Lightly does it

The first sunny day inspires many gardeners to rush outside and spend several hours weeding, pruning and digging. However, after a winter of perusing the seed catalogues, this is asking for trouble.  More gardening injuries occur in spring than at any other time.  Backs, knees, hips – gardeners can suddenly discover parts of our bodies they lost touch with months ago.  A friend emailed me to say she had weeded her plot for 3 hours and was aching really badly.....

The initial green work out should start with some gentle stretching before heading off to the potting shed to warm up muscles and joints and reduce the risk of strain. If you delve into the borders, a kneeling mat is an essential piece of kit but remember to plant your knees firmly in the middle of it rather than bending and stretching further than you are used to.  As for digging, Doc and I try to avoid it.  There is much to be said for no-dig methods of cultivation and there is no satisfaction to be had from a neatly double-dug garden if you spend the rest of the week in bed!

Lifting is always risky, whether it is a small plant or a heavy bag of rubbish and given how many gardeners are pulling on their wellies and lugging bags of compost around at this time of year, it’s a wonder the A & E departments are not full.  We should remember to bend our knees and keep the back straight, both when picking up and putting down.  How many of us face the direction in which the load is to be carried to order to avoid twisting our spines? 

We don’t have a hover mower but a neighbour tells me they are notorious for causing back problems. This is because the user tends to swing it from side to side instead of pushing it in front, facing the direction they are cutting the grass. 

Since I now have limited capabilities in the garden I don’t have to worry too much about over-doing it on the plot because I know my limitations.  However, I have always been a firm believer in changing tasks regularly.  This means I do tasks that use different parts of my body rather than doing lots of repetitive movement.  But the best thing is not to try and do everything at once. An hour a day is enough initially and you can always work up to more as the days get longer.

Currently my average time spent in the garden at any one time is around half an hour and it is surprising how much can be done in such a short time.  I focus on two or three small tasks which I plan in advance and regrettably I have to accept I cannot do the more energetic jobs. 

Today I cut back some sedum 'Autumn Joy'. The flowers bring a rich, deep pink to the flower border in the autumn and then the flower heads go to seed, turn brown and provide texture and form throughout the winter months.  They also protect the fresh, young green shoots from frost.  Eventually though, the attractive bronze turns to grey and withered so I have cut the back the clump to just above the new growth. 

Whilst I was snipping off the spent stems of the sedum I sniffed with the sweet, heady scent of the creamy-white flowers of our Sarcococca (sweet box). It is a compact, evergreen shrub which flowers in winter, followed by followed by red, purple or black berries which persist into the following winter

The backdrop to this duo is a combination of yellow and red cornus (dogwood).  The stems catch the low winter sunlight and brighten up the garden.  The harder you cut this back in the spring, the richer is the display of coloured stems in the winter and the time to do this is around now.  However, it still looks so delightful that I could not bring myself to take the loppers to it.  I will leave it a week or too longer and we can enjoy the colour until the spring garden explodes into life.

These plants – the sedum, the sweet box and the dogwood – are firm favourites of mine.  They are reliable, must-haves for the autumn and winter garden.  By the time I had tidied them up today and scooped up a pile of soggy leaves, I was tired but refreshed from being outside, even if it was only for a short while.  I only wish I had taken my camera with me!

My next tasks are to prune the wisteria and cut back the tall Verbena 'bonariensis' – but that will have to wait for another day.   

Effort

“.....all it takes is a few packets of seed and before long you will have your own, fresh home grown produce......”  As If!   Unless you are the gambling type, gardening requires some basic research before you start followed by a lot of practice and good husbandry.  This is generally known as effort and without it, gardening seldom delivers satisfaction. 

Food does not magically appear from a packet of bean seeds. If I dared to shove a few bean seeds directly into the soil instead of starting them off in pots, the slugs and mice would eat them for breakfast and even if a few plants made it above the soil, they would still need seriously engineered support from beans canes and twine to withstand strong wind and the weight of the harvest.  Of course, if the soil is not enriched with organic matter in the first place, there won’t be any beans at all! 

Given my present disability and level of pain, the effort required to do even a fraction of what I used to do in the garden, is multiplied.  I spent years telling Doc I was Superwoman but sadly this was only propaganda and I am definitely in the ‘I can only do what I can’ group of gardeners.  As such, and to my sadness, food production at Springfield will be reduced this coming season.  Traditionally in our garden, the 80/20 rule applies:  80% of the work is generated from 20% of the plot – namely, the fruit and vegetable plot.  Doc is keen to take over some of what I used to do, including the watering and husbandry but he has a lot of other garden maintenance to do.  He is not Superman either.

