Bonfire

Earlier this year, we cleared a lot of gorse from the hillside, and have added—during our subsequent clearing and trench digging efforts—brambles, hawthorn and gorse to the heaps. We decided it'd had long enough drying, and the conditions were about right, to burn. It turned into an all-day job, as it burnt better than expected, meaning that we spent the day feeding the bonfire, but it means that it's all done, rather than taking several efforts.

In the nettle-y corner up from the house, I set a small fire (few sheets of newspaper, four bits of kindling and, pleasingly, a single match & firelighter!), and started feeding dry gorse into it. That burnt well, and so as Liz brought over dry material from the various heaps we'd accumulated, I cut the branches from the other hawthorns we wanted to remove, and we burnt them, too. Even though it was wet, it burnt well once there was a good, hot bed of charcoal.

As I say, that took all day, in the end, and we've spent today mostly on the hillside, too. Breaking it into several sections, I've used Sigrid to brushcut almost the entire orchard, clearing grass, gorse, brambles, thistles and ragwort. Liz cleared up behind me, thus replacing a lot of the heaps we burnt only yesterday. So it goes.

Fortunately, the hillside now looks immeasurably better.

In between brushcutting, we got a few jobs done in the garden-proper. All the brassicas have been moved up a pot size (purple sprouting, romanesco cauliflowers, January King cabbages, kale, sprouts), to grow on before being planted out after alliums or potatoes come out. We sorted out the irrigation system in the fruit beds, which had been disturbed when we mulched them in the spring. Lastly, we've sown some more lettuce/salad leaves, and resown Swiss Chard in the barrel (previous sowing was a no-show).

Long Border

I went out this evening to mow the lawn, which was a frustrating experience, as I first had to replace the motor's drive belt (it snapped halfway through last week's mow, and the replacement part only arrived yesterday). Fundamentally, this is a relatively straightforward operation (although I'm not certain that all eight of the screws holding the motor unit in the body are strictly necessary), but it wasn't in practice. Four of the screws are pretty unprotected, and, as they're under the platform, they get covered with wet clippings, and inevitably rust.

The first wasn't too bad; the second yielded with some penetrating oil and care; the fourth was trickier, but came out. The third was a pig. Despite some care, the (nominally superior) Torx head stripped before the screw loosened, and I had to resort to unprofessional methods to get it out. Success eventually came by way of drilling into the head, and wedging a slightly large bit into the new hole. We shall never speak of this again.

The new drive belt then went on in about five minutes, and the mower's actually much improved. I assume that the belt was loose and worn after three year's use: the suction on the impeller is greater (which means better clipping collection), which I expect means that the power transfer is more efficient. A silver cloud to soothe my frustration at an hour lost.

There was enough light left this evening to take a photo of the long border which replaces the cotoneaster bed that took so long to remove. We started in August 2010, with a modest patch at the kitchen end: more progress that autumn (I note that this is when we uncovered the silver birch and rhododendron: they're both doing much better, and the rhododendron is starting to leaf up nearer the ground); and nearly completed it March last year. The last of it was out and shredded last June.

You can get a feel for what it was like to start with from the two photos here.

Before marking the pond, June 2011 ( Ian 2011)

The last stretch that was cleared in March 2012 (© Ian 2012)

Last year, an enormous number of foxgloves came up. As they're biennial, they were just little rosettes, of course, but this year they're all flowering. We guess that a huge seed bank accumulated under the cotoneaster, but didn't germinate because of it. With that removed, the rich soil (loads of leaf mould!) and fresh disturbance has made them all spring into life. A number of shrubs that were part buried in the rampant cotoneaster are now making a comeback, and, of course, we've added considerably to the planting over the past two years. Not everything has survived: my theory is that it's good soil, but exposed, and only those plants that can cope with the exposure live to make the most of the soil, and the rest vanish.

The Long Border (click through for bigger version) (© Ian 2013)

Foxgloves and perennials near the boundary with the pond garden (© Ian 2013)

Dutch Irises outside the dining room (© Ian 2013)

Lupin at the boundary between games lawn and pond garden (© Ian 2013)

Perennials at kitchen end: the rhododendron is the one we uncovered in November '11 (© Ian 2013)

Looking back along the Long Border (© Ian 2013)

Elsewhere in the garden, the currants and berries are swelling (there's going to be a bounty of both), and so I've sewn up the tears in the netting caused by the snow over the winter. The raspberries are laden with flowers (which are a-swarm with pollinators, pleasingly). The potatoes are doing well, although the Swift are noticeably smaller than the Lady Christl, which is leading us to suspect that we may swear off growing Earlies other than her ladyship (I'd love to know whether it's named after someone). The sweet peas are, I'm sure, growing as you watch them: even though Liz added some more tiers of strings for them at the weekend, they almost need more now. They're on the verge of flowering, too (as are the mange tout), which I'm looking forward to.

