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.

Easter Monday on the plot

With lots of family things going on over the last week, we haven't had time to get down to the allotment to do any work, apart from occasional visits to feed Ziggy the cat and to check the seedlings in the greenhouses. So it was good to be reunited with my plot on Easter Monday. I had a long list of jobs to do.

Ziggy was there as usual wanting to be fed. I think she would eat until she burst if we kept feeding her. She certainly doesn't look underfed. And she now lets us stroke her. When we first adopted her she wouldn't come anywhere near us and didn't have a voice, just a snarl. Now she follows me around as I work and meows all the time which can be a bit annoying, but I am learning to ignore it.

 I am really loving my two new greenhouses. The seedlings are coming along great and I never fail to get excited when I see new seeds coming through. There is something so amazing about new growth. I was especially pleased to see that the peas I sowed in a length of guttering a few weeks ago are now starting to come through.

 One of my allotment neighbours gave me some cabbage 'golden acre' seedlings which I potted on and put in the greenhouse. I also had some spring cabbage plants which I'd started off at the end of last summer. These were ready to plant out, the first plantings this year. I covered them with some netting frames to protect from the pigeons which are constantly flying around the plots.

Whilst I was doing this Richard did some weeding. Now the weather is warming up the weeds are starting to grow and there are lots of sycamore seedlings from the tree at the top of the garden. We are also seeing some Himalayan balsam seedlings starting to appear. This is an awful weed which can take over if not kept under control. Unfortunately the plot next to us is not well looked after and the seeds are blown over from there, which causes much annoyance to us and several of the neighbouring plots.

The grand children's woodland den is looking very spring like with tete a tete daffodils, blue pulmonaria and anemone. The daffodils which I rescued from Helen's old plot are just starting to flower too.

I managed to tick one or two jobs off my list before it started to rain, but I'm hoping to get down to the plot again this week to get more done.

Time to get seed sowing

 

 March has arrived and in just a couple of weeks we have had a mix of snow, sunshine and showers. But in the last few days the weather has become drier and we have had some lovely sunny and warmer days. These sunny days make me want to just be outside as much as possible and after a fairly quiet January and February pottering around the allotment, suddenly I am aware that there is plenty to be getting on with. I won't be planting anything outside yet as the soil will be too cold, but now that we have two new greenhouses on the plot I can't wait to get to work with some seed sowing indoors.

The potatoes are now chitting in trays and egg boxes and the onion sets have been planted in module trays.In February I started off seeds of leek, broad beans, sweet peas and lettuce. Now that March is here there are so many more seeds I can be sowing, the list has got longer.

 

It's good to see the greenhouses filling up with seed trays.  At the weekend I sowed some pea seeds in a length of guttering and put these in the bigger greenhouse.  These will get an early start and when they are ready I will be able to ease them gently out of the gutter and into the soil.

 I have also sown, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and cucumber, and with a list as long as my arm, every time we go to the allotment there's still more to be done.

What are you growing in your greenhouse at the moment?

Through the garden gate

This week I am joining with Sarah at Down by the Sea for her monthly garden slot--'Through the Garden Gate'. In this slot you are invited through the gate into my garden.

This is the gate which leads out of my garden, but I thought I would show it to you as I rather like this view. Of course the photo  was taken in the summer, but it's good to remind myself in the dreary winter months when there's not much colour in the garden that things do get better.

As we move through February and into March I am now looking forward to new growth in the garden. I am also thinking about new projects and plans I have for this year.

It's taken me a few weeks but I have finally finished clearing the borders of all the dead plant material in both the front and back gardens. The work never ends though, I'm sure in a week or two I will be starting again with the weeding. As I worked in the borders I noticed areas which needed re planning, some of them I have been thinking about for a while and am not sure what to do about them.  They keep getting put off each year.

In the front garden there is a bed where at the end of last year we removed a couple of very old and tired looking hydrangeas and lots of crocosmias. Crocosmias are really difficult to get rid off so I know they will keep reappearing . But I now have a big space in this bed and I'm wondering what to plant there.

At the moment I am enjoying the spots of colour coming from the tete a tete daffodils, but as I look around I can see other flowers just starting to open up. There's pulmonaria, anemone blanda and vinca-- lots of blue. Also there's a euphorbia with yellow bracts providing a bit of brightness in the shady areas. The back garden has a lot of shade and I have to work with that and just see what will grow. Spring  is usually a good time for these areas, before the trees get into full leaf.

cyclamen and snowdrops in a shady spot

Here's another gate in my garden. it leads into what we call the woodland garden.  There's only one tree, a lime tree but it's big and so the area gets very shady in the summer.  I've got three white foxgloves  to plant which a gardening friend grew from seed.  I think they will look lovely in the woodland garden later in the year.  In the meantime the daffodils and crocus are looking good.