Cold

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cold, frost, January, newgarden, Winter, winter jobs

The other week was really cold. Quite a few crisp, sunny days but resolutely cold. I lost one day’s work because I couldn’t do hedge planting when the ground was frozen, all the moisture is locked up in the soil, as well the groundbeing hard (literally!) To dig. The other days, I wrapped up well and chose jobs to keep warm.

The mulching continued and, with a bit of help, I got a good way to emptying that trailer. See previous post for the ‘full’ picture. It is sometimes said not to mulch frozen ground as it prevents it from warming up but this is a thin layer, to top up the organic matter rather than a thick weed suppressing mulch and it doesn’t make much difference anyway.

I do about 5 different gardens in an average week, I have some weekly, some fortnightly and 1 monthly so this is just a round up of jobs spread across them. This was a particularly cold day so I started off in the polytunnel, clearing last year’s left over vegetable plants and the dog helped himself to carrots. It didn’t warm much but I started the apple tree pruning in the orchard and gave up when I couldn’t take the cold any longer.

-5!

I started a new garden and it was -5°c.

It’s got vegetable beds, a wall border, lawn and a beautiful oak tree. I managed some cutting back of a mass of raspberries and then worked my way around the border as the sun came out. It has been well planted and I am looking forward to seeing what is there throughout the year, quite nice to start in January even if it was a bit chilly.

It’s got some lovely features, this would have been the access to the church across the road, so it’s an exciting start. Can’t wait for spring though.

Back to work January 2024

Tags

gardener, January, winter jobs

It was back to work this week, after 2 weeks off. There was no easing my self in gently, I started with large scale muck spreading in low temperatures and a biting wind. Even using all that energy didn’t keep me warm but I was just glad that I managed to keep going for the day, I haven’t done for a few years and I thought that I might be too old and unfit. I did feel it in my legs the next day though!

The work begins!

Garrya looking good. I’ve been working with the other gardener to get it into a better shape.

After that the week got marginally warmer as the wind dropped. I seem to have been up a ladder and using my long pole cutter quite a bit. I’ve been tidying up a Virginia creeper and pruning a Wisteria.

Wisteria pruning, ongoing.

I am using the slower, winter period to try and get on top of rose and shrub pruning and do a bit of planning, mostly in my head, what could go wrong?

Rose pruning, just made a start on this one.

Winter flowers are so precious. Here are a few from this week

Aconites always flower nice and early.

Vinca major – periwinkle.

Mahonia

Next week I start a new garden! Can’t wait to see what’s growing in it.

January 2024 before returning to work.

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January

January 2024 before returning to work.

The (2) week(s) in pictures.

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#gdnbloggers, April, gardening, May, Spring

Tree peonies

It is the end of April and it is still really cold. Yes, I am going to mention it again, I do have to work in it, and I’m still wearing my woolley hat.

Although spring is a bit slow, we have had plenty of rain here in Suffolk and things are growing nicely. It’s great to see the tree peonies in flower, it is the first year for 2 of them. I don’t know the varieties I am afraid as they were put in by the customer and only have generic peony labels.

Pear blossom

As I drive around I am enjoying the cherry blossom in all its forms, pink, white, single, double, but I also have a fondness for pear blossom with its delicate pink stamens.

Apple blossom

This is the first apple tree to flower in the orchard. There is a lot more to come.

The moist soil meant I managed to get this dock out with all of the root, very proud of this one!

I have mostly been weeding and edging this week including edging paving stones in the grass. At least I can see where I have been!

So why did I think I could actually write one a week? Now it’s the beginning of May and it’s been a warm but wet day today and everything is looking lush!

It’s been a while – part 2 April 2023

Tags

#gdnbloggers, gardening, Spring

Daffodil time!

Fast forward and it’s a nearly year since I wrote the last post. I’ve set myself the task of writing a blog post each week while I wait for my daughter to a have a drumming lesson. We’ll see if it happens!

After a cold winter, it’s beginning to feel a bit more spring like with blossom on the trees and daffodils out all over the place.

Prunus Kojo-no-Mai, covered with bees.

So the reason for the long gap, not just laziness, shortly after starting the last post my mother passed away suddenly so my time for the last year has been taken up with, ‘dealing with stuff’.

