Category: fruit and veg

A Bouquet for April

At last spring has arrived in the garden and taken it by storm. Buds are bursting, birds are nesting and bees buzzing searching the blooms.

Any bouquet for April will have to embrace flowering bulbs.

And how about adding a few bursting buds of trees and shrubs? Our miniature chestnut, the sweetly scented daphne flowers and the froth of snow-white amelanchier flowers.

All around the garden fresh fruit blossom promise beautifully scented and delicious, delicate flavours. The pinks of apple blossom and whites of plums. Oh so tasty!

The insects are appreciating these new signs of life too, in particular the bees and butterflies. This little bee knows that there is something good awaiting him inside the tulip once it opens. He is just a centimetre or so long and coloured a rich gingery orange.

I shall finish off by inviting you to enjoy a little gallery of garden delights taken on the last day of April.

Dusky pink primula hides in arum and stipa leaves.

Copper sculpture with copper leaved phormium.

Kingcups on the dge of the wildlife pond.

Tags amelanchier, apples, foliage, fruit and veg, fruit blossom, fruit., garden photography, garden wildlife, gardening, grasses, insects, ornamental trees, outdoor sculpture, sculpture, spring bulbs, spring flowers, spring garden

arboreta birds fruit and veg garden design garden photography garden wildlife gardening grow your own hardy perennials Hardy Plant Society HPS meadows ornamental trees and shrubs Shropshire South Shropshire village gardens

Holly Cottage – another garden visit with the HPS

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date February 22, 2013
8 Comments on Holly Cottage – another garden visit with the HPS

June 16th and we are visiting two gardens with fellow members of the Shropshire Hardy Plant Society. In my previous post I shared our morning visit to “Fairview” and now we move on to Holly Cottage just a few miles away for the afternoon. To get to the cottage we had to drive over a few fields dodging sheep and when we parked up the heavens opened and the temperature plummeted. Bravely we donned waterproofs – it was well worth it. The garden at Holly Cottage ran downhill from the cottage and within its two and a half acres formal and informal plantings of herbaceous plants mingled with mature trees, meadows, a pond and even a small stream.

Just as we were impressed by the veggie patch at Fairview in the morning, the fruit and veg garden at Holly Cottage impressed too. This veggie patch practised organic principles to produce quality harvests.

Part of following organic principles is to encourage wildlife to garden with you and here there were nest boxes and bird feeders in evidence as well as a meadow, a small arboretum featuring mostly native and wildlife attracting trees and shrubs. A comfy rustic bench was also positioned where we could appreciate it all.

We like to find original new ideas or twists on old favourites during our garden visits. At Holly Cottage we came across this wonderful example of high-rise living for plants.

As with any garden the plants are the stars and on a dull, wet cold day such as this these stars are needed even more. Holly Cottage’s plants did not let us down. They lifted our spirits out of the gloom.

Tags fruit and veg, fruit and vegetable growing, garden photography, garden wildlife, gardening, grown your own, meadows, organic gardening, shrubs, trees, wildlife

fruit and veg garden design garden photography gardening hardy perennials HPS ornamental trees and shrubs roses Shropshire South Shropshire village gardens

“Sheila’s Cafe” – The Garden of Two Hardy Planters’

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date February 20, 2013
6 Comments on “Sheila’s Cafe” – The Garden of Two Hardy Planters’

We spend many days visiting gardens all over the country, several of them large gardens run by the RHS or the NT, which we enjoy greatly. But we enjoy even more small gardens in our own county of Shropshire or in the neighbouring counties of ~Hereford, Staffordshire and Cheshire, many of them opening under the auspices of the National Garden Scheme. But most of all we enjoy our visits with the Shropshire Branch of the Hardy Plant Society, and in particular gardens tended by fellow members.

On a wet, dull, chilly mid-June day we visited just such a garden a few miles from our home in the Shropshire Hills.

Fairview is the garden of Geoff and Sheila Aston and although not a large garden it has a large heart. It welcomed us with such warmth.

It invited us to follow its paths and discover its secrets hidden behind hedges and around corners.

