Once more into the breach...

It's been a somewhat abortive start this year. With any luck the gardening season will start properly this weekend when we finally have a chance to move the cats over for the summer and I take up full time residence for a few months again. It'll be a rush to get the potatoes in, no records will be broken for earlies this year, but with any luck nothing else will be too much impeded by the delay.

The enforced stopover in the UK did give me a chance to visit the Harris Garden at Reading University. This is a charming little space which forms part of the School of Biological Sciences and is open to the public all year round. The spring planting is lovely and there are peonies and some exotic plants to come later in the year as well as a sweet little rill with bog garden plants leading to a duck pond. Worth a visit if you're in the area.

One plant that caught my eye there was Nandina domestica. Known as Heavenly bamboo it is nothing of the sort as it is not a bamboo, is actually considered a noxious invasive pest in some parts of America and could be potentially fatally toxic if you were silly enough to eat too much of it. Somehow I'd never seen it before and was taken with the habit and bright berries of the species plants there. It's also considered deer proof, reason enough for me to plant it if ever I heard one so I've acquired some seeds and maybe it will be forming part of my putative ornamental shrub garden one day.

All in my head

The year is powering on past and for reasons almost entirely beyond my control planting and gardening have been put on hold. It's a pity because this lovely mild spring weather is just perfect for getting the beds in order and main crops settled in. It seems now it will be the middle of April before any work can start in earnest which means I've next to nothing to blog about here.

Today I spent some time using Picasa to scroll through twelve years of digital photography looking for interesting pictures and reliving past hopes (mostly failed) and glories (not nearly enough).  It makes me wish again that I'd tried harder to document  all the years that went before - an unedited photo album may not be the most efficient form of record keeping but it does register something and seems far more reliable than my patchy memory.

Something I am pleased about is the tub of snake's head fritilliaries we planted up last week. After years of buying bulbs and promptly forgetting to plant them before they withered in their packets we found some ready potted on a market stall. I'm hoping that buying them in the green like this will mean the start of a proper meadow of them when the flowers are finished and I plant them out in the field.

Past it Pumpkin

Finally managed to get a few seeds started in the propagator, mostly tomatoes and a couple of the Capsicum pubescens I received from Magic Garden seeds. This unnamed rocoto cultivar appears to be very different to the Alberto's Locoto (scroll down) sort I've been growing from Realseeds. Alberto's is relatively small and red fruited, the new sort is orange skinned and appears larger, closer in size to a sweet capsicum.

I managed to kill two of my Alberto's during the winter, just let them get a touch too cold but I still have one good plant and saved seeds to start some more this spring.

The tomatoes are a mixed bunch. Avoiding buying seeds this year has meant rummaging around looking for old packets and hoping that some of the oldest are still viable. For example I found a packet of Mme Jardel's Black which I have no recollection of receiving from HSL or any memory of the plants although the packet had been started. I choose not to interpret this as the start of mental decline but even so, it's a bit like trying them for the first time and I wish I'd had more discipline in documenting my various exploits in the garden over the years. And given that I've no idea how old the seeds are they might not come up at all of course.

I've also popped in a few seeds of Tigerella (which were new, gifted to me at xmas) and some of my all time favourite tomatoes Potiron Encarlote, a huge well flavoured fruit that needs greenhouse protection in Normandy. These seeds are also rather aged so I'm keeping my fingers crossed with them. Scotland Yellow completes this first round of tomato starts. These grew excellently in the open in the poor summer of 2007 so I may try some outside this year if a) any come up and b) there's a chance of a bit of sun and not too much blight.

The Whangaparoa Crown pumpkin is the last one from store. A pity to miss using it up while it was in better condition but allowing it to complete a full cycle should produce plenty of plump healthy seeds for this year. In my head I'm imagining a whole field of plants growing out to maximise the genetic inheritance for the coming years. Who knows, it may even happen.

Back to the future

Back to France tomorrow and the weather forecast is looking good. We're quite apprehensive since we've not been over since the gales and floods. No reports of damage have reached us but we're expecting phone lines to be broken at the least and probably a lot of fallen trees.

To reduce my travelling stress we'll be keeping packing to a minimum but I do have several trays of garlic and shallots to take with us and a whole box of little items we were gifted at xmas, of which I'm hoping the old fashioned oil lamp isn't going to be the most useful. We have another new off-grid toy to play with, my reward for taking part in a crowd sourced funding for Gravity Light who have created a lighting solution that will work anywhere on the planet. They've sent me an example of the product which will make a useful back-up light when the power goes down.

