Getting on with it

After a week or so of cold and frozen ground, the weather has lurched to damp and drizzly and now unseasonably mild. Friends in Germany tell us that the temperature reached 21C, about 70F, where they are – not at all February weather.  The climate seems to be going haywire: there's snow in Athens and Texas, and a heatwave heading for us.  As the end of the month approaches, so too does the start of the growing season, and with more pleasant weather on the way it’s time to get down to work to start off the new season’s plants. 

Most of the seed-sowing will start in March, but there are some jobs to be done earlier. While last year’s seed-sowing was a bit hit-or-miss, there were successes particularly in the veg plot and greenhouse that I’d like to build on this year. 

Among last year's successes were the chard and leaf beet

The early jobs include sowing broad beans, and planting garlic and shallots. Normally I would have done at least some of this back in the autumn, but that didn’t happen this time because of problems with the seed companies. For the past few years I’ve saved garlic cloves and shallots from the previous crop for planting out, but last year’s garlic heads were tiny – probably because I didn’t water them enough in the dry spring – and I decided I would buy a new and more productive variety for this season. The variety I wanted was listed as ‘available soon’ in both the catalogues I usually buy from, but ‘soon’ never happened, and both catalogues are now listing it as ‘available September 2021’. The same thing with the shallots; although the bulbs from the 2020 crop were of a good size I was hoping to try something different, but that variety too never materialised. Is this some manifestation of Brexit (most of these things come in from Europe, but other varieties seemed unaffected), or a crop failure somewhere? Anyway, I finally decided to plant a few of last year’s garlic cloves and shallots out in the garden to give myself a small crop, and wait until September to order some more (is that being too optimistic? If necessary I can buy another variety of each). They went in in early February with some fleece over them, mostly to stop the birds from pulling them up, but it was useful during the freeze. Garlic needs a cold spell to do well, and it certainly had that. The fleece has now been removed and replaced with some plastic netting as the shoots are coming up (a number of the bulbs were already shooting when planted). 

Same with the broad bean planting– my chosen variety has been out of stock for months. Finally, last week, I relented and sowed some of my remaining Superaquadulce seeds in modules in the greenhouse. In any case I’ve never been sure whether it’s worth autumn-sowing broad beans; they don’t seem to crop significantly earlier than those sown in early spring. I’ve also given up sowing direct in the ground, as the germination rate is often poor (eaten by mice?), so a lot of seeds this year will be in toilet-roll-tube modules for planting out (complete with tube, which will break down in the soil). 

One lot of seeds that were sown in autumn were the sweet peas; they have been in the cold frame but have done very poorly, with only a couple of them germinating. There have been signs of disturbance in the pots, though it beats me how a mouse could have got in there. Anyway the spring sowing can be done soon, and I hope they will do rather better! 

The aubergines, peppers and chillies were sown indoors last week and are awaiting germination on the radiator. It’s too early still for the tomatoes, which will in due course be treated in the same way. Some of the early crocus planted in little pots last autumn are coming through, and some self-sown pulmonarias in odd corners are starting to flower – some very welcome colour to herald the spring! 

Crocuses 'Blue Pearl' and 'Cream Beauty'

Pulmonaria flowering quietly by the wall

The birds are also feeling spring-like; a blackbird has been gathering moss and dunking it in the pond to make it nice and muddy for her nest (which is in the long hedge). A pair of robins have been checking out a hole in the fascia of the neighbours’ garage, and a thrush has started singing quietly somewhere nearby.

Cutting back

Some years ago we went into a favourite restaurant and commented to the waiter that it was cold outside.  “Yes.” said the waiter.  “It is December.”  Fair comment.  And now it is February.  And it is cold.  Not as much as in some parts of the country; it’s much colder further north, and all the snow is in the north and east.  All we’ve had are a few light snow flurries every now and again, but the ground is mostly frozen and the temperature hasn’t risen much above zero (centigrade) for a few days, with significant windchill from the east making it feel colder.  Not a good time for digging or weeding.

