Challenge

Our new garden is a blank canvas. Except for the plants we took from our previous garden it is empty. Although, that is only the case if you ignore the knee-deep weeds that have been enjoying the undisturbed soil. Again, soil might be a bit optimistic. At the moment we’ll have to deal with rock hard clay. In a couple of weeks we’ll get some help from a professional gardener who will do the really hard landscaping and then it is up to us.
My fingers are itching to dig in, I have been designing and making plans all winter. Not long now!

Potting up and moving on

It has been a while since the last update on this blog. For a good reason, because the last months we’ve been busy preparing to move house. For the first time in our lives we’re house owners.
We weren’t sad to leave our old house. But to leave the garden behind, in which we spent so many hours transforming it into place of beauty after years of neglect, was a different story.
To keep the costs down, I mainly grew annuals from seeds, so there weren’t too many plants to dig up and bring along at the end of the winter. But still we’ve managed to pot up quite a selection. Hopefully they will form the start of a new beautiful place that we can create together.

We’ve even potted up a small apple and quince tree that we got as presents from our old neighbours a year ago. It was quite a challenge to dig them up. But we managed and found a more or less suitable container. They’ve spent the winter in an industrial plastic “pot” getting waterlogged every now and then. But it shows how resilient plants are: they are budding so fingers crossed that they will survive and bring us some fruit in the future.

War and Peace

The creatures we share the garden with bring their own wide range of different vibes.

Earlier this Summer, the bumblebees went mad about the hollyhocks. They drank nectar until they started dazedly buzzing around in circles. The two in the picture at least seem to share one flower peacefully.

Not long after that, the patrolling of the garden by big nose diving dragonflies started. They are extremely territorial and although we do not have any water in our garden, it apparently needs to be defended heavily. They are fiendish and not afraid to attack something as big as us.

And October brought on loads of spiders. The Rudbeckia forms it own little micro-environment with a bunch of spiders hanging between the flowers. One of them managed to catch a solitary bee and wrapped it up for later.

This Comma came to say goodbye as a last sign of Summer, the coming week the weather will turn. Rain and cold will come to replace the lovely warm afternoons we have had the past weeks.

In preparation the undergardener cleaned the birdfeeder and filled it up with peanuts.
Bring on the cold!

Pinnacle

This must be the climax of the growing season: the 2014 carrot harvest.

Do I hear anyone chuckle? It is an improvement over last year’s harvest of about 500%. So if we keep on going at the same rate I reckon we’ll have enough carrots for one meal in about 5 years.

Luckily we’re more successful with the tomatoes. I took my machete (secateurs) to the tomato jungle and cleaned a path. The result is in the freezer in the form of tomato soup.

Reflections

July and August are such great months for the garden(er). The results of all the hard work back in spring are on display and it is time to sit back and take it all in.
It is also the moment to evaluate the effect of all combinations and see what is worth repeating and what could be improved on next year.
The dahlias once again are a big success and keep on producing wonderful flowers.

Unfortunately most of the sunflowers got eaten by slugs (grrr) and they did not manage to shine like they did last year. And once again I completely misjudged the amount of space certain plants need. My tomato jungle is joined by a pattison forrest which does not seem to stop growing and the undergardener is only just about tolerating them creeping over the border-grass boundary.

And I vaguely remember planting phlox, picked up at a plant swap earlier this year, somewhere in the garden this spring. I gave up on it, thinking it also fell victim to the slugs. But to my great surprise it stuck its head up through the crop canopy, right next to the tiny apple tree which is also swamped by the tomatoes.

Next year we definitely have to change something about the way we grow the runner beans. The garden fence is a handy help for them to climb onto, but perhaps it is just a little too adventurous and not very practical to get a ladder to pick the beans from the neighbour’s tree.

Produce

Finally the potatoes were ready. Or at least so we thought because we had been waiting for flowers (apparently a sign), but they did not appear or we missed them.
In any case it was the undergardener’s birthday, a good reason to lift the potatoes from the ground and use them in the birthday lunch. And the three little wrinkly (forgotten to be eaten) potatoes that I put in the ground in the spring did not disappoint: besides feeding 10 for lunch we got dinner out of them several times too. (Note to self, potatoes are very prolific so don’t plant too many.)

Besides the potatoes, the runner beans, tomatoes, courgette and patty pans also start churning out edibles. Last weekend we turned this little bowl of goodness into home made tomato sauce and had a handful of blueberries for desert, yum yum!

After a tropical week with rain, shine and high temperatures, the patty pans are truly flourishing. They are taking over the best part of the garden and show no sign of slowing down. With this growing spurt also comes a steady produce of even more patty pans. Not long and we’ll have to start giving them away. (Note to self, also patty pan are very prolific so don’t plant too many.)

Sharing

Once again I have plenty of nasturtiums to go around. So this wonderful hairy monster (not really it is only about an inch long) is very welcome to munch on some of the seeds.

Cheeky

On my peanut feeder it said “jackdaw proof”. Which is true, but I don’t think they had this cheeky exotic visitor in mind during the design stage. Meet Percy our local parakeet. He is a very fussy eater, discarding the skin of the peanuts. Sometimes he brings his woman, Priscilla along and they make sweet squeaky sounds.

Pretty weeds

Last year I had mixed successes with my “live and let live” philosophy, letting plants grow that I did not recognise to see if they would produce pretty flowers. This year I have learnt from some of my mistakes (no more deadly nightshade), but luckily some new plants have sprung a surprise.

I moved a tiny fern-like plant that I found at the boundary of our garden to a more prominent place: you never know! To my surprise after our holiday bright blue spikes of flowers appeared, outperforming my expectations and definitely not belonging to a fern. Google assisted in giving this freebee a name: Jacob’s ladder. A perennial which is likely to self-seed and spread further throughout the garden.

Right next to the Jacob’s ladder I filled a gap with a little blue violet. Or so I thought, because covered in pollen by its neighbour proudly stands a little blue lobelia. I love it that the garden keeps amazing me.

Also I might have accidentally introduced a “weed” of my own to our garden. Nasturtiums love our sandy, poor soil and are popping up everywhere, even in the garden path. They are so prolific that I don’t think this garden will ever get rid of them and they will keep brightening up the garden for several years to come.

After the holidays

Following a meal consisting of our own broad beans and peas it is finally time for an update. The undergardener and I went on a nice long holiday and left our garden to its own devices (and to the generosity of the neighbours who watered it). Coming back to a garden after an absence of nearly four weeks in June is an interesting experience. The new variety of tomatoes – a cross between berries and tomatoes – have formed a jungle. I decided to tie them up hard, probably not good for the tomatoes, but they completely overshadowed the teeny-weeny leeks.

Also the cherry tomato which was not pinched out developed into a shrub. Tomatoes surprisingly do seem to like our poor soil, in contrast to the carrots. After last years micro crop and this years attack of the slugs I think I will give up on them.

A blitz through the garden and the situation is nearly under control. While having a good rummage, I found the first Pattie Pan hiding in the plant like a mini flying saucer landed in the vegetable bed.