Hoorah for colour!

Actually, some of my shots yesterday were not that bad, though I suppose a shot of colour is easy prey.  It is the more subtle subjects I have difficulty with and masses of intense colour and white flowers are tricky in bright conditions.  But, as the song goes: ‘You can only get betta.....’  I must try harder.

Anyway, I love colour.  I grow pastel shades of blue, pink and lilac but my heart goes thump for the hot colours.  Give me reds, oranges and garish yellows any day.  Life is grey most of the time and life is too short to be understated.  I love it the most when the hot colours clash really badly.  (I can almost hear the Chelsea Flower Show set shouting at me!)

I always grow tulips in pots because they don’t last long in the ground here at Springfield.  The other advantages are that I can layer them up in a pot easily which produces a bold display and I can position the containers where they get noticed the most.  These are placed just by the composting area which I visit every day with kitchen scraps and/or hen scoopings.

The daffodils are better than ever and we are at the mercy of the weather with these.  A dry winter stunts flower production and the hard winter the year before last really set them back.  However, they are recovered now and look amazing this spring.  There are plenty of blind bulbs but there are enough to make a decent ‘host of golden daffodils’ and I have picked some for the house too.  I am grateful to whoever planted them and they have been here for over forty years.  Bulbs are such good value and are true stars of the garden.  If you want value for money and ease of care, go for bulbs.

As for the Hellebores, well I think I like them.  The colours are a bit subdued for me and the fact their flowers face downwards is irritating but they are one of the first flowers to show themselves after the winter.  They earn their place here and our woodland setting suits them.  I transplanted some clumps successfully from a shady area to a semi-shaded area at the back of the new raised bed by the compost area.  It is easier to see their detail here but I still have to bend down to get a really good look at them.  (Not as easy task with a troublesome hip joint.)

The snowdrops and crocuses have now died back now and the daffs and tulips are in full swing.  But the bluebells are already in the green and will be keen to show their faces soon.

Gardens are for sharing

I stole a half hour this afternoon and wandered round the plot with my camera.  The sun was shining, the sheets were dancing on the washing line and spring was calling me from every corner of the garden.  There was so much to look at, I did not know where to shoot next and as I clicked my way round (haphazardly it seems when I reviewed the results), it occurred to me that the impact of our garden is not only due to our efforts but the hard work of previous generations and our neighbours. 

The best feature of our garden by far is the view and we had no input into its creation!  It grabs your attention because our garden slopes down into the valley beyond, visitors often describe it as an 'infinity garden'.  Much of what we do ourselves is lost in the big picture, not that we mind at all.  We never tire of gazing across the hillside.  In the winter it is stark and dramatic, often with angry skies and in summer it is soft and hazy and peaceful.   Every season presents us swith something new to connect with.   

Our neighbours’ gardens are equally large and the boundaries on both sides are made up of many mature trees - some of which must have been planted a hundred years ago.  There are Privet and Hawthorne hedges which we cut low enough to enable us to chat with each other and share the resources. 

A bad photo of our gorgeous Magnolia Stellata

We have a lovely Magnolia Stellata which was planted by a former owner of Springfield.  It is currently a mass of white, star-shaped flowers and the scent follows us around the garden.  There can never be too many trees, particularly Magnolias and our acid soil suits them.  Both sets of neighbours have specimens, unamed because they are so old (the Magnolias, not our neighbours!)  Every year, just as our own beauty is fading, the others makes their entrance, with large, pale pink flowers which fill the air with a different perfume.   We love to borrow them and even if we planted a new variety, we would never see it reach such glorious maturity. 

Next door's huge magnolia which is all set to burst

On the opposite boundary, there is large Forsythia that we pass every day on the way to the greenhouse.   It is a shame that this shrub is unfashionable these days.  Maybe it is associated with suburbia or perhaps the fact that it is deciduous means people get bored with it when it has finished flowering.  But for me, the few short weeks its bright yellow brilliance assaults me is worth the lack of interest for the rest of the year.  We have planted one our own recently, further down the garden but it will be many years before it has such a wow factor.  Perhaps if people knew it was part of the olive family of trees, it would take on a much more exotic appeal.

A wonderful Forsythia spoilt by really bad photography

I need to take more time with my pics.  My excuse is that I only had half an hour today.  My mum used to say: 'Don't hurry, don't worry and don't forget to smell the roses......'  I should have listened to her more carefully.

Conundrum

My tomato seedlings are growing well in the house.  Doc says he would like me to nurture him as much as I do my baby plants.

