This is what the lawn looks like at the end of Feb. It has been snowed on (the snow settled on it much thicker than anywhere else so it must be much colder?) and I can’t honestly say that this is the new grass from the turf, or the old grass that was left alive that is poking through.
There are lots of worm casts on it as well.
Note the culprit is still in the background, this time with a ladder as well as a cricket bat.
This is what happened to the brave navelwort flower spike when it snowed. I don’t know what will happen to it next – if it will grow another or that’s it. The rest of the plant looks fine. I guess it doesn’t snow much in the West Country.
It has been a tough fortnight. It snowed and froze and everything that had young, green growth looked like it had died. This is the fortnight Andrew fell downstairs too.
This is a picture of all the greenery coming through in the window box. I took off the grey fuzzy leaves that died in the frost and this is what’s left. Andrew is still okay. They announced today that the kids are going back to school. It’s nearly Spring….
February 6th: Me and Edie had our first go at Pass on a Plant today. We put out 4 pulmonaria (I don’t like the word Lungwort). Three of them went. But it was a very bleak day and hardly anyone going past.
I’ve never taken cuttings before. They seem a bit technical and I can’t get my head round the technique. But we did some at gardening club at the end of Autumn. And when Edie and me planted out the vetch, we put small sticks pruned from the fuchsia as supports. Some of these are still alive! They have buds! We did cuttings without realising.
This has inspired me and I have taken loads of cuttings today. More from the fuchsia, which is a force of nature, some from the corpus and some from the mint from the other garden. I wonder which ones will live!
Chris bought me this for Christmas. I really like it. It’s got a whole glowing thing to the kitchen. I am going to mostly use it as a propagator to get seedlings going. I have grown some salad in it, but it seems a lot of work for one portion of greens. So I think I will use it in later Winter/Spring for seedlings and in autumn for seedlings or keeping herbs alive as the light goes.
I have got some chilli going it in it. Also some tomato seedlings – which haven’t come up yet. I had the coriander in it but it’s going slightly yellow, so I’m going to put it into the greenhouse again.
I need to get better at planning what’s in it. In theory, the light should be up at the top until something has germinated and once it has, it should be about 6cm above it (otherwise it gets leggy as it tries to reach the light). But this takes a bit of organising if you’ve got salad that’s 4 cm tall, seedlings that have come though and some that haven’t.
So far I pretty much all the seeds I have planted in here have come up. I wasn’t expecting such a good strike rate.
chilli, tomatoes, scabious, bladderwort, catchfly, Queen Anne’s lace,
I bought one because Alan Titchmarsh told me to. He said it would be “perfectly happy on a North-facing wall” and though it grows up to 40ft high, “it is often slow to start, so be patient. The rewards are great eventually”.
I planted it too close to the wall and it gets no sun. Every year I look at it and think it has done badly and I will dig it up and then I remember what Alan said and leave it. I have had it for 15 years now I reckon and it’s about a foot wide. This is your your year schizophragma, get on with it…
March Update!
It took notice! It has leaves….
How can this have such an ugly name? It’s also called cymbalaria muralis so I might call it that instead. I took it from the steps of my parents house in Cornwall when I swiped the Navelwort and I hoping it will spread too. Here it is in old box (where I think a very small toad was hanging out last year… !)
Will it come back to life? The kids kill the lawn playing cricket when it’s wet. Luke had a cricket ball on a string and he stood in the same spot and gradually ground out a hole in the ground.
I got this turf from someone round the corner but it had been in a bag in their front garden for about a month and was mostly dead. I am interested to see if it comes alive. I got the chunky bit from Homerton Grove when I was helping plant the orchard. But buy the time I bought it back, I was so cold, I couldn’t do anything but put on the grass and stand on it.
NB: note that the sticks protecting the (dead) turf mean everyone’s walked over the other bit and killed that too!
NB2: note culprit in background
JANUARY 25th 2021
“If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with”.
Generally, I am good at this. I love the things that I am good at growing. I love the way they surprise me and flourish. Sweet peas are an exception. I am not very good at growing them but I still love them. I am not romantic about flowers but I am about sweet peas.
I know what the problem is – I grow them in pots and they get mildew. I need to grow mildew resistant ones, but I fall in love with ones that aren’t. I should grow them straight in the soil, but I have so many slugs and snails, they never make it. And every year, I know I can’t do it properly but I do it anyway!
Last year, along with the cerinthe, I bought some from Sarah Raven (Lord Nelson, Matacuna and one other) and grew them in pots on my balcony they were so beautiful. They all died in the heatwave in London, even though someone was watering them. But I harvested seed and I have some in my greenhouse. Let’s see…
It’s got a flower spike! This has got to be the wrong time? It is very sheltered as it’s under the roof terrace but still gets some light, but it can’t be warmer here than in Cornwall? Let’s see what happens…
My new foxgloves seem to be growing out of old foxgloves…
I have lots of foxgloves, which have seeded across the garden, white ones and purple ones. After the flower spikes have dried and rattle with little seeds, I wave them round the beds, hoping they will seed and grow.
Sometimes, they seed, and then when I find them in places I don’t want them (in the lawn/ in pots/etc), I move them or stick them in little pots and plant them out later.
I once read an article which turned out to be by an American (sometimes you can’t tell until it says something like “superb for humming birds”) who used foxgloves as a cut-and-come-again flower, saying if you chopped them early enough, you got more spikes.
