Off The Edge Gardening

This creamy California poppy was a surprise sighting today, poking its head through some spent hyacinth flowers, enjoying today’s outrageous sunshine.  Is this a portent?  Is it heralding spring moving into summer, the victor in the battle between the seasonal neighbours?  But just a moment, hold your horses!  It is only the beginning of May, we shouldn’t be talking of such things yet.  This was spring in disguise, getting a little above it’s station.  Today, the first day of true warmth, the natural world was in hyper drive.  Unfortunately I seemed to be trapped in slow motion, the speed of change disconcerting after months of cruising gear.  Soon enough I was back into my stride, planting and weeding and planning and smiling.  As often happens at this time of year, I stood for just a moment, looked about me and thought “what a lucky maid I am”.

We also ate the first radishes of the year, five imperfect jewels were harvested from the raised bed.  They were sweet and peppery and as fresh as a summer shower.  They were reserved for lunch time when they were savoured like none will be again.  Until next year.

I returned home having been reconnected with the sensation of sun warmed limbs, weary but fortified.

Exochorda, the pearlbush, shining in the spring sunshine.

And although I cannot truthfully say that you are my only sunshine, you did brighten my day.

I do love a nice hanging basket

Clients beware.  This is what happened to the unfortunate who suggested that I might plant Cotoneaster horizontalis in their garden.  For the sake of my dear and most sensitive readers I have shown you the silhouette only.  Some might say “harsh”, but I would say “fair”

 

At The Farm we have been working hard to reclaim the vegetable garden. To save you the trauma of our agonies over the last few months I will précis what we have achieved.  There are now two distinct planting areas.  These are rectangles of improved soil that have been released from the suffocating carpet lain many years ago and now covered in several centimetres of turf.  The lower bed has been planted with potatoes; Foremost, Wilja, Red Duke of York and Blue Danube. Courgettes will join them later.  The upper bed will be for peas, both sweet and edible, and all manner of beans and which will be supported by a trio of alternative wigwams created by Young Master George, one willow, one twisted ash, one sycamore.   Both beds are encircled by recycled paving slabs, bedded in by Slasher.

Slasher also constructed a raised bed, on a piece of uneven ground adjacent to the greenhouse. We filled it with upturned turf, relocated topsoil and added a few bags of compost for good measure.  It is to be used for salad crops and its height means it can be more easily protected from Those Who Wish Us To Fail.  The members of this non exclusive club include, but are not confined to, badgers, rabbits and of course those pesky chickens.  It has been succession sown with beetroot, spring onions, cut-and-come-again lettuce, carrots and of course radishes. Continuing with the recycling theme, we found abandoned in the bushes lengths of what I think is reinforcing steel.  This was cut to length and used as an open cloche for further protection.  But wait a moment, what is that top right, poking up between the ruler lines of emerging seedlings?

Rhubarb, that is what it is!  Foolishly (in retrospect) we built the raised bed on top of the scrappiest, saddest, specimen of rhubarb you have ever seen.  Its pathetic performance last year didn’t warrant even a single harvest.  This weakling was so obviously a spent force, doomed and definitely not a threat to straight lines.  Now it is vigorous, indomitable, chaotic.  We are all doomed.  I have cut it twice and still it continues its upward momentum.  Shows just how much I know.  Again.

Everyone is shouting “snow”,”plummeting temperatures”, “wind chill”, “Arctic conditions”.  So, in an attempt to redress the balance, I will whisper “beautiful icy-white Iberis sempervirens“.

This is Tulip “Blue Diamond”.  When I bought the bulbs at last autumn’s Malvern Show I didn’t really believe they would be blue.  But a little bit of me hoped they would be.  The little bit that would like to believe in Father Christmas or that I will win the Lottery or that George Clooney is regretting marrying that skinny maid and has come to appreciate the more padded torso.  They are blooming now and although the peony formed flowers are undoubtedly beautiful they are definitely not blue.  Or diamonds, come to think of it.