Sowing and potting

Cool and rather showery since the last post, and not much has been done in the garden; but yesterday I had a sowing and potting-up day in the greenhouse.

There’s still a sweet pea flower showing in the pot against the back wall, though it’s not particularly photogenic and won’t last long.  This year, after planting out the seedlings that were sown in late winter, I sowed some late seeds into the pot to provide a succession of flowers, and that seemed to work well; there were flowers in there for a long period, even though some of the plants suffered from under-watering over the dry summer.  I’ve now sown seeds for next year into small pots in the cold frame, and will try to remember to keep them watered; I think last winter’s failure was due to the pots drying out.

Sage and euonymus cuttings

I also tackled the several pots of cuttings taken in summer and earlier this autumn.  Some have already been divided up and potted on; the green and purple sages are doing well in their little pots, but I had left the cuttings of the variegated sage ‘Icterina’ until now.  It's a relatively new plant for me.  For a few years I had wondered about it – the yellowish colouring can look rather sickly – but having acquired one at a village plant sale a couple of years ago and having planted it out in the patio bed, I’ve decided that it can provide a nice contrast to green-leaved plants.  And, since there are plans afoot that may mean that that bed will have to be reworked, I had taken cuttings to ensure that I wouldn’t lose it.  The cuttings of the variegated euonymus which had been attacked by a scale insect infestation – taken in case of terminal decline of the parent plant – have also produced roots and have also gone into little pots, as have osteospermums and wallflowers, and two Photinia ‘Red Robin’ cuttings.  They are all set out in front of the greenhouse; I must remember to keep them watered and protected, if necessary, from excessively cold weather.

The euonymus cuttings were interesting; they seem to have produced most of their new roots near the top of the cutting rather than at the bottom.  I've never seen that before.

There are other cuttings about which I’m less certain.  You might think that signs of new growth on a cutting are a sure indication of its having rooted, but no, they seem to be able to keep growing without having produced any roots at all.  How do they do that?  The safe sign is roots poking out of the bottom of the pot.  There are cuttings of winter savory and Dianthus ‘Mrs Sinkins’ that are looking decidedly peaky but have the merest beginnings of growth on them, so I’m leaving them over winter to see if any roots appear!

A party of up to seven male pheasants has taken to strolling around the garden, probably sheltering from the local shoot (they have worked out that they’re safe here).  They particularly like hanging around under the seed and fatball feeders, and scratching about in the grass for dropped food – which is usefully scarifying moss out of the area.  I wonder if I can get them to do the whole lawn?

The bachelor party

Changing seasons

Back after a break in Scotland, to a garden on the change from autumn towards winter.  But the Choisiya ternata (Mexican Orange Blossom) thinks it's spring and is flowering its socks off!  Little does it know that I have plans to cut it back (severely) next spring; it's much too big.

Choisiya ternata - in full flower in late October!

The windowbox, however, was definitely in late autumn mode and in need of replanting for winter.  I had started planning for this a few weeks ago; the narcissi 'Tete-a-tete' had been started off in pots for transplanting, and various self-sown pansies around the garden had been dug up and potted on in preparation for this job.  I already had pots of the early-flowering snowdrop Galanthus elwesii and little rooted cuttings of Rosemary 'Miss Jessopp's Upright' (last year's windowbox plants had dried out irretrievably over the summer), and on a whim I dug up a couple of self-sown pulmonaria plants to fill out the space (we'll see if that works).  The result is a little bare but will do for the time being.  The summer planting has been dealt with; annuals composted and perennials potted up for next year.

Windowbox ready for winter

The birds seem pleased to see us back, with the birdbath refilled (the weather was mostly dry in our absence) and feeders replenished.  Over the summer we've had a pair of chiffchaffs about, and at least one of them seems still to be here; there has been a pair of blackcaps too, but I expect them to head south for the winter.  The fieldfares are here already, and probably the redwings too, so we don't expect to have many hollyberries to save for Christmas; the berries were ripe as early as mid-September and the birds will polish them off soon.

Holly berries in mid-September

The remaining eating apples still on the cordons have been picked and stored; we have plenty, but a great many have been eaten by the wildlife while still on the tree (and the pears too).  Usually it's insects and birds, but most of the damaged ones have teeth marks on them - the squirrel? or a rat (they're a fact of life in the countryside)?

A munched apple core - who's the culprit?

Something has also been rearranging the mushroom compost spread on some of the veg beds, and nibbling my radicchio plants; I had hoped that the latter would be too bitter for the wildlife to eat.  Ah well, if you attract wildlife to the garden, you can't expect it to necessarily play by your rules.

Nibbled radicchio, despite the twiggy protection

There are still a few small courgettes, and the French beans have a last few tiny pods, curled up against the chill, in addition to the old, larger pods left for seed; I need to pick and dry those off soon.  Another job will be to weed out the large number of foxglove seedlings that are colonising the bottom part of the veg plot; some years ago I put a few plants in there and since then their progeny has rather taken over.