When we think back to this garden we think of Sheila’s Café and the tidiest garden shed in the world. I will admit to experiencing a bout of “shed envy” – just how does Geoff keep his work spaces so tidy and well organised? This shed envy was closely followed by “compost heap envy”!

Sheila had turned the garage into a café where we met for a coffee and cakes and a chat about the garden before we had a slow wander. Now that is what I call a welcome!

Time for a wander ………………..

Before finishing our tour we were to be impressed by the veggie patch.

Off to Holly Cottage now – just a short journey down a maze of Shropshire lanes. (see next post)

Tags foliage, fruit and veg, garden photography, gardening, Hardy Plant Society, HPS, Shropshire Hardy Plant Society, Shropshire Hills

conservation fruit and veg gardening grow your own

Odd Harvests

In the last few weeks of last year we harvested two plants that we have rarely harvested before but for very different reasons.

The first crop came from the greenhouse where the plants had been growing away all summer in growing bags after being sown in the propagator early in the spring. We were given the seeds and having never tried them before we decided to give them a go. Tomatillos – the name sounding somewhat like tomatoes and the plants and fruit ending up looking somewhat like cape gooseberries.

Here is the crop, now we had to decide what to do with them. Chutney seemed to be the only answer, but I decided to turn to Google for ideas and perhaps if we were lucky, recipes.

And here they are closer up, thin pale green papery sheaths around fruit like green tomatoes. They didn’t look ready to harvest but we had heard somewhere that this is the stage to pick them and as the plants were suffering as temperatures cooled down, we went ahead and plucked them from the stems.

O.K. Back from a Googling session and I now knew that the botanic name for tomatillo is Physalis philadelphica, which makes it a relative of the Cape Gooseberry and a member of the Nightshade family. It originates from South America. In Mexico it is a staple food of the diet and is often used to make green sauces. Here they are called “Tomate Verde” and are most appreciated for their green colouring and sharp taste.

I found recipes for soups, stews, salsas and yes, chutney.

The second “odd” crop is bamboo, odd because it doesn’t often seem to be grown in the uk for anything but decorative reasons and because it is the first time we have seriously harvested our bamboo to use as garden canes. We grow three different bamboos for their different stem colours and originally planted them for their ornamental value, tall and graceful, moving gently adding sound to quiet days.

Growing your own garden canes is a good way of helping the environment. Importing them from China seems a terrible waste of resources.

It was mostly the black stemmed variety that was ready this year. Their stems are tough so I struggled with secateurs before turning to a pair of nicely sharpened loppers and getting the job done. The range of colours is very wide as the photos below shows.

Similarly we harvest our prunings, utilising the large shrubby ones for beanpoles and the scrubbier smaller ones for beansticks. We started to harvest these last week and will continue as we sort out the garden in readiness for the coming growing season.

Peas and beans seem to like to twine themselves around these rougher sticks and poles in preference to the bamboos available in garden centres. And of course we must remember they are self-sustaining, so there is no cost to the environment.

Tags bamboo, conservation, fruit and veg, fruit and vegetable growing, greenhouse gardening, grown your own, harvest, organic gardening

allotments fruit and veg gardening grow your own

Big Parsnips etc.

We are never very good at growing parsnips, but we have been getting better in recent years. With our allotment getting flooded six times this year we were not hopeful of success with our root crops. When the seedling carrots, beetroots and parsnips were just a centimetre or so tall and very delicate they found themselves underwater. When the water drained away the little seedlings just shrugged the experience off and carried on growing. The season carried on with the crops periodically under water. Imagine our surprise when we began harvesting healthy young roots of carrot and beetroot. Once frost had sweetened the parsnips and celeriac we began harvesting them too. By Christmas they were most impressive! I included my secateurs in the pictures to give an idea of scale.

We haven’t used excessive amounts of fertiliser to get them to this size just simple organic gardening techniques. Lots of manure dug into the ground, deep mulches of garden compost and feeding with comfrey feed made from our own comfrey plants. Not root crops these but they did delight and surprise us with their size and flavour. Elephant Garlic is not garlic at all but more closely related to leeks. We eat them roasted when they taste of sweet, delicate garlic.

