Author Archives: sophieharriett

March update

This is going quite well! I have learnt from last year. I prick my seedlings out early, in quite dry soil and move them on. I have a conveyor belt happening. So far I have got nicotiana (maybe too much), dill, greek basil, catch-fly and chilli from seed. This is my second set of dill because the mice got the first lot (and some coriander and some basil). They dug them up and ate them!

Growing, growing…
….gone

I’ve moved the nicotiana, some of the chilli and some nasturtiums which are cuttings (!) up to the balcony. I took the cuttings from the nasturtium in the window box on our window sill because it needed tidying up and then it seemed a shame to throw them away. They are doing well! It’s helped that it’s been so mild.

I am also growing sweet peas that are harvested from last year (why Harriet, why! let it go). And I’ve got some fox gloves in pots.

The cerinthe I planted last year in late autumn is now about 9 inches tall and about to flower – which is nice but not surely not seasonal. And the nemesis (from Wisley?? can it be those?) has self seeded and is also now flowering everywhere including in the cracks in the balcony.

I’ve put the angelica in a pot round Amie’s house and it was doing well but now it’s gone all droopy. And I’m going to go round her’s, give her a fuschia in a pot (from a cutting) and throw out the old golf-clubs…

Nicotiana Seedlings

April 3rd

I hae more than I have pots to put them in. I love them and I love how ordered and official they look. (They’re actually even bigger than this now – this was 1-2 weeks ago).

March

Last year, I planted these and I struggled a bit. They all germinated but came up really thickly. I didn’t pot them on properly and most of them died, then I did exactly the same thing again – and only ended up with a few good ones. None in my garden, though the ones at the Red Cross were lovely.

This year, I have been strict about pricking on and potting out. They are such tiny seeds, you still can’t get them thinly sown, but I ruthlessly moved them. I did it when they were quite dry so it was easy to separate them without everything getting sticky.

I did this on the 20th Feb – a week ago! I put half in pots in the greenhouse, and left some of them under the growlite, which are doing very well. The ones in the greenhouse are still alive!

Hopefully they will look like this…

Bye Bye Basil

Last week (mid Jan) we finished off the basil. I bought one pot in Spring, divided it and with a bit of help of the growlight, kept it going til now. It got a bit spindly and skanky by the end. I know we don’t eat huge amounts of basil but I am proud to have kept us self-sufficient for so long!

Fungi

This has nothing to do with my garden but we saw these at Hickling Broad in Norfolk on New Year’s Day and I want to put them somewhere I’ll see them.

Poominland Midwinter

I tidied up a bit this weekend – and immediately hit the gardening for wildlife conundrum. When is it okay to clear it up? What % is gardening and what % is wildlife? I couldn’t work it out so I did what I always do when I don’t know what to do and chopped some bits of the fuschia. I chopped some bits off the ivy too.

The garden feels a bit deserted and different – I haven’t been out there much for a long time. There’s a trod path to the cricket pitch and nothing else. It’s a bit like Moominland Midwinter, only instead of a wild landscape of its own with invisible shrews and Hemulens, it’s full of fox shit and fallen apples that have been half eaten by rodents.

I cut back the obvious things. I am pursuing the “leave stuff on the ground” attitude as much as possible but I wonder if I have reached peak stuff? How much of detritus can you have in a garden before it stops rotting it down? Especially as it has been so dry this year. We’ll see.

There are too many things flowering that shouldn’t be but here are 2 good things; toadflax (from Cawsand) growing out of a gap in the bricks by the pond and some VERY EXCITING fungi on on of the logs by the pond. If you try to move the stick, it is stuck in there.

January

I haven’t done any gardening for ages. It’s a combination of two things: the very mild winter, and leaving things to die down naturally.

I’m experimenting with things dying back/ rotting down naturally – and almost nothing is completely dead. Something things (like the marigolds & even the geraniums on Edie’s windowsill) are still flowering; and lots of plants are still growing. Very few things have died back – and even those that have – like the fern – still look quite soft, like there is still nutrient in the rotting leaves that might go back into the roots. Here is the rose and the salvia in flower and the bears’ breeches in the other garden are flowering too

I’ve seen bees and flies and even the odd butterfly. I think this is the weirdest season I’ve ever seen and I dread to think how the natural world can adapt to deal with it.

