Home and Garden

Love your garden

by Greenfingers

With this exceptionally cold winter still affecting gardening opportunities, I have been tidying and reorganising the dependence….or my workshop as I like to call it! I am fortunate to have such a good space which is dry, has concrete floors……… laid by my husband years ago, and lockable doors. I have installed a couple of off the peg shelving units which easily store all the various fertilisers, hormone rooting powders and gels, outside cleaning materials for patios and decking and of course all the tools of which I have a growing number of absolutely indispensable favourites. Most importantly I have a very old radio/cassette/CD player which accompanies me when I work inside or out. I really enjoy murder mysteries and have quite a big collection now……top of the list those by Stuart McBride, gruesome murder details expressed in a strong Scottish lilt and a very ‘alternative’ sense of humour. I’m often chuckling away all by myself! I store all the bird food out here and of course, because of the really cold temperatures, the mice have been helping themselves, their sharp teeth gnawing through any storage box! As long as they stay out of the house that’s ok by me and to this end, I’ve put up a lot more bird feeders in the tree and also nearer the house, so not only can we watch the birds more closely, but I don’t need to store so much of their food inside and there is less available for the mice! In tidying up, I found my original garden plan that I had drawn up within a few days of arriving here. For the most part it has been made and planted according to the design, but a few changes and additions have inevitably been made. A new and longer deck, running alongside the hedge, is great for displaying all the pots of hostas and for relaxing on the large double wooden seat that overlooks everything. The decking serves to stop me or my wheelbarrow falling down into the ditch on the other side of the hedge too…..very useful! The previous owners of the house had begun to demolish an old farm building to one side of the garden, but never actually finished the job! This is my real bête noir! The resulting rubble, was just thrown into what had been the interior of the building, and there are tons of it! My dream would be to have the outer wall reinforced, to use the rubble to build a foundation on, concrete it over and build a deck onto it with a pergola on top. This would give lots of shade in the summer and provide a framework for a lovely climber of some sort…….but renovating the kitchen must come first, so I just hold onto the dream for now. The weather is not being conducive to much working outside at the moment, the grass is like a muddy bog and the temperatures have been too cold for much planting…….minus 4°C here last week and days of thick fog and drizzle, I have had to be content with finally finishing off planting the bulbs and the new peonies. It’s pleasing to see green growth appearing on the clematis and the coloured bare stems of the Cornus are adding some interest. More of the mini cyclamen have self- seeded and the pale primroses are doing well, so lots of positives. I am not cutting back too much of the dead top foliage of the perennials just yet, the frosts have been quite severe and I’d rather leave it on, to offer some protection to the crown and new growth which, hopefully will soon be appearing. It is a bit frustrating not to be able to spend hours outside, getting things done, but the daylight hours are gradually increasing and the real spring weather will soon be here, so I’m just being impatient!

Now is the time to:

Greenfingers

• Neaten up the edges of flower beds using an edging iron.

Trim back plants that may have spread over the edges and remove any dead, diseased or damaged foliage. This will reinvigorate the plants and they will grow back more strongly and produce more flowers. • Sometimes a whole flower bed needs rejuvenating. If this is the case, dig up all the plants, fork the earth over, remove any perennial weeds and add some organic fertiliser. Then divide each plant and replant them. This a great way to increase your plant ‘stock’ and some can be exchanged for other varieties from friends and family. Defined ‘clumps’ in herbaceous borders stops the ‘overcrowded’ look. Bulbs that have been in the ground for many years can cease to flower………this can happen with daffodils in particular.

Allow the foliage to die back completely after flowering, and apply a bulb fertiliser. This increases the natural food supply in the bulb and more energy will be available for future flower production. • Some evergreen shrubs such as Hebe, Choisya, Pittosporum,

Camellia, Aucuba and Pieris, can be pruned now. Remove a third of stems to ground level. Use this as an opportunity to give each shrub a ‘health check’, removing any dead wood, frost damaged foliage and any insect pests. Look for signs of disease and treat accordingly. It is a good time to lift the crown of trees by removing some of the lower branches.

