Snow unlocking the garden's secret micro climates

We've had a lot of snow here in the Midlands.  Quite a few bouts.  It feels like Narnia - is spring really coming this time?  There's still a lot of snow on the ground in my garden.

It's made me wonder if I'm doing the right thing with my windowsills full of seedlings for late spring plantings. (Chillies, tomatoes, aubergines and yacon) Should I be growing things that are less challenging?  After all we may have another summer like last year.  There's talk of the slip stream that caused last summer's rain and cool temps being responsible for all the reoccurring snow.  Must admit last summer and this winter have dampened my gardening spirits somewhat.

But snow doesn't just have to dampen our spirits completely, we can use it to our advantage.  As the snow is thawing in the back gardens some of my garden has thawed and other parts there's still snow on the ground.  I've been talking pictures of the garden as a record to show me where those cold spots are.  Its telling me a lot about the micro climates and if I understand them better it will help me garden and work with the micro climates in the garden.  It's really interesting because there's parts of the garden that get sunshine and these have still not thawed after a few sunny days.

To the left of the veg patch looks like the warmest part (lucky for my broad beans - yes they're still alive!).  The middle towards the front seems to be the coldest part and the rhubarb grows there. From the middle to the right still all has snow and the far right is warmer than the middle in the front where the rhubarb grows but it is only marginally warmer.  I have a globe artichoke growing in the far right side which has seriously been sulking in the snow.  I'm going to move it to a much warmer part of the garden where it will be happier and the thoughts are the back of the flower border where it will get plenty of sunshine and more shelter (this was one of the first areas to thaw).

I already knew that my patio is quite a few degrees warmer than the rest of the garden and will be trying to grow my tenders plants there, its also a bit of a suntrap too.  I had also carried out studies to see where sun shines on the garden through out the year to learn where sun lovers should be planted.

A more scientific way to do this would be a soil thermometer but I've been looking and never quite seen a good one I want to invest in.  The snow does this job in a very visual way.

But despite my new knowledge I'd still like the Narnia winter to be fully over and spring to march into the garden!

A Weekend in London meeting fellow Grow Your Owners

I recently went to visit fellow gardening friends in the big smoke that is London.  It's funny going back after living there up until 6 months ago.  Forgot how everything seems closer together - the streets are narrower and you are in much closer proximity to people on public transport than in more roomy Birmingham (or my version of living in Birmingham at least).

Despite London's crowdedness, there's lots of amazing urban gardening going on, brilliantly joined up by the wonderful http://projectdirt.com/  Come on you brummies with green projects - just start posting your projects and events on this brilliant website and we'll all be joined up in Birmingham too.  

I went to see two London projects, the Lambeth Poly http://projectdirt.com/group/lambeth-poly-tulse-hill and Transition Town Wandsworth's Bramford Community Garden


http://ttwandsworth.wordpress.com/community-garden/
http://projectdirt.com/group/bramfordcommunitygarden

The lead for the Lambeth Poly is Fiona Law AKA for three days a week is the brilliant South London Master Gardener Coordinator - an essential link and support to the garden army of South London Master Gardeners (and I should know as I was a very enthused and passionate Master Gardener until I moved to Birmingham last April!)

The Lambeth Poly "is a community initiative to grow skills, food resilience and social enterprise."  This is the first project and the vision is to have more polytunnels in the area supplying salad leaves and stir fry leaves to the local community, run by the local community.  The aim is to have more of these polytunnels in other areas of Lambeth.  This really looks like something that could be done in other cities/urban community areas around the UK - especially Birmingham.

Whilst catching up with Fiona and sharing news, I gave her some seeds I'd saved from my garden that I thought may make a useful addition to the Lambeth Poly offerings.  Well one to trial at the very least - one of my favourites: Kai Lan.

Later on I caught up with Miranda, the powerhouse behind Transition Town Wandsworth's Bramford Community Garden.  We shared news and she updated me on how Bramford Garden is going.

I updated Miranda on the Lambeth Poly and she suggested the idea of a pop up greenhouse or a poly tunnel on wheels for vacant areas not being used - ingenious!