My tomatoes are indeed spoilt right from the start and I have always believed this care produces healthy plants that crop well and are resistant to disease.  They have the very best sterile seed compost and I keep them moist but not too wet or dry, using a fine mist spray.   I line them up in front of a south facing window but I move them away if the sunshine is very strong.  I am keeping an eye on the weather and when the seedlings have four or five leaves, I will carefully transport them to the greenhouse, into a lidded propagator with bubble wrap on the top at night, just to keep them toasty.  I even talk to them because I have always thought that the carbon di oxide and little breeze caused by my breath, encourages their stems to grow stronger.

A month ago, Doc conditioned the raised beds with well rotted compost and I covered them with cloches to help warm up the soil.  Yesterday, having had some sunshine recently, I wondered if any annual weeds had sprouted so I had a good look round and there they were several little tomato seedlings, growing away quite happily underneath one of the cloches.

The seeds were probably carried to the compost bin via the kitchen waste bucket and have been nestled in chicken poo, straw and all manner of green and brown material for about 9 months.  Doc was very proud that the compost heap was quite hot at several stages throughout the process last year.  Doc always sieves the compost and the tomato seeds even survived that too.

I have hard evidence that there is a ‘survival of the fittest’ and it is remarkable how nature will take care of itself.  However, I am wondering why I bother germinating seeds in the house.  Maybe I should just scatter seeds in the compost bin and wait and see what happens.  I am not that brave though and I have already transplanted the ‘wild’ tomato seedlings into pots and put them in the greenhouse!

Stawberries

I love growing strawberries because there is something very indulgent about plucking a ripe berry and sinking my teeth into its sweet, succulent flesh that has been warmed by the sun.  Home grown strawberries taste so much better than many of the shop bought varieties and it feels extravagant to enjoy fresh strawberries with yogurt and cereal every day.  I have a top tip though:  don't store them in the fridge because the cold kills the flavour.  We store ours in the pantry but they never last long!

Strawberries are easy to grow if you follow a few basic rules.  They need their crowns just above soil level to prevent water logging.  The fruits need lots of sun to ripen them so I position the plants in the sunniest spot in the garden.  They are very happy in hanging baskets and tubs which is good if you are short of space and it makes picking easier too.  The fruits do need to be kept clean and dry and since we grow most of ours in a raised bed we use strawberry mats.  Straw is cheaper but is a perfect slug hotel.

The birds also love the fruits – why wouldn’t they?  If you want some fruit for yourself, netting is essential though hanging baskets are usually okay.  However, make sure the nets are not too fine because strawberries need insects for pollination.  If you find malformed fruits then remember to help things along with a paintbrush next year, to ensure a healthy crop of fruits.

Strawberry plants need replacing every three years as they tend to lose their vigour and can develop viruses if grown in the same spot for too long.   I rotate the plants very easily and cheaply by propagating new plants from the existing ones.   Layering is the easiest way of doing this and involves setting small pots of moist compost around the plants and laying the runners across them, weighted down with stones.  Within two or three weeks, there are new leaves and I snip the umbilical cord to allow son or daughter of strawberry plant to grow away independently.   The new plants do not produce a very big crop for a year or so but taking runners every year means there are always mature plants available.

We like to grow a perpetual or everbearer strawberry (Flamenco does well at Springfield) though the description is misleading.  These plants do fruit for longer but we generally have a burst of activity in July and then a long flush later in the summer and into the autumn.  This year we are introducing Honeoye which is an early variety, Cambridge for the mid-season and Florence which is a later variety.  I am sure I have mixed up all the plants but they will have to get along together, the best they can!  I am not sure if they will cross-pollinate but we shall have see.

Last weekend I prepared a new strawberry bed which is well conditioned with compost and planted out the new plants which I had overwintered in the greenhouse.  Strawberries fruit better if they are subjected to a cold snap so I have brought them outside in early spring so they can catch some of the later frosts.  I find I lose more plants if I leave them in the raised beds over winter, I think, because we can have cold, wet soil.

  
For their novelty value we have some wild or woodland strawberries which are perennial and come up in a big mound every year.  The fruits are tiny and deep red in colour.  They have more seeds than flesh and are also time consuming to harvest.  However, for tiny fruits they have a punchy flavour and nice with cream cheese or goat’s cheese or added to a fruit salad for interest.

Some troughs of older strawberries were in need of a spring tidy up so I up ended them and set to work only to find all three riddled with the distinctive white grubs all gardeners hate.  There were hundreds of vine weevils. I broke apart all the plants and spread the compost on a sheet of plastic with the white invaders exposed.  By the time I had eaten a quick lunch myself, there were some very fat birds snoozing after their own lunch and all the grubs had thankfully disappeared.  (The leader of the flock was a cheeky Robin, I think.)  I have disposed of the strawberry plants which is a pity but we have a garden full of happy birds who have dined in style.  That can’t be bad, can it?