LUNAR SOLSTICE

Last year, for the first time in a couple of hundred years there was an eclipse of the moon on the solstice.  An auspicious (or not, depending how you feel about such things) event. We got up early to look - the moon turns blood red, apparently - but saw nothing but dull grey dawn.  Oh well, there’ll be another one in 2094....

The winter solstice marks the beginning of the end of darkness - from now on it will get lighter by 2 minutes every day until - let’s not even go there - it’s enough that it’s getting lighter, even if it’s not getting any warmer. The snow slows me up in so many ways (I quite like the fact that I can’t do any gardening).  I find it stops me from even wanting to move.  I watch the chickens just standing there, looking cold and refusing to lay much and I know just how they feel.

CHRISTMAS PREPARATIONS

Now that most of my children are teenagers I appreciate the little rituals and details that make Christmas what it is.  Sam and I have been decorating the tree - well, he decorates down one side of it and I change it once he’s in bed.  When the others were small I had to have my own tree, so that I could bear to watch them draping theirs in a haphazard fashion and not interfere.  I’m more relaxed about it now and love all the homemade, non-matching charm that a child decorated tree has.  I read somewhere that lots of children have their own tree in their bedrooms now, but my children make too much mess in their rooms for that - theirs  would end up being decorated with old socks...

                          

Last year I went a bit mad drying oranges - across a floor in our house with underfloor heating.  I’d  tried various methods before finding this one.  The slow oven made them too brown, the radiators were good, but not when the slices fell down the back of them - the big one in the bathroom would have been great, except for Sam jumping out of the bath and eating them when I wasn’t looking.  This year my husband declared them a complete nuisance and so I bought them ready dried instead.  Such a waste of a nice warm floor.

GATHER YE ROSEHIPS

I’m late with my hedgerow harvesting this year, but there are still Sloes on the Blackthorn bushes in the hedges and plenty of Hawberries on the Hawthorn.  The berries on the Hawthorn look so juicy, but they’re full of fat seeds surrounded by itchy fibres (used by children to stuff down one another’s backs as itching powder).  Last year I endeavoured to make some jelly from them, but it was very tedious.  After much mashing and boiling and straining I managed to squeeze a couple of jars of Hawberry jelly out of around 3 kilos of berries.  It was a beautiful colour and went very nicely with cheese - but not nicely enough to send me rushing out  with a basket again this year.

We have field mushrooms at the moment (actually they’re just coming to an end too).  They are completely edible, but eating wild mushrooms isn’t something I’d recommend unless you know what you’re picking.  Some poisonous fungi look very much like edible ones, in fact there is a toadstool that looks just like a field mushroom that’s fairly toxic, so I’m always a little nervous even when I pick the innocent ones in our field.  This year we haven’t actually eaten any at all because Sam and the dog have trampled all over them, so we won’t have the worry.

SOUP IN A BASKET

It’s the season of soups and comfort eating - a good time to stock up on carbohydrates, ready for the cold days ahead.  Celery makes a wonderful soup and stock ingredient.  The celery I grew earlier in the year was much more successful than I thought it would be.  I haven’t grown it here before, as my soil is light and dry and it prefers moist, rich soil.  Traditionally celery is grown in a trench to help blanch the stems, but I grew a self-blanching variety, called ‘Celebrity’, and I guess it’s getting a bit of that in my patch, as despite the dry start to the summer (yes, I watered it) it did very well.  Celery’s not frost hardy though, so needs harvesting early.

HALLOWEEN HOOLIGANS

Smaller pumpkins have a better flavour and texture than the giant lantern- style ones, which are fairly tasteless and watery - commiserations if you’ve been left with the innards of one of these.  The seeds are not bad baked until they’re crispy and tossed in paprika or cumin, but the flesh... well ours went on the compost heap, but probably only because I’ve grown some sweet mini pumpkins.  Bake them whole, or use them in casseroles, soups, pasta/risotto.

DAHLIA DILEMMA

The frost has come and done for the dahlias. Yesterday I picked a huge bunch of them, which was just as well, as now that the frost is melting, the  ones left outside are turning to a sad brown mush.  It’s just the top growth that will be killed by these first frosts, leaving the tubers safe under the ground.  To lift them or not to lift them?  I’ve done both and on balance, I tend to leave them in the ground now, covering them with a thick layer of straw or compost where, with luck, they will wait out the winter.  All the other tender plants have gone too - courgettes, beans, nasturtiums, French marigolds and the bedding plants.  It’s the end of the season.  Time to move on, whether we like it or not.

