Week 9 Lockdown Garden Diaries…Fire and Light
Since the beginning of lockdown I have been fuelling an addiction to spending online. It got slightly out of hand by week 3 with all manner of deliveries arriving throughout the day and cardboard building up in the hall for future blue bin days. I thought it absolutely necessary to buy cheap binoculars for birdwatching; two lots of tomato feed for my 3 tomato plants and a t-shirt with the slogan ‘Girls just want to have fundamental rights’. I also bought a 1970’s LP (condition: nearly new-my-arse) of the BBC Midland Radio Orchestra conducted by Norrie Paramor playing the BBC themes of the day. This was justified because my mum was principal viola player at the time so I shall look forward to buying a record player to play it on. I’ve had a bit of counselling and I am now a bit more in control of the Paypal button but this week we made another purchase – one that I am very pleased about. For a long time I’ve been after a vessel to burn things in for the garden and whilst I love open fires or fire bowls, we found a lovely little stove that can eventually come camping with us too (there’s event bit on top to boil a kettle). Check out www.originaloutbackerstoves.co.uk:
Fire in the garden is an increasingly fashionable commodity but for good reason. It extends our ability to stay outside into late spring and early autumn and it is a warming focal point for chat or contemplation. Fire is elemental and dangerous; an essential life-force of primordial survival. It is embedded in our symbolic psyche as a focus for gathering; ritual and punishment and so is edged, always with something unattainable and transcendent. In nearly every religion and culture there exist ancient practices to venerate fire deities; Loki in Norse tradition; Hephaestus in Greek and the goddess Sekhmet in ancient Egyptian mythology. Lots of traditions have animals or gods stealing fire to give to humans: prometheus famously stealing from Zeus (that’s not going to pan out well); coyote, beavers and dogs all steal fire in First Nation mythology. Blimey, I’m getting a bit philosophical – best to hand over to my friend Una Baines, Manchester punk/feminist post-punk icon (The Fall; The Fates and now writing and playing with the brilliant Poppycock @poppycockMusic.uk) who has been lighting fires and feeding friends for years:
Fire festivals
” I have lived in Whalley Range since the early ‘80s. Then it was a little run down with an air of notoriety, dilapidated and beautiful, so green with the beautiful trees and gardens. I had read different passages and books about ancient beliefs and was taken with the Irish Celtic goddess of the home and the hearth, Bridget. Before Christianity she is said to have gifted the Irish people with their language, poetry, the invention of architecture and musical instruments etc and Fire was always associated with her. Fire meaning the creative impulse, imagination and energy. I have always lit a fire for Imbolc on the 1st or 2nd of February to honour Bridget, and my mam who shared her name. This I have done every year since I have lived in Whalley Range, and many times people have played music and sang around the fire, telling stories, sharing food or just gazing into the flames. My mother told me that when she was a young child in Ireland, her and her brothers and sisters would look into the turf fire and tell each other what images they saw in the flames and make up stories. “
Elaine (Oxfordshire Garden Correspondent for our purposes), decided to camp out in her garden last week during the lovely weather, burning wood in her chiminea only to find she had scorched the grass. Looks like you got a couple of dogs Elaine. Meanwhile Faith and Audrey in North Chorlton (Firswood) have been using an old wok to have a fire – just shows you don’t need sophisticated kit and trigger happy Paypal finger:
Then there’s the altogether more sophisticated cor-ten steel fire bowls that are very popular at the moment. This one resides on the other side of our fence…we’ll have a fire-off sooner or later:
And finally…our Whalley Range contributors Fliss and Anne (collectively called Flanne) had a wonderful fire in their garden just before christmas 2019. We sang carols and got merry around the warmth of the flames, drinking mulled wine and christmas cocktails…one day we’ll be able to do that again:
Week 8 Lockdown Garden Diaries…These foolish things remind me of you
The spaces we create in nature, including gardens, are a magnet for memories and these rememberances, of a moment, a place or a person stir a range of emotions. Some of these feelings can stay and are fully formed; others float through and on with the passing smell of a flower. In my garden, I have plants that have been given to me and so the person becomes present in the happy minutes deadheading or pruning back. I have an Actaea simplex atropurpurea (or Bugbane to me and you) given to me by my mum when we moved into the house twenty years ago. It’s rich dark leaves look fantastic with verbena bonariensis in late summer. I also have a rose given to me on my 40th by my friend Doron Vidavsky (love that name so always have to write it in full…strange sometimes on whatsap) with beautiful orange blooms that flower twice a year. The masses of phyllostachys (big bamboo) and two peonies are from my dads garden and I grow nerines to remind me of my nan who always had loads of them in her front garden in Pontefract. They remind me of the cooling towers of the power station we could see down the lane at the back of her house and the donkey in the little field opposite her back door.
