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Sally Nex

Monthly Archives: February 2013

Of seed bombs and mushrooms

23 Saturday Feb 2013

Posted by sallynex in seeds

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

bee-friendly planting, flowers, mushrooms, seed bombing, seed swaps, seedy penpals, wildflowers

I got a lovely little parcel in the post the other day.

seedswap

I do love a good seed swap. This is the second year I’ve been taking part in this one: it’s run by the lovely Carl Legge, who lives in an obscure bit of Wales I’d only happened to have heard of because a breed of sheep is named after it (obscure bits of Wales are always heartbreakingly beautiful so that’s a good thing).

The idea of Seedy Penpals is pretty straightforward: you put your name down, you’re paired with another equally seed-obsessed gardener, and then given a (different) swapee – someone to send your own spare seeds to.

And this is the result. I don’t know what it is with beautiful packaging this year but everyone’s into it. I got the most beautiful packet of sweetpea seeds earlier this year from the wonderful Ursula over at Easton Walled Gardens. Well, I say packet: it was actually a very stylish flat tin, of the matt silver cigar sort, and inside the packets of sweetpeas were laid lovingly in a beautifully-folded piece of brown paper. It all looked so perfect I could hardly bear to break the seal and sow the seeds (though I got over that and they’re now in the altogether more prosaic surroundings of a load of old loo rolls full of compost in the greenhouse, soon, I hope, to germinate).

And my wonderful Seedy Penpal, Cally of Countrygate Gardens in Wiltshire (and a lady after my own heart: she has done a lot of what I one day dream of doing) clearly has an eye for a good ribbon, too. She’s taken such trouble to bind up my seeds so beautifully: it gives a pile of seed packets the delicious anticipation of a birthday present.

seedswap2

I particularly loved the bee mix seedballs – you can buy them from Cally (hunt down her phone number on the above website). Full of foxgoves, viper’s bugloss, wild marjoram, red clover and birdsfoot trefoil they might have been designed for my chalky soil. And they came wrapped in an artless square of hessian tied in string: it’s the little touches that make all the difference, you see.

seedswap3

Inside were – quite literally – seedballs. I’m very intrigued to find out if these work: the seeds inside are apparently mixed with clay, compost and chilli powder (to deter pests) and made into a little pellet about the size of an aniseed ball. I think you’re meant to sow the whole thing. It says to scatter them on the ground, but each pellet contains thousands of seeds… well. It’s not gardening as I know it: but I’m willing to give it a try. I shall report back.

seedswap4

And what were the other goodies in my little bundle of fun? Well: ‘Cosmic Purple’ carrot, which I’ve wanted to grow for ages (it’s one of the original heirloom purple carrots, though I think the ‘Cosmic’ bit probably came later); white and blue love-in-a-mist; some scallop summer squash (yay!), cleome, calendula, molucella and gypsophila; orange-scented thyme to add to my collection; some melons; and – get this – mushrooms! And it says all you need is horse manure. I’ve got loads, and loads, and loads of that thanks to my two little ponies, so I’m away. It sounds like a bit of a faff to get it started, but if home-grown chestnut mushrooms are the result, I’m game.

Thank you, Cally: you’ve sown the seeds (pun intended) for a wonderful season to come. And thanks also to Carl, for putting in the considerable work involved in setting up the swap in the first place. See you next year!

Wordless Wednesday: Crow

20 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by sallynex in wordless wednesday

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Tags

crow, photography, wildlife, wordless wednesday

(c) Gabrielle Nex

(c) Gabrielle Nex

Good ideas

17 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by sallynex in news

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

bumblebees, clematis, online garden design, wildlife gardening, wooden crates

Last week a lot of garden journalists emerged blinking into the open for the first major press event of the year: the Garden Press Event at the Barbican in London.

It was all a bit of a shock to the system: previously this has been held in the genteel surroundings of the RHS’s Horticultural Halls in Westminster, where they have such things as marble staircases and mezzanines.

No such luck at the altar to 70s brutalism that is The Barbican: I emerged from the tube station to plunge headlong into the demi-world of concrete and steel and unforgiving lighting that is this most urban of cityscapes. A curious choice for a show that embraces the wildlife-friendly, the environmentally considerate and the beautiful, perhaps.

But once you’re inside, you forget all that and immerse yourself in a gardeners’ sweetshop of delights, offered this year by a record-breaking 90 exhibitors. This show is getting bigger and better all the time: it’s already become unmissable for anyone involved in the garden media.

