Late Summer Colour in The Thompson & Morgan Garden

My beans are a disaster! Mountaineering slugs have been enjoying a beanfeast in the kitchen garden and I am left with two scrawny specimens climbing inconveniently up separate wigwams. Developments in plants can make a huge difference to our plots, and while I would love to find a slug-resistant bean (along with pigeon-proof brassicas and a self-watering pumpkin), I am always fascinated to meet any new cultivars and to see if their improvements match my gardening needs. Consequently, I was delighted to accept an invitation to see the 300-400 containers of plants being trialled in The Thompson & Morgan Garden at Jimmy’s Farm.

Fuchsia 'Princess Charlotte'

Sometimes we have no desire to grow a certain kind of plant. Perhaps it hasn't performed for us in the past, or it may never have had the opportunity to perform because it doesn't fulfil our requirements.

I have always regarded Gerbera as too tender for my plot and too fussy for the time I have available to pander to its needs, so to learn that Gerbera ‘Sweet Glow’ is hardy down to -10, flowers from early summer through to October and doesn’t mind being watered from above, means that it has made the rare leap from nowhere to the top of my wish list. There are also pink and yellow flowers available in the Sweet Series, but I particularly love the strength of ‘Sweet Glow’, which holds its colour well in bright sunlight.

Gerbera 'Sweet Glow'

I haven’t grown Amaranthus for years. We didn’t have a great falling out; it just dropped beneath the radar. Now it is firmly back on the must-have list thanks to the glorious great burgundy foliage of Amaranthus 'Molten Fire'. The leaves of this striking plant change to bronze as summer progresses and I can imagine it looking at home in mixed borders and exotic planting schemes.

Amaranthus 'Molten Fire'

It is decades since I planted any showy Salvia splendens, but Salvia 'Go Go Scarlet’ may be about to change that. It is certainly popular with bees, and unlike Salvia splendens, it doesn’t go to seed. 

Salvia 'Go Go Scarlet'

I loved Fuchsia as a child, and while I grow a couple of plants for berries in the kitchen garden, I have never embraced them ornamentally. Fuchsia 'Princess Charlotte’, with its compact form and upward facing flowers, is set to change this.

Fuchsia 'Princess Charlotte'

There were more surprises for me among Thompson & Morgan's new plants for 2017. I will write more about them in the autumn, by which time I might have recovered from the shock of finding myself drooling over a plant that I have never considered growing. Isn't it wonderful to be won over by plants?

Thank you to Thompson & Morgan for a very enjoyable, informative and eye-opening afternoon and for introducing me to the delights of the weeping peach, 'Lacrima'. Its succulent fruits have the good grace to hold themselves together so that the eater does not end up wearing bits of peach and juice dribbles down the chin in public.

If you are in Suffolk, do pop over and see Thompson and Morgan's show/trial garden. The plants are all clearly labelled and admission to the T&M garden is free. http://www.thompson-morgan.com/tmgarden

The Hopeful Kitchen Gardener

Panicking about unplanted pumpkins and runner beans with nowhere to run is an annual event in my kitchen garden. Spring-sown plants scream to be released from their pots and I can almost hear the sighs of relief every time I pop one of these poor, desperate specimens into the soil. Although everything needs to be done yesterday and the weeds will be back tomorrow, I am always filled with hope at this time of year because (with the exception of a breakout of peach leaf curl and the ongoing battle with aphids) things have yet to go catastrophically wrong in the kitchen garden.

The prettiest stage of a medlar

There were so many pollinators about in spring that I decided not to flutter around the fruit trees with my pollinating paintbrush pretending to be a bee. Unsurprisingly, the pollinators have done a fine job. Tiny embryonic fruits cluster on the branches of trees. They have yet to suffer the rigours of June drop, wasps and scab, so for the next week or two I shall remain optimistic that this autumn will be fuelled by wall-to-wall pies and crumbles.

Hope of fruit crumble, custard and cream

The hens are clearly heeding the slug and snail warning this year as their pest patrols have been ruthless. Nothing gets in their way. Last week they uprooted part of a mirabelle hedge, three asparagus plants and picked every last one of the developing gooseberries. That's one crumble I won't be enjoying this summer.

Hope of summer pudding

Images of pumpkin plants being released from the prison of their pots and spreading their roots gratefully (if indeed pumpkins feel gratitude) into delicious soil only to be dragged from their moorings by an over-exuberant hen, have led me to protect all of my crops from the chickens and rethink the whole slug control issue. 

Ever hopeful Hyacinth Hen

Fortunately my family are squirrels. That is not to say that they spend their days clinging valiantly to bird feeders and chewing on the little plastic perches, but they could quite happily live off seeds and nuts - particularly pistachios. This is great news in light of the slug and snail invasion forecast. I buy unsalted pistachios and it makes my family happy. I take the shells, scatter them around the brassicas and the slugs and snails do a runner elsewhere (hopefully into the path of a peckish hen). It takes a lot of pistachios to mulch a broccoli bed, then again, if it were left to the chickens, the broccoli would be long gone. 