Now we definitely have something to live up to next year. Perhaps the weather will be nearer normal next year and we might even avoid the floods. Mind you of course, the crops above might have excelled because of the floods rather than in spite of them.

Tags allotments, carrots, celeriac, elephant garlic, fruit and veg, fruit and vegetable growing, gardening, garlic, grown your own, harvest, organic gardening, parsnips, root crops

allotments fruit and veg gardening grow your own

Old Garden Tools

I just love old garden tools. I like using them and I like collecting them. They feel good in the hand, smooth and worn and I know I am holding a piece of gardening history. Every tool has a story to tell, a story I shall never know. But you can always imagine!

When you find old tools in antique centres, on market stalls or at garden or smallholder shows they seem dry and dull and lifeless. It is when I do them up that I feel in touch with the old gardeners who have used them for decades.

I have been amazed to find that for almost every old tool there is a modern equivalent and that today’s versions are often virtually identical. I enjoy trying out tools from my collection and find them just as easy to use. So it seems there are no new ideas in garden implements just new versions of the oldies.

The garden line below was used by Jude, The Undergardener’s Grandfather back in the early years of the twentieth century when he worked a market garden. We use it all the time on our allotment as it is far superior to any available today. It is a design that just could not be improved upon.

On a recent lottie visit we had hoeing and raking to do so I decided to take up my old triangular headed hoe and my “crome”. They worked really well, the sharp tines of the crome breaking down the soil to a fine tilth and with the hoe we could manouvre between winter onions and leeks a treat.

I enjoy trying out these oldies from my collection and I find them easy to use and often more comfortable than their new cousins. Perhaps it is the materials they are crafted from, the hardwood handles honed from local trees and the iron blades and tines. Today’s plastics and stainless steel give less and feel harder and colder. Of course the main difference is that old tools were individually made by craftsmen.

The art of repairing them and bringing them back to life is moat satisfying. I clean up the metal to prevent them getting any rustier and treat the wooden bits to a few coats of linseed oil well rubbed in. The smell brought back memories of my cricketing youth when I used to treat my bat handle in the same way.

Below is one of my pieces in need of some tender loving care, its handle dry and its blade rusted.

And here he is all spick and span!

This batch has been rust-treated, linseeded and given the first of two coats of satin finish varnish.

And here they all are in all their glory, decorating the back wall of our garage.

These two little hand tools are weeders better known as “daisy grubbers”. They seem so well designed with sharp forked tongues, a fulcrum point and beautifully shaped wooden handles, hand turned by a craftsman.

Tags allotments, fruit and vegetable growing, garden tools, gardening

climbing plants community gardening fruit and veg gardening gardens open to the public grow your own National Trust outdoor sculpture

Thrive at the Vynes

We visited the Vynes on a wet October day not knowing that the walled garden there was run by the gardening charity, “Thrive”. If you ask someone to name a garden charity the most likely answer would be the RHS, the NGS or perhaps Garden Organic but few will mention Thrive. This is sad as they do such good work. On their website when describing their role they state, ” We champion the benefits of gardening, carry out research, and offer training and practical solutions so that anyone with a disability can take part in, benefit from and enjoy gardening.”

“Thrive” is such an apt name for a charity which helps people thrive in the garden and through gardening. Sadly as the weather was so wet we met no gardeners at work. Apart from us and the occasional Robin, who provided the entertainment, the place was deserted.

The charity looks after gardens all over the UK teaching the skills of gardening and developing a love of gardening in its clients. Their gardens though are there to educate others. The gardening standards are very high and the gardens boast some effective educational and informative displays.

Here at the National Trust property, The Vynes, the productive garden maintained by Thrive illustrates quality techniques in action especially composting.

We liked these two ideas for raised beds, particularly this turf bank version, which would make gardening easier for wheelchair users or back pain sufferers (like me). The second picture shows raised beds and recycling combined – revamped old tyres.

Arches constructed from tree prunings make most attractive and natural supports for climbers such as Sweet Peas and help entice you down the paths.

Organic ideals are followed here as well, such as using fleece as protection from pests and the cold and growing green manures such as this Phacelia.

We were impressed by the use of willow as a craft material in creations such as the giant hen and the wall-mounted butterfly.

