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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: cold frame

October garden: Greenhouses and fruit garden

23 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by sallynex in garden design, greenhouse, landscaping, my garden

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

aubergines, blight, cold frame, cucumbers, fruit, fruit garden, greenhouse crops, greenhouse growing, hard landscaping, pests and diseases, tomatoes, vegetables

octgarden_greenhousecukes

It’s amazing what you can fit into an 8×6 greenhouse: here be melons, cucumbers, chilli ‘Razzmatazz’, okra, sweet peppers and my amazing tree chilli, now taller than me

The slow dying of the greenhouses is the swansong of my year. They’re the last to go: long after the veg beds outside are brown with dead foliage and slimy with rot, the cucumbers are still challenging me to find new recipes and the chilli peppers are suffusing with colour from green to orange to red.

octgarden_greenhousecukes2

Smaller but perfectly formed: ‘Sweet Crunch’ cucumbers, still going strong

It’s been a good year: and a bad. I have two greenhouses, facing each other in the lee of a hedge across the coldframe I made for my old garden (it’s falling to pieces now – a combination of age and a blackthorn tree just above which keeps dropping branches at inconvenient moments).

In one greenhouse I plant cucumbers, melons, peppers and anything else I fancy growing that year: in the other are my tomatoes.

I always start the year so optimistically with my toms: I love to try new varieties or revisit old ones. This year it’s been Gardeners’ Delight, Costoluto Fiorentino (quite the best beefsteak for flavour bar, perhaps, Brandywine) and the plum tomatoes Rio Grande.

octgarden_greenhousetoms

Not so successful. The other greenhouse has been sick with blight for months: nothing will grow in there but the marigolds. Pretty as they are, you can’t eat them.

But despite the dry weather, despite the perfect growing conditions of this blissfully warm summer, the blight got in.

I mulched with compost from the bins outside: mistake no. 1, as it no doubt carried blight spores. Then a pane of glass in the roof lost a corner, so the rain – laden, too, with spores – could spatter the Costolutos with fatally infected water. And the bush tomatoes I had in the corner – ‘The Amateur’ – turned out to be the most blight-prone tomatoes I’ve ever grown, finishing off my other plants by incubating and then spreading the plague.

octgarden_greenhouseaubergine

This was meant to be a ‘Black Beauty’ aubergine: but it’s turned out more like a ‘Pinstripe’. Duff seeds – veg which haven’t grown into what they said on the packet – have been a bit of a feature this year.

Well: it’s a lesson learned. This winter’s to-do list includes changing the soil in this greenhouse; replacing the broken panes; and fumigating with a sulphur candle. Then next year I shall use nothing but the cleanest compost and water with tap water. I’m considering growing only blight-resistant varieties, too: ‘Losetto’, ‘Ferline’ and ‘Fantasio’, perhaps.

octgarden_fruitgarden

My fruit garden: the only ‘finished’ bit of the garden (and even then it needs a netting cage, quite a few more plants and a bit of extra path put in). My little still small place of calm.

On the plus side, my fruit garden is looking wonderful. I planted it just last winter with two maiden cherries, a redcurrant, a couple of blackcurrants raised from cuttings taken from plants I had on my allotment, and a slew of raspberries. Oh, and a bed of strawberries, of course.

You’re not supposed to grow fruit on chalk, and my soil is grey with the stuff. But as a gardener to the core, I’m going to try anyway. So far I’m encouraged: the raspberries have not turned yellow as I expected them to (though three canes have turned up their toes for reasons unknown); the cherries are thriving; and the blackcurrants have had their first fruits already.

Here’s how it looked in 2010:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

End of month view: March

31 Thursday Mar 2011

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse, herbs

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Anemone blanda, chalk soil, cold frame, comfrey, daffodils, end of month view, fig tree, lupins, Pawlonia, peonies, pulsatilla, rock gardens, vegetables, wind flowers

What a difference a couple of months makes.

Last time I did the rounds with the camera was the end of January: barely a leaf had burst its bud at that time, I hadn’t even started the post-winter clearup, and everything was looking decidedly bleak and not a little scruffy around the edges.

I woke up, along with the garden, some time in mid-February. And in the six weeks or so since then, everything has changed.

First up (of course) is the veg garden: always my first priority at seed-sowing time. I’ve been ferrying eyewatering quantities of scaffold boards back on the roof of my poor groaning family estate to divide up the long, thin space into 4ft x 10ft beds. At first they were all re-covered with the black plastic which has been keeping my soil protected over winter: but now, gradually, it’s all coming off.

January:

…and now:

The far end is well up and away: with the addition of a bit of bought-in soil improver (not yet quite confident about how good my soil might be), new potatoes, onions and shallots have joined the overwintering broad beans and autumn-sown onions.