Akebia

While I am still wading through admin, I have also moved house and there has been a lot of sorting of both mine and my mother’s things. I now have a much smaller garden and I also lost my allotment space, at the pub, if anyone has been following my previous posts!

April seems to have been particularly cold but the blossom is out and I have sowed some seeds. This is big news as I didn’t manage to grow anything last year. I will introduce you to my new garden in another blog post.

Dog walking, more blossom to admire.

….A few days later and it’s still April and still freezing. The grass is growing though and the spring leaves are bursting out in all their greenness. I think I’d better stop procrastinating and actually publish these blog posts.

Cowslips from last week.

It’s been a while – part 1 June 2022

Hello blog, if I was struggling before, it’s got much worse but it is not motivation that is the problem this time.

Ox-eye daisies in the orchard

At the end of February, my partner had a stroke. It was a big one and I was told it was 50/50 whether he would survive. He did but he’s still in hospital and recovery is going to take a long time.

This also happened. Two days before the stroke we brought our new puppy home, not great timing and it has been very stressful keeping everything going.

This isn’t a blog about how gardening has saved my mental health. I have mixed feelings as I have been enjoying all the new stuff in spring but it marks the time passing and what he is missing stuck in hospital. I have also been so short of time that I have missed all the seed sowing times and the garden has carried on growing by itself.

One of my customer’s gardens. I planted the alliums in the autumn

Luckily all my customers have been brilliant and I am beginning to catch up after the few weeks I had off in March. I just have to make sure that I don’t beat myself up about all the stuff I can’t do. I have managed to cut the grass at home, they are only weeds and this year I will have to buy plants instead. Things catch up. I’m in Ipswich lots have people have got on.

I was writing this on the train and that last bit was supposed to be a text to my daughter. Zoom forward a year to April 2023 to carry on the catch up.

Finding motivation

Hellebores in the sunshine.

I have been struggling to get motivated in the garden this year, it’s not been the weather, although the last few days with two storms have been pretty grim. In January we had quite a bit of sunshine and some nice crisp days with lots of beautiful sunrises and sunsets.

Sunset

I have been busy being creative for my customers with new borders and new vistas but my garden hasn’t changed and I have only ordered my seeds for the allotment today. Unfortunately my polytunnel blew over in storm Eunice so I don’t have anywhere to sow them yet, but it’s a start.

New vista so you can see across the two borders from the top of the steps, I’ll come back to this another time.

Before

I have cleared this bed to create a herb garden near the kitchen door.

I despair when I look at my own patch, there is so much to do, but today I sowed some vegetable seeds in a customer’s, only slightly broken, greenhouse and did a bit more to the allotment.

Strawberry runners growing in the gravel.

I have decided to dig up my strawberry bed because strawberry plants don’t really have a very long productive life and they are really diseased as you can see. They came up more easily than I had expected as it turns out they are also suffering with vine weevil grubs eating the roots. I will replace with some new stock somewhere else, probably not as many.

Compost heap

Lines of compost, dug soil and old strawberry plants.

One of my many jobs to do is make compost bins but meanwhile I am combining digging over and turning the compost pile and topping up the raised bed with the good stuff.

There was even a bit of sunshine today!

After Christmas

I had the before Christmas rush around. Made a wreath from hazel twigs cut from the garden, spare bits of foliage cut off the Christmas tree and ivy from a neighbour who was tidying his hedge up. Tied together with Nutscene string so that I can just compost it when I’m finished with it.

We went on a 2 night visit to Wales to see my daughter’s friend, it’s a long way from Suffolk! Managed to have a visit to the sea at Southerndown Beach and visit the walled garden at Dunraven Castle.

Also made my first ever trip to IKEA, in Cardiff, so appalled by the hundreds of plastic plants that I didn’t take a photo!

I received a few gardening related gifts for Christmas. Can’t wait to read ‘Thoughtful Gardening’ by Robin Lane Fox, gardening gloves are always useful and I bought the flask myself so that I can take soup to work on chilly days.

Although I have already had a week off, eek, today, Monday, was the first day that I didn’t have to get up for something. Usually at this point I would spend some time in my own garden and although I looked around, and found some wasabi mustard that I had forgotten about in the polytunnel, it has been relentlessly wet and grey and not really gardening weather even for me.