Other plants remind me of people for different reasons. About 15 years ago me and my friend Steve got moderately obsessed with unusual varieties of ferns and would trawl the RHS shows at Tatton (even Chelsea once) looking for two beardy guys who had a business called ‘Fernatics’ selling rare and unusual ferns – I think there might have been a bit more than ferns in it for Steve come to think…. Dryopteris ‘Wallichiana’ and Matteucia struthiopteris found a place in my garden along with masses of asplenium and 3 tree ferns. Certain pots and plants remind me of gardens I’ve visited; the Euphorbia mellifera reminds me of Helligan where I bought it; the Euphorbia palustris of Hidcote and the box balls of my very favourite, Wollerton Old Hall in Shropshire that I regularly visit with my friend and fellow garden designer Cynthia.
This is what Whalley Range gardener Anne wrote last week about gardens and memories:
The Rowan Tree
“Wandering around the garden this morning taking some photographs, I am reminded of how many little things I brought from NI when I came to live here 13 years ago.
Among these. Is “the rowan tree” which now stands at about 10 ft tall and currently hosts clusters of cream flowers which will eventually turn into red berries for the birds to feed on. This tree came with me as a small stick like sampling in a pot, grown from a fallen berry dropped by the rowan in my fathers garden in Co Down. It is all the more special because it is a little piece of home.
Of course it’s magical powers are well known in Ireland and a story teller once told me how the rowan was planted at the crossroads to keep away the evil spirits. It is Hebe, daughter of Zeus and Hera that is attributed with the form the Rowan takes. According to mythology, Hebe was the cupbearer to the gods and she would bring them their potions to refresh and sustain them. One day the cup was stolen by demons and the gods being outraged, summoned an eagle of great strength and might to find it and bring it back.
A mighty battle ensued between the eagle and the demons. Blood was shed and for every drop of blood spilled, a red berry formed from which grew a rowan tree. If you look closely at the feathery leaves you’ll see the mighty eagles plumage!
Watching this tree grow and blossom over the last 13 years has been a joy to me and when finally the blackbirds arrive to gorge on the red berries and the leaves turn golden brown and drop, I know the Mother Tree is doing just the same thing back home in Co Down.
It is often said that “home is where the heart is” and standing beneath my rowan tree in Week 5 of the Covid19 lockdown, I am reminded that this once tiny red berry is part of my home and heart. As Kahlil Gibran wrote in The Prophet, “For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed”.” (Anne Whittock)
Elsewhere in Old Trafford, Carol and Fiona are busy tending their bees (and beers in their garage which has temporarily become “The Beekeepers Arms” so they feel like they are going out)
“Well another month has gone by and the bees have had more fun going out and about than we have! Hardly fair!!They are already collecting pollen and starting to make honey which seems to be 2 to 3 weeks earlier than in previous years. I guess the combination of warm weather and reduced pollution is helping? The forget-me-not is rampant round the garden and our woodland bit has lovely bluebells. We have 3 hives and my main work at this time of year is to check that they have “Brood, food and space”. This means firstly checking that there’s an active queen. She is extremely hard to spot (in my opinion). She’s about 50% bigger than the worker bees but still the same colour! When you open the hive and look in individual frames, understandably she moves away into darker areas. We’ve had the queens marked, with a little spot of harmless paint on her back, so for the first time in years I actually saw a queen. My usual approach is to look for young larva (brood). You can see the tiny larva quite easily and you can tell from their size that the queen laid them as an egg 4 or 5 days ago so you know she has been around recently. There will be usually be quite a lot of them in cells near each other. To be honest you can tell by the busy-ness and purposefulness of the bees if they have a queen. I’ve been keeping bees for 10 years and I suppose you build up a sense of what is a healthy hive. So then you check they have plenty of food. When I looked this week there was plenty of pollen stored in all the hives; this is the protein source for bees. Also all the hives have started making honey and the smell is amazing. So finally Space! They can be making honey so fast that you need to add extra boxes(called Supers) so that the bees have more places to put the honey they’ve made. Also the number of bees in a hive will go from around 10,000 in winter to anything up to 70,000 by late summer so the bees need space as well. I guess each hive has about 20,000 at the moment ( not that I’ve tried counting them!!).” (Carol Bradbury)
And finally, some lovely blousy wisteria to oggle at! Cynthia has a record number of climbers on her lovely pergola near Nantwich and the wisteria is looking particularly lush at the moment. Faith has hers trained over the hens in Old Trafford – gorgeous!