After much deliberating over the Modified Plan, we have decided that my role will be starting some seeds off and nurturing them into plants.  In a week or two it will be time for me to get going.  Today, Doc brought up some sieved multi-purpose compost in a trug and that will sit in the utility room to warm up.  There is also a large bag of assorted pots, root trainers and trays, plus a couple of unheated propagators and a packet of plant labels.

Tomatoes and Chilli plants will be the first off the starting blocks because they need a long season if they are to bear fruits which ripen.  I have reduced the varieties of tomatoes to a minimum to save work and I shall grow some large tubs of cherry sized Tumbling Tom (yellow and red) and Garden Pearl, together with some Romano Nano which is a meatier plum variety for cooking.  Once I get these up and about and plantlet sized, they will be grown on in the greenhouse.  When the weather turns warm and summery (wishful thinking I know) the tubs can be brought up to the terrace near the house where I can easily tend them.  The terrace is south facing and they should do well there, if not, Doc will take them back to the greenhouse.

After sowing the tomato seeds, it will be time for the Mangetout, sowed in root trainers because they like a long root run. I could start them off in the greenhouse but I find they do better in the kitchen, near the Aga and we usually achieve an earlier crop.  (I have never succeeded with autumn sowings of any of the pea family!)

A few months ago I did not think I could do any gardening at all.  But now I think I can.  My contribution will be very small but hopefully it will be significant and maybe I can gain the same kind of satisfaction all gardeners all share.  Making the effort to grow something, anything, nurtures our souls and I need all the nurturing I can get.

Paradise

Closely boarded jungle

Passionate gardeners believe in paradise, their own precious plots of paradise. However, I do wonder if we have a problem with our eyes.  For much of the 10 years Doc and I have lived at Springfield, the most striking and memorable sights have been ones like these.  Beauty seems to be a collection of fleeting moments glimpsed whilst we push laden wheelbarrows back and forth, ruining the grass in the process. 

If we don’t have a jungle, we have a building site or a mountain of logs to chop.  There are industrial sized bags of leaf mould and compost and heavy equipment like machetes, mowers, strimmers and ladders cluttering up the place.  Then of course we have huge bonfires producing horrible ash clouds and don’t even get me started on the washing out on the line.  Whatever happened to ‘England’s green and pleasant land’?  Why do gardening books never show what real garden’s look like most of time?

The boundary of one side of our garden has always been informal and amiable.  However, our neighbours have cut back some overgrown trees and Doc has knocked down the old summer house and massacred the banks of rhodies in front of our terrace, so it seems appropriate to improve the boundary with a fence.  It will give us scope for something more aesthetic in that part of the garden.  So we now have a trio of God-like men building a fence for us.  They fear no weather and by the look of the sweat on their faces, they need more than our tea and biscuits.  We salute them.

Hedges are more attractive than fences and they are good for wildlife but we have miles of them already.  It takes days to cut them every year so we also have the expense of paying someone to do it for us.  In any case, a newly planted hedge would not thrive in the shade of a row of trees.  So fencing it is and jolly good fencing it is too.  We decided that choosing the DIY store cheap and cheerful panels - which wobble in the slightest breeze - would not be value for money.  Our fencing is good quality, with workmanship that hopefully ensures it outlives us. 

‘Mick the Mole’ is the digger.  He is a dab hand at using a mattock and pick axe. G and R put the thick posts in and they all hammer in the boards together, section by section.  There is over a 100 feet of fencing and at 6 feet high, the boundary is starting to resemble the Berlin Wall.  Doc says he is going to spray paint the fence a National Trust green which, if it gets too windy, may mean everything within 20 yards will be painted National Trust green!  But hopefully, it will blend in nicely with the row of trees.

The work on the boundary means we have to re-think the water barrel and pipe in front of it.  We collect water from the gutters on the house and this not only fills 2 huge barrels behind the woodshed but gravity fills barrels down the garden too.  Since we do not want to waste this water and use it in the veg plot, Doc will have to dig a trench and sink the pipes and barrels. To use the water, we will have to use a hand pump but hard work never hurt a husband!!

