Category Archives: Back Garden

Green Grass

So this is the sward now.

That bloody ladder is there. There is a pigeon waiting to eat the grass seed. It’s not exactly weed free, and you can see the lumps where the different clumps came from but all the same! Not bad

I don’t love dandelions

Like lots of people, I am taking part in No Mow May Just writing it makes me HAH! like Patty and Selma.

We’ve been heading towards not mowing for a while. On a lot of the lawn, we don’t have grass anyway so it’s not like we have a green sward. We let it grow last May, and at the end of the month, me and the kids measured out our square metre like you’re supposed to and found we had enough flowers to keep one bee alive for about 10 minutes.

This year, we have more things. Maybe because it’s not as hot. Maybe because we let it grow last year. But all the things we have are either dandelions or things that have escaped from the beds (eg; lily of the valley).

And it makes me cross that all the pics (see on No Mow May link above!) are all beautiful meadows and orchids and rare grasshoppers and how you can cut a path through it like a swathe. You can’t do that in a small suburban garden. Actually, I have tried and it doesn’t look bad but STILL…

Also, I am struggling with dandelions. I know I should love them but I don’t. I am prejudiced against them. I have shifted how I see wild flowers. I don’t see weeds. I see beauty and delicacy and tenacity. But I still feel old-fashioned about dandelions. They ARE WEEDS! I understand how most people still see wild flowers when I look at dandelions! They smell horrible, they are deep-rooted bullies and take over all the grass. I know they make bees and hoverflies happy but I just don’t like them. We have more this year and they are a bit better growing in drifts, but STILL….

ps: we DO have grasshoppers (we’ve seen their legs sticking out of the bug hotel when something is eating them) and mining bees that live in the sandy patches so obviously our scabby lawn is rich (-ish) environment but STILL…

Rosettes?

I never would have thought I would post more about navelwort than anything else. But here it is. These are the two in my garden. I thought they were the same plant, and then I thought maybe one was the male and one female. Now I wonder if they are different plants altogether?

I saw a lot like this in Cawsand – some with rosettes that grow into spikes and some with just spikes. Spiky one looks a bit sad TBH

Gooseberries

I love gooseberries. They are hard to find in shops. For my birthday this year, Luke got me 2 gooseberry bushes. Here they are in March. Let’s see how they go…

gooseberry bush

May 12th Update

One had flowers and now has got tiny berries, one hasn’t. I’m not quite sure what to do next….

Still smelly

I have followed the advice of the nice people at Hotbin and the top of my hotbin smells nice and wholesome; it is warming up and it feels like I am finally becoming someone who Can Compost.

I know this is my fault – but the bottom is still very smelly and full of flies and vile smelling fluid! Where does it come from? I drain it off every day at at time when I don’t think the neighbours are in their garden. I can’t face a conversation about how I have failed at composting. I know this will get better and gradually stop but at the moment…

vile brown liquid

Dogwood

  • close up of branch
    Red Stems
  • shrub
    After I started pruning…

I used to coppice my dogwood hard every spring. It gives it lovely red branches but it feels cruel. Also, I am not sure it’s the best way to do it.

This year, I have pruned it not coppiced it. I thought I would chop it to look nice and be a shape I like rather than blindly pursue red stems in the winter.

Let’s see what it looks like next year…

Smelly Compost

I have a Hotbin. It smells. It’s full of stinky liquid and slimy slightly rotted vegetables and completely intact twigs. It’s cold. I can’t get it right. I know it’s me not the Hotbin – and they have sent lots of help about how to get it right but it still isn’t. And I’ve looked into Andrew’s and his is lovely and crumbly and wonderful.

I bought it just as lockdown started (so nearly a year?) (and then persuaded Andrew to buy his). I still haven’t got good compost out of it. I got some nearly good stuff a couple of months ago and put the best on the garden as a mulch and the worst back in the bin. This month, I couldn’t bear it any more so I took the smelly disgusting stuff out of the bottom. HB told me to aerate it – the smell is because it is anaerobically composting and I dried it as best I could and this is what it looks like….

not very rotted composted
Compost with bits of leek, sweet potato and possibly hair….

I think I was too mean about putting in dry matter/ bulking agent at the start and then it all got squished together – and you keep squashing more in to try and make it work and that makes it worse.

The problem is, once you’ve seen the error of your ways, you’ve got 3 foot of smelly cold crap compost and my garden isn’t big enough to put it anywhere (plus with the smell not fair on the neighbours).

I’m posting this in the hope it’s just one in the first in a series that ends up with lovely compost.

Grass growing

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.

turf with child in background

Cuttings

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.

vetch growing round a stick

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!

Schizophragma integrifolium

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…

schizophragma integrifolium
Still Alive but only just

March Update!

It took notice! It has leaves….

  • leaves

Ivy-leaved Toadflax

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… !)

Toadflax in a bug hotel

Turf

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

I love Sweet Peas

“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.

  • Sweet peas on the balcony


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…

Are foxgloves really biennial?

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.

  • Bee
  • At the back

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…

  • Foxglove in a pot
    Old Foxglove, with new growth at base
  • Old foxglove stem with growth at the bottom…
  • foxglove leaf
    .. and at the top too, like a palm tree

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.

I’ve done some research!

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.

Tiger Moths

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.

Tiger Moth on leaf