This often gives a new lease of life to the tree and allows more light to reach the area at the base of the trunk. With the increased light level, it may provide an opportunity to make an extra flower bed around the base of the tree. After any pruning always give plants a good watering, apply an organic fertiliser and mulch well. The shrubs mentioned above can all be moved now if needed. As the soil warms up, roots will be able to re-establish quickly. • Cut Cornus and Willow stems down to ground level, to encourage new growth and good stem colour. Once flowering has finished, prune back Viburnum shrubs, cutting out the weakest stems from the base. • Trees and shrubs growing in containers will benefit from the application of new compost. Remove the top 5 cms of the

If your purse no longer bulges and you’ve lost your golden treasure, If at times you think you’re lonely, and have hungry grown for pleasure, Don’t sit by your hearth and grumble, don’t let mind and spirit harden! If it’s thrills of joy you wish for, get to work and plant a garden! If it’s drama that you sigh for, plant a garden, and you’ll get it! You will know the thrill of battle, fighting foes that will beset it. If you long for entertainment and for pageantry most glowing, Plant a garden and this summer spend your time with green things growing. If it’s comradeship you sight for, learn the fellowship of daisies. You will come to know your neighbour by the blossoms that he raises; If you’d get away from boredom, and find new delights to look for, Learn the joy of budding pansies which you’ve kept a special nook for. If you ever think of dying and some fear to wake tomorrow, Plant a garden! It will cure you of your melancholy sorrow. Once you’ve learned to know the peonies, petunias and roses, You will find that every morning, some new happiness discloses! Edgar Albert Guest 1881-1959

Continued .....

old growing medium from the container and incorporate some new compost mixed with a slow release fertiliser. • Lift and divide snowdrops as soon as flowering has finished.

The foliage will still be green, but pull the clumps apart and replant as smaller clumps, over a wider area. This is called planting ‘in the green’. Plant to the same depth as before, with the white of the leaf bases under the soil. • Finish pruning shrub, floribunda, and hybrid tea roses during this month, making sure there are enough stakes in place to support new growth. Roses and clematis need a feed now of general purpose fertiliser and a mulch of fresh compost to give each one a boost. Remember, clematis prefer to have their roots in the shade, so it helps to shield and protect them by cutting up one side of an old plastic flower pot and putting as a collar around the base of the plant. • Prune winter jasmine after flowering by cutting back the flower stems to new strong shoots. Cut about a quarter of all the old stems to just above ground level. • It is time now to sow perennials that will give colour to the garden in summer and autumn. There are several that if sown now, will flower this year! Amongst the best are

Verbena bonariensis, sow in the warm ... a window sill will do ... and germination should happen between three and six weeks. Keep feeding with nutrients and water so that a good system of roots will establish. Sow seeds of Geum in a pot, cover with vermiculite or perlite, water and leave on a sunny window sill. Germination takes about a month.

Sow seeds of Gaura up until May. Sprinkle on top of moist compost and leave uncovered. Germination takes between three and six weeks. These seeds can also be sown on trays of compost, covered in vermiculite when germination will take between eight and ten weeks. Pennisetum grass is a pretty feathery variety that germinates very quickly. Sow on a seed tray filled with moist compost, cover in perlite and leave in warm place….germination only takes about a week!

There are several others to try ……Linaria, Blue Salvia and

Prairie Cornflower. Have a go, sow your own and you won’t have to buy bedding plants….all of the above are perennials and will come back year after year and also produce more seeds for you to sow! • If you are not a ‘seed sower’ bare root perennials can be bought online at reasonable prices. It’s an economic way of establishing a colourful flower garden with an almost instantaneous result. These plants will arrive wrapped in hessian or strong brown paper, and will need potting up and watering immediately. It’s a good idea to stand the plant in a bucket of water for an hour or so before planting out. If you are not quite ready for planting out, these plants will keep well in the salad drawer of the fridge for a couple of days.

Good, reliable perennials to sow in spring include, Eryngium,

Hylotelephium (used to called sedum or ‘Ice plant) Nepeta,

Agastache, Liatris, Echinacea, Phlomis (can become a large plant) and Verbascum. • If you prefer to buy small, potted perennials to grow on, make sure, when planting out, to remove as much of the existing compost and untangle the roots so that they can access nutrients more easily. Make sure the planting hole is big enough, allowing room for roots to spread out and grow in all directions. Don’t plant out too early, wait for the earth to warm up and dry out a bit. Don’t put a lot of fertiliser in the planting hole. If you do, the roots will just stay near the fertiliser, rather than spreading out, and the plant will be less sturdy. • It is time to trim back ornamental grasses. They will be looking a bit tatty and overgrown by now. Depending on the size of the plant, use secateurs or garden shears to cut away all the stems back close to the ground. Be careful not to cut the emerging new green growth. The evergreen grasses such as Stipa and Anemanthele, don’t need cutting back, but need the old growth pulling away…use gloves to do this as the grass edges are ‘sharp’. Pennisetum begins to regrow later in the spring, so don’t cut this one back until the middle of April. • Old, dead stems of perennials can be cut away now, right down low, avoiding any new growth that has begun. • If you have a bare wall facing south or west and you’d like to brighten it up, plant an Actinidia kolomikta climber. This plant, related to the kiwi vine, has beautiful white and pink tipped foliage. It is easy to grow, looks stunning and can reach up to 8 metres. Other choices include, Humulus lupulus (hops) which has long golden yellow leaves and in the summer produces hops. It can reach 8 metres in height.

