Strawberries that reach for the sky

I'm always looking for space-saving ideas in the suburban veg plot. It's not the largest of growing areas - 8 square metres of raised beds, a rhubarb patch and one or two small spots beneath trellis panels - so I try hard to pack a lot into it. So when I came across climbing strawberry plants, I thought I'd just have to give them a try. I've grown 'Cambridge Favourite' in grow-bags for the last few years but these went into the compost at the end of 2012 as they'd started to tail off in terms of production.

Strawberry 'Mount Everest' is available from a number of the bigger online/mail order seed and plant companies and is described as producing runners upto a metre long that can be trained up a trellis or other climbing support. They produce mid-sized fruit from mid June through to September and can also be planted as trailing plants in window boxes or hanging baskets.

They didn't come cheap (£12.99 for 12 runners) but the plants certainly look vigorous with a healthy bare root system. Once unwrapped, I did find a bonus 13th runner in the box as well. The runners were placed in a bucket of damp compost for a couple of days until I was ready to plant them out. I've decided to reuse my pea teepees from last year to train them up as they're in a nice sunny spot by the greenhouse. The teepees proved to be surprisingly strong and have weathered well through the winter. I replaced some of the twine fastened around them and they're good as new. 

So, 13 planting holes later, each of the runners are now situated at the bottom of a nice rough vertical stake to climb up (coincidently enough a strawberry tree pruning) and awaiting the warmer weather.

I can probably use the space beneath the teepee for salad leaves and radishes as they'll mature quickly before the strawberries grow and block out the light. And aside from the space saving aspect, I'm also hoping that unless the local slug population are kitted out with crampons and climbing ropes, then this may prove to keep more of my fruit safe from the hordes of marauding molluscs!

A tentative salad update

Following my woeful salad year – in particular the second half of 2012, I am pleased to report that despite sowing salad leaf seeds 2 days before a downfall of snow, the seeds bided their time and waited until more suitable daytime temps had been achieved before germinating. They're still a bit small for microgreens but I'm sure we're not too far off!

I'm hoping to be a bit more organised this year as regards succession sowing so I can maintain a regular supply of fresh green leaves. And indeed red leaves, as these were recommended by the Tuckshop Gardener as being less likely to become victim of a slug attack. I look forward to comparing the two once they're out in the raised beds. 

A beginning and an end

Potato chitting time has arrived again! My Apache potatoes arrived in the post yesterday, so I got them straight into egg boxes and into the cool spare room. These are a maincrop potato variety with attractive red markings. We've been buying them from our local supermarket for mini roasties, so thought I might as well try growing my own. I grew Ulster Classic last year and while they were lovely in taste, they were a bit too floury for my preference - fine if you want mash all the time, but pretty useless for anything else.

This weekend I also need to redo my planting plans for the year. Maybe it was the cold weather and snow cover, but our garden in December and January was suddenly inundated by some very hungry pigeons. There have always been pigeons in the large trees surrounding the suburban veg plot and there have always been winter brassicas in the plot, but this was my first experience of the 2 meeting... And suffice to say, the brassicas came off worse.
The tuscan kale, the early sprouting broccoli, the cauliflowers bought as plug plants, the savoy cabbages - all of it, gone. This is probably gardener's karma for forgetting about them as seedlings in the autumn (see post here). I managed to net the brussels sprouts before Christmas, so saved some of those but the rest was wholly decimated. Were it not for the fact I am vegetarian, there may have been some pigeon pie served up for dinner!

2012 – the year that salad forgot

It has to be said that 2012 wasn't the best year for salad leaves. I started well, with a couple of small lettuces overwintered in the greenhouse and moving into the early spring we have good harvests from cut and come again salad leaves grown under a heavyweight glass cloche in a raised bed. But then the drought set in and then the monsoons started. And the salad stealers arrived... It seems that the slugs in my garden have a good appreciation of the perfect moment to harvest (devour) young salad leaves. They, as I, would check on the developing seedlings on a daily basis. And when the leaves had reached the perfect tender size to be picked, I headed out to the cloche to find....nothing. Absolutely not a trace of them. This happened a couple of times before I gave up completely on the resowing front and started buying the bagged supermarket variety again – at least that way I could guarantee I would have salad available when I wanted it.

Anyway, I have started the new year afresh with renewed optimism and have sowed my first batch of salad seeds in a seed tray in a propagator in the greenhouse. Let's see you fight your way through these, slug invaders!

seeds sown on the damp surface of a potting compost and homemade compost mix

Seeds tucked up under a layer of vermiculite and the propagator lid

Of cataclysms and croci, destruction and daffodils

So, we have reached the deadline of 21/12/2012 and it seems that the world is still turning. Hey ho, at least I can get this blog post written now. It seemed a bit pointless earlier today to spend what could have been my last hour writing a post if no-one would be around to actually read it.

