Through the garden gate--planting alpines and herbs

 

 It's been a busy month in the garden. I've had a couple of projects on my to do list which I've managed to complete this month. The first one was to plant up an alpine sink garden. I bought the old sink from a second hand shop a couple of years ago and since then it's been stored in the garage. There's been the occasional comment from my husband about it lying around doing nothing, so I finally I decided to get a move on and do something with it.  A visit to the RHS garden Harlow Carr inspired me. The alpine house there is something quite special and there are lots of stone troughs planted up with alpines which gave me some planting ideas.

Alpine house at RHS Harlow Carr

Alpine troughs at RHS Harlow Carr

I got carried away when I was buying plants and bought too many! That was no problem though as I have a couple of little stone alpine troughs which were looking a bit untidy so I replanted them with some of the new plants.

The sink was very heavy to move but we got it in place outside the back door. I used a mixture of John Innes compost, sharp sand and grit as a planting medium and after planting I covered the top with a layer of grit. I also put some slates on end in between the plants which finished it off nicely.

The next project was to plant up a herb bed. My herbs have always been dotted around the garden, some in pots, some in the ground and I have often thought I would like a specific area for them. We have three raised beds at the top of the garden which have become redundant since we took on the allotment and stopped growing vegetables in the garden. So I decided to use one of these as a herb bed. There was already a clump of sorrel in one of them which had seeded from a nearby pot, so it seemed an obvious place to start the herb bed. I planted chives, lemon balm, French tarragon, three sorts of sage, bronze fennel, oregano and a golden marjoram. There is room for more, so I will add to them over the next few weeks. I have a variety of mint plants growing in pots which will be left as they are to contain the roots.

As usual I have joined with Sarah at Down by the Sea for her monthly 'Through the garden Gate' slot. Have a look at her blog it's really good. I hope you have enjoyed coming through my garden gate this month. Maybe you would like to join us and let us come through your garden gate to view your garden.

Sunny days, goats and a lot of seedlings

Last week  we had some lovely fine sunny days and it was  great to get down to the allotment and catch up with jobs. Working away in the warm sun is so relaxing and then to sit down with a welcome cup of tea admiring our hard work gives a great sense of well being.

The goats which belong to a man who lives nearby are becoming regular visitors, wandering about the lane. They are quite cute, especially the  baby ones, but we have to keep the plot gate shut otherwise they just wander in and eat anything. Up to now they have just eaten the ivy around the gate and we're not too bothered about that. They smell awful though and we can usually smell them before we see them.

I finally got the rest of the onion sets in the ground and then covered them with netting frames to keep the birds from pulling them out. The earlier planted ones had been started off in module trays to get some growth going. This does away with the need to cover with netting.

I planted the broad beans (The Sutton) which were started off weeks ago in cardboard tubes in the greenhouse. They made a double row. We put support sticks around them with string which should stop them from flopping over as they get bigger.

 As the soil is warming up now I decided to sow a row of carrot seeds directly in the ground. We don't have a lot of luck growing carrots. We have tried different ways but the carrot fly always seems to get at them. I think sowing too many is one mistake we have made as when the first carrots are pulled that's when the root fly dives in and gets at the remaining ones. This time I sowed the seed very thinly so there will be no need to thin out. I then covered the row with a fleece cloche and secured it well to the ground. Hopefully the root fly won't be able to get underneath. I will be sowing some more carrots in a deep container in another week or two. This sometimes helps as the root fly doesn't fly over a certain height.

In the asparagus bed we've spotted a couple of  spears poking through the soil. We've also spotted Ziggy the cat sunning herself on top of the bed. So before any more asparagus appears and gets squashed I have covered the bed with prickly holly branches to try to keep her off.

We planted up another big tub of strawberries at the weekend and still had a good number left over, but our grandson's school gardening club were happy to take them off our hands.
 

The greenhouse is a busy place at the moment. It's a constant job, sowing seeds, potting on seedlings, watering and regularly checking to see how they are all doing.  There are trays of seedlings all over the place and I wonder if I will run out of space. I always pot on a lot more seedlings than I will need, some will be spare just in case any die off.  Others will be given away to allotment neighbours or donated to the plant stall at the Church Coffee morning later in May.