Under those cloches are two varieties of pea; Feltham First (early and robust) and heritage variety Telephone, which reaches up to 5ft tall, so I’m told. Further down there are rows of leeks and carrots under fleece for protection against carrot fly.

Greenhouse no. 1 – unheated – is filling up: the other day I had to rig up the coldframe (in bits since the post-move chaos) in a hurry to get the first of the sweetpeas, chard and overwintered marigolds ready to go out.

But just look at Greenhouse no. 2 – the one that’s frost-free. I have run out of room. There is no other way to put it. The windowsills in the house are groaning with seedlings too. What am I going to do!

Right, never mind the veg: what about the rest of it?

Here’s the rock garden, or rather the herb garden to be. Nicely trimmed these days: and I’ve started placing a few pots of bits and bobs around the place ready to be planted.

January:

…and now:

In the blue pot is an olive tree, about six inches tall when I got it (it was a freebie which looked a lot better in the magazine than what actually arrived on my doorstep).

I nurtured it and nursed it, and now it’s about 5ft high and a lovely healthy young tree. Then it got left outside in the snow and ice, and I resigned myself to losing it: but no. It didn’t even lose its leaves.

So since it’s survived that, I figure it’ll breeze being planted outside. It’s moved around this patch a few times now, trying to find the right spot for what I hope will one day be a fetchingly gnarled evocation of Italy on my doorstep, and a rather fine backdrop to all my Mediterranean herbs.

There’s also plenty going on here quite independently of my own feeble efforts to spruce things up. Little pretties keep popping up all over the place. I keep stopping in my tracks on the way out of the house: the other day it was because I spotted a clump of pulsatilla. Pulsatilla! In my garden!

Aren’t they lovely? Those palest grey fluffy feathers set off the dusty mauve of the flowers so perfectly.

And look at this: in the hollow between two sides of the old stone wall, partially collapsed, a little colony of windflowers has sprung up.

I’ve spent many thorny hours clearing the bank above where my tropical edibles patch will eventually be. It’s not only painful, but also slightly unnerving as this bank is about 12ft high and much of my bramble removal was done while hanging precariously off a handy branch. Must invest in a ladder.

January:

…and now:

It’s all looking a lot better now, so I guess the splinter-pocked fingers were worth it.

There’s more pot placement here: you can make out the fig in the far corner, and just out of sight there’s a Pawlonia tomentosa I was given – half-dead on arrival but now, rather excitingly, reviving.

And other things are popping up here, too: lupins and a carpet of some kind of small white comfrey. It’s beautiful, the bees love it, but it is obviously a little invasive: I shall have to think carefully about where I move it to.

So on to the only other bit I’ve done anything to; the circular bed around our shady seating area.

January:

…and now:

I’ve recently been told by someone who’s lived in the village a lot longer than me that this was once a pond. This is answering a lot of questions: why, for example, a hefty Rodgersia (usually a bog plant) can survive so well in a free-draining, chalky soil.

I have an uncomfortable feeling this circular bed may be hiding a pond liner of epic proportions. We’re talking probably concrete; maybe not even split. We are talking bog garden.

This may rather alter my plans to turn this area into a scented garden full of daphnes and Christmas box and wintersweet.

For now however I have just cleared the winter debris and I’m about to launch into a huge weed-through, followed by my standard fall-back in situations where I have little time and large areas to fill: I’m planning to sow this lot with seed from Pictorial Meadows, already sitting in an inviting little packet on my desk as I type.

It isn’t all weeds and bog plants though: tucked up on the bank, a little higher than the rest, there is a paeony already swelling into bud.

A paeony! In my garden! (another chalk-loving plant I have never been able to grow before. My cup brimmeth over: snowdrops, primroses, pulsatillas and now peonies. Can it get any better than this?)

And last but absolutely not least: I haven’t touched this bit but I have been in love with it for a whole month now. I have, on the hill that rises at the back of my garden, a host of golden daffodils.

There are hundreds of them, across the width of the garden, and we have been giving them away to friends in big fat bunches as well as stuffing every vase in the house. Whoever planted them, many decades ago: I hope you are somewhere just as beautiful right now.

Thank you to Helen, aka Patient Gardener, for hosting the End of Month View: the perfect opportunity to take a step back and take the big view for a change.

Inspiration from West Dean #1

13 Tuesday Oct 2009

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

basil, cold frame, salads, Victorian architecture, West Dean Gardens

I’m suffering from a bad case of coldframe envy.

I went down to West Dean Gardens a little while ago, and for a kitchen garden fanatic like me it was like being given the keys to the sweetshop. Jim Buckland and Sarah Wain, who manage the garden and have overseen its restoration, must surely get some sort of award for dedication beyond the call of duty. Since 1991 they’ve turned the walled kitchen garden into a wonderful fusion of old-fashioned Victoriana and modern foody organic growing where they experiment with new (and old) cultivars using very 21st century techniques.