Week 7 Lockdown Garden Diaries…
For this weeks instalment visit p.50 http://openupmagazines.co.uk/read/
Week 6 Lockdown Garden Diaries….
Has anyone else got Covid -pants? I don’t mean the type of trouser that the virus adheres to when brushed against other loons (panta-) neither do I mean an anti-viral PPE Ethel Austin has rushed out to avoid knee transfer. No, Covid-pants are those faithful (comfy) slacks that are taken off every night and put on again in the morning; washed on a Thursday (reluctantly) and popped back on again Friday. Others have reported to me that their Covid-pants have some elastic give, others have some connection to yoga. My Covid-pants are marginally Monty Don (with a smattering of Sackville-West) – Khaki (natch) and a tiny bit low-slung to mimic boy-pant-on-slim-girl (I’m not…a boy or slim). Smoke and Mirrors.
Back to gardens. Seed update: most of the seeds that I planted directly outside have started to put on some growth now and will need thinning out – this is a proces of picking out the spares growing closely to a stong candidate to give it room to put on more growth. This is hard to do – there is a certain emotional investment in seed sowing; in seeing these plucky little plants emerging when you were sure they wouldn’t and then having to pull two-thirds of them out (‘Have I chosen the right one?’, ‘Oh God I’ve left a massive bloody space now by over plucking!’ etc.). Elaine, our Oxfordshire garden correspondent, has also sent pics of her raised beds looking extremely bountiful with sugar snap peas, borlotti beans, uchikuri squash (I had one of those in a lift once) and cavolo nero. The indoor seeds have mostly germinated (apart from a squash and a couple of french beans) and some have been planted out this weekend. There are still plenty of seeds that you can sow now indoors: tomatoes, squash, cougettes, pumpkin, cucumbers etc. and lots that can now be sown directly outside including beetroot, carrot, parsnip and all the salad leaves. And you don’t need fancy hemp potting pods or pressed copper plant labels (although have you seen the beauties from www.alitag.co.uk?? – you get a jig and everything). Vita Sackville West in 1950 described the odd array of containers used by a friend of hers (who had ‘fingers so green, that the water must surely turn emerald in the basin every time she washes her hands’) – this friend happily improvised with whatever she could find – pudding basins; dress boxes and gold syrup tins: ‘I verily believe that she would use an old shoe if it came handy’, V S-W later remarked. I don’t wear dresses and I use the pudding basin for my hair, but I do like a golden syrup tin and the word ‘verily’. I have used those Al jazeera coffee tins for my peas and the cardboard bit left from toilet rolls for spinach.
Elsewhere in the garden some things are doing very well in the warm weather – the hostas have never looked so good! I have a few varieties that are fairly ‘good -doers’ – ‘Sum and Substance’; ‘Halcyon’; ‘Frances Williams’ and ‘Devon Green’. I’ve had a bit of greenfly on a couple of them but no slugs! There is a village near Stratford called Pebworth (think Miss Marple; WI) that is famed for it’s amazing hosta growers. At their Open Garden day a couple of years ago, one of the gardeners let me into their secret: a whole head of garlic in boiling water allowed to cool and then poured at the base of the plants. They swore by it. Other things starting to emerge in my garden bringing some welcome colour are the geums – ‘Totally Tangerine’ and Geum rivulare ‘Leonard’s Variety’ which is better for shade. These will carry on flowering through the summer with a bit of dead-heading.