Anyway, since planting a veritable plethora of bulbs in October and November I'd been checking everyday for signs of life. Absolutely nothing happened in the first few weeks so the checking sort of tailed off until I stopped looking altogether. And then suddenly this morning, I looked out and saw these:

The first two photos are daffodils (Cornish Gold, I think) and the last one is some kind of crocus. I planted 4 varieties but I won't know which this particular one is until it flowers. I could have labelled the pot when I planted them, but that would take a much more organised gardener than me. I usually rely on memory serving me well. Which it very often doesn't. Anyway, I was delighted to see it. Though the delight was slightly overshadowed by the possibility that the world would end before it had chance to flower and  that I'd perish in some epic and dramatic apocalyptic earthquake/flood/fire/brimstone event and would never know what crocus it was. In fact maybe I'd wasted £20 in September by forking out for a load of bulbs without first checking on the timing of end of the world forecasts. That's me all over though – rushing in with no long term plan...

But thankfully, it looks as though the Mayan calendar was just a bit too short, rather than being a prediction of the earth's final day. Happy Friday everyone!

Sloely does it

At long last, we got around to making our 2012 sloe gin. Bearing in mind that the sloe picking was a month later than planned, this should come as no surprise.

By the time we got out to collect the lovely berries of the blackthorn bush (in the secret location along the secret cycle path behind the not-so-secret Morrisons supermarket) it was almost the end of October. And by the look of things, the local council hedge-trimming contractors had got there before us - we arrived to the sight of the entire hedgerow line hacked off leaving behind split stems, ripped branches and mangled twigs. They took most of the sloe berry harvest with them, so we had a much smaller harvest than previous years.

Much advice on sloe berry preparation tells you to prick each berry with a thorn taken from the bush. Personally I think life's too short for that kind of thing, so a few days in the freezer will serve to split the berries and achieve the same end. And there are many different 'recipes' for making sloe gin, but there are so few ingredients that you can't really go far wrong. The basic idea is to have half as much sugar as sloes, but you can add more later if it's still too sharp.

So here's a basic recipe to get you started: a litre of gin, 500g of sloe berries, 250g sugar. That's it. If you're making it up directly into bottles you'll need an empty one to take the excess, and the patience of a saint to drop the sloe berries into the neck of the bottle one by one. We tend to use large kilner jars so it's easy to add the ingredients and there's air space in the top for stirring the contents or for mixing by shaking.

Add berries and sugar and then pour on the gin. Mix well and then store in a cool dark place, mixing every few days to help the sugar dissolve and the berries to break down. The gin will gradually turn a wonderful shade of rich purple as the berry juices are released. Leave it for at least 6 weeks before drinking - at which stage you can add more sugar if you wish. We find that decanting it into bottles through a coffee filter removes most of the remains of the berries. Serve neat as a winter warmer or with sparkling wine/cava/prosecco/champagne for my personal favourite - a Sloegasm!

Tulips on Twitter

Everyone loves a freebie - especially if it's in the shape of tulip bulbs. So when I saw a tweet from the lovely bods at Spalding Bulbs offering tulip bulbs to garden bloggers, I just couldn't pass it up.
So, just a few days later I received a well packaged delivery of no fewer than 4 varieties of tulip bulbs. This is the first year I've really gone for autumn/winter bulb planting and I'd already put a mix of purple tulips (Attila, Havran, Recreado) that I bought in September in the raised bed in the front garden. So I thought I'd plant these bulbs 'a la Carol Klein' and have them in pots. November/December is the best time to plant tulip bulbs as the cold weather we would usually expect (and have certainly be experiencing) should kill off any lurking viruses that might be detrimental to the bulbs.

My bulb delivery contained:
White Triumphator – a white lily flowered tulip – which have been planted in a pot currently home to black lily grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens' for those who want to be precise). I thought white tulips emerging from a mass of black leaves would look quite striking.

Darwin hybrid – a mix of yellow and red viridiflora tulips, 'developed by crossing the wild Fosteriana Tulip with the large Darwin tulip'. 

Parrot tulips – mixed colour tulips with frilled and twisted petals.

Candy Kisses – dark pink and white on the outside and pale orange inside! The blurb says 'It is possible to get 5-6 flowers from one bulb' – it will certainly be interesting to see if that happens.

These last 3 varieties were planted up into terracotta pots to their required depth, (3 times the height of the bulb for tulips) using fresh compost and a layer of grit beneath for drainage. I also top the surface of the compost with grit/pea shingle to keep down the weeds and because I think it looks nice.

I shall post updates of the tulips as and when they start peeking through the gravel. Roll on springtime!