Time for a garden tidy

I'm trying to pretend that autumn isn't happening. In my head I'm sitting at the patio table with a Pimms in hand flicking through the latest Gardeners' World, whereas in reality I'm peering out from the kitchen, watching the chickens shelter from the rain beyond the dogwood bushes whose leaves are slowly turning an autumnal shade of red.

So, in a brief few hours on sunshine yesterday, I started my garden tidy. Well, hubby started it while I sat at the patio table sowing some hardy annual seeds. As you can see, it was warm enough for a refreshing glass of shandy! These seed trays will go into the cold frame over winter and shouldn't need pricking out until early spring.

During a clearing of an untidy border, this little chap put in an appearance. My internet searches have identified him (or her?) as a common frog rather than a toad. But if any herpetologists out there know better, then I'm happy to be corrected.

As part of the tidy-up, I braved the tying-in of this years new tayberry shoots. It put me in mind of wrestling a particularly spiny snake. This lovely plant has grown three impressive new shoots during this year and these will fruit in 2013. I implemented my 'Loch Ness monster' formation again, which looks a little convoluted, but allows me to train 3m shoots onto a 1m length of fence. I also buried the end of the longest shoot to experiment with a bit of 'tip layering'. Hopefully I will have a baby plant to pass on to a deserving garden next year.

When I'm not gardening...

I have a very good reason for my posts to have been a bit...shall we say...thin on the ground this summer. Yes, I was revising for my latest round of RHS exams but I was also involved in the wonderful showcase of sport that hit London - the Olympic and Paralympic Games!

Now, although I was pretty handy with a hockey stick in my uni years, this talent did not stay with me on my journey into adulthood. I have finally come to terms with the fact that I may never compete for Team GB - but I did manage to get into the Olympic stadium. In fact, right onto the 'field of play'. (Disclaimer - no, that wasn't me gate crashing the India team parade...)

Sometime late in 2011, I happened upon a website that called for volunteers to fulfil a role that would, to roll out a much-used cliche, be a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity. And after a couple of attendances at a secret location in East London and a few months of waiting for an email, I was finally rewarded with the news that I'd been offered a role in the Paralympic Opening Ceremony.
The list of rehearsal times was extensive. For a period during July, we were rehearsing 3 times a week for 4 -5 hours at a time. But it was fabulous fun, meeting a wide range of people who had all volunteered their time with enthusiasm. And none of us really knowing what we'd let ourselves in for.
So, after 5 weeks of rehearsals in a film studio in Bow and 2 weeks rehearsing in the world's biggest car park in Dagenham, and the issuing of a plethora of access and accreditation passes, we hit the Olympic stadium for our first on-site rehearsal.

All too soon the night itself arrived. Backstage, in the warren of corridors, areas and rooms beneath the stadium seating, was a buzz of excitement. We were in our 'holding area' for hours, having arrived at the stadium at 3pm for a last minute addition to our choreography. The scheduled time for our part of the performance was 10.30pm, but as the athletes parade overran we were still waiting to go on at 11pm.

A lot of time was spent waiting in the wings, peering out at the show through any available open door or trying to evade security by getting upstairs to the media area where we'd managed to watch most of the dress rehearsal a few days before.

At long last it was time to move. Led to our area we got a glimpse of the vast audience flickering with camera flashes as another cast section headed out into the arena amid cheers and whistles from the rest of us.

And suddenly we were out there ourselves! (and I managed to find myself on a couple of photos on the internet...)

photo from Flickr

photo from Flickr

photo from Flickr

photo from Flickr 

photo from Flickr

 It was an amazing night and I have lots of fantastic memories from it. As well as a black and white costume that I am wondering on what occasion I might wear again...

I'm on the right...

In a jam

Way back in 2010 I planted out a small tayberry plant that was well overdue a permanent home. My first mention of that small plant is here.

It kind of sat by the fence for a year minding it's own business and showing just the merest hints of growing. Towards the end of 2011 it grew a bit more and then a bit more again. Three very prickly stems reached further and further out until the only way I could keep them under control was to rig up an amateur stake and wire type arrangement against the fence using some plastic coated wire and screws usually reserved for hanging net curtains. The long whippy stems, by now each a couple of metres, were tied to the wires in a 'Loch Ness monster' formation (if that's not an official fruit cultivation term, it certainly deserves to be).

