I have been for the first time after work yesterday, and then again today – very frustrating but at the same time it has been absolutely vital as slugs and snails (big, beautiful ones) seem to have found their way to my seedlings and have already cleared out four crops completely and another two or three partially: I had to plant out my cardoons in the hope that they will be safer in the ground than they were in the protected environment of the propagator!

Tonight I have sprinkled ferric phosphate all over the place and will keep my finger crossed and keep checking (tonight I squashed three of the nasty visitors). Sigh.

— Post From My iPhone

Over Easter I became an expert of bed-making. I made four; still have another four to go and I am a tinselly bit tired and sore, but you know… It’s that time of the year!

Anyway, if you do a big of gardening yourselves, you will know that it’s awfully expensive to buy pre-shaped wood to make beds. I am sure it is worthwhile and they will last forever, but I could never bring myself to buy any and then found myself with some old overlap panels – like the ones they sell at Wickes for next to nothing – from the fence at home. They are simply perfect for the job! As they are slightly rotten, they pull apart fairly easily. The overlapping wood makes fine bed walls and the battens, chopped to a suitable size, also have a role in keeping the bed walls in place. They look very nice and tidy and I am sure they will make gardening easier too, as the plot is clearly sectioned, and there are proper footpaths to walk on.

It is confirmed that the less you clear up your plot over winter, the more native ladybirds will like it: when I finally made it to pull dead leaves and sticks from my strawberries, there were a half dozen!

I have some raspberry shoots and gooseberry cuttings at various stages of rooting. Also mint and some peas Balmoral (50% germination) and Meteor (15% germination) if anyone is interested.

— Post From My iPhone

Suddenly the anxiety of having to do everything in the weekend because the week is off-limit was gone: British Summer Time! It was more relaxing doing what I have done for the last couple of months: digging and sowing, knowing that I will be able to go back evening after evening. Except if the weather is rubbish all the time as it has been since…

I am still very divided about the ducks: when I caught them mating in the pond I found it sweet, but when they came back later I shooshed them away and they went to lie on a neighbour’s black polithene sheet, as they have done all of last year.

My spawn at home was doing very well with almost-tadpoles wriggling inside the eggs of one of the clumps but then something happened and they may be dying, a feathery white fungus feeding on the decaying matter.

Finally tonight I finished and sent the first paper of my horticulture course.

Long weekend approaching, lots of gardening is going to be on the menu, but of late I am not too inspired about writing, as I do not seem to be able to find an interesting enough angle to what I do: after all gardening implies the same rituals to be repeated year after year after year…

As I said last week everything is tidy and ready to burst into life, and it’s so good to look at and enjoy, except it’s NOT under control! This is the time of the year when all the gardening chores start to compete for my time, at home and the allotment, and I still have only the weekends to tackle them.

This weekend it was mostly the turn of my garden at home, where I planted some more bulbs, spring and summer ones. I found some tiny lovely irises – purple, that go very well with the plain yellow of dwarf daffodils. And I will give another go to lilies (the first time round they were decimated by slugs & snails…)

Then at the allotment I only managed to dig half a small bed.
My rotation plan tells me that – apart from where I already planted (alliaceae, Jerusalem artichokes & broadbeans, besides soft fruits & asparagus, and last year’s leek seedlings that are still apparently growing) and the potato & chilli beds weeded and covered – I currently have no clear beds to plant anything in the ground, so I can only sow in the greenhouse. This is a most inconvenient situation, as you can imagine, as there are at least a couple of vegs that I could sow in the ground now.

Which means that I fell behind once again: 8 beds still need weeding and clearing! I hope I manage by Easter…

— Post From My iPhone

Yesterday, with sunny weather forecast, I decided to take the day off to garden.

It was actually cold and grey, but my order of trees had arrived, so I had to clean the pots and transplant my new lemon, olive and lime trees. In my collection of old Italian favourites, which started last year with the fig tree, only the persimmon is now missing, which I am going to order shortly – I will try and grow it in a pot for the first few years, as I do not have the space in my garden right now. I love kaki fruit, and you need only one plant as the fruit is parthenocarpic (it grows without fertilisation of the flower). Oh, and uva fragola, what we call “American” grapes whose correct English name is actually Concord and that its Latin name is Vitis lambrusca – you can suck or squeeze the grapes out of their skins: delicious… But that will have to wait, although I see that Seeds of Italy sell that too and I am sooo tempted…

Anyway, then I went to the allotment and planted the Jerusalem artichokes, besides clearing another of the soft fruits bed. There’s much digging and clearing still to be done, and one of my magazine suggests the clearing work should be completed by the end of the month.

As a bonus for going out in the miserable weather, I found a very strange twisting leaf, apparently from a bulb, growing on the path among all sorts of rubble. I pulled it out and transplanted it in a place where it will not be trodden upon: the bulb is orange, starts oval but grows to a funny irregular shape and is all wrinkly, never seen before. Hope it’s not a weed. Certainly it looks stunning.

And at home I found an envelope with my Garden Organic experiments waiting for me. I will grow lettuce within protection of an anti-slug cardboard barrier, a spinach tree and look out for butterflies on flowers.

Now let me go and finish my flower and seeds summaries for the horticulture assignment.

Today I spent another great afternoon, on a delightfully sunny day, at the allotment.

There is not much to talk about, really, but it was great fun as I increased the size of the asparagus bed to plant the new ones I got last week – the hickory axe and the recycled fence panels from my garden are coming so handy on the plot: the new bed is much more solid and nice looking than before, and hopefully the asparagus will thrive!

I then decided where to plant the Jerusalem artichokes, on the side of a couple of shortish beds. I digged a small bed, just enough for the 5 or so tubers I’ve got, and built a wooden support for the plants, which can grow as tall as 2.5 m.

Jerusalem artichoke is actually a type of sunflower, whose tuber (a stem tuber, like a potato) tastes like an artichoke. They show a weedy behaviour, so they are always grown on the same spot. The tuber, which I read is a good source of iron, should be planted in early spring in well conditioned soil. I hope when I plant them in the next couple of weeks they like the spot I chose for them!

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You may have noticed that I have not mentioned study for a while… I will try to make the next post on that, and to write my paper this week.