However there is a lot of cutting back to do.  I’m leaving the wisteria, apple tree and Buddleja davidii – all of which need pruning this month – until the temperatures rise a little, next week if the forecast is correct, but shrubs which are for the chop anyway are fair game; it doesn’t matter if they get frosted in the process.  I’ve been tackling the elder bush that self-seeded between the ‘Mary Queen of Scots’ rose (which also needs cutting back) and the choisya (which seriously needs taking in hand, but not just now), cutting out long branches back to the trunk in the hope that I can control it from there.  But my main focus has been further down the garden, where the Buddleja alternifolia has been getting beyond itself.

Buddleja alternifolia is not what you would call a graceful shrub.  It’s a sprawler, sending out long, long wands of growth which sprout even thinner (and longer) shoots; in due course these produce narrow leaves and little lilac puffs of flower clusters which are striking when they are allowed to cascade through a stronger-growing shrub or tree, but otherwise they arch over and colonise quite a wide area of ground.  Sometimes they layer themselves, creating new plants.  For a few years now I’ve wondered about removing it entirely, but it’s pretty in flower and I’m giving it another chance by taking it in hand and seeing how it does.  Or, more correctly, I’m taking them in hand, for there are now two of them.  It must have layered itself, and I can’t remember which is the original plant, but I’ve decided that the one which is shooting up through the neighbouring osmanthus and waving about way above my head is the one that is going to go.  It's not the correct time of year to prune B. alternifolia, but it's easier to see what I'm doing while the leaves are not in the way, and it will make no difference to the plant that I'm planning to dig out; I might lose some flowers on the other plant, but I can live with that.  Removing one of them will also make more room, and light, for the Japanese anemones that have lived in its shadow, and for rose ‘Mme Hardy’, and allow me to dig out the nettles and other undesirables that live under there.  On closer inspection, it turns out that both buddleja plants have a lot of dead wood in them, and I’ve been hacking away at both to thin them out and recover a lot of adjacent ground.  The dead twigs have made useful brushwood to cover the long path alongside the leylandii hedge, and the thicker wood has made its way to the log piles at the bottom of the garden, providing a home for various garden creatures.  My efforts were closely watched, and encouraged, by whichever garden robin owns that particular territory – I’m never sure whether it’s the veg patch robin or the patio robin – and he (or she) was particularly pleased when I dug up a few comfrey plants, exposing some of the minibeasts that live in the soil.  Now that some of the area has been cleared of buddleja cover, I can tackle the ever-spreading comfrey and create room for more (different) plants!

Being watched ...

... and encouraged

The Viburnum davidii also needs cutting back; part of it is sprawling into the pond.  I’m leaving that for the time being, as the cover it provides has been keeping part of the pond from freezing on the slightly less cold nights, allowing somewhere for the birds to drink and bathe.  There are advantages to leaving some of the more overgrown areas untouched – the local pheasant has been hunkering down in the undergrowth to shelter from the cold wind, and the blackbirds appreciate my leaving windfall apples for them in the lee of the shrubs.  One day we even had a nuthatch taking a rest in the purple-leaved prunus, sheltered from the east by the ivy-covered trunk, and occasionally poking around in the moss-covered branches and in the ivy for food.

The icy blast from the east has flattened the snowdrops (Galanthus atkinsii) down by the summerhouse, and the phlomis in the same area.  They should both survive the experience; snowdrops come from cold mountain places, and I've seen phlomis growing wild high in the mountains of Crete were snow is common in winter (although admittedly snow provides protection from the cold, whereas snow-less icy winds are a different thing).  However I was pleasantly surprised to find a few golden-yellow crocuses flowering near the drive entrance when the sun encouraged them to open up.  They must be Crocus angustifolius, which I used to have in the windowbox, but I have no recollection of planting them where they now are.  They were a lovely sight on a cold February day!

Crocus angustifolius