The solitary bee boxes I put up a few weeks ago have been inhabited! Almost immediately bees were crawling in and out of the holes and after a week or so I noticed that the holes were blocked with mud at the entrance. Apparently, when a bee finds a nest she will collect materials to create the cell for her first egg which consists of a ball of pollen stuck together with nectar for each larvae to eat thoughout its development into an adult.
She puts the ball inside the cell and lays an egg on top, leaving space for the larvae to grow and then builds a partition wall and repeats the process until the whole tube is filled, closing off the entrance with mud and moving on to another tube. It’s very likely that we have red mason bees as this type of bee uses mud to seal their hole.
Another interesting fact is that females can choose whether to lay male or female eggs – the males emerge a couple of weeks before the females so she lays all the females at the back and males at the front. Who knew!
I try not to be an envious person, but where bearded iris’s are concerned I’m raging. My lovely neighbours over the road have the most gorgeous front garden spilling over with a kaleidoscope of cottage plants including wonderful Camassias, with racemes of blue starry blooms and gorgeous iris a bit too purple for ‘Jane Phillips’ but not as dark as ‘Mer du Sud’. I have one flowering blue camassia and even so it’s a bit weedy, but I did put in three new variegated forms (camassia leichtlinii ‘Sacajawea’ – nice easy name) that are just producing buds that should flower in the next couple of weeks. I have never had any luck with bearded iris but I’m trying again this year with 2 new purchases ‘Darley Dale’ and ‘Best Blue’ from www.theenglishiriscompany.com.
And finally, my fiend Helen from Glossop sent some amazing photos of a Hummingbird Hawkmoth pollinating her honesty. Apparently quite rare in Northern climbs (usually found in Southern Europe), the moth has a wing span of two inches and is seen during the day. What a privilege to see it so early in the season – another example of burgeoning wildlife during lockdown?
Week 5 and we’re still in lockdown….time to find some Lost Words and Green Shoots…
I have been working with people to create or re-create their gardens for twelve years now. One of the most enduring threads woven throughout that time (aside from the usual practical, everyday elements of creating usable, attractive outdoor space), has been a desire for renewal or solace. I’ve worked with a number of people who have been bereaved. Some have wanted to create a new garden to help them move forward; others have wanted to preserve and enhance elements reflecting a loved one’s passion for the garden. Whatever their situation, most people have spoken of their gardens as an oasis and an escape; a space to de-stress and create. Indeed any outdoor space can evoke these feelings. Most days I take my dog walking either to Chorlton Ees or to the ‘wild-land’ next to Longford Park. Without fail I breathe more deeply and allow myself twenty minutes of green calm. This is not a new thing – the renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks in his article ‘The Healing Power of Gardens’ states that in his 40 years of practice, the two non-medical forms of therapy that have consistently proved most beneficial are music and gardening. Our appreciation of green space and recognition of its positive effect on our physical and mental health has probably become much more focussed during this epidemic and yet the words used to describe our natural world appear to be in decline. In 2007, the Oxford Junior Dictionary introduced new words such as ‘Broadband’ but it also removed a long list of words describing the natural world: Acorn, Blackberry, Bluebell, Conker, Kingfisher….Their argument goes like this: ‘If it’s not in common use then why include it?’. Out of this has emerged a campaign to save these precious words and to re-ignite children’s knowledge of and passion for nature. One particular book has captured this brilliantly: The Lost Words: A Spell Book by Robert McFarlane illustrated by Jackie Morris. The book re-introduces the words though lyrical ‘spells’.
What’s even more fabulous about this endeavour is the setting of the book to music by Karine Polwart and 7 other fantastic folk singers (including the brilliant Seckou Keita, Beth Porter and Julie Fowlis). We were lucky enough to see them perform Spell Songs at the RNCM – I don’t think there was a dry eye in the audience.