FRUITS AND LABOURS

The sloes are ready in the hedgerow - ideally you should wait for a frost, but I can’t say I’ve noticed a difference, so I tend to collect them around now. Watchout, though, as the Blackthorn bushes are very spiky.

The blackberries have been plumper, the apples more numerous (but smaller, as I should have thinned them out...) and I now feel really guilty about not harvesting all those plums, but am trying to make up for it with the other hedgerow fruits - at least you don’t have to stone the sloes.  Some people prick each one before the gin dunk, but they seem fine after a stint in the freezer - the freeze/thaw action cracks the skins just as well.  So unless you like repetitive manual labour (and it can be soothing), take the short route to the sloe gin.

CONKERS

I love collecting horse chestnuts (even if the children aren’t bothered) They’re so gorgeous and shiny.  I sometimes pile them up in a bowl, but find that they lose their wonderful bloom too quickly, so really are best just enjoyed in the moment.  Are they called conkers because they fall on our heads???

SEASONALLY AFFECTED

I find myself more and more affected by the changes in the seasons, I’m not sure whether it’s because I’m a gardener, or because I live in the country and am outside more, but whatever it is, I physically notice the light levels dropping. I’m doing what I think the animals are; that is - slowing down, eating more, looking for places to hibernate.  It must be a natural impulse, but it’s called SAD (seasonal affective disorder) now and is seen as something bad - which makes me feel worse.  If we saw it as a natural part of the year’s cycle and didn’t try to fight it (I notice there are products available to help with this) it might not be as bad.

PUSHING IT

The veg patch is looking very mellow at the moment.  I planted some more beans at the end of July in the hope that I’ll be in time for a quick harvest before the frosts - I do it every year, as if to dare the weather.  Three years ago I lost all my dahlias one night, thanks to a very early frost in the middle of September.  It does happen and when it comes, changes the look of the garden instantly.  All the tender plants and lush green leaves turn into bedraggled nothings, las if a bad fairy’s waved her wand at them in the night.

IT'S RAINING PLUMS

Fruitfullness is upon us again and I’m feeling so guilty about the plums.  It’s been a wonderful year for fruit - the weather’s been just right.  The blossom set well in spring and then we had a wet, but fruit ‘plumpening’ August and consequently I’m squelching in them here.  They are native hedgerow plums called Bullace, a name that seems to cover a multitude of size and colour - we have yellow/green ones, plum coloured and a dark little damson type.  I normally make chutney and jam, but we’ve  still got masses left from 2 years ago.  So I shall be dousing some in sugar and vodka - strangely no one turns their nose up at this once it’s been bottled....

THE DRIFT TO DARKNESS

We’ve had the autumn equinox now,  the time at which there’s equal daylight and darkness - approximately (it’s a complicated thing astronomically).  This year there was also a full moon, a proper harvest moon.  I’m not sure how significant this is these days, as, apart from Harvest Festival, the shortening of days and the gradual drift into darkness of the northern hemisphere, no-one really comments, but in pagan times, when we were completely governed by the seasons and the weather, we would have been celebrating something called Mabon, the last festival celebrating the harvest season.

PEST WARDEN

The variety of marigold (right) is called 'Mr Stripey’ and originated from a plant that had self sown in someone’s garden.  I’m not keen on bedding schemes), Mr Stripey grows to around 1m in height  does the same job of warding off pests, but looks very different.  Unfortunately I planted too many in the greenhouse with my tomatoes, where they’ve frightened off the tomatoes along with the pests....

MAGIC BEANS

These beans are beautiful enough to make into jewellery - I can quite see how Jack swapped his cow for some.  Leave a few pods on your plants to collect at the end of the season, keep them somewhere dry and frost free over the winter and next year you’ll have new plants for free - magic beans indeed.

There are lots of seeds that you can collect at this time of the year.  Choose a dry day and make sure the seeds are ripe and ready to collect.  Store until you are ready to sow them in paper bags or envelopes - not plastic or they’ll be more likely to rot if you’re keeping them for a long time.  Some seeds like to be sown while they’re fresh, but most will keep for ages as long as they don’t get damp.  It’s hugely satisfying to sow seed you’ve collected yourself.

