The majestic Scots Pine.

I've not posted on my blog for a few weeks, for a couple of reasons, I had a terrible stomach bug which knocked me back for nearly a week. Terrible, I don't want to go through that again. Unfortunately it coincided with my other half, Martin's big birthday but I recovered just as we were due to go away for a few days, which is the second reason why I've not posted for a while. The break was well timed though as we both had a much needed rest. It was a bit of a last minute booking, we decided to go up to Scotland to try and catch the last of the snow, so Martin could do some snowboarding and I could do some walking. So whilst I'm catching up on reading my favourite blogs most of you have been making the most of the mild weather and getting going in the garden and at your plots. However, the mild weather was not good for us and unfortunately the Cairngorm mountains were severely lacking in snow, so no snowboarding for Martin. If we'd have gone the week before we'd have been OK, but the mild weather and the rain has caused most of the snow to melt. But we got out and did some good walks instead. This is the Cairngorm range from Loch Morlich.

We stayed in Aviemore which is in the heart of the Cairngorms National Park. I just wanted to share a wonderful place, Loch an Eilein, it is within the Rothiemurchus estate, one of the largest surviving areas of natural forest in Europe. The ancient Caledonian forest used to cover most of Scotland but now only around 1% remains and is home to some specific wildlife not often found elsewhere in the UK. Such as red squirrels, crested tits, crossbills, capercallie, wildcats, pine martens to name but a few. It is largely Scots Pine, Birch, Rowan and Aspen. According to Rothiemurchus website the average age of the majestic Scots Pine trees is over 100 years old and some over 300 years old. Loch an Eilein (loch of the island) is a beautiful loch within the forest, with a 13th century island castle.

You can walk round the whole loch.

But for me the trees are the stars of the show.

The bark at times encrusted in lichens.

Some of them look truly ancient.

A little surprise at the end of the walk.

I think we got off lightly

The snow mostly missed us this weekend, it has been bad in Manchester and bad in Leeds but here in Huddersfield only a thin covering. Shame in a way as I was looking forward to a nice walk in the snow today.

This was the garden this morning, with just Bob the cat's footprints. He hates the snow and has spent most of the day today curled up asleep on the back of the chair next to the radiator.

The cyclamen was peeking through with its vibrant pink, near the lovely foliage of the Arum maculatum and in my front garden the spidery flowers of the Witch Hazel.

I went for a walk to the allotment but I shouldn't have, it looked very bleak, spring seems a long way off today. 

This is at the entrance of the site.

 

My plot looked very bare.

The kale looks very sorry for itself and I hope my Globe artichokes will survive this cold.

Nearly used all my leeks up now.

Garden dreaming

So cold here in Huddersfield this weekend and its now snowing, so have had a lazy morning reading the paper and catching up with some gardening magazines. Had a good laugh at Alys Fowler's latest column in the Guardian. She talks about trying to pass the winter with a "furtive garden porn habit, locking myself into my office to look at pictures of vegetables, or verdant gardens in full summer sun", very funny and I think I'm with her on that one, looking at glossy pictures of glorious gardens in magazines and books, just about gets me through the winter! Though it doesn't all have to be visual, I love reading about gardening and gardens too. I always think its odd that there are no garden shows on TV over the winter, this is when we need to see gardens to help us plan our plots and gardens for the next season. Maybe its just me....

Anyway I've spent a lovely hour going through some pics of gardens that I have visited over the last few years for some inspiration and to feed my habit.
Inverewe Gardens, in Poolewe on the west coast of Scotland.

This is an amazing Scottish garden, which has an amazing collection of rhododendrons and azaleas and has a kitchen garden on the edge of the sea shore. The garden has the perfect growing conditions of one of may favourite flowers the Blue Himalayan poppy.

The tranquil Japanese garden at Tatton Park.

Trentham Gardens in Staffordshire, recently renovated with garden designer, Tom Stuart-Smith. This picture shows a section of the prairie garden.

A local garden with a fabulous nursery attached, in Halifax, it has sumptuous prairie planting again.

Finally one of my fairly recent garden discoveries and now so far my favourite garden is York Gate on the outskirts of Leeds. Relatively small but packed with ideas and plants grown in different environments, beautiful. Here it is in mid-spring.

Finally an image of summer taken at Scampston Hall in North Yorkshire, the flower which is adored by bees and butterflies, the sunflower.

Big Garden Birdwatch

I have just completed the Big Garden Birdwatch for my garden.

Actually it was a lovely thing to do on a sunday morning, to just sit and watch the birds. I've been watching from my upstairs bedroom, and I opened the window so that I could hear them too. I think the cold probably helped the number of birds that I saw, as the feeders were very busy. I have placed most of the feeders in one of my apple trees at the bottom of the garden, which is next to a big rhododendron bush, which I think the birds like as they fly into there for protection if they are disturbed.

