Tempestuous weather leaves gardening in a whirl

An anenome finally opens on the patio.

How many fingers can you cross? And is it possible that crossing some toes too will add to the effect?

The weather pepped up over the weekend. It wasn’t a heat wave, but there was enough warmth to give hope that my bones will feel warm sometime soon.

And enough warmth to make you very aware that the warming of the sun on you skin is very, very different to the warming of central heating.

Such an improvement was also just in time to be able to sit outside and appreciate the results of the bulb planing that we'd done last autumn.

The question, as always, is whether it lasts, but the forecasts are looking more optimistic, at least in terms of temperature.

Spot the healthy ones.

It had been a crazy week. Last Tuesday, I got home to find that the sudden sun that day had boiled most of my seedlings in their propagating trays. Most was gone – it remains to be seen whether any of the peas and broad beans recover. I’m holding out faint optimism for one or two at most.

At least there were two small pea plants – the smallest and poorest, it had seemed – that were outside the trays waiting for the extra coir pots needed for repotting, and thus didn’t suffer. They look so healthy by comparison now.

And then, just 48 hours after that, a blizzard hit. Oh, it didn't stick, but the snow was teeming down, swirling around in the wind, obliterating the nearby St Pancras and British Library.

All this while early mornings would, whether bright or gloomy, reveal frosted car roofs.

How on earth do you judge whether to try to harden off plants or open the propagator vents or do anything when the weather is so utterly all over the place?

Grazing sheep at Hackney City Farm.

It is a learning curve – and then some.

As young plants succumbed to massive stress and shock, the leaves of the broad beans turned from vibrant green to grey, and everything else wilted, it felt soul destroying, having judged so well until that moment.

But you have to get right back into the saddle, as they say after a throw, so on Saturday, with the sun at my back once more, I sat down and sowed two more full cell trays.

One was made up of salad vegetables – I’m going to leave radishes and spring onions until I’m back from my brief trip, and then sow them straight into pots – but included two varieties of lettuce, plus more chard.

The second tray was all tomatoes and chilies, of which there have been no sign in the earlier attempts.

Red leaves catching the sun near Columbia Road.

I read somewhere that the entire country is about five weeks behind usual growing times, so perhaps those first ones may yet geminate, while the new sowing should have a much better chance as the temperature seems to be stabilising.

Yesterday, a pleasurable wander down to Columbia Road allowed to to pick up some more fibre pots for potting on.

And alongside the one pea that I sowed to make a trio with the two healthy plants (a Kelvedon Wonder), I added three broad beans (Witkiem Manita) and three runner beans (St George).

All are sitting on trays – but are not in propagators. Let’s see what happens.

Primula on Columbia Road market.

Also yesterday, I added another row of carrots into the potager – there is no sign of anything pushing up from the first sowing, but as with the tomatoes, they may now appear.

And alongside this now sits a row of turnip seeds.

The revelation of the weekend – of the week, indeed – was the discovery of three tiny pea shoots in the potager, just pushing through and unbending to reach the light.

Sown five weeks ago, I was beginning to doubt that any of them would germinate, but it provides yet more evidence for just how tough and resilient plants can be.

They now have a wigwam erected around them – with space for several more plants – and are themselves encircled by strips of copper to (hopefully) help keep the slugs off as they grow bugger and juicier.

Joyfully able to revel in the weather, I also spent time clearing the space in the pot holding the vine, together with the hanging basket, and sowed substantial amounts of nasturtium.

Potager with added wigwam. And car. For context.

That will keep things ticking over for a few days, I think.

But with the forecast suggesting – finally – that temperatures are approaching a seasonal norm and, most importantly, not plunging below freezing almost every night, gardening matters might finally be looking up.

And the lesson of the lost beans and peas must be that, once leaves appear, open the vents.

As a wise man once put it: living is learning. And the same goes for gardening.

A god in my garden

Late winter light and shade.

As the march toward spring continued, the forecast weekend sunshine arrived on cue, providing the perfect opportunity to spend quality time outside.

There was plenty to do, but the weather was such a convincing call to action that it felt effortlessly enjoyable.

Out of the breeze, the sun had real warmth, and with the brightness that dominated both days, it was intoxicating.

Saturday’s activities surrounded the potager; ground was prepped for sowing and plastic tracking, strenuously linked together, was laid down to provide a pathway between planting areas.

And then, in three spots, were sown peas (Meteor), broad beans (Witkiem Manita) and – probably wildly optimistically – some runner beans (Painted Lady). All are now covered with plastic bell cloches.

The runner beans shouldn’t really go in for a while, but as Monty Don said last year, if we’re going to get so much grey – and rain and god alone knows what else – then maybe we need to rethink some of the old formulas a bit. It’s certainly worth a try – not least as part of my learning process.

Stencil: Columbia Road.

Later, wigwams will be erected next to each group, and more seeds/plants added to (hopefully) ensure lengthy and generous cropping.

It was exhilarating: even the fact that I found myself wondering if I really had a clue what I was up to was joyful in its sense of unregimented experimentation and the attempt to do something so positive.

Over the weekend, various people commented on my progress. There was the father of one neighbour I don’t know who wished me luck, but then seemed fascinated to learn that the soil that he assumed was dismal should be home to countless worms.

Then there was Michael, the neighbour who had done so much to strip the weeds out of my patch once I’d started last year, and who is now so tickled and excited by the whole project that he’s decided to address me as Percy Chucker.

I feel faintly guilty at being so possessive of it – although Michael has a patch in the flower bed nearest his flat, which he also cleared last year, while Lisa is intending to make the most of the middle bed.

Everyone will be welcome to use the flower seeds that I seem to be accruing regularly as freebies.

Light and shade in Columbia Road.