There was even a children’s garden with picnic tables topped with puzzles and a beautifully decorated shed full of special tools and games.

The produce from the beds are for sale to visitors and at this time of year that meant mostly apples in variety.

To find out more about the work of Thrive I suggest a visit to their website www.thrive.co.uk . To see their work in action you can visit one of their many gardens around the country. Check it out and you will be impressed!

Tags apples, community gardening, fruit and veg, fruit and vegetable growing, fruit., garden charities, garden photography, gardening, grown your own, National Trust, organic gardening, the Vynes, Thrive

allotments autumn autumn colours bird watching colours community gardening fruit and veg garden photography garden wildlife gardening grasses grow your own meadows natural pest control ornamental trees and shrubs photography roses wildlife

A Wander Around our Allotments in November

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date November 10, 2012
10 Comments on A Wander Around our Allotments in November

The penultimate lottie wander post for 2012 and at last the weather is providing a few bright cold days. This is what we look forward to in this autumnal month, rather than the wet dark days we have been presented with in the first few days. The light is warm and gives a crisp edge to any photos taken as the blue haze of summer has disappeared.

We went up the lottie yesterday to deliver some spare seeds for the Seed Swap basket and to collect some greens left by fellow plot holders for our chickens. They are spoilt by our friends from the site! It was mid-afternoon and we had not intended to stop to work, but we changed our minds. We got out the communal mowers and rakes and gave the final two meadows their annual “hair cuts”. Jude, The Undergardener did most of the work as it is a bit difficult with my spine and leg pains, so I wandered off taking advantage of the special quality of the day’s light and shot off a couple of dozen pics with my Galaxy.

As we worked on the meadows the resident Field Voles scuttled off as they felt the mower’s vibrations and disappeared down their holes. We left a few clumps of wildflowers standing for everyone to enjoy before winter cuts them down. Field Scabious, Mallow and Sunflowers.

The meadows that are already trimmed look flat and brown, but the pathways mown through them look crisp and green.

The foliage in our Sensory Garden is given extra vitality in the November sunshine.

The next shot is a view of the site boundary through the seed heads of a white-flowered Actaea across the Spring Garden. In the Spring Garden a tiny Acer shows that you don’t have to be big to impress.

In the meadows the last of the grasses and sunflowers stand tall and proud.

Up in the mature Sycamore and Oak the resident bats will be shuffling around and preening in readiness to leave their roosts in the boxes and go on the feed for moths and night-flying insects. Bats are our night-time pest control patrols. In the daylight hours we are being entertained by birds of prey often being mobbed by our flocks of Jackdaws and Rooks . Peregrines, Buzzard, Red Kite, Kestrel and Sparrow Hawk.

Around the plots the gardeners are preparing their plots for the winter, beds are cleared and manure piled up or spread over the surface.

A few crops remain for winter sustenance.The red stems and purple leaves of Ruby Chard add a burst of colour. Brassicas are covered to give protection from ravenous and greedy Wood Pigeons who love to eat the sweet centres of Brussels Sprouts and the tenderest, newest leaves of cabbages.

A few remaining flowers add extra brightness to the plots.Tthat most popular of companion plants, the Calendula brightens up compost areas and odd roses still perform in the Summer Garden. We can expect these David Austin roses to continue to treat us to flowers until the new year.

The star of the site for the next few months will be the Winter Garden and it is already showing promises and hints of what delights it has in store for us in times ahead. As leaves fall from trees and shrubs the colours and textures of the stems and trunks will come into their own.

We have endured a wet summer and autumn with each month breaking previous rainfall records. Crops have been poor and we have been flooded four times. Dave, the Scarecrow looks a bit worse for wear too!

autumn autumn colours colours fruit and veg garden design garden photography gardening ornamental trees and shrubs trees

Nuts and Berries

As allotment gardeners we enjoy late summer and early autumn as the busiest harvesting time, but lots more food is coming into readiness in our ornamental gardens and parks. Nuts, seeds and berries provide feasts for wildlife and feasts for our eyes.

Sweet Chestnut awaiting the attention of squirrels in Pittville Park in Cheltenham.

Onopordum seed heads against a blue sky in our garden.