I have three feeders, one with hulled sunflower seeds, one with peanuts and one with nyjer seeds, plus a hanger with fatballs in them. It seems to attract a mixture of birds to the garden, the sparrows, like the sunflower seeds, the blue tits like the peanuts and goldfinches like the nyjer seed. I put this feeder out especially to attract the goldfinches as I think they are such beautiful birds, very easy to identify with their red face and gold wings. The other day I had a whole flock of them in the garden, the collective noun is a charm of goldfinches, how poetic. It took them a while to find the feeder but now I see them regularly.

My most common garden bird is definitely the sparrow, which I know is struggling these days but I regularly get flocks and they roost in shrubs and bushes round about here, making a racket sometimes but its lovely to hear. It was difficult to count them today as they flit from one feeder to another and in and out of the trees and bushes but I think there were 11 in the garden at one time.

At this time of year I also see a couple of robins, which often have run-ins with the dunnocks, chasing each other off,  I also have a few local blackbirds in the garden which tend to get the bits that drop down from the feeders. Last year in our really cold winter, in the snowy spell at the beginning of January I was very excited to see some fieldfares in the garden, which were attracted to the apples which had dropped from my trees which I hadn't tidied up, thank heavens I'm not a tidy gardener.The blackbirds have started to sing again in the mornings and at dusk and there is nothing nicer to hear.

My most lovely bird today though was a bullfinch, another beautiful bird with a rosy pink chest, it was the male that was in the garden, I couldn't see a female with him, though in the past when I have seen them in my garden they have been in pairs.

I love feeding and watching my garden birds but I have pangs of guilt every now and then as I also have a cat. I have had a few traumatic moments when he has bought in a bird, often dead but not always. I've rescued a few but others have just been unsaveable. I like to think that I help more birds than Bob kills but it is still a moral dilemma. He's getting old now, and doesn't go out as much so he's definitely not bringing as many things in as he once did. Anyway Bob is fast asleep this morning so the birds are having a good time.

So in my hour, I saw the following (the number is the most seen at any one time):
Sparrow - 11
Blue tit - 2
Blackbird - 2
Dunnock - 2
Robin -1
Goldfinch - 4
Bullfinch - 1

Potatoes in the post

My potatoes have arrived in the post!

I've gone for 'Pentland Javelin' which is a first early variety. It has white skin and flesh, with a waxy texture. Then also 'Cara' which is a Main Crop variety. It is white with pink eyes and considered to be a very robust variety. Good for jacket potatoes.

I think I'll also put in a few 'Pink Fir Apple' potatoes which are a bit unusual looking but taste great.

Last year I grew three varieties 'Charlotte', Vales Emerald' and 'Pink Fir Apple' and whilst I had a good healthy crop from the 'Vales Emerald' they were a bit floury in texture for me. Everyone will have different preferences for potatoes, but I definitely prefer mine more waxy than floury. I'm still trying out varieties each year to find which I like best and which grows best on my plot.

This is the time of year when you get articles in gardening magazines about the pros and cons of chitting. To chit or not to chit, that is the question! Most people seem to think it is an advantage and I have always done it. It basically just encourages the potatoes to produce shoots, and encourage them into growth quicker when you plant them in the ground. I'm going to start them chitting in a cool, frost-free but bright place. They need to be in the light or they will produce the long white spindly shoots that you get when you forget about your potatoes and find them weeks later in your cupboard! In the light they will produce smaller, dark green shoots. The advice is to start chitting in warmer parts of the country from late January or in February in cooler parts, but about six weeks before you intend to plant out the potatoes. Can you chit for too long!? I planted mine last year at the end of March beginning of April, but I guess it all depends on where you live and the spring weather conditions. We did have a frost here quite late in the spring and the tops of my potatoes were damaged a bit but it didn't seem to affect the crop. I plan to plant them in the part of my plot that didn't get too much attention last year. Potatoes are know to be a good 'cleaning crop' for allotments as they break up the soil and the foliage grows fast and thick and can help smother some weeds. I will give the site a weed, add some garden compost and give a fork over before I plant them but that will be all.
I still find the digging up of your first potatoes of the year is one of the most exciting parts of the veg growers year and the first spuds always seem the tastiest. Apparently the heaviest potato was grown by Peter Glazebrook and weighed 11lb (4.99kg) (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-14934269), thats heavier than my cat! Don't think I'll be trying to break that record, small and sweet for me.

Books, Books Books.

