Gardening Quotes

A short animation with some gardening quotes.

Wrapping up warm

Winter has arrived although I have yet to see any snow the overnight temperature is plunging below zero. Decided it would be prudent to cover some of my globe artichokes with fleece and the rest with straw. The plants are still young and hopefully I should pick my first ever homegrown globes later this year.

Meanwhile my garlic is doing well and actually needs some cold weather to encourage it to form bulbs. This is my first successful attempt at growing garlic, my earlier effort last Spring was a total disaster with not a single one appearing. I now realise that I planted them too deep in a heavy soil. This time I chose a bed with a lighter soil and planted more shallower. 

There is a video on YouTube that shows you: How to plant garlic video

Carpe diem

The mild weather continued over the weekend and I managed to do a few hours digging on both Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Part of the motivation is simply to get outside and enjoy a bit of fresh air and exercise while clearing away last year and preparing the beds for a new growing season.

The other key factor is my freelance lifestyle rarely provides a routine so I have to seize the day to work on the plot when an opportunity appears. Quite often I chip away at it with a few hours here and there, it also guards against becoming too ambitious and over doing it.

One thing I have noticed this year is the digging is easiest in the beds that have been cultivated the longest. So for anyone starting off with new beds the hard work you put in the first few years will be rewarded.

Time now to head out and finish off digging another bed. I will soon be ready for my delivery of compost.

Nice start

Sunshine and a free afternoon was an invitation to step outside and start digging over one of my free beds. I am still contemplating my planting scheme for this year and with the offer of some free compost considering growing my potatoes in planter bags. This will make sticking to a crop rotation routine easier.

My garlic is coming along nicely and a look at my rhubarb revealed signs of life, I think in a few weeks I will divide the crown and move it to a new fruit bed I intend to make when the compost I have been given arrives. Possibly not the right time technically to split and move the rhubarb but with the weather being so over the place, do the seasonal guidelines matter that much?

Found my Horseradish root, I am not sure whether the leaves die back in winter or whether they have been ravaged by slugs. There were some promising shoots on the top so I divided my large clump into three and planted into a bed with lighter soil. The top of the roots looked nibbled which at the moment I am blaming on slugs. It seems they like the taste as much as I do.

As soon as I began gardening I was touched by the generosity of other gardeners being offered seeds, plants and now a truckload of compost. This is going to make a big difference to the plot and allow me to improve the beds that have a heavier clay soil. If time and weather allows I plan on moving out some of the soil and replacing it with the compost.

A very enjoyable start to gardening in 2013 - fingers crossed that the weather is kinder this year.

When does it all begin?

I had a surprise this morning as I strolled around my plot after an absence of a week or so - my garlic has started to come up. Huge sigh of relief as my effort last year produced not a single shoot let alone a bulb; I think I planted them too deep in a part of the plot with a heavy clay soil. Learning from that disaster I choose a bed with a lighter soil and planted the cloves about an inch down from their tips.

If you grow throughout the year then gardening becomes circular and while circles do not have beginnings or ends I feel that the winter solstice for me marks the start of another year. I like the psychological boost and/or spiritual lift that being the other side of the longest night/shortest day brings.

Over the next few weeks I will start gearing up for a new season, my shallot order should arrive soon and the last weekend in January is Potato Day* at Garden Organic where I will buy my seed potatoes.

Although there could be plenty of wintry weather yet to come there is the possibility of a few warm sunny days out in the garden in January and February. These are the months when I like to do most of my digging. I find this is the time when the garden can look the most ordered and I can briefly feel in charge and full of optimism for the approaching Spring. 


*On Saturday 26th Potato Day  is for Garden Organic Members only while Sunday 27th is open to the public  - more details  here

Moving On

The break in my blogging was due to experiencing the worst growing season I have known. I will admit my experience is limited but even so the weather statistics for this year's summer in the UK tell a sorry story. I pretty well gave up on my plot and so did most of my vegetables. It pretty well was a write off leaving me with little to write about.

The only semblance of success came from my runner beans and mangetout although this was the first time I had grown both. Even though I had nothing to judge them against I was pleased and surprised by the crop. It certainly gave me enough of a lift to start clearing the beds in September.

Looking for some inspiration and advice I watched this video by Alys Fowler on Winter Gardening and discovered "Hard-necked garlic" that although it has a shorter storage life than "soft-necked" is regarded as being superior for cooking. Alys explains more starting a 6 mins 20 secs in should you want to skip the rest.


So I ordered some "Lautrec Wight" garlic described as the king of garlic for the kitchen that I will be planting out in the next week. This will mark the start of a new gardening year for me with my fingers crossed that next year's weather will be better.
  

Imperial Horseradish

Although Horseradish was cultivated in antiquity by the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans there is no certainty when it was introduced into Britain. Recently I was told it was brought here by the Romans and was lead on a foraging trip along an old Roman road. The Fosse Way ran from Exeter to Lincoln, a distance of 182 miles and in my county of Warwickshire its route is now followed by the B4455. According to my guide the Romans planted it alongside their roads and it still grows there in abundance today. I can certainly imagine some poor cold Roman legionnaire using its heat to cheer himself up.

After quite a bit of research on Google I am none the wiser whether this is fact or fiction. I prefer to believe it and now view my transplanted roots as a direct descendant of those Roman plantings and thus, Imperial Horseradish.