There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments...

I've just been outside to collect some wood for the fire...cold day here in the Wild West...the old garden's looking a bit sorry for itself. It's suffering at the moment from what might be called seasonal neglect: i.e. it's cold, damp and dark outside most of the time so I can't be arsed going out and tidying the beds and what not.

Ho hum. This is not the work ethic one requires if one is to, as Jake & Elwood put it "live, thrive and survive..." or even keep up with Giles & Sue as the do the Good Life. Nevertheless, it was lovely the other night to be able to nip out to the onion bed the other night when I realised I'd none in for chilli. The onion sets weren't particularly successful this year - I think the bed needs some manure or something - but I still got a couple of wee ones for the dinner.

The great success that was our greenhouse/polytunnel thing, however, is no more. The stormy weather of the last few days has ripped the plastic and snapped the support poles beyond repair. I'm a tad miffed to say the least - we had loads of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuces and wee leaves from there this year, to say nothing of a couple of lovely squashes, green peppers and this magnificent micro melon!








The other point of the tunnel was as a wood store - living in one of the wettest parts of the UK, it can be a bit of a trial keeping the fuel dry: tarpaulins don't cut it as they don't allow air circulation and a well engineered woodshed is outwith my capabilities and free-time at the moment. We'll need to investigate an alternative solution for next year, both for produce and wood storage. In the meantime, the dry wood we do have can come into the house and the glut of green tomatoes will be enjoyed as chutney over the festive season. Farewell polytunnel, you've done us proud...

Roaming (not very far) in the gloaming...

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Originally uploaded by singletrackroads

That's the thing about low-light photography, it's tricky to get any quality to the shot and still capture the essence of what it was you saw that prompted you to get the camera out in the first place.
Or maybe it's just my crappy camera. Or my inherent lack of patience. Or photographic skill.
Anyway, this is the very jolly burst of nasturtiums (the kids call them variously 'nurse-tur-shrooms', 'mastushrooms' and 'nur-star-shums') outside the greenhouse.

There're lemony bits, deep reddy-oranges, golden yellows and some lip-sticky scarlet tones. The bees have been very taken with them and they add a wee splash of colour and a peppery twist to a salad...or, yes, 'tis true, a homemade fishcake.

I love my garden.

So come on, come on, do the growth-promotion with me...

It's about that time when the blackcurrants have fallen (or been gently plucked) from their branches and thoughts are turning, as with the strawberries, to how to make them even more productive next year.

The BBC said this about pruning the blackcurrants on their gardening site:

Pruning blackcurrants

• Blackcurrant bushes need constant renewal to ensure heavy crops. Older branches will bear fruit, but quantity and quality decline with age.
• For this reason new bushes are planted deeply so that the plant produces vigorous young branches annually from below ground.
• These are then used to replace older ones cut out after harvest.
• Each year remove about one third of the oldest stems - the bark is very dark to the point of being black - and any that are weak or very low.
• Always cut back to ground level or to a strong new shoot.
• You can combine pruning with picking the fruit, or wait until winter.

So the boy-child and I have been out doing just that. The stems hadn't gone too dark but were certainly much darker than the newer growth so we'll see how it goes. One of our bushes was, literally, fruitless this year so we can't do any worse regardless of how cavalier we've been with the secateurs.

The Disappointing Tatties

That's going to be the name of my new folk group. It's certainly looking like a better use of time than planting the scabby leftover potatoes from the shop and seeing what return they give.

A fairly poor yield from some of our shaws suggests we might be better off with seed potatoes next year. Having said that, we splashed out on onion sets this year and so far they look as if they're going to be fairly rubbishy. What a lottery it all is. Still, much more fun - and satisfying - than a trip to the produce department of one's local supermarket!

Death By Chocolate...

...is one thing, but these sleepy, slightly stoner-esque wasps are trying to do themselves in by overindulging on sticky end of season strawberries. Before I came out with the camera there were about six in there!

The berries are past their best now, so it's time to take the BBC's advice and get deadheading and runner-chopping in preparation for next year when it starts all over again.

Nature's bounty

That just never fails to be an entirely satisfactory experience: picking strawberries for immediate breakfast consumption. Throw in the waffles, yoghurt and freshly made coffee and Saturdays just don't start any better.

Economies of scale

I'm no businessman but even I can see that if you're using 'leftover' pots, homemade compost and a packet of seeds which cost 39pence, then if you get only one courgette with a normal retail price of over 70pence then you're onto a good thing.

I worte a few weeks ago about the wee ones' courgette planting and the other day we harvested ten of the lovely things...

As they say Stateside, you do the math.

Imagine my delight in the greenhouse last night then when I saw the cucumber plant...

The plant itself was bought for £1.50 and the last time I bought a cucumber it was seventy nine pee, so even if we only get those two you can see there, we've broken even. Like the Mastercard ad, though, the satisfaction gained from watching them grow, and helping to be a small part of that process, is priceless.

No pop, no style: all strictly roots

This is better. Much better. I wrote recently about my abortive strawberry runner potting up. My other half suggested I should have waited until there were roots coming out of the pot before severing the new plant's ties with the main crop.

Yesterday was that day.