Last of the Rhubarb

As it's the end of June (that is, midsummer), it's time to stop harvesting rhubarb. It's done really well: we planted it in December 2011, and the combination of young plants and awful conditions meant that we didn't really have any stems from it last year. But this year it's been prolific.

The Timperley Early has done fine, but the late spring probably reduced its usefulness, as by the time it was really growing, the Victoria had come into its own. The stalks on Victoria have been monstrous, as the photo below suggests. Leaf and stem, together, have been nigh-on four feet long, and each stem's weighed about a pound. We've had rhubarb available whenever we wanted it for the last six weeks or so, and it's been delicious.

The Sutton's Seedless hasn't particularly impressed, but we'll have to see how all three do next spring.

Tonight I've taken the last picking, leaving the crowns with a few stems to recover for the rest of the year.

Rhubarb 'Victoria' stem, with Chess for scale (© Ian 2013)

Quince Bed

A weekend of hard work has meant that we now have a new flower bed. We planted the quince in June last year, and covered as much of the rest of its future bed with plastic, weighed down with branches. There's a photo from earlier this year, in April, when we dug the bed in front of this one, for sweet peas.

Sweet pea bed, with quince bed behind (© Ian 2013)

Yesterday, we removed all the branches (replacing that pile behind the orange bag in the photo above, which has now been chipped: it's a Sisyphean task!), and lifted the plastic. It's mostly done its work: the grass under the plastic was dead and largely decomposed. We hadn't put plastic all the way up to the quince—I can't remember, now, whether we ran out of plastic, or didn't want to stop water reaching the quince.

Either way, some turf remained. The mattock head once again proved invaluable, and I cut off the turf and started digging over the bed yesterday. I got about a third of the way through, having started after chopping a load of firewood, and left the rest for today.

It took six hours of work today, while Liz weeded and tidied, but I've now dug over the whole bed, removing about five barrow-loads of stones, and a five foot metal pole (no idea what it once was).

The long border is looking greatly improved from Liz's tidying, as are the two beds along the septic tank, and the whole kitchen garden.

Having readied the bed, we then planted out most of the heucheras that we've had waiting (about eighteen of them); two of the purple stemmed sarcococca; the physocarpus ('Lady in Red'), elder ('Black Lace'), and oak-leaved hydrangea from Ludlow market; calamagrostis (C. x acutiflora 'Overdam'), deschampsia, molinia, and achillea from RHS Tatton Park; and thirteen of the stipa we grew from seed last year.

Many of these will probably be split, in a year, and/or moved around, to build up the planting in the copse beds below it, and the colour wheel above it, but for now they make a pretty range of colours.

New planting in the Quince Bed (© Ian 2013)

Tidying Up

It's been a busy weekend of mostly tidying up, meaning accumulated progress, rather than any particular thing getting very far.

We've sown some more seeds: Dianthus amurensis 'Siberian Blues' (for the rockery wall in the front); Polemonium boreale 'Heavenly Habit' (Jacob's ladder); two aquilegias, 'Magpie' and 'Royal Purple'; and a mixed selection of hostas (hopefully some of which will be pretty!).

We've planted out half a dozen rows (about ninety plants) of carrots, and another block of beetroot (about forty plants) in the bottom bed.

Liz weeded the bed at the front of the copse, and we've done another prune/tidy of the shrubs in the bottom bank, which were hit by the cold east wind.

The pots on the patios, and sitting on the old shed base, needed some attention, so we've sorted through them, removing the dead/empty pots to the back patio, and weeding, tidying and fertilizing the rest. Another heuchera's been hit by root-eating grubs (which seem to focus their predation on primrose and heuchera roots, for whatever reason), so that needed cleaning up and re-potting, in the hopes that it might survive.

We dug up the buddleja that we planted in one of the front beds in 2010 (I think: I don't appear to have a note!), and is the bottom right of this photo (from April last year). Liz has never been sure about it, and we found a pretty acer that will replace it, and go well with the other, older acer that's the centre point of the adjacent bed.

I took the opportunity to add new guide wires to the wall behind for the Virginia creeper to run along. It's almost reached the ivy at the bottom (which I had to cut back earlier this week, as it was encroaching on the windows, again), and is looking pretty with its new growth.

Front garden (© Ian 2012–13)

We re-planted the hanging baskets, with bronze carex, cinereria, trailing nasturtiums, and petunias, and I re-hung the bracket that came off the wall late last year.

Liz potted up another 96 lavenders which arrived this week, into modules. They'll grow on ready to be planted into the herb garden edges later this year, hopefully.