New ideas were everywhere: so here’s my pick of the ones that caught my eye.

gpe_bumblebees

Mini beehives: not for honeybees (they’re much too small) but for bumblebees. As we all know they’re in a bit of a pickle at the moment, and there’s lots gardeners can do to help them out. Which is fine if you have a local population of bumblebees: if not, these ones come with fuzzy bees already installed.gpe_bumblebees2Here they are: that black blob in the middle. See? Just under that clear plastic lumpy bit? OK, so photographing bumblebees in a plastic box turns out to be something of a challenge, but anyway: this is the insert inside each of those little boxes above. They only stay in the box a year as they don’t return to the same nest twice: but in that time they’ll multiply to 200+ bumblebees in a good year, and you’ll have done your bit for the environment. Oh yes, and you can get refills. (www.dragonfli.co.uk) gpe_clematispotClematis root shaders: Those nice people at Crocus have impeccable good taste and their stand was once again a mouthwatering selection of things I could have snapped up and squirrelled off home with right away (sadly, they weren’t looking the other way, and my bag wasn’t big enough. Shame). Among the handsomest and most innovative, I thought, were these half-pot terracotta root shaders: as we all know, clematis like their roots in the shade and their heads in the sun, so these were just the thing. (www.crocus.co.uk)  gpe_crateStylish ways with apple crates: Not really, strictly speaking, a product on display this one: just a very, very chic idea from the stylist who put together the Homebase stand. All you do is get one of those big wooden apple crates, paint it a distressed off white, then nail it on a wall. Hey presto: instant shelf for your garden lantern, perhaps some potted auriculas, a well-chosen sculpture… (www.homebase.co.uk)

growmatic

Online veg planning for schools: There’s now quite a choice of online planning tools for veg growers out there (I’m a dedicated fan of www.growveg.com) but this one caught my eye as one of the better ones if you’re just starting out. Growmatic has been helping Irish veg gardeners for the last four years: its first venture in the UK looks very promising. You can use it whatever sort of veg gardener you are, but what I really liked was that it gives school gardeners the chance to programme in the school term – so you can plan to grow crops that do their stuff while the kids are there to enjoy it. Could become a must-have tool for school gardening clubs everywhere. (www.quickcrop.co.uk)

gpe_growbagwatererAutomatic growbag waterer: Perhaps not the prettiest of exhibits on display – but definitely one of the more practical. This odd-looking contraption takes the idea of the reservoir-based automatic watering container and adapts it to use with growbags: simple, but possibly a lifesaver when you’re trying to sustain thirsty tomatoes in not-quite-enough compost. You plonk the grow bag on those yellow plastic thingies, which pierce the bag and go up into the compost. Then just fill the reservoir and the water is wicked up via the green capillary matting into the growbag where it’s needed. It holds a hefty 15 litres, enough to keep things ticking over nicely for up to 14 days if it’s not too sunny (about a week if it is). You could always hide it behind a bit of woven wicker hurdle or something. (www.hozelock.com).

 

End of month view: January

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

end of month view, extreme weather, snow, spring, winter

Always the last one to the party, that’s me. But I didn’t want to wave January goodbye without documenting what has been an extraordinary month – even for this most extreme time of year.

Of course we spent most of the month under deep snow, so for the first couple of weeks there wasn’t much gardening going on. I had a close encounter with a proper bona fide blizzard, in which I discovered that our Toyota Rav 4, previously considered embarrassingly poncy, outperforms a Landrover in a snowdrift, and I lost my precious loquat tree to a heavy snowfall of 8″ in a single night. Note to self: loquat trees have brittle branches and need tying up in snowy weather.

There's a viburnum in full flower under here somewhere

There’s a viburnum in full flower under here somewhere

Once the snow had melted, it was time to assess the damage. The most serious was caused not so much by the snow but by months of wet weather followed by howling gales during that blizzard I was talking about.

An ex-tree, and possibly an ex-ladder too

An ex-tree, and possibly an ex-ladder too

This was previously an unassuming ash tree, some 40ft tall and minding its own business in a corner of our garden. It went largely unnoticed until it crashed down our back slope, its roots terminally loosened in the muddy soil. Thankfully there was nobody around at the time: our ladder copped it though.

Otherwise things have been mostly soldiering on through. I am eternally thankful I managed to remember to cover at least one of my ginger lilies (Hedychium gardnerianum) with a Heath Robinson affair involving cardboard, lots of fleece and some bricks: the other one I didn’t get around to so this is going to turn into an Interesting Experiment. We haven’t had it very cold here, minus 4-5°C at most, but it has been very wet, so if the one survives and the other doesn’t we’ll know what’s to blame.

My little ginger all snug in its fleece jacket

My little ginger all snug in its fleece jacket

And as the snow melted, it revealed all those lovely heart-lifting little jewels from their hiding places under the blanket of white, lifting the cloud just long enough to remind me that spring will arrive again, one day, as inevitable as the turning of the world.

Battered but not beaten: the first daffodils appeared on the slope this month

Battered but not beaten: the first daffodils appeared on the slope this month

It's been a wonderful year for snowdrops: perhaps it's just me but they seem bigger and fatter somehow

It’s been a wonderful year for snowdrops: perhaps it’s just me but they seem bigger and fatter somehow

..and the bulbs are poking through the ground everywhere: a new one appears every day. These are the early tulips, only a couple of months away now.

..and the bulbs are poking through the ground everywhere: a new one appears every day. These are the early tulips, only a couple of months away now.

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