Through the Garden Gate--January

January is that month in the year when gardeners are feeling restless. they want to get outside to do things,  but the weather is not good, the soil is usually too wet to be able to plant anything and it's best for the garden to just leave things alone for  a few weeks.

It's a time to rest, to plan ahead and look forward to the Spring.  That's how |I have been feeling these last few weeks, I have been longing to get out into the garden and when I have been out there I've realised that there is nothing I can do yet.

We had some fine dry days early in the month, but then the cold set in and we had our first snow of the winter. The garden takes on another look when it is covered in snow. Much as I don't like the snow I love to see how it changes the look of the garden.

I didn't cut back in the autumn, I left the dead plant foliage and seed heads to give some winter interest and provide food for wildlife. When the seed heads and grasses are covered in snow they look lovely.

Although the January days are dark and dreary, I love to walk around and see what's growing. Our garden was only created last year so all the plants were newly planted. I've been keen to see how everything has survived in the new garden. There are buds on trees and shrubs. New growth is appearing at the base of perennial plants and there are bulbs coming through. The snowdrops I planted last year are flowering--there aren't many yet but I hope to add to them this year.

The witch hazel (Jelena) has grown really well and now has lovely orange flowers which seemed to pop open overnight.

The hellebores which I planted last year are flowering too. I really like these pink flowered ones

We have had more snow so still no gardening for a while  yet.

What's your garden looking like at the moment?

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post.

Brightening up the winter

 

There's a lot of thinking ahead and planning required with gardening. Way back in October I bought bulbs, some for the garden some for the house. I planted tete a tete daffodils and crocus in pots for outside and hyacinths for the house. The hyacinths were put under the bench in the shed where it was dark and cool.

In December when the shoots were starting to grow I brought them out and put them on top of the bench in front of the window to get some light. I had several pots and bowls of hyacinths and I have been gradually bringing them into the house. As one plant starts to go over I bring another pot inside, giving me hyacinths flowering over several weeks. The smell is lovely and they brighten up the house so well.

Every year when I plant these bulbs I always think it seems ages before they will be flowering, but it is worth the wait. Outside the narcissus and crocus pots are starting to grow and I know there will soon be spring colour on the garden table.

Winter jobs on the allotment

After a busy December when all work on the allotment stopped, I have been wanting to get back to work on my plot. December is always busy at home and I don't think I ever get to do any allotment work during that time. We have managed to do a couple of visits since the start of the New Year and it's been a case of carrying on where we left off.

cabbages looking messy

When we arrived for our first visit we were greeted by a strong smell of rotten cabbages.  The cabbage bed still had two or three cabbages left in, but they were very slimy and slug eaten. I got rid of them and weeded the bed.  The rest of the bed has kale and purple sprouting broccoli growing and they looked quite healthy, but not ready for harvesting.

the asparagus bed in need of clearing up

Next I tackled the asparagus bed, cutting down the dead foliage stems and weeding. There were some Rudbekias which had kept on flowering well into November, but had finally gone over, so they got pulled up and thrown on the compost heap.  At the other end of the asparagus bed are some rows of leeks.  I weeded and earthed up the soil around them.  The bed looked very clean and tidy after all that work.  All the beds which I had weeded then got a feed with chicken manure pellets.  We normally put a layer of well rotted horse manure on the beds during the winter once they have been cleared, but our manure bins are empty.  We need to find a source of manure so that we can start storing it again.

a tidy seating area overlooking the asparagus bed

Down the lane some bark chippings have been dumped for the allotment holders to help themselves to.  Richard brought a few barrow loads of the chippings and spread them out where our table and chairs are.  It looks much tidier now and will help to keep the weeds down.  There were also some bags of leaves on the car park so we helped ourselves to some of those and put them in the leaf bin to rot down.

After clearing the vegetable beds my next job was to start weeding the fruit beds.  I made a start with the rhubarb and apple tree bed, but there is still the blueberry and blackcurrant beds to weed yet. I was pleased to see the rhubarb showing new growth already.

the rhubarb bed

There are plenty of jobs still on my to do list and the list never seems to get any shorter.  But as the days start to lengthen we can spend more time on the plot.  The weather has turned cold now and we have had snow in the last day, so we can't do any more work at the moment.  We look forward to better days.

Through the garden gate--November

The garden is slowly settling down for the winter. As I look around there is still colour to be found, from stems, leaves starting to go over and flowers still struggling on. There were some amazing leaf colours from trees which I gazed on briefly only for them to have blown away a few days later.

I have done an autumn tidy up. Just a little one as I like to leave a lot for the wildlife over the winter. But the garden looks better for it. I love to see the seed heads of plants gone over, a reminder of their summer display.