This week I’ve been appreciating the luminosity of the spring garden – you can’t beat this shade of green – fleeting, as it blanches to maturity but utterly uplifting. I always love the unfurling of fern fronds at this time. Jurassic limbs uncurling from tight furry spirals:
I particularly love the shuttlecock fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) so called for its upright habit:
I’ve just divided mine after years in the same place – once they get going they multiply rapidly with sturdy underground stolons (I suffer with those too). Euphorbias are also looking magnificently luminous at the moment. I grow a few varieties in the garden: E. mellifera (the ‘Honey’ euphorbia named for it’s honey-smelling bracts); E. palustris and E. griffithii ‘Fireglow’:
Elsewhere in Norf Landan and Oxford, Richard and Elaine are enjoying their spring gardens:
And finally, Fliss in Whalley Range has shared some wonderful pics of her spring garden proving that it’s not just about the greens – absolutely stunning:
It’s Week 4! Time to update my pants and dust off my cane toppers….
For some time now I have been obsessed with Monty Don’s wardrobe. Not in a weird way, but in a slightly jealous, hankering kind of way, wishing that I was altogether more land-girl and less decathlon fleece. Monty’s effortless donning of serge and brushed cotton without a collar in sight, has inspired me to up my game in the clothes department. Gardening is pretty rough on clothes – I get through a few pairs of walking pants a year and have 13 serviceable fleeces that are entirely uninspiring but finding cool and inexpensive garden attire is no mean feat. For a reasonable range both in terms of workwear and price, Dickies is a good option – I like their quilted body warmer. ‘Rugged Tough’ is another straightforward supplier and, as the name suggests, is suitably butch. Lots of khaki. Then there is the next layer of clothes for when you want something a bit more sturdy and special. I’ve just bought a pair of trousers from Green Hip – an Australian based supplier who supply their trousers with a stretchy waistband ‘for a little more give’ – great when you’re pushing north of 45 (age and waist). I’m worried that I might look like I work for Manchester City Council but I’ll give them a go cos they’ll be comfy. Genus.gs is another bespoke garden clothing company providing the discerning lady gardener with a ‘3 season gardening trouser’ (what happened to the fourth??) sporting a damp-proof seat panel ‘to prevent a soggy bottom’ but given the last comment, I don’t think I need any extra padding – soggy bottom or not – so might give that a miss. Then we get into real-Monty-territory; my complete wish-list of very expensive trousers, tops and jackets that would make me look like I’ve been gardening since 1895 and use the word miscellany at least twice a week. Check out the ‘Carrier Company’ and ‘Old Town’ – what’s not to like? I’m saving up for some high rise trousers with braces and some Orfords on the trouser side and a collarless workshirt in indigo cotton ticking (ticking!). That will probably clear me out of profit for the next three years given current income but at least I’ll be living the horticultural dream.
This week I’ve been sorting out my canes for various beans and peas I’ve started off as seeds and I remembered that I had some lovely cane toppers from a friend, Sue, a potter in Chorlton. I think they are very cheery and will stop you poking your eye out when picking your Jessy’s (a popular variety of pea).
Out in Hyde, Suzanne’s garden is starting to come alive and she’s used some beautiful rusty supports for her young shoots:
In Heaton Moor, Carolyn also has some rusty things nestling in her beds that can sometimes be used to show off very lifelike ‘Art’:
And finally, the birds have been very noisy in my garden just recently, I even witnessed a few squabbles. It’s no surprise given that eggs are being laid and new babies are being hatched. In Ireland, Fiona sent a fantastic picture she took in a neighbours garden:
Lonely Bees and Girl Caves: Week 3 Corona Lockdown….
We’re at the beginning of the third week of lockdown and Matt Hancock has been threatening to curb even more of our outdoor activity due to people meeting up on sunny days. Of course this is the right advice. The problem is that we are not solitary animals and we, like some bees, thrive in our colonies and hives (sometimes with a bossy Queen at the centre). However, one sunny day last week I spotted some small bees with orange fur scanning the sun-lit wall at the back of the house stopping briefly at little holes in the old Edwardian bricks trying to get in. These are solitary bees and make up 250 of the 270 species of bee we have in England. What is interesting about these bees is that unlike bumblebees and honey bees they don’t live in colonies. When we first moved into our house over 20 years ago, there were solitary bees nesting in the lawn which apparently is the primary nesting habit of a lot of solitary bees. There are others that nest aerially (the ones that are most likely to set up home in artificial nests we might provide in our gardens). The brilliant thing about solitary bees is that they are prolific pollinators – they are polylectic – meaning they collect pollen from lots of different plant species.