The only thing that’s really died (back) is my crab apple – and that’s because Luke hit his cricket ball into it and smashed the stem in half. Humph. Here’s what’s left and what came off, stuck round the front gate as a festive decoration.

A tale of 2 hotboxes

I still hate the hotbox. At the top it is all hot (100 degrees!)and rotty and it smells nice and 2 days after you put things in, it’s covered in mould and starting to break down. But at the bottom, it’s still wet, sticky, smelly, full of smushed cardboard and fluid and sticks. How hard can it be? I took a tiny bit out – I’m not taking any more for months now and it’s still smelly mulch at best. But maybe, just maybe there are a few a bits that look like proper compost – like the sponge at the bottom of a trifle..

Top
Bottom

So it begins…

Today I potted on some cerinthe that I got from seed from the cerinthe I grew from seed last year. They look pretty healthy already. I will leave them out unless it gets really cold and hope for the bets. I love these plants. I haven’t worked out how to keep them going from year to year but here’s hoping

I’ve also got about 6 foxgloves seedlings in pots that should be ready to do the business this summer.

I potted on some sage too. I grew this from cuttings, using the method Nemone at Core taught me – in a plastic bag and everything – and so far they are working. it feels like the circle of growing is starring again….

Bulbs

I’m not very good at planting bulbs – and they don’t seem to last. I thought you just put them in and they came up for ever but quite often I come across them and they’ve rotted. I do love tulips though – and who doesn’t like spring bulbs coming up. Today I planted a load of tulips I got from Sarah Raven and some mini daffs Amanda gave me

Sarah told me not to plant until late Oct/ Nov because this stops them getting diseases. Tho I don’t know whether that is “November” as in when it is actually cold or now, when it’s still what would be October weather. We’ll see.

To remember, I planted….

  • Prinses Irene – in the pot at the back and in the front pots too and some in a long green pot that might be for Edie, or might not.
  • Mini daffs in 2 round pots.

All the others are white or yellow because I bought the “Sherbet Lemon” collection. Why? These aren’t the colours I like – why did I buy these? Anyway there are…

  • Green Dance and Westpoint in the bed by the honey suckle.
  • And in the back bed and the pot by the back door, there are World Friendship, Golden Apeldoorn and praestans Shogun.

Amanda also gave me some red tulips and some Green star which are white with green markings which I’m going to plant at the Red Cross. See what I’m doing there.

Let’s see…

It’s grow time!

I got my growlight out of the cellar! I put the basil in it. I’m so proud of this basil. I bought it in a pot from the supermarket in May (?). I split it and have kept it alive ever since. Ihave managed to make us self-sufficient in basil for more than 6 months! Admittedly that is because we don’t use basil much, but it is the ONLY thing I have managed to make us self sufficient in (apart from tough outdoor herbs like sage which don’t count and we also don’t eat much).

I’m going to eat the ones at the front but try and 1 or 2 plants alive for as long as possible. Apparently they are going yellow because of too much water, too little, not enough nutrients or too cold. I’m going too cold… It says they like a night time temperature of no less than 10degrees. I’m guessing it’s not even that during the day in the kitchen

On FIRE!

It’s been too warm but it feels like Autumn is finally taking hold. The cotinus and the virginia creeper (up the soil stack) are looking pretty special. Last year, the cotinus just lost its leaves before they turned but this year, it looks lovely…

Me vs Fuschia, Fuschia vs Pond

One of the things about trying to garden in a different way, is that I sometimes don’t have anything to do. Not that my garden is finished – it’s still a mess – but that if I am trying to let nature do more, then I need to do less. For ex, usually this time of year, I would clear up and cut back, but I am trying to let things die and rot back into the soil.

Today everyone was driving me nuts and I wanted to do some soothing gardening. But I couldn’t find anything to do. Then I turned to the fuschia, as I often do, because you can hack great bits off it with impunity and really no result.

