With a little help from my friends

I think the war on slugs might have just taken an unexpected turn. Out of nowhere Major toad appeared in the salad growing bag. Quite an interesting choice of abode, but he is welcome to stay if he hoovers up a slug or two on the go.

First produce

My first pea harvest won’t feed an army, but my my how delicious they are.

The scent of spring and the hunt is on

The garden is bursting with flowers and new shoots and with it come those lovely scents of spring. Our new quince is absolutely packed with blossom giving off a lovely perfume that reminds me of old fashioned soap.

And an unexpected surprise: the multi-headed daffodils I bought in a variety pack have the most wonderful fragrance. I didn’t even know daffodils could smell this nice! Definitely worth taking very good care of them, so they will keep doing their magic year after year.

The good old lavender is early this year and is churning out flowers. The (bumble)bees once again have found their way to our garden and day in day out are getting drunk on lavender nectar. That must be a sign of good things to come.

But in the meantime my nemesis is waking up and starting to slither around. In between the little spells of rain I have been rushing into the garden with my trowel to go slug and snail hunting. Last year they nearly won the war as they kept lining up battalions of thick orange and brown giants eating up the fresh green shoots. But this year it is going to be different: I have been lifting them from the garden when they are still tiny. Hopefully their big family members will respect the fence around our garden and eat the neighbours’ greens.

Culprit

Two beautiful bird boxes later and guess where this little bird decided to make a nest? He dug his way through a layer of insulation material spreading bits of fluff through the whole garden. But I can’t bring myself to fix the wall, imagine what will happen when he brings his missus to his beautiful nest and it is no longer there!

Spring has sprung

Spring is slowly thinking of arriving in our garden. It shows its face intermittently between spells of rain and hail and warms the garden when the sun breaks through the clouds. I have been so busy sowing seeds and potting on that I didn’t even have time for a blog update.
But this weekend it was bitterly cold, so I postponed putting on my wellies for a bit before rooting around in the freezing earth to catch up with my blog.

The big garden plan requires quite some new plants, for which I happily spent a good few hours browsing online for the seeds this winter. As it has been so mild the last few months, I optimistically started some of the seeds already in January. In the meanwhile the undergardener made me a big shelf in the shed for my pots and plants acting as a surrogate greenhouse.
I even performed an experiment Monty (Don, from BBC’s Gardener’s World) would be proud of: I started some broadbeans inside and planted half of them outside while the others were potted on and slowly hardened off in the shed. Turns out these little beans are so tough, they don’t seem to mind the cold nights and happily stay outside!

In the meanwhile the shed and the window sills in the whole house start to fill up with seedlings. Time to start planting out?!

Amazing Amaryllis and peekaboo

We had some alternative Christmas decorations this year (skipped the tree in favour of some branches) and to add some extra color I decided to buy an Amaryllis bulb.
I like its bold and bright flowers. There is little subtlety about them and they will be the center of attention, whether you want them to be or not. Luckily, unlike many indoor flowering bulbs they do not draw attention by a sudden pungent smell.

Perhaps the size of the bulb was a clue. Because although it did not flower on Christmas day, we did celebrate new-years eve in the presence of two big flashing beauties.

And that was not all. Nearly one month later, while the first two flowers have dried out, it is churning out four more flowers. Now that I call value for money. In the meanwhile it has grown to about 1 meter high and tipped over several times because it is incredibly top-heavy. It will pose a challenge for me to transfer it to a new sturdy (and heavily based) pot after its flowering season and to get the timing right for it to flower next Christmas.

In my previous post I mentioned the birds showing unseasonal behaviour.
Last year we had a couple of blue tits nestling in our bird box. We happily adopted them in our family and named them Herbert and Francine. By the looks of it, this year they are also going to be our lodgers. Or at least I like to think they are Herbert and Francine (junior) and that they have come back because they approve of our reinforcements that prevent the box from swinging around in the wind keeping the little tits from getting seasick.

Confused

There is no other word to describe how the birds behave at the moment: confused. It is still too warm for the time of year (14 degrees Celsius expected next week) and that plays havoc with their instincts. This morning at 4 o’clock a blackbird burst into song, ferociously defending his territory that won’t be his for several months to come.