And when I get there I'm hoping to find my pack of Higgedly garden flower seeds because if they're not there I don't know where I've put them.

Goldfinch

Apparently I can't start a blog post without a picture to hang it from. Luckily a couple of days ago a small flock of goldfinches descended on the teasels. This picture was taken through the kitchen window as they cleaned the seedheads of all remaining accessible morsels.

It seems the old trouble, the one that stops me writing, has stopped me painting or doing anything much has spread and just at the moment I feel frozen and unable to get started on the seed planting which is normally such a boost to my mood each spring. I'm casting around in my head looking for a strategy or trick that will break through the jam and let something approaching normality emerge.

At least with the sun shining today brings a little more optimism in my day and I certainly have  lots of new seeds that have the potential to be inspiring if I can only get them into the soil. I found an unnamed variety of Rocoto for sale at Magic Garden seeds and some Conopodium majus (pignuts in the UK) which I'm sure I have already growing wild but have been so unable to accurately identify the plants that I thought starting some from named seed would be a good exercise before attempting to forage again. The seeds look similar to another related plant sometimes grown for its edible roots but checking on this useful botanical picture I think these are what I'm looking for. And I have some more ramson seeds which I hope will be more successful now that I understand they germinate best after stratifying - previous attempts have failed miserably.

A couple of the ulluco tubers sent to me by William Whitson at Cultivariable Seeds have been potted and sprouted already. I started them as an insurance but space indoors is extremely limited so the rest must wait until better weather allows them to be started in the cold greenhouse.

Best get planting then while the suns shines.

A slow start

This picture from 2006 when we first started living at the farm revealed an unnoticed detail today when I was flicking through looking for snaps to illustrate the post; a tiny yellow 22 spotted ladybird hitching a ride up the wall on the side of a snail.

The year is nearly a twelfth of the way through and it still feels like we're in limbo waiting for the start. I was trying to avoid spending a lot on seeds this year so I've not been studying catalogues or making many plans, typical activities for January gardeners and the wet and windy weather has meant more days huddled inside than bright brisk days noticing the natural advance of spring.

I have swapped some ulluco with other enthusiasts and taken in return salmon flowered peas, rocambole and some different varieties of ulluco so some new projects are under way. I've also requested seeds from HSL but unusually they are very late in returning my order, I'm hoping it hasn't been lost in the post. I'd been anticipating getting some Shark's fin melon and Dudi from their SNS section.

It's time to make a seed potato order. I'm wondering if it would be sensible this year to reduce the number of varieties right back to three or four of our absolute favourites. We love our spuds but I'm thinking I'll have more time for other crops if I simplify the planting of these core essentials by sticking to varieties that I know grow without trouble and have some blight resistance.

Maybe I should start those plans now - is everyone else organised yet?

New Year Orchids

During the winter I have more time for ornamental plants. The trouble is that during the summer these little treasures have to survive on a bare minimum of care so my days of fostering rare and exotic specimens are now far behind me. Still, I keep a few pots of the more robust orchids on my bathroom windowsill and even if they are so ubiquitous that for most people they have the same value as cut flowers I can get a thrill from extending their lives and encouraging them to flower for us time and again.

The moth orchid (Phalaenopsis) came from B&Q or some such fine establishment but is in its third year carrying a fine spray of flowers and with another new flower shoot forming. Its companions are currently between blooms but both are growing fine new shoots that will flower in a few weeks time.

Their care regime is an absolute minimum, they sit on a south easterly facing windowsill that takes direct sunlight for a few hours each day, they are watered with tap water at room temperature (because it's recycled from bedside drinking glasses)  every few days and are fed almost never. This lack of attention allows their aerial roots to shoot out untidily and the plants themselves to almost climb out of their clear plastic pots so that they are more sitting on than sitting in the very free draining compost of bark and moss.



The flowers on the jewel orchid (Ludisia discolor) are miniature by comparison, but just as complex and worth examining in detail to reveal their velvety texture. This plant also came from a chain garden centre, a French one this time, but they are easily available in the UK. As with most of my commercially obtained plants this one was past its sell by date and looking a bit battered when I bought it at a bargain price. Jewel orchids aren't often grown for their flowers as it is the beautifully coloured and textured leaves that catch the eye year around.

It lives on a similar window sill to the moth orchids, shaded by a variegated rubber plant that is fast outgrowing its position. A terrestrial orchid, it needs a little more attention to watering than the Phalaenopsis but is otherwise quite well tempered. It's also easier to propagate as it produces new shoots from its root which can be detached and potted on.