And for Anca, who also wants to get stuck in, I’m going to get lovage seeds: she has just one small plant in a pot and relishes what it brings each year.

So this is not a one-sided relationship.

It’s funny really: of those of who know each other and speak regularly (about half the flats), we were all were peeved with the way that the housing association-employed garden contractors had let things get overgrown and out of hand, but we did nothing.

It was only my greedy desire to grow more that kick-started something last year.

Thus it was a group of us, one bright Sunday last year, that pulled down and cut away the climber that had covered much of the ivy on the carpark wall, had grown over the lights and was spreading out from the wall to the small tree that stands at the heart of the potager.

So as things warm up and the days stretch out like a cat on a warm hearth, it’s not difficult to imagine days when there will be gardening activity across all three little plots; gardening shared and enjoyed communally.

Choosing: Columbia Road Market.

On Sunday evening, Les delivered another 240 litres of organic, multi-use compost, which will help fill the space vacated by the rubble that is now heaping up against a wall beyond ‘my’ area.

This provided pleasant early-evening labour after work today and will be continued tomorrow. I’m hoping the area will be okay for sowing carrots and turnips by the weekend.

And how extraordinary to hear an early dusk chorus from the plane beyond the wall; so many different songs making me wish I knew each call.

But the patch also welcomed a new resident on Sunday afternoon, after an exploratory amble down Columbia Road produced a blackcurrant bush.

It’s not an easy fruit to buy fresh: something like 90% of the UK’s domestic blackcurrant crop goes straight to Ribena – an insult to a fruit that, used properly, whether as the base for a sorbet or a good jam, is gratifyingly grown up.

Which is why it’s the fruit bush I’d prioritised over any other – much as I love gooseberries and fantasise about making my own redcurrant jelly.

And of course, this is the time of year to plant fruit bushes, so the timing was perfect. Frankly, at £5.50, if it produces three punnets of fruit this year, it’ll have paid for itself already – and it looks lovely and healthy, with a mass of buds foretelling growth to come.

Otto exploring the potager.

According to a variety of sources, blackcurrant requires a deeper hole than you’d imagine; needs fertilising straight away (it got some organic seaweed food all over the root ball) and will need mulching in the next few weeks – so another trip to Hackney City Farm will be required, if only for a bag rather than a barrow of manure.

In the meantime, there was plenty more sowing to undertake – two more trays of 40 cells apiece, now nurturing two varieties of strawberry, four varieties of tomato, lettuce, more radishes and spring onions – and chard.

Chard? I’ve never even eaten it (to the best of my knowledge) but it was a free packet that was languishing at the bottom of the tin, so it seemed eminently sensible to use it.

My goodness: this is addictive!

But what pleasure and what a sense of something real as I rubbed compost between my fingers on Sunday, dying them black; and as I pressed seeds into the moist dark, a god in my garden, granting the opportunity for life to grow from what seems, on the surface, like shriveled death.

A load of shit

Ah. Me. With manure.

It comes to something when a couple of hours spent with a load of shit leaves you with a grin on your face.

But sure enough, this afternoon’s endeavours have left the warm glow of satisfaction, as well as the slight, but not unpleasant, ache of muscles that have never hefted manure – or a wheelbarrow – before.

As mentioned a few days ago, Hackney City Farm, which is only a five-minute walk through the park at the back of us, had said that I was welcome to a load of manure – and they’d even let me use one of their barrows to wheel it home.

Indeed, I got the manure free, as I’m “community”, which chuffed me rather a lot. Actually, I gave them a donation, but they were reluctant to take it initially, since they didn’t want me to think that I had to do that.

Very nice people and a really friendly environment.

And a big ‘hello’ to Larry the Donkey and all the other residents, plus all the carers, at the farm.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve toddled down occasionally on weekends when The Other Half is away.

It’s easy to assume that such a place is for young families with tots, but I find it has something to ofer the likes of me too.

I have real, concrete memories of staying on farms for holidays as a child. And they are valued, loved memories.

And discovering that I can wander just a short distance from my middle-of-a-bleedin-big-city home, and smell the same smells that I remember fondly from farms, is not – how shall I put it – unwelcome.

And after all, we only think it’s a ‘bad’ smell, if we don’t remember what it means and how incredibly productive and life-promoting what makes that smell can be.

But anyway, if you’re up this way, Hackney City Farm is very well worth a visit. There’s a nice café, with fresh food, too, plus the opportunity to buy such things as fresh eggs.

Anyway, let’s go back a bit. It’s probably a bit early to say that today has been ‘a job well done’, since the job isn’t finished yet, but it’s certainly a case of ‘a job well started’.

Before any digging in.

Although it wasn’t the only soil-improving arrival today,

Les from Halifax – or more pertinently, from a shop just off Columbia Road – brought me up two 60l bags of organic all-purpose compost.

The majority is going on the same bed, but some will be used for sowing the first batch of seeds that will sit in the new growhouse.

God, I love discovering real, local, independent businesses! And is it any coincidence that the service is almost always so much better?!

I have to say, I was also absolutely thrilled when Les, having driven into the car park and pulled up right next to my precious bed, looked at it and praised what I’d done.

I was elated – really.

Now because of the lack of readily-available hot water this week, much of my intended cooking and preserving has been put on hold, so it’s been rather easy to see the week as a failure – or at least a part-failure.

But what I’ve managed to do in terms of the garden is pretty good – I’m on track for everything I wanted to achieve. And that can’t possibly be bad.

What remains is more digging in, plus a lot of sowing. And, err, that’s it.

To add, I’ve just joined the RHS and I feel all sort of frizzy and excited. I hope you understand.

And finally – a big shout out to Larry the Donkey, and all the other residents (and helpers) at Hackney City Farm. You really do rock, guys and guyettes.