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.

The last of the parsnips

 
I dug up the last of the parsnips from the allotment last week and had just enough to make some parsnip soup.

A few years ago, out walking near Settle we stopped for a soup and sandwich lunch at a pub.I didn't realise until after the order had been placed that the soup was curried parsnip. This did not appeal to me at all as I am not a fan of curry, but by then it was too late to cancel the order. I was very pleased to find that the soup was really delicious.

I have since found a recipe for curried parsnip soup and it has become a favourite in our house. With just a hint of spice it is a very warming winter soup.

Curried Parsnip Soup

40g  butter
1 medium onion skinned and sliced
700 g parsnips, peeled and finely diced
2 or 3 small potatoes (optional)
5ml curry powder
2.5ml ground cumin
1.4 litres chicken or vegetable stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper
5 fl oz fresh single cream (optional)

paprika to garnish

1. Melt the butter in a large pan, add the onions, parsnips and potatoes, stir round to coat in the buttery juices and cook very gently with the lid on for about 3 minutes.
2. Stir in the curry powder and cumin and cook for a further 2 minutes.
3. Add the stock, bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer covered for about 45 minutes until the vegetables are tender.
4. Cool slightly then whizz in a blender until smooth
5. Return to the pan. Adjust seasoning, add more stock if it is too thick. Add cream if using, reheat very gently. Serve sprinkled with paprika.

NB. The potatoes help to thicken the soup, but if you like a thinner soup you can leave them out

Garden calling

The garden has been calling me for a week or two now. But I have been neglecting it and giving all the attention to the allotment. Not that this time of year and the current weather conditions are really gardening weather. But a gardener will always find something that needs to be done. Having spent most of January doing jobs around the allotment I decided that I needed to give some time to the garden. The garden does tend to take second place to the allotment, but it's good to see that it can look after itself for a lot of the time.

In the autumn I cut back some of the very messy looking dead plants and left the rest--the grasses and seed heads, to give some interest through the winter and provide homes for insects and food for the birds  I decided that now was the time to finally cut back these plants and get ready for spring. I was glad to cut the grasses down, there were bits of dried grass blowing about all over the garden. Not sure if that was the result of the winter storms or Holly the cat who likes to roll about in them. Holly supervised as I worked and was probably a bit miffed that I had destroyed her playground. The birds might feel a bit more secure now that she can't hide behind clumps of plants as she likes to do, ready to pounce.

The garden looks a bit flat now, but soon new shoots will be appearing and the empty areas of the borders will fill up. As I cut back I discovered some treasures-- snowdrops, narcissi, crocus. I also found a lovely pink hellebore flowering for the first time since I bought it from a charity plant stall two years ago. The  hamamelis, otherwise known as witch hazel is now flowering. It's yellow spidery flowers are a welcome bit of colour at this time of year.  I  potted up some tete a tete narcissi into small pots to display on the garden table.  These can  be seen from the house and look brighter every day as a few more flowers open up.

As I worked on the borders, Richard dug out some compost from the compost bins.  He managed to fill an old dustbin. My next job after I have finished clearing all the borders of debris will be to mulch the borders with compost or leaf mould, but I will need more than a dustbin full of compost for that.

Seedy jobs

The weather is showing no signs of improvement and I wonder if it will ever stop raining. As the wind was howling outside and the rain battering against the windows at the weekend I decided a good rainy day activity would be to sort out my very untidy box of seed packets. It took nearly all day, but I now have a neatly filed box, a seed list on computer and a long list of new seeds to buy for this year. Very organised, I thought!

Holly was keen to stop me from working

 I will need to be starting off seeds very soon and I am so pleased that our allotment greenhouse is now fully assembled and it looks great. I couldn't wait to get something in there and before Richard had cleared away all his tools, I had put in some trays of spring cabbage seedlings which I started off late summer and seemed a bit slow to grow. They had been living in the shed.  I'm  sure that before long I will be running out of greenhouse space.  This little greenhouse will not be big enough for all the growing we will be doing, so Richard's next project is to build a bigger growhouse type of structure next to it. This is what he was planning to do all along.

My next job is to go shopping for vegetable seeds and get some seed trays washed.