Fruit Blossom, Seed Sowing and the Joys of Spring

Fresh green leaves are unfurling on the gooseberries and mirabelles. The pluot has burst into flower and I am screaming "No! Not Yet! Get a grip on yourselves and wait a while!"

Pluot

I might be filled with the joys of spring were it not for an all-pervading fear that Jack Frost will sneak into the garden and teach these precocious blooms a lesson or two in timing. 

Pyrus calleryana 'Chanticleer'

If, like me, you garden without a greenhouse in the UK, you are probably exercising more patience than you ever thought possible. Every year I exceed my own expectations in the self-control department and with gargantuan effort, I usually manage to put off sowing vegetable seeds until late March. Even so, my office window has already disappeared from view thanks to a handful of ornamentals.

The table I use for seedlings has been backed by reflective foil and moved to a window. It is ready for action, and where am I? Still in the throes of bare root hedge planting. Meanwhile the weeds are having a field day hurling their seeds willy-nilly and the Wisteria is strangling a drainpipe. All of this activity means that while half of me is hoping that temperatures will not plummet, particularly as I am excited to try my first homegrown pluot, the other half is wishing that winter could last another week or three to give me a chance to catch up with long overdue gardening tasks. 

Unfurling Ribes

The answer, of course, lies in a cloak of fleece for the pluot to snuggle under should the weather turn, and for me to tackle the weeds and Wisteria. The fleece is a must, but if spring turns wintry, I shall be holed up in the potting shed with my seed collection and, joy of joys, a packet of pristine plastic plant labels. After all, it would be folly to climb a ladder to deal with a wayward Wisteria in bad weather, and as for the weeds, well, they can wait. They are, after all, a never-ending task.

Growing Delicious Food - The Allotment Cookbook by Pete Lawrence

A friend gave up her high-powered legal job in favour of a simpler, more self-sufficient lifestyle. During the first month at home she baked every day, systematically working her way through all the cake recipes in her cookery books. Once completed, she turned her attention to chutney, which was just as well since a cake-based diet, although a marvellous thing, is not without its side effects.

Unlike my friend, I have never tried all the recipes in one chapter of a cookbook. I dip in and out of chapters - and books. There are cookery books on our shelves which have not a spatter of batter glueing their pages together. They are pristine, treasured, and the cause of merciless mockery from those who do not understand the world of the voracious recipe reader.

Given my passion for gardening and reading recipes, I was delighted to receive The Allotment Cookbook by Pete Lawrence. Pete is an award-winning executive producer who has worked with a variety of TV cooks including Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson. For Pete, relaxation from food-related work takes the form of growing food, cooking food and writing about it. Obsessive gardeners will recognise this trait: many professionals spend weekends gardening and writing about plants, so we understand how the day job can also become a wonderful form of relaxation.

The Allotment Cookbook is not simply a collection of recipes, neither is it a gardening manual. Filled with anecdotes involving food and generations of family life, this book verges on becoming a love letter to fresh produce. It is not slushy, with the exception of the lovely rocket seedling proposal to his wife (I shall be discussing this with my other half as a standard to which he might aspire); rather it is an appreciation of the incredible positive transformation which can take place in our lives when we grow, rather than buy, our own fruit and vegetables.

   "Growing veg feels right. When you hum the same tune 

   as nature - get into its rhythm - then you will learn to    

savour produce at its very best."  - Pete Lawrence                

Pete Lawrence’s love for growing food shines through. It is a gentle, enjoyable read with delicious echoes of Nigel Slater’s writing. This book is not just for foodies and wannabe plotters, it is also a great read for experienced growers and voracious recipe readers. 

The Allotment Cookbook will not remain pristine in my house. I promise, in spite of everything stated earlier, that I will have cooked and eaten every dish in the radish and courgette sections by the end of this growing season -  not because I will be wrestling with gluts, but because I want to eat them. Roll on summer!

*Photos feature crops I have grown, picked and enjoyed eating. There would have been more strawberries and raspberries in the first picture, but they are notoriously challenging crops when it comes to picking and not eating.

Skinny Beans and Falling in Love 

Isn’t it great when you look forward to something and it turns out to be even better than you had anticipated?

I had wanted to see Felbrigg Hall's walled garden for some time, but since I am a seasoned procrastinator I only got round to it a few days ago. Thankfully there are no photos of me stepping into the garden, although I am certain I wasn't the only visitor who stopped dead in their tracks and stood open-mouthed with eyes like organ stops.  