Curled-up beans

Too many foxgloves!

In the greenhouse, the tomato plants have been cut down and the last fruits brought indoors to ripen; I've also taken the opportunity to pull up the yellow antirrhinum that has been flowering in there for a couple of years now.  It will have seeded sufficiently to come back next spring, and indeed I may have to do quite a lot of weeding to keep the numbers manageable!

I also have autumn-sown seedlings of annuals for an early showing next year: the blue salvia, marigolds and corncockles.  But the orlaya, also sown at the same time, has done nothing.  That plant really doesn't like me; it's supposed to respond well to autumn sowing, but I've never had anything from it.

Salvia, marigolds and corncockles - but no orlaya!

The lawn has been mown twice this autumn, and is already looking a little long although the weather is probably going to be too wet now to do it again.  There are more toadstools in the grass.  Fungi seem to have had a bumper year everywhere; in Scotland we saw an amazing variety of them.

Three types of Highland fungi ...

... and some more on a fallen log

Pink and orange

Autumn is always thought of as a time of golds and russets.  There's certainly gold (orange and yellow) in my garden at the moment, but the main colour, such as it is, seems to be pink.  Pink and orange is not a colour combination that I favour, though fortunately there are few places where the two appear close together; and in the softer light of autumn, the colour clash doesn't seem quite so garish. 

Nerine bowdenii

The nerines are starting to flower; they're flamboyant blooms, lipstick-pink and parading their finery at a time of year when most plants are winding down or fading away.  Nearby is a pot with a few last orange marigolds, but those are tucked away in a corner and not very visible from most angles.  

Cosmos bipinnatus 'Dazzler'

Another strong pink in the garden is the bed of Cosmos bipinnatus 'Dazzler' which has bloomed strongly for a few months now and is still providing some cut flowers for the house; I've managed to save seed from it to sow again next year.

Dahlia 'Bishop of Canterbury' - I think!

Dahlia 'David Howard'

The dahlias are recovering from their rather dry summer (pots insufficiently watered in the heat!) and are gradually starting to flower again.  The pink one which I think is 'Bishop of Canterbury' - although online searches suggest that 'B of C' is a rather variable variety so it might not be - is dominating the patio along with D. 'David Howard', which is a nicely soft shade of orange.  The two get along not too badly together.

Orange-berried pyracantha

Rudbeckia

As I've said before, this has been a spectacular fruit year, and the firethorn (pyracantha) on the north wall of the house has berried profusely - orange, of course.  And the yellow rudbeckia is also in full splendour.

The 'pink and orange' combo is at its peak in the berries of the spindle tree, Euonymus europaeus 'Red Sentinel'; the seed cases haven't opened yet, and only the pink outer is visible, with the orange berries still tucked up inside.

Spindleberries

Fruit of the season

A combination of wet weather and having other things to do kept me from checking on the garden for a couple of days, but this morning a foray down the veg patch and into the greenhouse produced a good handful of tomatoes and some fair sized courgettes.  The courgette 'British Summertime' hasn't done so well this year; as its name suggests, it is supposedly bred to fruit well in our summer weather, but we haven't had a typical summer this year and perhaps it has been too hot for it!  'Defender' continues to do well, however; I need to buy more seed for next year and 'Defender' will definitely be on my shopping list.

Down by the compost corner, several impressive clumps of toadstools have suddenly appeared in the grass.  I said in a recent post that the little solitary toadstool found in the lawn looked fairy-like; these ones are more for goblins, I think.  Fruit, but definitely not edible, and rather sinister-looking!

I made the most of a couple of dry days to get on with attempting to clip the long hedge into some sort of order.  I haven't cut the top for a couple of years; it involves balancing on the top of the ladder and hacking away with the extending shears, and last year there were too few dry days to do that.  There's still work to be done, but we're getting there.  One of the robins was obviously concerned that I was going to destroy his roosting place; he kept a close eye on what I was doing.  There's plenty of hedge left for him to hide in.

Greening up

It's strange for the garden to be turning greener at this time of year, rather than going brown; but the recent rain, some of it heavy, has encouraged plants to get a second wind.  The courgettes have started producing again, and the lawn is now looking more like itself than it has for a few months.  The rain has occasionally been accompanied by thunder, and together those have kept me indoors at times, but some dry spells in the past few days have allowed me to get outside.  Jobs have included making a start on cutting the long hedge (big leylandii, some too big for me to reach the back) - a layer of cardboard has been put down covering the path alongside the trees, and this is being gradually covered by the clippings as a weed suppressant.  For the time being I've left the ivy that is flowering through the leylandii in parts, to provide nectar for the insect population; a couple of years ago we had a great many red admiral butterflies enjoying it.

Male common blue butterfly

- with wings open

Butterflies have done better this year, and they continue to come to the garden; this week's spot was a male common blue which was around for a couple of days.