The two clematis (C. florida 'Alba Plena') we bought at Tatton Park last year, and which are growing up the trellis sides of our arbour, are growing well. However, we want, if possible, to move the arbour later this year, in order to dig out and lay the paving that's going under it. That will be well-nigh impossible with clematis entwined up both sides. To solve this, I've used a couple of blocks of wood, and wire, to space two 1'x6' trellis panels, one behind each plant, away from the main trellis. We'll twine the climbers up these, instead of the arbour, so it'll still look good, but when (if) we have to move things, they can be transferred safely and separately.

To finish the weekend, we made use of a prolific spinach crop (very pleased with the spinach: it's 'Lazio', which is effectively new to us, as it didn't grow in last year's horrible conditions), and made a batch of spinach black pudding ('boudin noir du Poitou'). It's made with a kilo of spinach, a pint of light bechemal, half a pound of onion, four ounces of breadcrumbs, a pint and half of cream, and eight pints of blood; the seasoning (salt, pepper and mace) is extended to include nutmeg, too.

As with our batch of 'fry-up' black pudding (with pork fat and oatmeal, instead of spinach, bechemal, and breadcrumbs), we cooked it as cakes, in loaf tins.

It's frankly delicious, and a fine conclusion to a weekend of hard work.

Kitchen Garden Paths

Long planned, but never accomplished: since building the vegetable and fruit beds (during 2010, with the last vegetable bed completed March 2011), the paths have been left as grass. The buttercups, dandelions, and grass growing along them have made the paths difficult during the late summer, and the mud has been awful when it's wet (which is, frankly, often).

We quite quickly established that we needed to put down weed-suppressant membrane and chippings, in order to help with both of these problems—and then promptly spent two years bemoaning not getting round to it.

I said, last August, that we hoped to get round to the paths, intending at the time to get it done during our usually productive autumn phase of work, which didn't happen (I think the wood shelter and hillside intervened, probably reasonably).

But lo! We've got it done. Taking advantage of the warm and dry weather, we decided we had to get it done before it got wet (it'd be a horribly muddy job, if the ground's sodden, à la the hillside trenches). I bought a mattock head for the pick-axe a couple of weeks ago, hoping that it would make this sort of work easier, and it's worked really well for cutting the banked sides of the paths off, so that the ground's more level. It's incredible how much soil has built up against the raised beds, which must have furrowed out from the path centre (where the wheelbarrow tracks, I suppose).

The paths cleared, we then worked along wedging woven weed suppressing fabric along all the paths (we ran out of woven stuff with the two shortest paths left (between the bottom raspberry bed and the two beds to either side), but they're the lowest-traffic paths (hence leaving them 'til last, as I knew we weren't flush with membrane!). They've been done with the slightly less tough non-woven fabric (which I used under the woodshelter), which I think will cope with the low wear, though I wanted the polypropylene woven material for the main tracks.

We probably don't have enough chippings to cover the paths, but that's 'easily' sorted, as we can order a truckload as soon as the drive's clear.

That was the other part of the weekend's work, splitting a couple of tons of wood. The driveway is, therefore, rather more clear.

Lastly, we planted a delphinium (picked up cheap last week while buying the border tools), astrantia, aquilegia, and three schizostylis that we bought earlier in the year. They've all been in pots, but there were clear spaces in the long border, so in they went. The border tools have proved useful!

In other news: on Friday I started a batch of 'Harvest Mild' beer and chardonnay, both from kits. They both claim to only take a few weeks, which is, I suppose, plausible if it stays warm.

Path Clearing

Yesterday evening, I managed to spend three quarters of an hour on the hillside, clearing some of the grass, brambles, thistles, and other weeds with Sigrid the brushcutter. I managed to cut a path roughly from opposite the garage, along the bottom boundary, and then up the natural path all the way to the entrance to the first, main clearing behind the treeline (which wasn't so grassy, but had bracken ready to cut). I cleared quite a large area around the plums and pears, in doing so, as well as a big stretch of brambles up in the corner.

The square in the bottom right corner (opposite the colour-wheel garden) is full of cow parsley, so I'm planning to leave that alone for now, as it's pretty; but I'll cut it down once that's over, as it's also full of nettles. I'd like to provoke them into new growth, as they're starting to flower, which means they're no longer much good for cooking, or making into cordial or beer/wine.

This evening, we took advantage of an offer at the garden centre, and bought a border-size spade and fork from the Joseph Bentley range. 'My' spade (the one that's the right size for me) that we bought a few years ago is lovely to use, and we added a fork last autumn. The border tools are a bit narrower, which will come in handy when working in and amongst plants, as the digging-sized tools can be a bit cumbersome then. They're all really nice to work with: strong heads, and wooden handles are a pleasure to handle (and they're never cold, in the winter, to the touch). 