Our vision is to cut back our borders to the new, green fence, re-plant the area with more decorative shrubs and perennials and build a garden room with landscaping around it which includes a pergola draped with scented climbers.  If we re-vamp the grass in front of the garden room too and make it into a lawn, we will have the perfect south-west facing paradise from which to enjoy the sunset over the valley...............

There I go again.  I must remember to remind Doc to chop those logs.

Can this really be February?

The storms have abated, although I hear on the news that the break is only temporary.  After yesterday’s whistling wind and driving rain, the sun came out and took some of the chill out of the air.  So I wandered down the garden to see what was happening.  My walking stick did not help me much.  Instead of meandering down the path, I mistakenly took the route over the lawn, to see if any bulbs were up and about but the ground was so spongy with water, my stick got stuck!   Thank goodness we live on a hill with all the water running away from the house.  I do so feel for all those families who have been flooded since the New Year. 

One of our garden club members has collected weather data for 25 years and M says that it was the wettest January in our village since her records began.  We had 26 days of rain!  Interestingly, she said we did not have as many huge downpours as we might have thought; there was steady, moderate amounts of rain throughout the month.

I managed to walk the short distance from the greenhouse to the flower bed in front of the orchard and was surprised to see the buddleia is in full leaf with new leaflets sprouting. However, the rabbits have been busy, digging holes around it.  They do make a mess but at least they appear to have left the buddleia alone.

There are snowdrops lighting up the hedgerows and the rhubarb has pushed forth its first buds. (Help, there is still some of last season's rhubarb in the freezer!) The pulmonaria dotted all over the garden are so reliable and they have been in full flower since the beginning of January.  I love their flowers and I don't know any other plant which can have both pink and blue flowers at the same time.

The stars of the current show at Springfield are the primroses that decorate and soften the edges of the steps down to the lawn.  The slope of our south-west facing garden is the perfect spot for them and they have been out to play for a while now. Today they were basking in the sunlight with their golden flowers nodding happily in the breeze.  How can anyone not feel lifted up by these simple little plants?

It may only be February but the garden has a sense of wakefulness about it.  Today it felt like March and this is fine, as long as March does not turn into February! 

Toughies

I don’t venture down the garden path very often these days but today I left the crutches in the house, grabbed my new walking stick and braved the gravel path down to the greenhouse.  Risky, I know, given my disability but sometimes we all have to live dangerously and I had forgotten to ask Doc to bring up some fresh parsley.

The sunshine helped and beckoned me onwards, step by difficult step.  The frost was glistening and fraught with slippery potential.  But when I arrived, the sight that met me was worth it because inside the unheated greenhouse was sheer loveliness.  The collection of mixed pelargonium I bought from Jim at our local garden club last season, for 50 pence a plant, was still in magnificent, full flower - in January! 

 

How they survive such cold nights, I don’t know.  I can only suppose that the stone flags warm up in the daytime and give off just enough heat to see them through the cold nights.  However, even if I had expected them to just keep ticking along; I would never have expected them to maintain their display.  Perhaps I have weakened the plants for next season by omitting to nip off the flower buds until next spring, but the flowers do feed my soul.  It is almost as if they are willing me on:  ‘Call yourself a gardener?  Come on, this is only a setback.  Believe you can get back to work and you will.....look at us!’

The rest of the pots which are over-wintering in the wind-free shelter of the greenhouse are doing fine too.  The hardy fuchsias and strawberry plantlets are even sprouting new growth!  The parsley looks lush, the cuttings are growing away and some small clumps of chives are showing off fresh, green shoots. 

Of course, the truth is we are enjoying a mild winter, despite the horrendous rains.  We have had some cold frosts but we have not experienced prolonged sub-zero temperatures and the white stuff.  If we were facing a winter like last year or the year before, I doubt even the hardiest of plants in the greenhouse would look quite so perky.  A fair few of them would look positively dead.

I will keep my fingers crossed and who knows, I may be tidying up the pelargoniums myself next spring, putting them in fresh compost and looking forward to a new, exciting growing season.  If anyone has some compost suitable for an injured foot, do let me know.

Autumn Benefits

Each season brings its own rhythm in the garden and I love autumn.  The tasks are a pleasant ritual, rather than a chore.  Gardeners need gloves but bright, dry days are a bonus and must be celebrated because the garden path is leading us into dark, dank winter days. 