Like us at the moment, they have to live alone, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for this little bee and where possible providing some extra help by putting up solitary bee boxes or ‘bee-blocks’ (www.greenandblue.co.uk), or making them yourself with some hollowed out canes bundled together. You can source them online from www.buglife.org.uk or www.arkwildlife.co.uk or learn how to build your own via the RSPB website ‘Build a Bee B&B’.
One thing I have loved coming across on my walks are small examples of ‘guerilla gardening’ – the interventions of humans in nature in a good way! On Chorlton Ees, there are little pockets of planting either as living forms of rememberance for a loved one or just planting up some spares; in Longford park we spotted a beautifully cultivated patch in the borderlands between park and garden and a pop-up community garden at the edge of Ryebank fields.These bring little pops of joy in stressful times.
Elsewhere in the Northwest, Cynthia has been providing the birds with bathing facilities – actually quite crucial for our birds both for drinking and preening – removing dust and parasites and Ann has been revelling in the amount and variety of birdsong on her Chorlton allotment.
Oxfordshire garden correspondent (we just made that up) Elaine, has been busy sorting the potting shed (this picture really reminds me of yesteryear garden potterers of the Christo Lloyd and Vita Sackville West variety), revamping the compost and servicing the girls in the Girl Cave (her chickens).
In Warwickshire, Ted and Veronica are creating a pop-up ‘Corona’ garden for the fairies (can you spot them?) where their pond used to be – they can’t get hold of the necessary bits to sort the pond but wanted to create something lovely to look at in the meantime…
From Supercolumns to Super-Bums, it’s all happening in South Manchester Gardens….Week Two of Lockdown
It’s week two of lockdown and along with some lovely weather, the enforced enclosure has sent us running into our gardens and outside spaces whether we would normally be there or not. Some of us are able to while away a few minutes with our neighbours over the garden fence – modern-day Ada’s and Cissy’s checking out the neighbours begonias – we have managed to trade hand sanitiser for plum tomatoes this week passed discretely via the top of the fence. For others, conversations that would normally be constrained to the kitchen table are drifting out for collective pleasure – I overheard the teenage son of a neighbour on the phone to his aunty shouting: “I’ve been trying to get Nana on Houseparty for the last half an hour! What’s she doin??!” Another friend overheard bingo numbers being called from windows of a neighbouring residential home! It’s amazing what you hear at the ‘number 8’…
My garden is a small-ish urban garden, bursting with plants (some thought through, others plonked in after gluttonous buying at flower shows) which is undergoing a timely make-over. I made the hard decision to remove the lawn (have dog – will water) and a large overgrown hedge. The latter was a large berberis and I agonised over taking this out because of its value to birds, but eventually took the plunge on the basis that I would plant a new multi-stem birch and some small fruiting trees that I could train along the new fence. The bed next to the fence is about 90cms wide so I had to think carefully about what type if fruit to plant here – it is also South-East facing but the very early morning sun is sheilded by a neighbouring house which helps with blossom-burn on frosty mornings (also a problem for joggers). So this is what I decided to try:
An English Espalier Apple (on a dwarf rootstock) ‘Beauty of Bath’ from www.chrisbowers.co.uk. Espaliers are those plants you see trained in lines along a wall or fence. I’ve attached some sturdy steel wires to the fence from www.gsproducts.co.uk (look for the Plant Training Wire Kit). I planted it at the end of last summer and have just tied in the lower branches to the first wire which is 40cms above the soil surface. As the tree grows I will tie in the upper branches to the next wire and so-on.
2 x Minarette crab apples ‘Pink Glow’ and 2 x Minarette plums ‘Marjorie’s Seedling’ from www.kenmuir.co.uk. ‘Minarettes’ and ‘Supercolumns’ are a type of columnar fruit tree that has been selected for their particular suitability for growing in an upright form. The brilliant thing about them is that they fruit very near the stem so can be planted 60cms apart (90cms for the plums). I managed to get them in as bare-root trees just before lock-down and they came with superb growing instructions from Ken Muir.