Changes in the fruit bed

I've been making changes to the allotment fruit bed recently.   The strawberries which had been in there a couple of years now had completely taken over the ground around and under the fruit bushes. I found it quite difficult scrambling about on my hands and knees to pick the strawberries last summer, and more recently while trying to dig up the runners. It didn't do my back  much good and the bed looked really messy.

As we already have strawberries planted up in an old bath on another part of the plot I decided that I would grow all the strawberries in containers instead of in the ground, where they take up such a lot of space. I have a variety of big containers not being used--old dustbins, dolly tubs, big plastic crates.  You know the sort of thing, that when you have an allotment you save things which might come in useful one day, things which other people are throwing away and you know they could be used on the allotment. That's how we got the old bath.  I decided that now is the time to put some of this 'junk' to good use.

Weeks ago I dug up all the strawberries in the fruit bed and selected good ones from the runners to pot up. I kept them in the cold frame for a while to protect against frost until a couple of weeks ago when Helen planted them up in two of the big containers. There are a few left and being a bit greedy for strawberries, I think I will plant up another container.

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Also in the fruit bed are an apple tree, three blackcurrants, a redcurrant, four blueberries, three rhubarb plants and another tree which has never fruited in the three years it has been there and we don't know what it is. The unknown tree has one last chance this year, if it doesn't produce anything it will be dug up. The redcurrant has been in for two years and also hasn't produced any fruit, so that too is on it's final warning, but I have noticed some flower buds appearing in the last few days, so there's hope yet.

Two of the blueberry plants are new this year and these have been planted near the other ones where some of the strawberries were. Blueberries like an acidic soil, so I put some ericaceous compost in the pIanting hole and a good mulch of shredded pine needles around them all. We love blueberries and have found them easy to grow. Finally I have some gooseberries to plant. These were brought over from Helen's old plot when she gave it up last year and were potted up into big pots until I made some room in the fruit bed. They will be planted in the next week or two, but I'm not looking forward to that as they are so prickly, I might have to use Richard's big heavy duty gloves for that job.

Here's looking forward to a fruitful summer.

Through the garden gate--the yellow with a bit of blue border

We had snow one day at the end of March, fortunately it didn't last long and had gone later in the day. It's not the weather we would expect at this time of year, but fortunately even if it might be a little bit cold at the moment we are getting some sunny spells to brighten up the garden and bring on the new growth

The garden is slowly waking up and starting to look very spring like. There is new growth popping up all around. As always there are plants which were new last year and I look at a clump of emerging leaves unable to remember what they are. It will be nice a surprise when they flower. Yellow and blue seem to be the main colours around the garden at this time. The pots of deep purply blue violas which I planted up in the autumn have now started to flower again and are looking lovely.

The tete a tete daffodils are still going strong even though the snow battered them about a bit.  In the autumn I planted some big daffodils in the  front garden which I dug up from my daughter's allotment before she gave it up at the end of the year.  I had planted them myself on her plot in a big narrow border alongside the greenhouse. They had  always put on a good show so I was reluctant to leave them. Some I planted on my allotment and the rest I brought home for the garden. They are now flowering happily in their new home.

One of the beds in the back garden is known as the 'yellow border'. I started the yellow border because most of the plants in the garden are  pink, purple and blue and I thought it would be good to get some yellow in the garden but it might not look good amongst the pink flowers. I soon realised that too much yellow in one border wasn't a good idea so I introduced blue as a contrast. Orange and white are also allowed, but pink is banned. Sometimes aquilegias set seed in the border and if they turn out to be pink they have to be moved. Last summer there was a stray foxglove which I expected to be pink, but it turned out to be a lovely pale creamy yellow. How clever of it to settle there!

This yellow border has got a bit overcrowded in the last few years, so I decided to thin it out a bit before everything got growing and taking over again. The kerria japonica provides some lovely spring colour but it sends shoots up all over the place.  They were quite difficult to get out especially where they were growing in the middle of a clump of heleniums. After a lot of pulling and tugging, puffing and blowing, I finally got them out. There was also a massive clump of crocosmia lucifer which is of course red and not really a colour that is allowed in the bed.  It also takes up too much space.  So I spent another energetic afternoon trying to dig it all out. Now there's much more space and I will move some of the other plants around to get colours and heights a bit more balanced.

This is my offering for Sarah's monthly Through the Garden Gate feature.