In the springtime the shoots were covered in blossom and then a bumper fruit crop followed. Rather than eating the fruits fresh as they ripened, I saved them in the freezer until they fruiting period was over so I could make a big batch of jam. Five takeaway containers full gave me 3 jars of very tasty, slightly tart tayberry jam!

After consulting my RHS 'Pruning and Training' book, I've now cut out the stems that fruited, and am in the process of tying in the 3 rope-like stems that grew during this year. They will be my fruiting stems in 2013.

Bearing fruit

Things are ripening at the suburban veg plot. It's that time of year again (though admittedly, slightly later than usual) when I'm picking or plucking on a daily basis. Now I really get a chance to evaluate how something has grown (or not) and depending on the reasons for any failures, whether I will grow the same again next year.

My 2 nectarines were lovely. From a tree purchased in May and said to be self fertile, it arrived with little fruitlets already attached so I can't really claim much of a part in its success. More fruitlets were lying on the surface of the soil in the pot – thanks courier company for taking so much care and not throwing the box around en route... But at least I have hope that if I can look after it over the winter, then it will produce more than 2 fruits next year.

I have mentioned before that we have alpine strawberries rambling all over the suburban veg plot. These hardy plants have runners like steel wire that seek out any little space or gap to set up shop. Mistakenly I tried to create a small strawberry border using these plants at one stage – they multiplied like rabbits and ended up looking a horrible tangled mess and producing very few fruits. Needless to say, that border has now been 'de-strawberried'. So now I have them just about under control bordering a few raised beds where they seem happy and I can keep pulling out any new plants they try to throw out. The fruits are real crowd-pleasers around here – the husband, the chickens, my best friend's toddler – they all love these tiny fruit straight from the plant. I pick a few each morning to throw onto my muesli along with fresh blueberries. And as for deciding whether I'll grow them next year? Well, I don't think I have much choice in that.

Almost a potato disaster

Well, that was close. With the warm, yet wet, weather of late I did suspect that it might be ideal conditions for that most dreaded of all diseases in the vegetable garden – potato blight. On close inspection it did look like the potato plants were starting to suffer from those telltale brown patches on the leaves and some stalks and there was a general yellowing all over the foliage. So, once the greenhouse door was closed (to protect the tomatoes from the airborne spores) I set about clearing the bed.
My potato variety this year was selected purely on the basis of name alone – Ulster Classic – in honour of my lovely hubbie's Norn Iron roots. And what a harvest I found beneath the surface:

Lots of creamy white potatoes with pale pink splashes snuggled deep in the soil. And thankfully, no sign that any blight had reached them. Which is, when you've got an Irish husband, quite a relief to report. I don't want to see him disappearing across the Atlantic...

Vegging out

The dwarf french beans are very prolific at the moment. Super resilient to the attentions of the slugs and snails and super tasty to boot. Can anyone explain why they lose their purple colouration when they're cooked though? I'm definitely growing these again next year – very low maintenance and no supports required.
I've left a couple of pods on one plant to form beans that I can dry and save to sow next spring.

In the recent heat, the courgettes are finally putting out female flowers and setting fruit. Here's the ever-reliable Striata type. Once they start coming, they don't usually stop for a couple of months.

And a new variety – Sunburst squash – a little patty pan type in bright sunshine yellow. Not a lot to go around when you only get one at a time, but as you can see, there are more and more forming on this plant now as it spreads its way across a vacant bed.

Rosemary beetle

Why did natural selection result in some very destructive, if very attractive insects surviving with the sole intention in life to eat my plants. In the brief respite between rain showers, I spotted these lil' critters all over my lavender bed. Oh they're very pretty – shiny like an oil droplet – but in high numbers they're not good. I've yet to discover who their natural predator is, and why those lovely colours evolve

ved to be on their wingcase. It must either be camouflage or a warning to potential predators. Anyway, despite them not being particularly welcome on my lovely flowering lavender, I don't use chemical sprays and so figured that as long as there weren't too many of them, then I could live with them. So, I took a few photos and then...how shall we put this?...streamlined the population numbers. :)