Wild windy weather has returned to Huddersfield today, its been very windy with frequent showers. A day when even I'd prefer to be indoors. Although I love gardening I actually quite enjoy the lull that you get in winter, I definitely go into a type of hibernation. Its a time to recharge your batteries and to reflect and plan your garden/plot for next year. Over the winter my fellow garden bloggers have been writing about things they do to keep busy when we can't be where we'd most like to be, out in the garden. There have been posts on soup making, baking, crafts, seed catalogue studying, allotment planning and lawn lounging! It seems some of us relish a bit of downtime from gardening, though whether we'll still be saying the same thing in February I'm not sure!

For me its a time to catch up on reading. I've been sorting out my gardening books, if I can't do any gardening I can still read about it, so this is the time of year when I go back to some of my old favourites.

 I've just realised how many I have, from kitchen garden books, organic gardening, cut flowers, garden design,  you name it I have it. My favourites though, are those written about a persons garden experiences, such as Mirabel Osler's 'A gentle plea for chaos' and Beth Chatto's 'Garden notebook' but here are my two of my favourites. Elizabeth von Arnim 'Elizabeth and her German garden' which I reread frequently. I love her wit and passionate descriptions of her garden. She also wrote one of my favourite novels 'The Enchanted April', for any one who loves Springtime and Italy, the descriptions are enough to make your mouth water.

But the one book that I've read so many times its now falling apart and has so many pages marked for reference is by Elspeth Thompson 'Urban Gardener' which is in diary form and was about her garden in the centre of London and her allotment. I love it, its what inspired me to get my first allotment years ago and gave me loads of hints and tips about growing in a small space. I was heartbroken when I heard that she had died at the very young age of 48 after a struggle with depression. She was such an inspiring woman to me.

I've recently been buying a few gardening classics, I read Vita Sackville West's 'In Your Garden' which is a collection of her newspaper column articles that she wrote for the Observer. Her descriptions of her gardens are legendary and her gardening knowledge so extensive its scary. I need to go to Sissinghurst to visit very soon. She'd have been an amazing blogger!
On my holiday last September I found a brilliant book shop in Lyme Regis where they sold a few great gardening books, I bought Eleanor Perenyi 'Green Thoughts', Gertrude Jekyll 'Colour schemes for the flower garden' and Margery Fish 'Cottage Garden Flowers'. I didn't realise until it was too late that when we were on holiday in Dorset, we were near Margery Fish's famous garden East Lambook Manor, Somerset. We want to go back next year so that will be on the itinery. Anyway these books will while away the winter months for me.

For practical gardening books I love Carol Klein, Alys Fowler, Sarah Raven and of course Alan Titchmarsh. I have noticed that there aren't too many male gardeners in my list of favourites, I do enjoy reading Monty Don and Christopher Lloyd but I seem to veer to ones written by women. For Christmas I got Monty Don's 'Ivington diaries' and Carol Klein's 'Life in a Cottage Garden' both of which are also in diary form and are easy to dip in and out of.
Anyway my armchair is calling I'm off to do some reading.

Planning my 2012 plot

Today I've been sat at my desk, with my cat Bob (can you spot him?), planning my allotment for this year but I keep getting distracted by the lovely sunny day and the view from my window which looks out over some allotments and over to the most famous landmark of Huddersfield, Castle Hill.

Sadly I couldn't get one of those plots behind my garden, that would have been ideal. The end plot was not being cultivated very well and I tried and tried to see if I could get it but each year the bloke who had it would come for a few weeks plant some potatoes and then leave it again for the rest of the year, so in the end I gave up and asked for a plot on another site. Its only a few minutes walk so its not too bad, but one day I would love to get one of these!

I've been up to my plot today but there has been a hard frost this morning and that combined with the wet weather we have had nothing much can be done there today so back home to plan!

So now that I've reviewed what I grew last year I've sorted through my seeds and whilst I still have lots of seeds left over from previous seasons I like to try and few new varieties every year. Here are my new ones.

I bought some from the flower shows that I went to last year, including some from W.Robinson & Sons, those of the famous mammoth onion who create amazing displays of vegetables in the great pavilion. Some from T&M and some from Sow Seeds. Finally some from a seed company who have heirloom tomatoes (http://www.heirloomtoms.org/), they came to do a talk at my local allotment society meeting last year, bringing lots of tomatoes for us to taste. So I'm trying two of their tomatoes, one with a great name called 'Auld Sod', which is supposed to be good for outdoor growing and one called 'Red grape sugar plum' which on taste was amazing, so sweet.

I'm going to try some crimson flowered broad beans, to add some colour though I love the flowers on the ordinary broad bean too, they are so pretty. Some round yellow courgettes, and a very weird looking courgette called 'Trombocino'. Some mangetout peas, Crystal Lemon cucumber, a yellow beaned dwarf french bean and a purple beaned climbing french bean. Basically I'm adding some colour to my plot this year, it will be interesting to see if they taste good too! Maybe I've gone a bit off course, but I'll be growing lots of my usual tried and tested varieties as well, these are just some extras!