Hope of pumpkin pie

While tomatoes and potatoes have yet to be blighted and courgette leaves exhibit no sign of mildew, we can remain optimistic for a bumper harvest. Early summer is a time for hope: hope that we won't be pulling pointless micro-celeriac again (what on earth happened to the celeriac last year?); hope that 2016 will be the year of the great butternut glut; and on a personal note, hope that my family's passion for pistachios will never wane.

Creative Vegetable Growing and the Harvesting Dilemma

Many moons ago, inspired at a lecture by the doyenne of creative vegetable growing, Joy Larkcom, I designed and planted a beautiful patchwork quilt of cut-and-come-again salad leaves. As I watered in the last lettuce, I knew that this edible blanket of burgundies and greens would look even better once the plants had knitted together, so I postponed capturing my creation on film. 

RHS Wisley - several years ago, but since
the advent of digital photography.

The next morning, before I left for work, I decided to take my morning coffee by my lettuce (as you do) and to my horror, I was met by bare soil and a few stumpy stalks. For unbeknownst to me, lurking under the canopy of the cedar tree was a hungry muntjac deer with excellent taste in salad leaves, but no respect for lettuce art. 

Since then, I have created pleasing, yet fleeting edible foliage combinations which have been enjoyed by rabbits, pigeons and caterpillars, but not slugs. You may recall that I blithely blogged about the lack of slugs in the farmhouse garden http://thegardeningshoe.blogspot.co.uk/2013_04_01_archive.html  well, I have had my comeuppance. Why wouldn't we have slugs in the farmhouse garden? Because there was finer fare around the corner in our new kitchen garden. 

Having been raised in a hospitable household, my natural instinct was to offer my guests a drink. Being slugs, their chosen poison was beer. Ten little beer-filled containers were duly set out for the molluscy revellers and despite initial fears that I was creating a hugely popular gastropod gastropub crawl, the slugs have been merrily availing themselves of one beer too many and our veggies are finally showing signs of recovery. 

Growing food decoratively is a tricky business, because even if it survives the excesses of slugs, deer, rabbits and birds, we will eat it and in so doing wreak havoc on our edible scheme. Cut-and-come-again lettuces succeed in the world of food art because we can pinch the odd leaf here and there and not spoil our salad tapestry (it is a pity that no one told the muntjac about this valuable attribute of these leaves).  

There are plenty of edibles which look great despite regular harvesting, but many crops simply look gappy. I have tried succession sowing and planting, intercropping and the occasional selectively placed rhubarb forcer, but these methods are too time-consuming for me at the end of a working day and a rhubarb forcer looks downright incongruous in the middle of a patch of onions. Consequently, I have been on the lookout for a solution and I think I have found it. Instead of seeing a gap in the garden; I see a meal I have enjoyed. Absurd as it might seem, this desperate attempt at reframing seems to be working. 

I finally stopped fretting about gaps in the veggie borders following a tour of the two acre organic kitchen garden at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. Now I think, if they are good enough for Raymond Blanc, they are good enough for me. Of course, a two Michelin Star chef in my kitchen, waiting to prepare my homegrown veg would be splendid.... well... I need to fantasise about something as I offer a top-up of beer to the molluscy guests on a tour of my own rather less extensive, but equally organic kitchen garden. 

P.S. If you have never read anything by Joy Larkcom before, I urge you to take time to look at her work. Her books introduced me to so many of the crops I enjoy growing today and I frequently revisit her writing when I am looking for inspiration. 
The last two photos show the kitchen garden at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, where the crops look great, but taste even better.    http://www.manoir.com/web/olem/le_manoir_gardens.jsp

Slug Holiday

Here is a photo of someone you might recognise. We met on holiday in Italy - well, I was on holiday, I neglected to enquire whether we were both taking a breather from our usual lives. Please note that it is not my hand in the photo - I scream like a banshee when I accidentally touch a slug, so I would never knowingly risk a close encounter with one. Indeed, it is highly probable that I took this photo using a zoom lens, thereby creating the maximum distance between me and the subject of my photograph.

Whilst I am an expert on slug avoidance tactics, I am not expert on slugs, so I cannot comment on whether this is an invasive killer slug of the type found in Norfolk. 

http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/invasive_killer_slug_found_outside_norwich_1_1790374

We don't have many slugs in our garden. I suspect that they may be sensitive to noise and would prefer not to reside or dine in the gardens of screaming banshees. Of course, one day (in my nightmares), some clever slug will invent ear defenders and none of my plants will be safe. Until then, I shall continue to scream in my own garden and those belonging to my clients (you might view this as unprofessional; I prefer to view it as a service to those discerning clients requiring slug-free gardens). 

Today I am linking to http://www.catharinehoward.co.uk . Catharine Howard has initiated a  new meme called Terrified Tuesday, whereby we are invited to post a photo which is vaguely disquieting. I am not entirely convinced that the slug photo fits the bill - it is more downright scary than vaguely disquieting and in any case, like many of you, I am terrified of slugs every day of the week, not just on a Tuesday. 

I was about to type "why not pop over to Catharine's to see something vaguely disquieting?" but that doesn't sound right at all. 

Have a good week!