What have you done in the garden today Part 4 Spring 2024.

[MereDintofPandiculation]

What have you done in the garden today? What went well? What surprises have you had? What could have gone better?

Get some newts. We used to have masses of frogs (169 one year), then a neighbour gave us 5 newts, and now we have to rear our taddies in a separate tank because the newts are queuing up to eat them as they emerge from the eggs.

Just concentrate on the fruit - much better profit margin. Then you won’t be failing at veg. And can offer the allotment holder some fruit in exchange.

Lawns mowed. Hard going. Need a bath now.

Planted a few half price lupins I picked up in the supermarket and because it was so warm I stayed out and did some pruning and light weeding. Everywhere is so wet and boggy so lots of mud. Washed out the bird bath and put out some new fat balls and mealworms.

DS took me to a garden centre yesterday. First one was closed, second one, which is pure plants with no tat, was open. I wonder whether nurseries selling plants are OK but ones with lots of non-plant selling areas are not?

Maybe it's that a lot of them - including proper nurseries - are caught by the law being based on the area, which is supposed to discriminate between convenience stores and supermarkets.

To my shame, I don't actually know the law, even though I know we were open all through the weekend. I think it is correct that it has to do with being a nursery versus being a 'shop' - I think there are also different laws having to do with size? So although we have a big site, most of that is for production, not sales. Not sure!

I do remember that during covid (when I didn't work there) there was a point when we could be open to sell plants, but if people wanted to buy sundries (gloves, forks etc.), that wasn't considered essential.

Thank you @MereDintofPandiculation for encouraging me to pack it in. Apart from anything else, I have so many slugs and snails that they’ve eaten my daffodils and made their way up to the blossom. I planted my primulas, pruned my forsythia, sketchily primped the pergola and found some seed trays in my green house. The bottom panel fell out of the door in the autumn, and I left it, having no clue how to fix it. A fox has been using the greenhouse as a latrine. It’s added a whole new layer of awfulness to the usually slightly grim job of getting it ready for the season. I do begin to understand why greenhouses get abandoned.

There’s a useful guide to the law on Sunday and Easter Sunday trading here. It’s national legislation, but it’s all about size.

Planted out my leek babies today, and this happened. Twice. Great, glorious long worms as well.

We've given up on vegetables too, @Zebracat. Tried tomatoes, potatoes, courgettes, corn, carrots & no real success. Potato we do in bags more for the kids than a decent crop. We focus on fruit now - we have a cherry tree, strawberries (both wild & cultivated), raspberries, a blackberry hybrid, blueberries, gooseberries, & recent additions - patio apple tree, plum tree, apricot tree, crab apple, & a blackcurrant.

That’s interesting@APurpleSquirrel . I felt such a failure. I’m ok with tomatoes though, cut and come again salad leaves and herbs. Mainly my soft fruit is ok, but I planted summer and autumn raspberries in the same border, so pruning is a lottery. I think if I don’t try for more than that, I may do everything else better.

I do 6-10 sungold cherry tomatoes in growbags, as well as salad, herbs and chillies in planters but that’s it. Veg are too much like hard work here with our crap soil. Wildflowers love it, anything that needs any moisture, not so much. Over the years I’ve tried potatoes, carrots, garlic, parsnips, kale, pak choi, beans, peas, cucumber and they’ve all been more effort than the results are worth.

Fruit is fine as it’s low maintenance - we have an abundance of blackcurrants and gooseberries plus a couple of apple trees, a very small plum that we’ve not had any fruit off yet (3 years this year) and redcurrant. I’ve planted two rhubarb recently so will see what they do.

Interesting, I have also given up on veg and stuck to fruit as the effort wasn't worth the return.

Worst was the year my DF made me covers to keep butterflies off my cabbages. There were more butterflies inside than out and I called it my butterfly sanctuary.

Don’t think so in my case - they’re not that different in size. Didn’t know the area law till Saturday, when DS1, who works in a small supermarket, told me he was working both Easter Sunday and Easter Monday, having already worked Easter Saturday and Good Friday.

I'm also focussing now on fruit (and cut flowers). Too little reward with veg (although my purple sprouting broccoli has been good this year and grows whilst nothing else is doing much so it doesn't take up room) and I do like to have some perpetual spinach and salad leaves.

I am doubling the number of rhubarb plants and focussing on raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, black currants, red currants, gooseberries. They all cope with the shade too. I've also planted a morello cherry and two more apple trees.

… Except for the list of shops exempted from Sunday Trading Laws. (See the download attached to the link above)

Strangely, garden centres and nurseries aren’t in the list. Strangely, because there’s no way the one I was in on Sunday was less than 280sq m (or 60ft x 50ft)

Mmm purple sprouting broccoli is a thought. I have some seeds. I could start some of that off, I normally don’t have enough space,but if I’m giving up on potatoes leeks etc, then I do, and they are such handsome plants.

Since shading out my vegetable garden, my vegetables now occupy half my greenhouse and up to 15 large pots on the driveway. My shady, semi-wild, unkempt garden provides apples (Brownlees Russet, Forge, Worcester, King if the Pippins, Herrings Pippin, Allingtons Pippin, Cornish Aromatic and Ashmead’s Kernel), quince, medlar, mulberries, raspberries, loganberries, boysenberries, blackberries, strawberries (garden and alpine) and figs.

Fruit suits my temperament much better. There isn’t an endless timetable of jobs - sowing, pricking out, potting on, watering.

If you want handsome, try Asturian Tree Cabbage from Real Seeds. Yellowy green big roundish leaves eventually on a stem over 1m long. Lasts for years. Harvest all the year round by picking 1 leaf per person as and when needed

Incidentally, all the cabbage flower shoots are good to eat, if your plants have bolted.

Yes my veg garden has 1 large sunny bed and border and 2 very shady. My neighbours garden is a jungle full of elder, sycamore and brambles. I feel liberated!

Thanks for the tip. I will. Do they cope with shade?

I grew Asturian tree cabbage this year, and while I don't particularly enjoy the flavour of the leaves, the flower shoots are delicious. It's stood up to the weather much better than my purple sprouting broccoli. Rainbow chard is worth growing if you like it, as it looks absolutely stunning in amongst ornamental plants. And you can eat it. It seems to withstand absolutely everything including torrential rain and flooding. I'd also recommend Dazzling Blue kale for growing in a flower bed as the leaves have a gorgeous colour to them.

Yes, I read the whole report. There may of course be other issues about compliance and enforcement.

I’ve never had much success with veg either. I did do tomatoes and potatoes and chillies last year but have mostly given up on other stuff. Never ever managed to grow a carrot to maturity.
We have a couple of apple trees, a new damson tree and an enormous rhubarb but they need next to no looking after.
We stayed in a holiday cottage last year that had a perfect little veg plot and I was very envious so I might try a few broad bean plants this year.

To keep the allotment police happy, we try to have plenty of (fairly) perennials - an apple tree, fruit bushes, rhubarb, strawberries and artichokes. Root veg have always been a disaster.