BUTTERFLY SUMMER

There have been a lot of butterflies around this summer and I love them all bar one - well 2 actually, but they get lumped together as one and are  hard to tell apart.  I’m talking about the Large and Small White cabbage butterflies.  I do feel mean to be at war with such beautiful creatures, but the damage their caterpillars do to every kind of brassica, except the kale (all hail the kale!) makes me not just mean, but teeth gnashingly murderous.  I have dismally failed again this year to stop the attack, despite using the correct gauge of netting - somehow they’re getting in, but once in, they often can’t get out again and I have been found there, scrunching them into fluttery pieces.  You’ll think I’m a terrible person now if you don’t grow cabbages etc, but if you do, then I know you’ll understand.  I think we get more of them down here in the south.  The small white is a native species, but the Large White travels over from Europe - apparently huge clouds of them can be seen drifting across the channel to feast on Kent cabbages...

HENRY MOORE

We’ve been harvesting the maincrop potatoes - Pink Fir Apple is the variety I always grow.  It has a wonderful taste and waxy texture (doesn’t fall to pieces when you boil it like the floury ones can).  It tastes more like a new potato than a maincrop.  the potatoes are long and knobbly, often very peculiar in shape - Sam and I found a potato family - mother, father and baby.  Laid together they look like a Henry Moore sculpture and we can’t quite bring ourselves to eat them.  Luckily they keep well...

HOOLIGANS ON THE LOOSE

I was given some wonderful pumpkins (thank you Fiona) called ‘Hooligan’
this year and I should really have guessed how rampant a pumpkin with such a name would be. I planted them in my 3 sisters bed (growing these  3 sisters - sweetcorn, climbing beans and squash together is an ancient American Indian way of companion planting and allows 3 crops that might otherwise take up a lot of room to be planted in one space).  They are now rampaging through the veg patch with gusto, not very companionably either.  Their saving grace is that they seem to be very prolific and are producing lots of fruits.

DRY

It feels like the end of summer already - everything’s taken on that dry, tired and careworn look.  It will all perk up once the hay’s been made and some rain has fallen on the garden - I hope.

It’s difficult in the veg patch at the moment.  The runner beans are ok, but the french beans have been dismal, despite the bean trench I made for them earlier in the year.  I have been watering too, but obviously not enough for them to want to make lots of juicy pods.  I don’t water much as a rule - just crops that need moisture to swell their seed pods and fruits, so - tomatoes, squash, beans, peas and also celery (which likes very moist soil).  Everything just seems so much later and smaller than usual. Ho Hum.

FAIRY CASTLES

The picture shows the spent flower of an early summer flowering bulb called Allium nectaroscordum.  It is a weird looking thing when in flower, brownish in colour, drooping with little bobbles like a 1970’s ornament.  As the blooms fade, each small seedhead grows a cap like a minaret, straightens and turns upward until the whole thing resembles a tiny castle.  A perfect home for the fairies, Alice and I like to think.

LABRADORABLES

Meg has had 6 gorgeous little puppies - all chocolate - 1 boy and 5 little girls (actually some of them not so little).  Mother and pups are all doing very well.  They are a huge distraction from gardening tasks, but I sense that I’m superfluous to the whole business;  while we stand about and gaze at them, Meg gets on with all the housework.

I must make the most of the calm before the puppy rampage starts though - I've been clearing space in the veg garden, ready to sow some autumn and winter crops.  I’m trying not to disturb the Bullfinch in the Bay tree, but it’s in the middle of the path, so I’ve been climbing through the beds, which is fine - until they’re planted up.  It’s a good excuse not to have to go in there too much, although there’s suddenly lots to do before the season changes and autumn starts creeping in.

CUT FLOWERS

There are lots of flowers around at the moment - lilies are a wonderful sight and scent in the garden this month.  I like Lilium regale best, as it’s very robust, with several blooms on each stem. It will grow from seed very readily and bulk up to flower within a couple of years.

I've been picking flowers quite a bit this week - for end of term and for the pleasure of picking - most perennials benefit from having their blooms snipped off as it saves them from the bother of making seed, a process that saps their strength (like having children).  Annuals need picking regularly or they will consider that their job is done and stop flowering.  If you don’t want to deplete your border of blooms while it’s in full swing, pick off the flowers as they fade - dead-heading will help the plant, either by encouraging more flowers, or directing energy to other parts.