There are still some plants which are making an attempt at flowering again, little flashes of colours amongst the foliage-- a bit of blue lavender and campanula, pink geranium and as for the Rudbekias, well they are still going strong as is the fuchsia in the front garden. The grasses are looking good, this time of year they give some welcome colour and interest to the garden borders.

I'm feeding the birds most days now and they are often to be seen perched on the fence in the morning waiting for their food. In the back garden there are groups of starlings, pigeons, doves and magpies with the occasional blackbird. In the front garden the sparrows and blue tits are active in the shrubs. 

I bought some white hellebores this week to make some Christmas pot displays on the garden bench, they seem to be becoming a popular plant for this time of year. They are lovely.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post

Apple harvests

When we were on holiday in Cornwall In October we visited Trelissick gardens who were preparing for an apple weekend. The apples were set out in bowls on shelves in the old stables. There was an amazing number of different varieties. We checked them all out but couldn't find any which resembled our allotment apples which are a type of pippin. They taste like a Cox's pippin but are quite red. There was a wonderful smell of apples as we wandered around the stables looking at the displays and I thought of the apples back home on our allotment apple tree.

We've had a lot of apples this year on our allotment apple tree. Just before we went on holiday we wondered whether to start picking them, but they didn't seem ready to come off the tree when we tried twisting them so we decided to wait until after the holiday.  We returned from holiday to find the ground underneath the tree full of apples which had fallen off. Most of these were badly damaged or half eaten by birds, so we left them there for the birds to finish them off.

There were still plenty left on the tree so we set to work on picking them, wrapped them in newspaper and stored them in boxes  as we always do. They are an eating apple and I find that they don't store well so we eat as many as we can before they go off.

Over at our old house where our daughter now lives, there is a Bramley apple tree, which again has produced plenty this year and my daughter is happy for us to take as many as we want. Bramley apples store very well, so I have taken a good number to store in the shed. They will keep for quite some time. 

At this time of year we often see boxes of apples outside people's houses with notes on for people to help themselves. Then there are the friendly neighbours who call round with a big bag of apples for us. I usually accept them with a smile but groan inwardly. I don't need any more apples I have enough of my own.

Through the garden gate--October

We were on holiday in Cornwall  for the first two weeks of October, so not much was done in the garden during October. We had some lovely fine autumnal weather whilst we were in Cornwall, but the day we left was the day the storms arrived. The sea was rough, the waves were lashing against the rocks and the day was grey.

Back home the garden was full of leaves and looked overgrown, but on closer inspection it wasn't as bad as I thought, a few plants had gone over and there weren't as many leaves on the trees, but many plants now have their lovely autumn colours.

Despite the stormy weather the sunflowers are still standing, they are quite tough and difficult to get out of the ground now. I'm quite surprised that some flowers just keep on growing. There's a passion flower growing up an obelisk which keeps producing the odd flower. There are spots of yellow in the borders from the rudbekia and a white valerian which has been flowering all summer looks very happy and shows no sign of giving up.

We have been very busy since we got back from holiday and I haven't done any weeding or tidying up, but soon I will find some time to get out and do some work.

 One job I have been doing is planting spring bulbs in pots--mainly crocus and narcissus for the garden tables and hyacinths for indoor display. The hyacinths are now tucked up under the bench in the shed for a few weeks until I can bring them into the house.

I have also been emptying pots of summer bedding plants and planting them up with autumn displays of cyclamen, violas and grasses.

We visited quite a few gardens whilst we were down in Cornwall, one of them being the Lost Gardens of Heligan. They had an absolutely magnificent harvest display in the shop area.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly  'Through the Garden Gate' post.

Through the Garden Gate--September

The garden is beginning to look more autumnal now. Leaf colours are changing, leaves are falling, flowers are going over. Autumn colour seems to be earlier this year, perhaps it's due to the hot summer we had. It's just over a year since we started work on our garden and I'm keen to see what it will look like through the autumn. This time last year we had only planted the trees and shrubs, but now the beds are packed full of plants so there should be much more colour.

The leaves on the witch hazel have been gradually turning red through September and the hostas are starting to go yellow.

The sweet peas have done well, but their growth started to slow down so I decided it was time to cut them down. The flower bed looks a little empty now without them.

We've had some very strong winds recently which have blown leaves from the big trees down beyond our garden all over the lawn. I've grown some massive sunflowers this year and their yellow and brown heads have been peeping over the fence. They have been much admired by neighbours. Unfortunately one of them became a casualty to the high winds and fell down onto the flower bed. I'm wondering how long the others will stay upright for.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post