Posts from ‘April, 2009’

Sedum looks incredible at this time of year, especially following the warm, wet weather we’ve been experiencing here on the South coast. But come late July and August, as the plant limbers up to produce those spectacular helipad blooms, the stems become unwieldy, obese, and unable to balance. They flop over and recline on the [...]

Hoorah. The first carrots from the Garden from Scratch. I sowed these Autumn King II in September as an experiment to see if they would make it through the winter. Which they did. They have been growing in a deep container on the balcony, which gets the most sun in the garden, interplanted with rocket [...]

Green Lane Allotments
28 April
 
 
Another week where a major challenge was to decide whether to leave a sweater on or take it off. When the sun was shining it was quite hot and summery but as soon as it disappeared behind a cloud the temperature chilled and it was back on with the sweater.

One day Diana Harrison sat amongst the tall phlox and the stonecrop in her garden. After a few minutes she found herself surrounded by hordes of honeybees. “They were too preoccupied to even notice me,” she observes. “It was an experience beyond words.”

Image by Liz West
Growing asparagus is a long-term investment. It’s a trust fund you can’t open for three years, but when you do, you’ll be eating the king of vegetables at a fraction of its supermarket price.

Shame upon the stuffy gardener who thinks sunflowers are a bit common. Such gardeners are grumpy and clearly lost their school sunflower-growing competition. Planting a few of these annuals will make your garden look like the sort of sunny, fun place anyone could spend a warm afternoon, and make any unhappy passers-by smile.
You don’t have to grow the [...]

I don’t just grow plants, I grow newspapers too. Every day, a new pile of them appears next to my bed, and in the recycling box, and under my bed. This is actually rather handy, as I’m sowing seeds non-stop at the moment, and our stash of toilet roll tubes and eggboxes can’t keep up.
Newspaper [...]

 Vegalicious April 2009
 Asparagus with potato dressing
 
 
Asparagus is one of our favorite vegetables. We look forward to springtime when the first asparagus will appear in the markets. Historically, it’s known that asparagus was enjoyed in ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece. Today, we are able to enjoy 4 different types of asparagus. The green is best known [...]

Nothing is quite so cheering about the English spring as the Primrose, Primula vulgaris. And nothing is quite so depressing as the sight of bright yellow, pink and red cultivars bringing ’spring colour’ to miserable-looking beds. These gaudy flowers are the wrong colour for spring: wrong in fact, for any season. Please don’t grow them. [...]

Green Lane Allotments
21 April
 
 
 Although the greenery says spring, winter is still challenging the idea and sending some cold winds. When the sun pushes through it is lovely and warm. It’s the sort of weather that the plants and wildlife must find confusing.

 
I met this slug as he journeyed across my compost heap. Unfortunately, it was his last journey, as I am one of the awful, brutal gardeners who keeps a pair of ’slug-cutting’ scissors in their coat pocket. I’m sorry, Mr Slug, but there’s just no other way. Either you go quietly now, or endure weeks [...]

Peas ready to be planted out
The Garden from Scratch is starting to look more like a garden and less like a bare soil museum. Two of the veg beds are edged with garlic, which is looking very proud of itself at the moment, and the third is holding our Charlotte potatoes. We chitted these indoors [...]

Alliums unzipping in the Garden from Scratch
Perhaps it was the raspberry canes, lined up on the kitchen table, with ‘I Love You’ written on post-it notes. Or the handmade raised bed. Or a daily inspection of the garden at the end of work. Whatever the turning point, my husband has become a gardener, and last [...]

Even though chives are a widely-grown perennial herb, their common uses in the kitchen are limited mainly to potatoes. This is a shame as this member of the onion family is far more versatile.

Green Lane Allotments
April 12

It’s really beginning to look and feel like spring now. I think from now until the end of May is my favourite time of the year when the greens look so fresh and everything seems just bursting to grow.