenfeld', and 'Shirley Temple'), and sowed a tray of celeriac; half a tray of kale; half a tray of sprouts; and four modules each of tomatoes, sweet peppers and chilli peppers. The leeks, sprouts and beetroot we sowed last week (but I forgot to mention) have started to germinate: not a high percentage of beetroot, though, so we'll need to sow more.

Pruning

It's getting towards the end of winter, which makes it time to make sure we've pruned many of the plants. The new fruit and ornamental trees need formative pruning, and the fruit bushes in the kitchen garden all need annual attention.

So, today, we have:

• Cut back all the laterals on the apples and pears below 1.75m (only one is this tall, in fact, so it mostly just meant cutting back all the side shoots). The oldest apple tree, which came with us when we moved in, is now tall enough to have it's leader cut out at the 1.75m mark (or so). All the laterals below this have been trimmed back, and it's got a few lateral shoots at that height, which we'll now train in to become the main lateral framework of the tree.
• Not done anything with the plums or cherries. We're leaving them another week or two, to minimize the risk of silver leaf infection.
• Taken out some of the old wood on the oldest blackcurrant, and a few dodgy looking stems on the other two.
• Tip pruned and shortened side-shoots on the redcurrants and whitecurrants.
• Taken out damaged wood on the blueberries (still too small to take out old wood).
• Tidied the gooseberries: they're particularly bad at branches flopping onto the ground, so this always needs quite a lot of work -- they're also bad at growing into the path.
• Undertaken major work on the three established apples that were already on the hillside. None of these has ever been pruned, we think. One of them isn't too badly formed, but the others are over-grown 'bush' forms. The first just needed a low, unbalanced lateral taking out, and is now pretty neat. The other two both had errant cross-cutting stems, rubbing branches, and dead wood: they're now both considerably better, but will never win prizes for training. Never mind: they should, at least, be healthier, stronger, and better bearers!

Apart from that, we weeded a few beds, chopped down and dug in the green manure, and potted up some new arrivals: four hostas ('Canadian Blue', 'Fire and Ice', 'Touch of Glass' and 'White Feather'); six mixed astilbes; and a dwarf red Japanese azalea.

I forgot to mention some acquisitions from the garden centre during our week of trench and hole digging: three kaffir lilies (the outside variety Schizostylis coccinea, not the houseplant, Clivia miniata, which we also have); an Australian mint bush; and a number of heucheras (two Dayglow Pink, two Can-Can, two Marmalade, and a Paris). All very cheap and out of season...we couldn't resist.

Orchard

The orchard has now been planted: seventeen fruit trees, and a further five ornamental deciduous trees. Later, we'll add the Scot's Pines, and there's space to add another 2–6 full size trees (that is, some more ornamental or fruit trees) over the next couple of years.

Each tree is in a decent planting pit, with extra compost and sand mixed into the soil. They each have a 6' post (2.5" diameter), and a metre of chicken wire, wrapped into a tube, secured around them with a pair of bamboos (to protect the main stem from deer).

The four plums and one walnut are tall enough to have their leader cut, ready to start growing laterals at that height as standards: most of the rest need to grow on for another year or more. In the next few weeks, we'll trim back any laterals they all have, to encourage the main stem to grow taller and thicker. The aim is to have a clear trunk up to around the 5'6"–6' mark, and then a framework of branches above that. Standards take up more space (but there's plenty of that), but have high yields, and aren't as vulnerable to deer -- in the case of the walnuts, it's also to reduce squirrel nut-theft...

Panorama of the orchard, from the kitchen gate (© Ian 2013)

Trenches and Pits

Finally, the drainage trenches and planting pits are complete. It's been a hell of a day, and we only managed to finish the last half-dozen holes, and the ditches they needed: we're both tired, the ground's soaking, and the last area of ground is full of stones, including a few mammoths.

At last, they're now all done (subject to checking as we plant that they are draining well), and we even managed, on Wednesday, in the snow, to start clearing the patch that the sweet chestnuts and willows will go in, in the first clearing above the tree line.

The lower portion of the hillside looks a mess, currently, with heaps of spoil mud, soggy paths, and gaping holes. But tomorrow we can start planting.

Mud

We've been spending almost all of the last seven days digging. The hillside, we discovered, is far wetter than expected, and needs serious drainage in order to be sure that our fruit trees will thrive. With some interruptions (a visit to my parents' on Monday; snow on Wednesday; things like that), we've been working on digging the necessary drainage trenches, and the planting pits for the trees.

Needless to say, this has been non-trivial. We're almost there, now, and just have another half-dozen pits (and whatever trenches are required for them!) to go.

It's been a muddy, hard, squelching job, and I shall be very glad when it's done. At the moment, the hillside doesn't look like much, with bamboo canes marking the future position of trees, and then only muddy ditches, wet spoil heaps, and muddy tracks where the grass has broken down under foot.

Land Drains

We had hoped to spend the weekend planting fruit trees on the hillside. However, when we came to dig the holes, we found the ground is waterlogged, and not draining at all well. Certainly, it's been wet for the last month, with 10" of snow, followed by 3" of rain: but the ground is downright boggy at the foot of the hillside—and waterlogged even up the slope. The problem, basically, is compacted and humus-poor soil of only 8" depth, on top of impermeable clay.

We've had to change our plans, therefore, and have spent the past two days digging twelve planting pits (a quarter of the total needed), and land drains. There's one herringbone arrangement linking half a dozen of the pits, and a second trench draining two more: these lead to a newly built culvert in the wall flowing into the road-side ditch. Three planting pits further up the hill have trenches leading away from them, to make sure that these pits don't submerge. These are just open ditches at the moment, but in time we'll hope to make them covered drains, possibly leading on to the lower system.

Another six or so holes further along are going to need the same treatment: we've dug the ditches to bring two of them down to a spinal drain, which leads partway to the wall (the rest of the length, and the culvert, will follow). Three above this will definitely need to be linked in; possibly one further.

All in all, this means another weekend of drain digging, at least, and then a glut of planting. We think we can still get everything planted by the end of the month, but it'll mean a bit of a soggy slog!

In more pleasant news, we've sown some more achillea (Summer Pastels, and Cloth of Gold); some Snow in Summer, and aquilegia 'Royal Purple'. We also started the vegetable sowing, with a pot of each of beetroot, leeks, and spinach.

We also need to pack up our Corolle seed potatoes, as they've been recalled: I've ordered some Kestrel tubers, as a replacement.

Potato Chitting

Our seed potatoes arrived a little while ago, and we've now got them out, as traditional, in egg boxes in the study to chit.

After being a bit disappointed with 'Cara' last year, we've returned to 'Druid'. We've got 'Lady Christl' again (delicious, productive, and stores surprisingly well for a first early: past Christmas, in fact), and are trying out 'Swift' and 'Corolle'.