Also, Trachelospermum jasminoides which produces white flowers resembling jasmine. It has variegated evergreen leaves which are edged with cream in the summer and become red in the winter. • Sow under cover, seeds of cabbage, Brussels sprouts, celery, early leeks, lettuce, onions and peas. There are lots of varieties of seed potatoes available in garden centres now.

Place the potato tubers in a tray or an empty egg tray or carton, to ‘chit’. The ‘chits’ are visible firstly as small ‘bumps’ which then become much bigger. Once ‘chitted’ the tubers can be planted out. Wait until the soil has warmed a little; make ‘drills’ (rows) and line them with compost and plant the potatoes about 30 cms apart. Draw a layer of compost over them to make a ridged mound effect. As the potatoes grow, keep mounding the earth up around them otherwise the tubers will become green and won’t be fit to eat. These will be ready to harvest in July and August. • Deadhead hydrangeas and cut back to just below a healthy bud. • Prune woody garden herbs such as sage, lavender, hyssop and santolina to within 2.5 cms of the previous years’ growth. • Prune blueberry bushes now carefully, making a distinction between the larger, fatter fruit buds and the smaller, flatter leaf buds. Blueberries fruit on the previous years’ growth so the older, woodier stems can be pruned out to encourage new young shoots. • Top up bug ‘hotels’ with new bits of moss, bamboo, twigs, corrugated paper etc., and put them in sheltered areas to attract beneficial insects in to lay their eggs. Keep providing garden birds with plenty of food as it is the beginning of their breeding season now. • Bees are beginning to emerge now and they will need food to survive. Here are some plants that flower early and will provide them with nectar: Prunus, Acers, Pulmonaria,

Bergenia, Primula, Crocus, Clematis, Stachyurus Keep warm and safe and enjoy your gardening! Greenfingers

DEAR DIARY .....

“Keeping a diary” seems to be something that most people have done, in one way or another, at some point in their lives. It’s usually as angst-ridden teenagers that we scribbled down incredible insights (hands up those who admit to identifying ever-soslightly with Sue Townsend’s 'Adrian Mole, aged 133⁄4'). Those diaries were always supposed to be secret, but as we got older we didn’t have the time or inclination to retain the habit. Perhaps social media, with its instant access and global reach, has replaced the traditional form of diary-keeping, but there is definitely still a place for old-fashioned observation in the world of beekeeping. Fictional diaries such as ‘The Diary of a Provincial Lady’ (E M Delafield) and ‘Diary of a Nobody’ (G&W Grossmith) are amusing and tell a good story, dealing as they do with the comings and goings of ‘ordinary people’, whereas Samuel Pepys’s Diary and Daniel Defoe’s ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ are informative and useful in helping us understand life in a definite place and time. The ‘diaries’ or

records kept by scientists are even more so, and this is where the link with beekeeping comes in.

When you start your beekeeping life, you may only have one or two colonies and so it will be fairly easy to remember what’s going on, when and where. Having said that, we have been known to mis-remember things e.g. which queen bee is in which hive, even when there are only two of them! As time goes on, and as the number of colonies rises, remembering becomes more difficult, and so we urge people to get into the habit of record-keeping right from the start. Records are not just for checking what you did last time you did a hive inspection, but they are essential when you want to look at performance – colony build-up, productivity (bees and honey), resistance to disease etc.

by Amanda Baughen

How you keep your records is up to you and the system should suit your way of working – there is no Records Inspector, so don’t worry about that. In the UK you do have to keep a veterinary record of any treatments that you have used on your colonies, but in France it is simply good practice. We find it enormously useful to look back on our notes when we are considering treatment against varroa mite, and also at the feeding records. My records take the shape of a simple diary entry for each visit to our apiaries but you can use whatever system works for you… there are even a number of smartphone apps you can use to store all your notes digitally.

I note the date, time, and weather conditions, and, if doing a full hive inspection, I make a note of the five things I always look for. These are: Queen or evidence of queen, brood in all stages, stores (pollen, nectar, honey), space, and pests/disease. I also note any extra activity such as feeding, treating for varroa, or whacking hornets with my badminton racket. It may not be as interesting to read as Mr Pepys’s Diary but every now and again, looking back over the notes I’ve made in previous years, it can be surprising. We have a tendency to think “Last year it was much warmer/ nicer/sunnier” but my notes reveal that it was just as wet and cold as it is now. One thing I have noted though is that I tend to receive my first bee sting of the year in mid-March…..hopefully this year will be different!