As previously discussed, the fuschia needs chopping because it’s too big and not actually a tree and always trying to be a bush. Ilove it when I cut it’s shape clearly. I’m going to go back and cut more later and I’m thinking about turning it into one of those pom-pom trees! I think I need to learn more about pruning.

  • Too many….
  • sticky out bits

Also as previously discussed, the fuschia is killing the pond. Today I took out a ton of old rotting leaves and disturbed a very cross looking frog. It seems a shame to have got the pond properly done with bricks and tadpoles into maturity and let the bushy tree kill it off.

Something out of nothing

We went to Cornwall for half term. It rained ALL the time. I was struck by/ love things the grow out of nothing – trees that hold onto cliffs, honeysuckle growing out of walls – things taking the smallest hold and holding on. Even dandelions growing from cracks in rocks on the beach (by Edgcumbe).

I think it’s partly because its so wet and mild down there. There was life all over the place. And all the colours very different to here (on the path to Penlee).

Planning for 2022

I”m going to use this as a list of things I”m thinking about for next year:

1. Get rid of this

If this comes up again – give it to Amie. You don’t like it, it’s massive and it doesn’t do anything. She will like it because it is architectural.

Maybe make a big effort to find out what it is and give some away.

2. Fuschia

Cut it right back. In the winter and then throughout the summer.

3. Gooseberries

Managed to keep next doors cat from sleeping in that bed. Didn’t manage anything else. Find out how to look after them better.

4. Back bed

AGAIN. needs sorting. Has needed sorting for the last 5-10 years. Now needs either to become a shady bed or a mixed one but either way, needs sorting

Spiders Everywhere!

I am tidying up a bit so that the garden still looks like a garden for its last phase of the summer. Some stuff I am leaving – like the fuschia – to give everyone a last meal. And shortly, I’m going to stop tidying up altogether, so that fallen leaves can rot back into the soil like last year, as this seems ugly but effective.

But the SPIDERS are stopping me doing this!

They are everywhere! Which I guess is a great marker of how many flying insects we have. But I feel mean if I chop down the stalks they have used as supports. And I feel even worse when I walk through their webs. There is a horrible sound (how can something so silent make such a noise?) and a clammy feeling as the web wraps round my face and then tears. There are some bits of the garden I don’t go into, and some I only go into waving my arms in front of me.

I am very curious about why spiders choose to build their webs where they do. There must be an optimal point – sunshine, breeze, passing traffic? But I wonder what the criteria are and whether they adapt where they spin or is it just chance? I can find lots about how spiders spin their webs but nothing about location. And depressingly, when you put the question into google, the first answer is a pest-exterminator web site, which happens quite a lot when you look up insects. I can’t believe anyone in the UK really needs to exterminate spiders.

Next for the Fuschia…?

So as mentioned, I do love my fuschia. But it has now so big that by this time of year, it

  • turns the big sunny back bed into a shady bed
  • blocks all light to the pond and fills it with dead leaves and flowers (so it’s a bit smelly)

I don’t want this. I love the pond (more than the fuschia?). I want two sunny beds not the one which will be all I will have left. (Though maybe I don’t if it we’re in for some very hot summers?).

I am going to think about what to do about this over the winter. Here is a picture of what it looks like now – to remind me when I come to chop it in the Spring!

I think I should chop the top bits off – so it is always lower and thin it ruthlessly and regularly. Because it was never meant to be a tree – it is a bushy shrub – it will take a lot of persistent work to bring some sun and light back.

There is also a bit of it growing up the fence (it is a MONSTER) and into the sun by next door’s garden. I need to think about how could encourage this instead (it is never going to stop trying). But not until later in the year because I can’t get to the back of the garden right now because of all the spiders.….

Other Garden – September

It looks FAB. It makes me smile whenever I see it. It looks like the mother of the bride at a blousy wedding.

Yesterday, me and Jade were talking on my doorstep and a really nice mum from school walked by who’s had a really bad year. She didn’t know the other garden was mine – and she just said she loved it – it always cheered her up when she walked past. And that felt like a good thing.