Our bird box got visited by several couples of tits (blues and greats) today and there is definitely some flirting and fluttering action going on.
And even the woodpecker, who until last week visited the trees in our front garden on its own seems to have teamed up as he was pick-pocking away with a companion.

I hope the cold will set in soon to prevent them from making nests, or even laying eggs way too early. Because their short term memory might not be so great, but I do remember last winter that arrived late and lasted well into April…….

Mulch and garden design

Mulch and design are two words not likely to appear often together in one sentence, but they sum up my recent garden-related activities quite nicely. We had bucket and bucket loads of rain until even the grass was sopping wet under my wellies. It just prevented any work in the garden. So, instead I decided to pick up my pencils and work on a garden design for next year. While our garden this year showed all the colours of the rainbow, it will hopefully look a bit more sophisticated next year. Not that it will lack in colour, but it makes life a little easier now I know what colours my seedlings are going to be.

To complete the plan I ordered some seeds from a local shop and although I am still looking for stipa and astrantia seeds (they had sold out) they delivered all the other seeds and my spring bulbs just when we had a break from all the rain. I jumped in my wellies and dug up whatever was left of the dahlias and planted about 200 bulbs (ouch).

Last weekend I bought the biggest bag of mulch ever seen, I hardly got it home! But now at least my dahlia bulbs are snuggled up in their buckets covered in mulch and we applied a nice blanket to the fruit trees and the hibiscuses. Definitely needed the help of the undergardener who lugged the bag of mulch around the garden.

I think we are pretty much ready for winter now, I’ll keep the very last flowers going as long as possible and then bring on the first frost and snow!

Winter makeover

Last week it was unseasonably warm around here. While I was getting ready for my winter wardrobe, the temperature swung back round to 20 degrees. Together with some rain this proved perfect conditions for the dahlias. The plants look a but scruffy because of the wind and rain, but the colours really stand out amidst the yellow and brown leaves of the trees.

The warm spell makes me hesitant to give the garden its final winter makeover, there is still so much green and because I mainly planted annuals it will look pretty bare once I am done. But one frosty night, and it can’t be that long, will turn it all to mush. So I got out my little red trowel and went to work. Who would have thought the dwarf sunflowers grew such big root systems?

Some of the late veggies are still happily going and growing. The beetroots are the size of big marbles, not sure if they will survive the winter, so perhaps we’d better eat them soon as some novelty veg. Sadly, the parsnips were rubbish (again) and I pulled them all out of the ground. Even with protective ground covers the cabbage root flies managed to wiggle their eggs in. You could almost hear the larvae munching away. And talking about munching, by the time the cavolo nero will have ended up on our plates, I will have checked every leaf a few dozen times, they were irresistible for the Cabbage whites.

Just after writing the first draft of this post, the big storm also hit our garden and snapped all the dahlias. Now I just need a dry day to lift the tubers from the ground and store them for the winter. I guess that’s also part of wanting to be a gardener, saying goodbye to your plants for the winter to come.

Indian summer and micro carrots

After the first autumn storm that floored what was left of the sunflowers, the weather turned for the better and we’ve been enjoying fabulous sunny days for the past few weeks. This provided a great opportunity for getting all the spent annuals out of the garden, move some plants around and….guess what do some more hard landscaping! The undergardener still had some plans for more curves and better defined edging. And who am I to oppose, the more flower/veg beds the better!

Removing the sunflowers, which grew remarkably big root clumps, I also came across my experimental carrot planting scheme. When the garden was exploding with plants this summer I still desperately wanted to squeeze some carrots in. So, I planted them in the gaps between the sunflowers. I can’t recommend that method, as they have grown the size of my fingernails in all these months.

It is good to see that we’re not the only ones enjoying the last rays of sunshine. The masses of bumblebees have disappeared (I’d like to say they moved South, although I don’t think they migrate…), but the last bees are hanging on to the few remaining flowers. Preparing for the winter by soaking up as much sunshine and nectar as possible. Perhaps there is sufficient room in our garden, next to the bird box, to hang an insect apartment block where they can crawl into, protected from the weather, so we can enjoy their visits again early next spring.