Wasabi mustard from Sarah Raven seeds.

Another couple of days on and guess what, it is still grey and raining/drizzling. I still haven’t done any gardening but I have been browsing the seed catalogues and sorting out my random home saved seeds.

So while it remains uninviting, we can enjoy the thinking and planning ahead. I am looking forward to the first snowdrops appearing and already excited by the buds forming on the hellebores. And trying to catch up on blog posts of course.

Leaves

It has been beautifuly warm this week with a little bit of sunshine here and there. Perfect weather to show off the peak of autumn colour just before a big temperature drop and proper winter sets in. In essence, this time of year is all about the leaves.

There are the ones on the trees, red maples, like this one in one of my gardens, and bright yellow field maple and hazel dotted along the country lanes as I travel around to work.

Cotinus

This Cotinus, probably Cotinus coggyria Royal Purple, looked stunning backlit by the morning sun, was in another customer’s garden.

They look amazing on the trees, but then they fall. When they first come down, leaves can look pretty good on the ground too but they are not great for lawns, where they block out the light to the grass and they are not so welcome on paths and driveways where they become a sticky, slippy mess and get trampled into the house.

Beech

Luckily I only have one garden where I rake leaves, the others have someone else with the proper equipment or they deal with them themselves. I don’t mind leaf raking, it’s good exercise and it keeps me warm.

The start of the raking

More leaves!

This is a pretty traditional garden for an old lady and I suspect the system has been in place for a long time. The leaves get raked up and narrowed to the leaf pile in the corner.

Leaf pile

A few weeks ago I forked last year’s pile over the wall at the back into the bay behind

One year old leaves, with a few new ones from the beech above.

The pile that was here, so two years old, has mostly been spread on the garden borders but there’s a little bit left and it looks like this.

It’s a bit lumpy because of the conker shells, all the conkers have to be picked out because they tend to grow.

When I look up and all the leaves are gone, it’s a good moment because the leaf raking has taken place over several visits but now it is done for the year and time to leave the leaf pile to work it’s magic.

And this is where I walked!

Pub Kitchen Garden – Re-opening

Tags

#gdnbloggers, Spring, The Queen at Brandeston, Vegetables

As we all know, it has been an unusual and difficult year all round but especially for the hospitality industry. The Queen at Brandeston, where I manage the garden has met each new challenge full on, opening a local shop and serving food and drinks as takeaway, then sitting outside and inside, as permitted, at different times.

Last week I was there on Easter bank holiday, trying to catch up with jobs in the vegetable garden to make sure I was ready for the growing season ahead.

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Rhubarb

Usually the pub would be busy, but this year it was just me and Mr Blackbird feeling the chill of snow showers.

You can just about see the snowflakes!

I was weeding the final beds to be done and he was following me, filling his beak with worms. He must have a family in the hedge.

Every year I hope to keep on top of the weeds with a little bit of regular hoeing but once I spend more time planting, watering and sowing seeds, the weeds take overk. So I will just take this moment to enjoy the vegetable patch being under control before it all goes crazy again.

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Here it is, ready to go. Strawberries in the foreground.

There are already some things coming on. I have winter lettuces and chard under green mesh, which seemed to have survived the recent late frosts.

Chard foreground, lettuces behind.

There are some tiny radish seedlings and peas planted out, having been started off in the the greenhouse in early spring.

Peas

The wild garlic, which I planted a few years ago, is looking well and finally spreading. I just have a bit of a problem in that bed with tiny field maple seedlings.

Wild garlic surrounding my new pinkcurrant bush.

There is lots of self seeded coriander in the herb garden and the chives are romping away as always. The only bed not sorted out yet is the flower patch.

Coriander

The flower patch – still to be sorted.

A week on and the flower patch is still waiting to be brought to order but I have planted 14 kg of pink fir apple seed potatoes to be used in the pub kitchen. A main crop variety, they should be ready, once they have flowered, late summer.

With the tables and outside space restored and and the glamping facilities re-vamped and improved, The Queen is ready to welcome people to sit outside to eat and drink and stay. Visit the website here for opening hours.

The tulips are flowering with perfect timing now customers are allowed to sit in the garden again.