Orto di Casa Cecconi

My first allotment, and then one thing leading to another…

L’orto di Casa Cecconi Plants Recipes Me & Kew One Year at Wisley

Tag: plants

Plants are my great love, they are like children to me. I sometimes indulge in sharing a bit more details about this plant or the other.

  • Spindles

    Mature spindles A row of young spindles A kinky leader; on the side, a vertical branch Spindlebushes. A kinky leader at the top, not a permanent one; a layer of branches, slightly above the horizontal at the bottom (not the very bottom, about 75 cm), with a gap in the middle. This shape is widely…

  • Apple pruning season

    Sizeable canker on an apple tree It’s apple pruning season, and you know why? Because the fruits have gone (so no knocking about) and the leaves are down so you can see the shape of the tree more clearly! Otherwise, apples are pretty tolerant of pruning at any time between leaf fall and bud burst,…

  • Divided about rhubarb

    RHS Garden Wisley holds the National Collection of Rhubarb and today we were taught how to divide and replant crowns. Autumn is best, because if you plant rhubarb in the spring, you are then required to keep watering the new plant to help its establishment. Adding manure to the hole The first step in the…

  • Fig dressing

    The preparations for winter continue, and today it was the Model Fruit Garden fan-trained fig’s turn to be put to sleep. The fig, ready to go to bed The first step was pruning the tree, untying it from the frame. Syconium inflorescence, with inward looking florets and fruits Figs (an inflorescence called syconium giving origin…

  • Cane management and training

    Berries of the Rubus genus cross liberally, and today we learnt how to deal with blackberries (R. fruticosus) and its hybrids, some of which I have tried to research in more details… a mammoth task, I suppose because in the search for the better berry, yielding more and more disease resistant – or even the…

  • Gooseberry aplenty

    … as over the last couple of months I have had several stints at pruning the cordon collection, and there are still a few to go. Cordon gooseberry pruning is, as of now, the only skill that I feel I really had time to practice long enough to master. I have also tried to time…

  • Preparing for winter

    It is late indeed as the season has been so mild, but the time has come to puts plants to rest for winter while cheering the place up with some winter bedding. Today we put up the lean-to frames, made of wood battens and clear plastic sheeting, to cover the fan-trained peaches and apricots and…

About Me

M.Paola M.Paola, that’s me

I got my first allotment in the UK in 2007 and started gI got my first allotment in the UK in 2007 and started growing my own food. Learning as I went along was not enough, so I studied horticulture. Faced with the horticultural warfare, I became a conscientious objector: I use no chemicals and support organic principles and regulations.

Brexit gave me a new life in the Netherlands, three new plots by a nature reserve and an MSc in sustainable food systems.

I write in my personal capacity and, as a language perfectionist and a non native speaker, I keep reviewing my entries’ text for clarity.

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