Some of you may remember that I used to blog about Bramford Garden from time to time as I mentored at the garden and got my hands dirty there every Sunday until I moved away to Birmingham.  Happy days and happy memories so I really wanted to go back and see how the garden's was going. 

Of course there was lots going on in the garden.  The globe artichoke I planted well over a year ago flowered this summer.  I planted it when I didn't have a garden with sufficient room to grow one of these beauties.  The flower was so beautiful Bramford Gardeners didn't have the heart to harvest it!  Miranda was concerned that it was dying off but the only part that had dried up was the flower stalk.  Like a good perennial, it had divided and there were fresh green shoots at the base.  I was so pleased to see it - all those feeds of worm tea from my wormery had naturally paid off.

I was also really pleased to see the rhubarb.  I also planted this on site as my garden was too small.  They'd had a good harvest from the rhubarb about a month after my departure to Birmingham.  Another plant that really benefited from lots of worm tea feeding.

Actually my parting gift to the garden was a few bottles of worm tea!!

There were lots of cabbage growing and looking so healthy in the garden.  Naturally brassicas are doing great all over the country as they are particularly suited to our climate.  There were also really lovely flowers growing at all the edges and the compost had really come along.

I'd brought some saved Kai Lan seeds for Bramford Garden too so I planted them in one of the beds.  They can take their leaves as cut and come again and if they forget to harvest the leaves, they'll get some lovely white flowers that can also be eaten or left to fully go to seed and allowed to self seed if they want some more new shoots.

They have a few new garden members, one of which is Mustafa who seems to really love gardening.  A recent convert I believe.

Naturally, at the end of the gardening session, any harvested veg was divided out between gardeners so I had some lovely potatoes which came back with me in my rucksack for my kitchen stocks.

I really miss being involved with all of these gardening projects and going back reminded me how involved I was and how much food I used to get from gardening and mentoring local growers in Wandsworth.

I have recently been to see the Urban Veg garden at Winterbourne House and Gardens and have high hopes for involvement in that project.  It will be a project that I can bring all the lessons learned in London through working with school gardens and community gardens and build on that knowledge further. 

http://www.winterbourne.org.uk/education/garden-projects
http://urbanvegwhg.wordpress.com/
 
And I am really looking forward to my future visits to London to share stories and experiences of growing in these two cities.

Successes and poor performers in a challenging summer

Despite the long awaited sunshine we have even enjoying this week, we have had a rather challenging year garden wise so far this year with many commenting "what summer?"!

Which got me thinking - what is doing well in this cool, wet summer?

We are a good few weeks past the mid year mark so I thought now would be a good time to reflect.

So my stars of the patch so far are definitely all the beans (broad beans, peas, French beans) these were slow to start and were impacted by the lower than usual temperatures but perhaps not so much by the lack of sun and they would have certainly enjoyed all the rain once the temperature was warm enough.

Parsnips also are doing well, as are the Egyptian walking onions and the globe artichokes have been steady. Kai Lan is quite happy in these conditions, as are salad crops and the HSL rat tail radishes have done really well whilst adding a lovely floral display if you like that kind of thing!

Of the low performers it has to be the tenders - I am still waiting for the big luscious leaves of the squash plants and the flowers haven't made an appearance yet - that's the ones that escaped slug and snail fest! And I've been feeding those squash lots of worm tea feed but I think the rain washed most of it away! Beets,chard and carrots have been incredibly slow growing and I don't think I'm going to get a tomato glut this year!!

It will be interesting to see what the top performers will be in August after they've all settled after our current heat wave.

How are your veggies faring?

Project New Veg Plot

As regular readers will already know, I recently moved to a new home in South Birmingham. 

My new garden is absolutely huge in comparison to my 4m x 4m patio in London, but its been fairly neglected in the last few years of tenants!

Its got plenty of shrub planting and I'm lucky enough to have inherited some good edibles - an apple tree (that's not been pruned in years and years), a rhubarb and a very sorry looking globe artichoke.  I was surprised with the globe artichoke as I thought left to their own devices I thought they made sister plants - but maybe it just hasn't had much love.  It'll be getting plenty of worm juice now that I live here!