Drooping Dieramas.

Black umbellifer seeds.

Crataegus berries and autumn foliage.

A host of Arum Lilies.

Jude “The Undergardener” mystified by an unknown chestnut.

The chestnut had spiky golf balls as nut capsules.

Mad clashing colours on Euonymous europaeus.

Crocosmia Lucifer graceful stems with its ginger coloured seeds.

Let us now have a wander around our garden and spot red berries, and photograph them before the Mistle Thrushes, Redwings and Fieldfares gorge on them.

But unlike Henry Ford we do grow our berries in more than one colour!

White Dogwood.

Two-tone Hypericum.

Musky purple grapes.

This unusual cream berried Cotoneaster always confuses garden visitors. (C. rothchildsiana)

Tags autumn, autumn colours, autumn harvests, fruit., garden photography, gardening, harvests, ornamental trees, shrubs

allotments autumn fruit and veg garden photography gardening grow your own

Fruity

We harvested our first apples last month and have been harvesting other varieties as they ripen. We still have a few varieties waiting on the treesto be collected. The first harvest was from a tree we have trained over an arch, having bought it as a one year maiden. It is a deep red-blushed beauty called “Scrumptious” which is a rather silly name but I have to admit quite apt. The basket weighed in at 8lb 7oz. – very pleasing!

The other variety that we normally harvest in September is James Grieve, which grows in the company of a clematis over another arch. This tree is a reliable heavy cropper and this year’s crop looked most promising as we waited for it to ripen. We can enjoy the taste of this apple straight from picking and they stay full of flavour for a few months, but it does not store too well.

The harvest did live up to expectations weighing in at 27 lb with a few of the individual fruit being really large as we can see in the picture below of these two sitting on Jude, the Undergardener’s hand.

All the apple, pear and plum trees in our garden were bought as one year maidens and we have trained them into cordons, over arches and as step-overs. Now after ten years it is so rewarding to see them as such productive trees. Of course apple trees are worth growing for their blossom as well, so they are doubly useful to us gardeners.

The apple below is Red Falstaff a variety we have trained as a single-stemmed upright tree. It sits to the left of our greenhouse door, where, coupled with Scrumptious on the right of the door, it gives the impression of being one of a pair of sentinels guarding the doorway. We harvested our Red Falstaff a few days ago and the fruit has developed much deeper red blushed cheeks. In total though the little tree produced only half a dozen pounds of fruit.

The green fruit below is a Bramley apple, the only pure cooker we grow. It is not the best of croppers as we made the mistake of training it as a step-over. Bramley is a tip-bearer so when we carry out the formative pruning necessary with step-overs we are effectively cutting out most of its future fruiting buds. However it does give us a small crop every year, so it has forgiven me my ignorance. We stew this cooking apple and then freeze them to use in pies in the winter and spring. As we do not grow many cooking varieties we tend to use wind falls and any damaged fruit of eaters as cookers or as ingredients in chutneys or mixed with blackberries in jams.

Ashmeads Kernel seen below however is a most successful step-over tree, with a dry textured skin and nutty flavour. This apple is one of the last to be harvested in late October but will not be at its eating best until December through to February, when its flavours will have fully developed.

We grow some heritage varieties which tend to produce fewer fruits but are usually better flavoured, such as Cornish Aromatic, Beauty of Bath, Pixie and King of Pippins.

The photo below shows the unusually shaped, boxy fruit of Cornish Aromatic with its green skin with a few freckles of slightly deeper green.

Any apples whose flavour improves with keeping ,we store in shallow trays with individual fruit wrapped in newspaper to make sure no fruits touch each other. If an apple does go bad when in store then this barrier of newspaper will stop it spreading too quickly.

The act of picking fruit evokes our senses, the touch of the skin as we twist the fruit from the tree, the scent of the fruit in the hand and the subtle variations of reds and greens to delight the eye. And then of course comes the taste, in some cases best straight from the tree in others the tastes matures with age, reaching a peak months after being plucked from the tree. There is also the sensation of the first bite, the crunch, the juice running and the balance of taste between sweet and acidic, and the hints of fruits shared with other fruits, strawberries and pineapples.