The use of wall-trained plants was superb. Uncompromising mass planting resulted in a whopping wall wow-factor. I have never been the number one fan of climbing Hydrangea (Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris). It is a solid, dependable plant and I rely on it to do a job, which it does very well, but it has never set my heart aflutter, until Felbrigg. 

Here is what the wall looked like from the other side. These are not the best photos in the world. No camera shake facility is any match for a flabbergasted gardener.

They were not in full flower when I saw them. Imagine what they will be like this week! The same full-on effect was achieved with figs in the allotment area. 

The plants seemed more exuberant than any others I have seen this summer. Clearly the walls help to protect them, but we mustn't overlook the addition of a jaw-dropping 75 tons of mulch which has been applied every winter since 1999. They use their own garden compost on the main borders and mushroom compost in the vegetable gardens. Oh how I love a good mulch.

The allotments there are delightful. Trug-loads of delicious fruit and vegetables are interspersed with flowers which are grown thickly in serried ranks of great gorgeous herbaceous hedges

Areas are set aside for families to grow their own food. Fruit and vegetables grown in the garden supply the restaurant and when fruit is ripe in the orchard, visitors are invited to take one piece to enjoy. Bees are encouraged and no pesticides are used on the vegetables, fruit, or borders in the walled garden.  
Bantams control insect pests in the allotments and rescue guinea fowl free range in the orchard. It is this generous, inclusive approach which makes the garden all the more special.


For me, the most relaxing area was the orchard. Mown paths meandering through longer grass and a thoughtfully placed bench is an unbeatable combination, especially when you are still recovering from Hydrangea heaven.

Having feasted my eyes on all these uberplants**, my thoughts turned to my climbing French beans which are not their usual feisty selves this year. Their stems are skinnier and the leaves are set further apart than usual. The same thing has happened with a number of my friends’ runner and French beans. I have taken the precaution of a later sowing, just in case cropping is reduced. Of course, now I have done this, we will be in for a great bean glut later this summer. It’s a good job that we love beans as much as we love mulch (although, much as we love it, we don’t eat the latter).

* Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk. www.nationaltrust.org.uk/felbrigg-hall

** I'm sorry, I don't know where my laptop keeps its umlauts.

Rabbiting on

As a fully paid-up member of the ‘do as I say and not as I do’ brigade*, heeding my own advice is about as natural as the sweet heady scent of freshly mown astro turf. However, miracles can happen - even in twenty-first century Norfolk.

In all honesty, I would rather spend my garden budget on something exquisite which pleases as many of my senses as is physically possible, so anything humdrum and sensible, like rabbit fencing, is way down my list of desirable purchases. Or it was. I have been preaching to clients about correctly installed rabbit protection for years and I have finally heard my own message.

Of course, lists of rabbit-resistant plants are readily available, but Br'er, Peter, Roger and Buggs haven’t read any of them and will invariably munch their way through specimens which are, according to the experts, off the menu.

I love to grow my own food and if I eat the food, the chances are that the rabbits will too and I know who is more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning and will get to the crops first. So a considerable proportion of my garden budget will be blown on rabbit fencing which will, hopefully, keep the bunnies out. I like to think it will be a fine long-term investment for my plants and my sanity. After all, little is more disheartening than discovering that your garden is now the eatery of choice for the entire cast of Watership Down.

The photos above are of my auntie's travelling Geum. I took some from her Cambridgeshire garden, planted it in Essex, then moved a little of it with me to Norfolk. It's a spreader, so it travels within the garden too, although not in a pesky way - just enough to enable us to share it with others. It is Geum rivale. I think it is beautiful and even better, bees love it.

Our barn conversion continues apace. Tonnes of soil have been removed and the barn is still standing despite howling gales and hailstorms.

We have had many heaps of soil bigger than the one below (although this one is unusual in that it is basking in the sunlight). We have managed to reuse them all, so nothing has been disposed of off-site.

The dog enjoying his morning constitutional is Sprout. I can't believe how clean he looks in that photo!

This week it is Chelsea Flower Show, so my camera battery is recharging and I am getting all excited about catching up with old friends and meeting new plants. I can't wait!

* Please see the 'Chocolate and Cherries' post March 2012