I also have a step-over apple, ‘Redsleeves’ in another part of the garden (a west-facing wall so let’s see how that does). These are similar to the espalier but consist of only one branching line instead of the tiers of the espalier, and are therefore descriptive of their habit – you can literally step-over them (in some old kitchen gardens you can see veteran apples enclosing growing beds).
When you choose your fruit, keep an eye out for pollinators – some of the varieties above are self pollinating (which means they don’t need a compatible tree nearby for a bee to visit in order to set fruit); others need a compatible plant (for e.g. ‘Beauty of Bath’ needs a ‘Pink Glow’ to produce babies…)
Around Manchester, other gardeners are also busy….
Carol and Fiona keep bees in Old Trafford and the hives are creating a buzz…
“The bees have been out and about this week, enjoying the first warm weather since the autumn. The last 6 weeks I have had to feed the 3 hives “bee fondant” (which looks a lot like cake icing). They had used up all their own stores of honey with all the recent cold and rain, but now they’re starting to make honey and store pollen from the spring flowers. The queen is getting busy laying hundreds of eggs a day! Over the winter numbers in a hive dwindle to around 5,000 but now new bees are needed and at the height of the summer there will be more than 50,000 bees in a hive. The loveliest sound is the hum of the bees as they work. There is a large goat willow tree next door and the catkins have just come out. When the sun shines the bees are all over the tree and the hum of so many bees is amazing.”
Jill from Manchester garden company SheDigs (and she really does…) sent some pictures of the pots she had planted before the lockdown for some of her vulnerable clients so they had something to look at during isolation, and our neighbours Paul and Jo have done a similar thing in their garden using an unsightly corner to create something lovely:
“We acquired a load of logs when they pollarded the trees on Darley Road. Initially we wanted them for firewood – after they had seasoned properly. So they lay around in an unsightly horizontal pile for a few years until I decided to do something ‘creative’ with the ones we hadn’t already chopped up. Piling them vertically, in a disused but sunny corner garden provided a perfect excuse for a display of geraniums and other flowers.”
We’ve heard of Millenium gardens but dahn saahf, two of our friends decided to do a bit of geurilla gardening by taking over part of an abandoned boatyard to create a ‘Corona Garden’ which will be planted with anything colourful they can get their hands on.
And finally, whilst trotting the dog through Chorlton Ees last week I came across the much-fated, never-seen tree Arbuttus x Super-Bum ‘Shaggy’ bearing some very strange bloom-ers:
‘They’re Sow Now’: Seeds that even Margo Leadbetter might sow…..Lockdown – Week One
Like everyone else I’m largely holed up at home in a state of disbelief – the house has never been cleaner and I seem to have gained about 6 hours in the day and 6 inches round my middle. I’m worried about my elderly parents who live in the Midlands. They are not worried – my mum has been self-isolating for 40 years and has managed to get through half of the tinned food I bought her for emergency rations in case the carers can’t go in – mind you I could only get prunes and ambrosia creamed rice so I’ll be on the hunt for toilet paper to send down next.
And so I’ve turned to the things that always brings me solace – the garden, nature and all the beautiful things that are emerging after a chronically wet winter, basking in this gorgeous spring sun. This weekend I have sown some seeds so I’ll share with you the what’s and how’s – you may find some of my choices odd but let me explain! There is a modicum of method in my madness.
Currently you can still order seeds online (see below) – they are relatively cheap and are a good activity to do with the kids and given the queues outside Aldi we may be resorting more than ever to ‘The Good Life’ – if nothing else it’s a distraction that will keep on giving over the next few months.
What: My choice of seed has depended on three things – growing space (I have a relatively small garden so some will be in pots and smaller beds); aspect (some are for sun some will have to cope with some shade due to my gardens position) and what I like/what is easy (I have a particular liking for stoved turnips but foolishly have bought 5 packs of turnip seed). So – what I have sown this weekend:
Coriander from Jekka’s Herbs: Can be sown all year round indoors and outside between March – July. I’ll do both but I’ll wait a bit longer to sow outside. It resents being moved – don’t we all – so sow where it is to crop. We use loads of it in curries.
Parsley Flat Leaved from Jekka’s Herbs: Can be sown all year round indoors and outside between April – July
Lettuce (Salad Bowl Mix Looseleaf), Leaf Beet (perpetual spinach) and Baby Leaf Rocket Astra from Moreveg: These are cut-and-come-again types of leaf – I’ve sown small trays inside and will sow outside in another few weeks. I love the idea of something coming back again – lazy I know…The good thing about this group is that they can take some shade.