The veg plot is totally grassed over and at the top of the garden.  It's not the sunniest position of this south west facing garden but most parts probably get a good 4 hours of sunshine and this may be extended in the mid 3 months around midsummer.

At present, as we had so many waste cardboard from moving house, we've placed this over the grassed areas to try and start to kill the grass a little before a big clear up job this weekend when my boyfriend and I will both work on removing the grass and exposing the soil armed with garden forks to remove the grass so I can start planting lots of VEG!!!!

I am also working my way around the garden gradually pruning the trees and the shrubs.  Some branches of the apple tree could take our eyes as we walk on the path, so I removed all these low growing branches.  Looking forward to a proper prune job with ladders with my Mum this coming autumn.  There's also a lot of fir trees that need taming.  I think I've even got a bay tree hidden at the back, but there are other overgrown shrubs and firs in the way so I need to make a closer inspection.

The front border nearest the house also needs a lot of love and pruning.  The bed has completely grassed over but I'm thinking of replacing the grass with something like low growing chamomile.

Can you suggest an interesting low growing perennial to replace the grass at the bottom of a flower border with something more interesting?  Preferably edible or herbal :)

An ornamental edible garden

Lately I've been pondering a lot about the ornamental qualities of an edible garden.

It could be my work at the garden centre that has inspired me.

It could be due to planting a few companion flowers in the garden to ward off pests (e.g. calendula and nasturtiums).

It could be recently reading Alys Fowler's book The Thrifty Gardener - I could not help but read this gardening manual cover to cover!  This book inspired me to look at the garden as a combination of a thing of beauty and an edible garden.  Previously, I had always been focussed on growing edibles.  It really got me thinking about combining the two aspects, not just the plants but the containers that the plants live within.

Since then shopping has not been the same - always on the lookout for potential plant containers where ever I go and what ever I consume.  Take a look at what the radishes are growing in, in the picture below.

As well as hunting for potential containers this also led to my sowing a few annual ornamentals which I haven't really done before.  Cosmos was the ornamental flower that crept in - technically speaking the rest of the flowers are recommended companions for an edible garden.

I find rainbow chard with its full leaves and colourful stems always to be visually beautiful as well as very tasty.  Virtues of growing chard

Another vegetable that I have always thought very beautiful are squash.  I grew crookneck summer squash last year and the leaves looked so lush, the flowers and the bright yellow fruit looked amazing. Wonder of germinating squash

This year I have simply been completely bowled over by the beauty of purple pea varieties.  I think their flowers are simply astounding.  The flowers look sweet and no doubt their peas will taste amazing too.  I have never grown these before.  They came in this year's batch of seeds from the Heritage Seed Library called Purple pod.  Just take a look at how it flowers.  Peas please

I had almost forgotten to eat nasturtiums.  I've grown them for the last few years but simply as a fodder for the aphids so that they would leave my more prized edibles alone.

The other day I was gardening at the Bramford Community Garden and one of the other volunteers ate a nasturtium leaf.  The penny dropped - of course, you can eat the leaves! So I picked a nasturtium leaf.  Immediately, I smelt a very evocative smell that reminded me of a smell I knew from my childhood and with that smell I remembered the taste.  I thought why didn't I do this sooner!!  Munched on the leaf and that leaf packed a punch of peppery flavour.  Ever since then, nasturtium leaves have appeared in my daily salad!!  And the leaves and the petals are so beautiful too.

Last week I planted a Globe Artichoke in the Bramford Community Garden for its beautiful tall thistle shaped flower and its multi purpose of being a beautiful and architectural plant as well as an edible.  (Not the one in the picture!)  It is just a baby plant at the moment but I am looking forward to it growing taller than me with loads of beautiful flower heads!

Another thing of beauty is strawberry plants.  They come in a range of flower colours from deep dark pink, to pale pink through to the classic white flowers.  They can be planted in hanging baskets where the ripening fruit can dangle down graciously.

Take a look at these radish flowers. 

If I hadn't neglected the radishes last summer, I would never have seen this beautiful display of white flowers.  Following on from the flowers came the radish pods which were delightfully crunchy in salad (a bit like very small mange tout).