One) I know it's only an optical illusion, but plants are set off better by moist dark soil than pale dry stuff. After last night's deluge, which combined the most sustained lightning I have seen in my life with rain akin to the tropical downpours I've seen in Australia, moist and dark wasn't a problem.…
Six on Saturday – 20/5/2017
One. I was going to start with a picture of dead cabbages, the rootfly having munched their way through two rows. But it was raining and going up the allotment in the rain to take a picture of dead cabbages didn't do it for me. Two. Papaver bracteata. Every year this monster astonishes me anew.…
Six on Saturday 13/5/2017
Six on Saturday, or SOS; appropriate because my allotment seems to be constantly under assault by pests. Gooseberry sawfly is far worse than I've had before, I squash hundreds, the next day they're all back again. And I thought the slugs had been chewing my cabbages, turns out it's rootfly. Nematodes will be ordered and…
Allotment update – 9/5/2017
I decided to give onions from seed another go this year. I have grown the red onion 'Brunswick' and a Spanish variety called Liria, from real Seeds. Brunswick I pricked off singly into modules, the twenty to a half-tray size. Liria I did singly, in pairs and in threes. Yesterday I planted them all…
Six on Saturday 6/5/2017
"The Propagator" has just launched a new meme which struck a chord with me, so this is by way of climbing on board. Six things going on in the garden. 1) This is Camellia 'Nightrider', very dark, very late flowering and with new leaves a similar colour to the flowers but shiny. It's a very…
End of month view – April 2017
These are butternut squash seedlings on my window ledge. It's raining outside, which is a very good thing; steady, hour after hour. What happened to April showers? April has seen masses of stuff coming into leaf and flowering like mad. It has also seen weeks of dry weather and the threat of frost on half…
Allotment update 14/4/2017
I've put in several hours on my plot yesterday and today, strimming, weeding, sowing and planting. It still feels early in the season but I'm well on the way to a full house. I've said before that I have trouble getting seedlings going on my plot and start most things off in pots or cells.…
Allotment update – 3/4/2017
My purple curly kale has had it. Time to go. I chopped round the stems with the spade, leaving most of the roots in the ground and took them away to be shredded and added to the compost heap. I'd wanted to plant spuds in the space nearly a month ago but thought there were…
End of month view, March 2017
There's quite a bit flowering now, bulbs and bushes. I'm not sure how but we still have three magnolias, used to have five. The one behind the polytunnel is Vulcan and it's slowly falling over. It might be possible to push it back up and prop it, I hope so. The plum tree on its…
What I think I know about soil.
Soil is the stuff I grow most of my plants in, the ones I don’t grow in pots. It is derived from the local rock, soft slatey stuff, small bits of which are visible and sometimes abundant in the soil. Everybody describes it as “shilletty”. If I analysed the distribution of article sizes I would…
garden ruminations 