Dwarf Bean Caledonia Thompson and Morgan: This is for planting out eventually and are sown individually in pots to transplant when all risk of frost is passed. They can also be sown in their position outside from May
Collard Champion: Again, sown to plant out, this was recommended by my good friend (allotmenteer and fabulous Blues singer) Helen Watson – I’d never heard of it! It sounds like something you might grow to alleviate boils on the neck. She said it was brilliant – really productive and iron-rich I can’t wait to see how this one goes. It’s a brassica in the same group as Kale – broad, rich dark green leaves but compact growing 40cms.
French Marigold: Came free with a magazine but thought I’d start some off for when I get into my tomatoes….
How: I’ve used some small plastic plant pots I had and some mushroom/veg trays having punched a few holes in the bottom. I used a peat-free seed soil which is usually finer so the tiny seed roots don’t have to compete with thuggish clumps – Garden Organic sell Moorland Gold; Crocus sells a wool compost for seeds and Suttons the RHS Silvagrow. If you can’t get these just use a bit of garden soil but break it up so it’s quite fine and if you’ve got a bit of sand you could mix this in. The seed packets will give you instructions for depth of planting – I’m trying some covered with a clear plastic bag and some uncovered in a sunny window in my kitchen but will move them out of the direct sun when the shoots show so they don’t get scorched – Skegness/Bondi take heed – and then I’ll self isolate them for approx X months until the frosts have passed.
And that’s it so far. Later down the line I’ve got: small squash ‘Harlequin’; pumpkin ‘Baby Boo’; Beetroot ‘Solo and ‘Bolthardy’; Chard ‘Bright Lights’; Radish ‘Celesta’; Sugar Pea ‘Shiraz’; and the turnips…oh the turnips: ‘Snowball’ (x2); ‘Golden Ball’; ‘Tokyo Cross’; ‘Aramis’ (bought just for the name cos it took me to a Greek Island smelling lovely); and two tomatoes ‘Ailsa Craig’ and ‘Golden Sunrise’. Watch this space…I’ve also ordered a few small plants just in case……
In Other Gardens…. Whalley Range gardenista Anne (she’s got an allotment and isn’t afraid to use it) has just sown some seeds for sanity this is what she says:
“I’m usually a bit ‘GUNG-HO’ with seeds and end up buying the plant (might yet!) but this spring time it felt really important to me and my mental health to actually get new life started in my seed trays – just to spite the C word. And this time I’m planting food I really enjoyed eating this year – butternut squash and Brussels became a firm favourite and purple sprouting broccoli is the plant that just keeps giving! Worst that could happen? They don’t grow. But I’ll have had a go…:”
Faith and Audrey have created a space in Old Trafford that has a tranquil, city-farm feel and they love their chicks!
Our garden is well-used in some ways and neglected in others. There are 3 humans and several animals living here and we all use the garden differently. It’s a place where the dog rushes out to bark at the chickens and where the cats find sunny or sheltered places to lounge around and stare at the frogs in the pond. It’s a workplace, where we chop logs for the wood burners and sometimes do big, messy jobs like making a bench, spray-painting old furniture or cleaning the bikes. It’s a place where we can lose ourselves in the many and endless tasks associated with growing flowers and a small number of vegetables and fruit, but strangely it’s always the compost bin that gets the most attention. It’s a frustrating place that constantly reminds us of what we should have done to save all the plants that failed to thrive and what we ought to be doing now to avoid the same mistakes. Finally, it’s a relaxing place where we drink our morning coffee, or have lunch when the sun’s shining, admiring those faithful perennials that survive only on intermittent attention, and planning what amazing things we’re going to do in the garden next… possibly.
Pete and Joe in Firswood, have already started some flowering seeds: Sunflower ‘Teddy Bear’; Lupins; Lavender; “and upstairs are some slow emerging Chinese lanterns – the lupins are the ones that look like cannabis, sunflower the big leaves and small cress like plants are lavender apparently!”
Back next week for some interesting fruit growing options xxxx