There are fallen apples to rescue (easy with our quirky apple picker-upper!) and zillions of leaves to heap into large bags to make rich leaf mould.  Doc sends the lawn mower away for a holiday and a service.  The smell of bonfires along our road is pervasive and reminds us that our neighbours’ are tidying up too.  Some people feel that autumn heralds the end of the growing season, but for me it is the beginning of the gardening calendar.  This is the time to get those bulbs into the ground and invest time in order to reap the rewards of next spring.

My foot has taken a step backwards this last week (sorry about the pun!) and I cannot manage even a gentle potter in the greenhouse.  However, Doc was busy on the plot over the weekend, promising me that he would make sure the garden was fit for my inspection next spring!

Before this setback I was able to give the strawberry plants their autumn clean up.  Mouldy, unripe strawberries attract slugs and they like nothing better than a snug, winter home under the decaying leaves.  I made sure there was space between each plant to increase the air flow and this should hopefully reduce the risk of fungal infections. The bonus of course was finding some rooted runners (free new plants!) which I lifted, potted up and took to the sanctuary of the greenhouse.  I already have 3 dozen plantlets and they make great presents for friends and family.

The vegetable plot is still providing us with comfort food and we need plenty of that at the moment.  We have parsnips and leeks and the radicchio plants I haphazardly planted months ago and left to their own devices are making wonderfully sharp accompaniment to a boring sandwich.  In the garage there are trays of apples, pumpkins and butternut squash.  Even the greenhouse has its own offerings and my pots of parsley are still doing really well.
2013 has been a great year for apples and Doc’s cordons (18 and still counting!) provide us with  daily apple tastings and we love them chopped up in our porridge. We could have invited the whole street for a Springfield apple tasting and if next year is as fruitful, we must consider organising a community event. 

Anyway, the tree that always delivers the most abundant and tasty crop is the dessert apple: Katy.  It is an old established tree and the fruits are bright red and full of rosy cheer.  A few years ago Doc’s mum kindly gave us a juicer attachment to our Kenwood machine but we did not feel there were enough apples to ‘sacrifice’ in the name of experimentation.  However, this year Doc decided we should try to make some apple juice so in went the apples, cored and washed and out came the most gorgeous pink juice.  Usually I loathe apple juice - the kind that comes in cartons in the supermarket – but this freshly made apple juice was a revelation.   It is wonderful stuff and we had 2 precious pints to savour.  It does not keep more than a couple of days and unfortunately we did not have enough room in the freezer to store bulky juice, so we enjoyed it whilst it lasted.  Next year, we need a bigger freezer!

We love making the most of seasonal produce from the garden but of course there is a freezer full of produce from earlier in the season.  There are French beans and berries, rhubarb and gooseberries as well as bags of tomatoes I skinned and chopped. 
Surprisingly, the star of the freezer has to be the bags of sliced strawberries and pots of strawberry puree.  As with the apples, we had a glut this year and unlike raspberries, strawberries are not noted for their freezing qualities.  But I could not waste them, could I?  I pureed some because the texture of the fruit is not important and for an experiment I sliced some strawberries and open frozen them on trays before bagging them up.  I intend to use the sliced fruit to try a new recipe involving whizzing the frozen fruit slices with semi-frozen whipped cream for a soft, instant ice-cream.  I will let you know how it goes!

Strawberry puree is proving to be very useful - and delicious.  A strawberry jelly tablet is transformed by putting the squares in a jug and filling it to the half pint mark of boiling water.  Stir until dissolved and then top up with unsweetened strawberry puree, to make the full pint of liquid.  Pour into a dish and chill in the fridge until set.  We serve it natural yogurt and our granddaughter (Olympia, 16 months) would eat the whole lot!

Following the theme, strawberry jelly mousse is a must-try recipe.  Dissolve the tablet of jelly in a couple of spoonfuls of water over a gentle heat.  Defrost 7 ozs (200 g) frozen strawberries and sieve to remove the seeds.  Whisk up 2 x  6 oz/170 g cans  chilled evaporated milk until thick and doubled in volume.  Fold in the slightly cooled jelly liquid and then the strawberry puree.  This should serve 4 people but it may not!

It looks like I will be trying lots of new recipes if I cannot get out into the garden.  Doc does not say as much but I know he is thinking that this autumn is bringing fringe benefits.  I have put down the secateurs and picked up the recipe books.  I am going to have to regard my situation as an opportunity rather than a threat - though I am not sure my waistline feels the same.