Make a note in YOUR diary to take up beekeeping this year – more information on our website www.13bees.co.uk or email us at infor@13bees.co.uk or call us on 05 45 71 22 90

Amanda Baughen

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DONNA IN HER POTAGER

March 2022

Another month gone already! In Basse Normandie, it has been grey…or white, and I’m not talking about snow! We’ve had a lot of fog and mists so far this year but we did have a beautiful hoar frost one day as a result and the sky was blue that day but very, very cold.

If you read last month’s missive, you might remember that I said the outside straw bale garden was in place? Well, it is but surprise! There has been a change, albeit a minor one…

My main task since I last wrote, has been getting the bales in the polytunnel into the correct layout for my tomatoes. Largely this is an easy job as we’d already moved the bales in there from the 'agglo sheep shed'. This shed is a rather ugly construction that looks as if it was going to be a garage at one time, but now has ten centimetres of sheep poo on the floor leading to it being christened the ‘agglo sheep shed’ (or ASS).

We also have the ‘nice sheep shed’, which is made of stone with a decent slate roof and was probably built for horses - sadly this also contains ten centimetres of sheep poo. Anyway, the ASS (not normally one for using initials, but that is quite appropriate) is now a storage facility!

by Donna Palframan

So, one grey day I decided the time had come to finish setting out the bales in the polytunnel. After all, one cannot hide in the house ALL winter, I thought. I have made two runs of bales, one for determinate, or bush tomatoes and one for indeterminate tomatoes – those that would grow forever in height if they weren’t pinched out. The bush tomato run is to one side and comprises six bales in a row, end to end and my intention is to have two plants in each bale. They will be caged to keep them tidier this year, as I feel in my bones that it’s going to be a bumper year for tomatoes! Support is also good because as the bales decompose, heavy plants do have a tendency to fall over.

The indeterminates will be down the middle of the polytunnel to make use of the height of the structure. In previous years, I have positioned the bales parallel with the support wires but this year, I’m trying something different - I have positioned them perpendicular, so one tomato will be planted at the end of the bale. I’m also not

going to put a tomato in each bale, I’m going to alternate with basil to give the tomato plants more space. It’s a bit of an experiment to see if less is, indeed, more and I get a better yield. I am growing my tomatoes from seed again this year and will sow extra but only use the strongest seedlings, whereas in previous years I have felt that I should use them all!

I had a bit of a hiccup as I realised I had fewer bales than I had thought. This is why the outside garden has been altered slightly as the five bale block has been moved and those bales are now in the polytunnel. As I have mentioned before, it is better to put the bales in their final position outside to avoid moving them as they are very heavy when sodden and likely to fall apart. That gave me a good workout, moving five very wet bales to the other end of the potager. Luckily, I lifted them onto my little trolley, one by one, and moved them without any falling apart. They are wedged in between the fence posts that support the wires and I will cage them again to keep them in place. The irrigation is in place and the next step is to saturate the bales just before conditioning.

The outside bales are so wet that they are starting to get a bit hairy. When the bales are tied, there is always a bit of seed incorporated and this seed is now germinating and I’m growing wheat or barley at the moment. This is without conditioning, just water. We still haven’t picked up any manure as my manure man said it was too wet and he’d let me know when we could. This is galvanizing me to set up a proper composting station as I need a lot of compost for my no dig beds. At the moment, it is a bit rudimentary so isn’t giving me the amount I need. Other things have been more important than finding seven palettes but now, it is a must!

The carrots are finished and I have a couple of parsnips left in the ground and a few leeks but the kales and rainbow chard are still producing well! I cooked some of the Red Russian kale on its own as I said I would and have decided it is a winner! It has a flavour very similar to spinach and deserves to be used as a single variety – I am going to pick some soon for the 'breakfast chef' to make eggs Florentine. We don’t eat lunch so usually have a good breakfast. Some curly kale is being used in a mushroom and Brie pithivier for supper tonight and tomorrow it will be our beloved kale and flageolet soup. When we were omnivores, vegetables tended to be an accompaniment but now, as they say on a lot of cookery programs, they really are the star of the show!

While I’ve got a lot to do in the next few weeks in the potager, it is going to be tidying up and getting ready for the new season – not exciting stuff, so I’m going to take a break from writing and will be back with how to condition a straw bale garden and it won’t be too late for you to try it too!

As well as the potager, Donna operates Gîtes St Vigor & St Martin in Basse Normandie http://www.gite-stvigor.com/