I’ve never dared do this but my kids and the actual foxes have snapped them off occasionally and I have got other spikes – though usually a bit more branched off than the first one.
Normally I pull them up once I’ve taken of the flower spikes/ seeds but this year I have left them – mostly in my attempt to leave stuff for bugs and not tidy up too much. Now the old gloves seem to be sprouting…
What is going on? This isn’t new plants, it’s last year’s ones. Maybe it has been so mild, they think it’s still the end of summer? Or might they do this sometimes if you don’t pull them up? I don’t know but I’m going to see what happens.
But it’s still not completely clear. Apparently some foxgloves are perennial – but short lived, they only come though for a couple of years. And some, if you cut off the “king spire,” will grow flowering side branches. The problem is, I don’t know what my foxgloves are. I think one might be just plain woodland ones (the purple ones) but I don’t know what type the whites are.
Also an expert lady foxglove grower at Chelsea says the seeds lower down the spine tend to come true more than the ones lower down the spire.
We’ve had these in our garden for two years in a row. We only see them in day if we disturb them. Apparently they are not profuse in this part of the world, but the flowers in the Olympic Park are helping them spread through Hackney.
I’m going to try and grow some of this too.
Things I know so far: 5+ hours of direct sunlight a day.
I got some from Vital Seeds – who I read about in The Garden and who sell organic seed. They came in a lovely package and made me feel green fingered just opening it.
I have planted them in the growlight. I am sceptical they will come up this early but we will see…..
They have come up! They look all perky. We’ll see.
I could not love my chillis more. It’s going to get warmer next week so I will put them out then.
I don’t think it’s going to end well. I put them in the greenhouse and then hardened them off. When we had some sun in the Spring, I moved them round the garden so they got as much sun as possible. But it has been a terrible summer. Every time there has been a ray of sunshine, they’ve tried to flower but the rain comes in and strips them off. They’ve gone weirdly bushy, and as they haven’t set any fruit, I can’t see them growing any chillis. Maybe next year…
Well, that didn’t work brilliantly. I blame the weather.
This year I am going to become self-sufficient in coriander. I’m going to try to become self-sufficient in parsley. I’ve said it now.
I might buy some tarragon and grow it on.
I have mint, marjoram, thyme, sage and fennel already. Every year, I do that thing where you buy one pot of basil from the supermarket and split it and it lasts all summer.
I’m going to try this method with the seeds which is a very cool man in India I think suggesting you sandpaper them.
I had some coriander seeds growing very slowing in the greenhouse which me and Edie planted in the Autumn. They had germinated. I put them in a bigger pot and under the growlight and they looked lovely and perky for a bit but then started yellowing and some of them died. I’ve put them by the growlight but not it in, and I’m going to move them up to the greenhouse after the snow (this weekend apparently).
I have also read a bit and learnt it doesn’t like being moved and it likes to grow a deep tap root. And (from the sandpaper guy) that they each “seed” is in fact 2 seeds, so they always grow double so presumably need super thinning which I am not good at.
I am already thinking, bloody coriander, you spend ages growing it and you end up with just enough for a sprinkle on a soup. A bunch as big as my hand costs £1.25 at the greengrocer.
I can for foliage and flowers but not produce. It doesn’t fit with prime directives (stuff that looks nice all year round/ stuff it doesn’t matter if the kids trash); I never end up with a “bumper crop” and at the time that eg: tomatoes are super cheap in the shops, I end up with 3-4 leathery, watery tomatoes no-one wants to eat.
Growing vegetables is hard work. Farmers are skilled and knowledgeable!
My biggest success is pea sprouts from Vertical Veg (this is an inspiring site). And we grew a sample and sold peas in packets at the Summer Fair, which the kids love.
I grow beans every year because I like the way they look but we rarely eat them as usually only about three of them are ripe at time. These last 2 years, I have grown them on the balcony up a clothes rack.
And I grew trombocino which looked AWESOME but didn’t really make it as a dinner. In 2021 I am going to try to grow herbs and leave it at that.
I don’t love my acer any more. I used to, but now I want a more natural garden. I love minimalist foliage gardens but that’s not MY garden. Other reasons I don’t love it:
Last year it looked horrible. It is mostly in shade, but it couldn’t take the endless sun and had curled up brown leaves very early on.
It is too bushy now. It looks more like a muppet than a sculpture.
I am not going to kill it or move it (which I think would kill it). So acting on a tiny bit of knowledge that I overhead and don’t quite remember, I have chopped it this January to try to give it a bit of structure and maybe make it more like a woodland underneath. Let’s see what happens…
It’s looking nice. Not sure it will last but the prune didn’t kill it!
Ragged Robin! And some kind of bedstraw!
This winter I bought a mini green house. I got a Grozone and it is fab.
It’s light but sturdy and very well made. It’s on the roof terrace outside our bedroom. When it rains in the night I can hear the water hitting it and it’s like being dry in a tent when it’s raining outside, only nicer.
My plan is to move it down to the garden for the Spring – or maybe even take it down all together until the autumn.
Here it is on January 5th 2021
We have started saving old plastic pots to use as plant pots and it seems to be working!
Big old yoghurt pots work well, but I am quite excited about trying out some of the pots that grapes etc come in as they have lids. So they are like mini-greenhouses already.
I think the trick might be to start collecting them early – so you gradually build up a selection. Also to not mind what they look like as they are a bit random but good for the world…
My Garden 