Into the damp garden between downpours with the youngest who wielded an Opinel under parental supervision to slice through the - tougher than expected - runners to leave us with three new plants.

And, as it turned out, a rather nice way to tie up a wee flower bundle from her own bed in the garden...


Hey, I never claimed to be a flower arranger.

Cordial relations...

Into the midge-ridden garden again this afternoon with the wee folk to take on one of the summer's lovelier tasks: the gathering of the blackcurrants!

A much healthier haul today than the sour, hard spheres harvested for the freezer at the t
ail end of last week. As the soft inky globes dropped into the colander we could all smell the essence of Ribena and we can't wait to use them in a nice sorbet or (middle-class spoiler alert) a coulis type thing to put on our waffles.

Next up is to find out how best to promote growth for next year - hard pruning or leaving well alone? The advice on the web is a veritable tangled bramble bush of contradictions...

Strawberry yields for breakfast...

Our first crop from the ten or so plants in the bed. The slugs have had a wee go at one or two of the precious rubies but overall they're a healthy bunch with a great smell. The fruits, not the slimy slugs...

Looking forward to this lot with some waffles, yoghurt and a cappuccino.

Pretentious? Mais oui...

Tiger tiger burning bright

What in the name of the wee man is that?

This spectacularly emblazoned little creature is currently resting on a branch of our broom plant in the garden. The four mohican style tufts on its back and the array of hairy spikes look fearsome enough to deter all but the most intrepid predator.

Almost certainly, further investigation would reveal the little black and orange striped chap to be perfectly innocuous, but then that would rather spoil the fun. Grrr!

Shutting the stable door...

The rocket has decided to blast off at such a rate that our consumption has been unable to keep pace (such a middle class problem that!)

The youngest and I have spent a wee while rooting out the offending leggy runners and harvesting what we can for the salad spinner.

Waste not, want not.

You're twisting my melons man

One of those 'ach, what the hell' horticultural experiments.

As any fruit fan knows, your standard melon comes with a myriad of seeds which require to be scooped out before munching can begin.

Not for us the drying out and threading onto a necklace though. Oh no. This year I've decided to actually plant some. This lot seem to be doing well enough in the mini greenhouse.

Hopefully they'll come to something and get to the stage where they'll need nets to support the fruits.

If we even get one tiny Galia I'll consider that worthwhile. In fact I'll consider it a miracle - the seeds were from a Honeydew.

Here they come...

Now this is more like it. The much anticipated sight of the yellow flowers signalling the imminent arrival of the courgettes. You can just see one of the fruits forming behind the petals there...

The wee people planted, ahem, thirty seeds. All of which have done very well. We've already given a load of plants away to neighbours and our youngest's nursery but with an average yield of even say six fruits per plant, we're still looking at the best part of EIGHTY of the green blighters!

Ratatouille anyone...?

It's all gone to pot...

One of the garden's most satisfying sights: the potted up strawberry runner.

Effectively a 'free' strawberry plant from one of the already established ones. It appears, however, that a good deal of care must be taken to ensure the new plant is fully established before cutting its lifeline from the mothership...as I discovered to my cost earlier in the week. Nothing quite so disspiriting as a spot of premature cultivation. Oh well. Hoping for better luck with this chap.

How do they do that?

How come peas and beans know that they need to send out their feathery tendrils to find some support to keep them upwardly mobile?

The endless fascination of the garden in action continues apace.

Fly away home...

Comedy ladybird in maroon and cream colours reminiscent of perhaps the London Midland and Scottish Railway, redolent of the steam driven pleasures of a bygone age. Or something.

I don't even like the Beatles...

But I suppose if their Strawberry Fields looked as good as this I might forgive them. The excitement mounts in anticipation of Wimbledon, purely so we can eat the strawberries with some cream and a glass of something sparkly.

Meanwhile over by the porch, the weather's taken a turn for the worse as the Snow in Summer finally arrives with a flourish...

Gotta love those pollenating insects...

How does your garden grow?

I think, if you're a proper gardener, that there's always something needing to be done in the garden. Whether it's weeding the beds or mulching the borders, Gardener's World would have you believe that the world's not right until you've been out with the spade and the secateurs and to hang with any jobs from the real world.

There may well be a grain of truth in this. If, however, like me you're just messing about at it and trying your luck* then one can manage the incredible feat of pottering about and appearing simultaneously productive/constructive and yet shambolic and disorganised.

This, of course, may be no bad thing. Too much anal retention can't be good for either the garden or the digestion. Are regimented rows of seedlings and well drilled lines of saplings really doing much to advance the cause of human happiness? Laissez-faire and devil may care, that's me.

Real gardeners (yes, retired folk really) would no doubt be horrified at my planting regime - points to consider: do I have space, do I have any soil/compost? Answer = yes? Bung in the seeds regardless of instructions to the contrary. I prefer to think of it as a kind of "control method", checking whether those seed packet instructions really are accurate is a true service to the horticulturist I think.

No, no, don't all rush to thank me. It was nothing...

* many years ago, the Beechgrove Garden used to talk about, what I took to be a form of cultivation called "keanamata gardening" - it's only recently I've discovered this seemingly exotic form of horticulture to be for the "keen amateur". Oh well, another bubble burst.