HATCHING NEWS

                              

Egged on by a friend at the Wealden Times fair (“What’s six pounds for a bit of excitement?” she said to tip me into my purse) I bought some fertilised eggs and popped them under our broody hen. We placed bets on how many would be cockerels (there must be a natural law that guarantees more males than females, which is decidedly unfair in the chicken world).  Twenty one days after purchase five little heads poked out from under their stepmum’s feathers.  They are very cute, but it’s hard to catch them for a cuddle as their mum flies at us with much maternal flapping and squawking when we go near.  It’s too early to tell what sex they are yet, so we’re saved from the cockerel question for the moment.

Even more exciting, but at considerably more expense than £6, is the  imminent arrival of Meg’s puppies.  Our chocolate Labrador is due to give birth on 27th July.  My excitement is tinged with a little trepidation, as I’m her birthing partner and it will be the first time for both of us.  Let’s hope she’s not as fiesty as the mother hen over her babies when they come...

KALE CRUSADER

I love kale - the look of it, the taste of it and the fact that, for a member of the fussy and temperamental brassica family, it’s incredibly easy to grow.   I’m sure it would prefer the rich, firm soil that cabbages and the like need, but it will put up with less comfortable conditions, the pests that make a beeline for the other similar crops seem to leave the kale alone (or at least, until last), despite it being very nutritious.  Add to that the fact that it will withstand the coldest of winters, not bolt in these very dry days and it seems near to the perfect vegetable.  The downside is that not many in my family will eat it.  I am on a kale crusade at the moment though and will try my best in the next few months to convert them - I’m going to have to, as most of the veg patch has been given over to it...

PEAS FOR PUDDING

Freshly podded peas are such a treat that we eat them for pudding - they’re sweet enough, but only if you eat them straight away, before the sugars turn to starch.   Do try to grow some peas if you can. I find them tricky to start off because the mice go mad for them here - so I have to seal them into a seed tray with a propagator lid tightly on.  Once they’ve germinated and grown a few leaves, I plant them out, zig-zagging the rows and supporting them with twiggy peas sticks (or canes and pea netting). If your life’s too short to pod peas,  the alternative is to grow sugar snaps, or mange touts and eat the whole pod.   Successionally sow for a long season of pea picking.



We are overwhelmed with salad leaves at the moment - mainly because I sow far too many and can’t help making patterns with all the different varieties.  Sadly Heidi the rabbit died earlier in the month and can’t help us finish them.  Lettuce is another thing to sow in succession, as it tends to bolt (run to seed) in hot, dry weather.  Finding the time to keep sowing, planting out, weeding and harvesting is hard, but at least the nights are light for a long time.....

ONCE MORE INTO THE HEDGEROW

I’m seeking comfort in the wild plants at the moment.  They seem so resilient in the near desert conditions down here and the hedgerows continue to look abundant.  Weeds and wild flowers are tenacious and the perennial ones have very deep roots that can tap into what little water there is left in the soil.  The arid winds have blown off the petals on the Dogroses and Hogweed and Honeysuckle are taking their turn now, together with the Wayfaring tree (Viburnum lantana).

MIDNIGHT BATHING

     

Our field is full of buttercups at the moment, which look wonderful in the sunshine and distract the eye from the equally large numbers of thistles growing there...




There are not enough hours in the day for all the gardening I have set for myself (yes, it’s my fault entirely), but there are now more daylight hours in the evening, which helps a little.  I cease upon the midnight, but only for a bath, because – and it thrills me just to write this –  a nightingale has been singing in the trees outside the bathroom window.  It sings its heart out every evening from around 10pm until I’m not sure when,  but way past midnight.  My family have pretended to be as excited and troop obediently upstairs or outside to hear it.  “Yeah, cool.”, they say in their down-beat way.  I know they’re not impressed now, but they’ll look back on this when they’re ninety and tell their great grandchildren that once there were nightingales.  It is magical and I shall learn more about them.

DOG ROSE DAYS

I’m so enjoying the hedgerows this year - perhaps it’s the endlessly glorious weather, but whatever it is, I feel like planting a hedgerow in my garden; nature seems to be managing things better than me at the moment and the wild plants are coping with the conditions more successfully than all my pampered garden plants.