Birds are also about, albeit in smaller numbers in the moulting season; a robin has been showing interest in my hedge clipping.  Aside from the wild birds, young pheasants and red-legged partridges, brought in by a local estate for shooting, flock regularly in the field beyond us and occasionally wander in.  One day 20 partridges filed through the garden and stood on the summerhouse veranda for a bit until I gently moved them on (the summerhouse door was open and, although they weren't looking as though they were going to explore inside, I thought it best to discourage them from any such thought). 

One day I found a little toadstool in the lawn; a few hours later it had entirely disappeared.  I can see how they came to be associated with the fairies.

Autumn, suddenly

After a much warmer than usual summer, suddenly it’s autumn.  On the second-last morning of August for the first time this year we had condensation on the outside of the bedroom windows – always a sign of the cooler weather kicking in.  The fourth heatwave was a bit of an anticlimax; one or two warm days, but then a chilly wind from the east cooled things down considerably, and I did briefly consider putting on my winter gardening jacket one afternoon.  A few showery days turned to more persistent rain, and this week is more wet than not.  It’s all good for the garden, which desperately needs any rain it can get.

Apple and plum trees

The leaves of the plum tree are always the first to turn, and it makes a striking contrast with the big apple tree next to it, with its still-green leaves and huge fruit.  The early eating apples are much smaller but also plentiful (sadly, they aren’t good keepers); several houses in the village are giving their fruit away as there is so much.

Autumn and winter veg is starting to appear in the kitchen garden: leeks, winter cabbage, radicchio, pak choi, hardy herbs, in addition to the sprouting broccoli and kale that have been growing for several weeks now.  There are still some French beans, and I planted out a few little lettuce seedlings today, into a surprisingly warm soil, for a late crop.  There’s a row of carrots and some beetroot that need to be dealt with, and the courgettes are still limping along; and in the greenhouse the tomato crop has been good.

We have set up a bird table near the summerhouse, and the robin who lives down there has been enjoying having food put out for him (or her).  But it’s that time of year when birdlife seems to go quiet; perhaps some of the residents are already starting to migrate to warmer parts of the country or they’re moulting and staying in hiding.  A fatball put out a couple of days ago has gone untouched, and there are now only two or three sparrows coming to the patio for food whereas a couple of weeks ago we had nearly 20 at a time.  After two or three months away, Lefty the lame woodpigeon returned the other day to poke around one of the flowerbeds; we hope he’ll stay for the winter.

There are a few butterflies still about; a small copper was resting today on the winter savory.

Small copper butterfly

Feast or famine II

Apart from a showery spell a couple of weeks ago, the weather has continued dry (we’re now in Heatwave 4, although the past few days have been more cloudy and breezy than hot).  The garden is parched, and although little has died prematurely in the veg plot, nothing is actually growing very much.  I have some seedlings (radicchio, cima di rapa, a late cabbage or two) ready to go out, and will have to water assiduously to keep them alive.  There are warnings that vegetable supplies may be impacted, and that, because berries and other wild fruits are appearing early, wildlife may run short of food this autumn and winter.  Although I've been picking blackberries across the lane, I'm happily leaving a good number for the birds and other denizens of the hedgerow.

Pears ,,,

,,, and apples

It has been an excellent fruit year.  The plum crop (now long gone or laid down as preserves, see below) was large, the apples are prolific and we have a few of the best pears our two little trees have ever produced.  Even the fig, in its over-shady position, has done well.  Down at the bottom of the garden, the wild damson trees – probably suckers from the plum tree, which was probably grafted onto a damson rootstock – rarely produce enough fruit for us to bother with; the fruit is small and very sour, and really only fit for use in flavouring liqueurs, in the manner of sloe gin, and you need a fair quantity of them to do that.  This year, though, there’s a good number of them.  We recently unearthed a long-forgotten bottle of home-made damson gin in the cellar, 2011 vintage, which has turned out to be delicious with its 14 years of bottle age.  There’s a bottle of cheap gin in the house, bought so that we could preserve some of the plums, so the rest of it has gone to make more damson gin.  I doubt if we’ll manage to keep it for 14 years though!

Damsons - ready for the gin!

I had carefully netted my cabbages to prevent butterflies from laying their eggs on them.  In the end, it has been the dry weather that has finished off the cabbages rather than the butterflies, helped by the presence of a red ant nest in the soil of that bed.  When I passed by yesterday, there was a frantic fluttering under the netting – a wren had somehow got in there and was trapped.  How did it manage that?  I lifted the netting and let it out, and it flew off with a loud chirp.  The netting was put back in place.  Later on, I passed by again, and – there, under the netting, was the wren.  So I let it out again.  And later still – yes, the wren was back.  I gave up and left the netting half off the bed, but still lying on its supports; the remains of the cabbages are so unappealing that no butterfly is likely to lay eggs on them.  The wren spent several hours in its little tent, fluttering busily around and apparently picking something (flies?) off the underside of the net; this morning, at breakfast time, it was in there again, working hard at finding whatever is attracting it.  Perhaps it’s feeding itself up in anticipation of a hard winter?