Tulips

We've enjoyed a lovely weekend in the company of university friends (Katherine, Rachel, Philip, Liz, Robert, and their five-month-old, James), for which the weather cooperated magnificently. While we spent a lot of time outside, little of it was working, until this afternoon, when we managed to get a few things done.

We sowed the last of the RHS-produced ornamental seeds, potted up new lavender plants (48 Hidcote, 48 Munstead) that arrived on Friday, planted gladioli in pots, sowed some more cauliflowers (Mystique) and leeks (Prizetaker), watered everything, and admired the tulips.

Pots of tulips (© Ian 2012)

New Tenants

For the last two years, we've had a swallow's nest in the porch. They arrived in June 2011, and built the nest below, resting on the keystone on the inside of the arched doorway. That year, they seemed to raise a clutch, and departed in the autumn. Sadly, last year, one or both failed to make it back from their winter habitat, and the nest was unused.

The swallows' nest (© Ian 2011–13)

I've been hopeful that either the original pair will find their way to us this year, or that a new pair will discover the nest, and make use of it. It was unoccupied on Monday (I can be sure, as I was sweeping and cleaning the porch out), but this evening I discovered that new occupants have moved in—and made some changes.

Modified swallows' nest (© Ian 2013)

They appear to have added an extension: I don't know if this is a pair of swallows, or another species, but will keep an eye. It doesn't look (with the leaf extension) like a typical swallow nest, I have to think.

I've also put together a panoramic photo of the hillside, from while we were cutting down some of the hawthorns.

Hillside in late May (© Ian 2013)

Compare, if you like, to February's photo.

Hillside in February (© Ian 2013)

Coming Into Leaf

The weather's been kind for the long weekend, meaning we've been able to get out all three days. Saturday and Sunday morning were both spent sawing, splitting, and stacking firewood, which isn't particularly noteworthy.

We spent a lot of time weeding the top bank, which is now looking immeasurably better: there are going to be dozens of foxgloves, soon, and hopefully the whole bank will look good. We planted a couple of dozen white cosmos ('Purity') that we've grown from seed, too.

I weeded around the Japanese quince while Liz began this weeding, pulling out about three trugs full of nettles and goosegrass. To start with, I cut the tips off the nettles, and started a batch of nettle cordial, using these, later in the day.

In the kitchen garden, I've overhauled the irrigation system, which is now ready to use once more (if we get warm, dry weather for any length of time!). The green roof is now well into germination, and seedlings abound. Today we planted out the five courgette plants, each under a plastic cloche. None of the curcubits we planted last year came to anything at all, so we're both hoping for a better crop this year.

The front garden received a lot of attention this morning, and we took out several trugs of weeds and rubbish from the paving, planted wall, and beds. The ivy needs cutting back (and the Virginia creeper needs more support wires, and the hanging basket that fell of that wall needs re-hanging), but they'll wait for another day. We need to replace a few things in the wall, where the plants have been overgrown by grass: possibly some dianthus we have growing from seed.

Most pleasingly, we uncovered loads of little hellebore seedlings under the acer, which I've carefully transplanted, so we now have forty tiny hellebores in a module tray. Of course, they'll take about three years to flower, but there you go.

While in the front garden, I lifted the slab in front of the gate, which was rather sunken, and have lifted it by a couple of inches: it's now level with the paving, and less of a step down from the lane.

We also went up onto the hillside. The deer/rabbit damaged stems of the Scot's pines are now all pruned out, and I've sprayed all the pines with animal repellent. A few of the fruit trees have had second ties added, further up the stem, to stop them rubbing. All the trees have now, finally, come into leaf (the walnuts are lagging slightly, but are on the way). James Grieve is in flower, as is the 'Spring Glow' plum. Only one of our established (anonymous) apples is in bloom (one next door, in Peter and Sara's plot, is), but almost all the others are in bud. Just one doesn't appear to be, yet.

As has been reported elsewhere, the cold winter and late spring means that there's a lot of blossom, so we're hopeful of a bumper crop from the established trees, and maybe a few fruits from the new plants.

I cut down several of the hawthorns that were between the apples: it's looking as though we'll be able to find space for up to another ten trees, once the hawthorns, blackthorn, and scrub is fully cleared, so we're making a start on removing this, so we can get a proper picture of the space available. I'm going to try to get out with Sigrid to clear some of the bracken and brambles this coming week, as we have visitors at the weekend, who will want to look 

Lastly: the dandelion wine, which I finished on Thursday, is now sat, bubbling away beautifully. I'm hoping to start a batch of beer, and maybe some nettle wine, in the next week or so.

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—having fallen out of the habit over the winter—I 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.