LATE FROSTS ON THE EARLIES

 Regardless of the weather, spring is marching on and although some plants are late or out of sequence with one another, most are just getting on with it.   

I’m trying to work out if it’s partly the challenge of gardening that keeps me interested - the fact that no season is ever quite the same and something always catches me out.  I’ve been careful not to plant out anything tender yet, but thought I’d be safe with my early potatoes. Not so.  They caught the frost badly overnight and are looking very sorry for themselves.  They might recover and send up new growth from below the ground - fingers crossed.

GREEN AND PLEASANT

It's all mimsy in the lanes and groves.  The cow parsley billows on all our edges and despite the desert conditions here it’s still lush and green in the fields.  The scene in late spring is almost too lovely - apparently pictures of idyllic country views from the Weald of Kent and Sussex were used in the war to remind everyone what we were fighting for.

It’s the time of the year when all the umbellifers (flowers with ‘umberella’ shaped heads) are in bloom.  The hedgerows are awash with their delicate creamy umbels.  Not just cow Parsley and Elderflowers, although round here they don’t leave room for much else to bloom.

BRIDES

The picture above is Exochorda ‘The Bride’, a slow growing, stiffly branched shrub that is forced to grow in almost permanent dry shade in my garden.  it struggles, but still manages to bloom.  So I add insult to injury and grow a clematis through it too.  Treat ‘em mean - and they often die, but not in this case.  Philadelphus ‘The Bride’ will be flowering in a few weeks too and while it’s in flower it is glorious - blooms not unlike the Exochorda and with a heavenly scent - but for the rest of the year it’s a complete shambles.  It is forgiven because the blossom redeems it - but only just...

                                    

I’m really enjoying the hedgerow scene at the moment.  the Hawthorn is looking wonderful in the sunshine - except where we’ve trimmed the hedges tightly  in the winter - I like a blossomy hedge, but the hedge trimmer likes it clipped and crisp, but at least he agrees not to cut them until all the nesting birds have moved out.

FIRST HARVESTS

                       
At last we’ve had some rain. It’s much needed, although the grass has grown about a foot overnight in response - it’s just a shame the rain has to fall on the bank holiday weekend - as usual...

 We are in the middle of the ‘hungry gap’ which is the period when the pickings from the veg patch are slim - the winter vegetables have finished and the summer crops are yet to mature.  In years gone by this was a very difficult and often hungry, time.  Two crops that help to bridge the gap are purple sprouting brocolli and asparagus.  They are both easy to grow, although the brocolli takes nearly a year from sowing to harvest and must be protected from a barage of pests through the summer and pigeons in the winter - strangely nothing is around to eat it in early spring, so it’s a reliable cropper.  

If you have the space for a permanent bed, do grow some asparagus.  It does take a couple of years to establish, but after that you will be harvesting fresh spears from the same plants for many years.

EASTER HEAT

                                      














At last it’s Easter, and it feels too late for it, somehow.  All the chocolate is in the fridge as the weather’s so baking hot.  It could be June, or even August.  The tulips are nearly all over, seedlings are frazzling and salad crops are bolting.   I am happy for my family - all avid non-gardeners, as they are having a lovely time in the sunshine, but secretly and quietly (as it would never do to complain out loud about the sun shining) I am longing for some soft spring rain to fall on my bewildered garden.

BUD BURST (AND MORE CATKINS)

                     

The sunshine seems to be speeding up the opening of blossom and leaf buds.  Admittedly I am especially pleased and aware of it all this year, due to THAT WINTER.  You can almost see them splitting open and uncurling in front of you - a more thrilling version of watching paint dry.

Spring seems to have caught up with itself a bit this week, although I heard that the bluebells are still going to be late this year.  It will be interesting to see if it really does all even out, or whether the season will keep lagging behind.  Interesting for us, but possibly life and death to creatures timing their emergence with the blossoming of certain flowers.  

DAZZLERS

                                  

Just look at these gorgeous little lettuces - they could almost be spring flowers. This is a variety called ‘Dazzle’ and it lives up to its name.  It’s the first time I’ve grown this variety. I love it already and to be honest, I shall still love it even if it doesn’t taste that nice, because it’s so pretty.