There’s also a college which among other things runs lots of mouthwatering courses in things to do with horticulture, and the gardens host a series of legendary foody events celebrating things like chillies, tomatoes and apples. You’ll see why it’s my kind of place.

But back to those coldframes.

Brick bases to absorb lots of heat and pristine white wooden frames. These babies must be 8ft from front to back.

They stretch right along one length of greenhouse (and that’s a very, very big greenhouse). And they’re packed with mixed salads of every kind, all sown lovingly in densely-packed rows. I wish, wish, wish I could grow salad like this.

The whole thing was a lesson in how to contrast leaf shapes, colours and textures: even humble old lettuce gets to look a million dollars if you mix it with a sprinkling of purple basil and pinch of perilla.

My discovery of the day was this dwarf basil, Ocimum minimum, which grows like a tight little football packed with leaves. Picked over just like thyme, they’re intensely fragrant: I always find ordinary basil a little tricky so this could be the answer.

The coldframe I really, really want, above all other, is this one. And the reason I want it is that bit of iron at the side: that’s an automatic Victorian light-lifting contraption. You can wind up the lights bit by bit to harden things off or adjust for the weather: no more bits of wood propping up the glass and getting knocked out, to the accompanying sound of breaking glass, by over-enthusiastic dogs bounding about the garden.

As if that wasn’t enough, they’ve got those lovely curvy glass panels too, designed to guide the water away from the wooden frame and down the centre of the glass. Sometimes those Victorians had the right idea.

I want, I want, I want….

How to make a coldframe #4

17 Tuesday Jun 2008

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

cold frame, hard landscaping, plant protection


Time to get back to my coldframe construction – it’s been put on the back burner a little since all the blessed weeds started growing in about April. I’m currently juggling with a Heath Robinson construction of planks and old greenhouse glass next to my greenhouse as the home for my long-suffering seedlings (late-sown summer annuals, mostly) – I do wish I could get on and finish the deluxe model. At this rate it’ll be just about ready for the first frosts…

Anyway, I think I left this just as the uprights were nicely battened and ready to clad. You start by doing the end uprights, the ones you put battens around the inside edges as well as at top, back, front and base. The reason for these inside battens will now become obvious: these are what you fix the cladding to.

This is a pretty easy process: you can either use thin planks, like I have, or following the Terence Conran design more closely, you can use overlapping cladding, which is kind of wedge shaped and widely available from DIY stores. I originally thought this would look a bit clunky (actually I still think that) but now I think it might be the better option – the above looks smart, but it does inevitably mean tiny gaps between the planks, as wood rather inconveniently tends to move as it gets soaked or dries out. Cladding, on the other hand, can move all it likes but it’s still overlapping, so no draughts.

The only slightly tricky bit is cutting the top triangular wedges to size: the best way is to draw the shape of the upright onto the planks as a cutting guide before you actually nail them on to the battens. Or you can do it like me, and fiddle about cutting extra bits off here and there as you go along, thus doubling the time it takes you and making you swear in frustration.

No prizes for guessing that we’ll be cladding the rest of it next time.

Previous bits of the series:

How to make a coldframe #1

How to make a coldframe #2

How to make a coldframe #3

How to make a coldframe #3

01 Tuesday Apr 2008

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

cold frame, hard landscaping, plant protection

Right, now having blown your brain cutting impossibly shallow angles for the upright dividers (I hope it wasn’t that bad – I “borrowed” my husband’s professional shed-making machinery so I cheated)… now here’s an easier bit of woodwork for you.

The battens you attach to the uprights are to hold the cladding in place, and should measure 25mm x 25mm, though I couldn’t find that at my local branch of Wickes so settled for 25mm x 38mm. As you can see from the pic you only need them along the top edge and down the two vertical sides of the dividers – not along the bottom. You’ll obviously need the battens on both sides of the two central dividers.

You do need to cut the top batten to shape at an angle, but it’s a lot easier this time. Use the edge of a bit of cut-off batten wood as a spacer to work out how far down you need to attach the batten itself (if you’re using 25x38mm wood, use the 25mm edge). Just line the spacer up with the top edge of the divider and draw a line underneath. This marks where the top edge of the batten will go.

Then cut the batten to about 10cm (4″) too long at each end and nail it on so that it lines up with the mark. After that, it’s just a matter of cutting the ends off flush with the divider.

The upright battens are far easier – unless you’re a real perfectionist (or are borrowing your husband’s shed-building machinery) you don’t need to cut the ends at an angle as they go in pretty close anyway, certainly close enough to fix the cladding to. You do still need to do the thing with the spacer, though, or the cladding won’t lie flush with the uprights.

After you’ve done all that, you’ll also need to put in an extra bit of battening all around the inside edge of the two end dividers – the divider in the picture is an end divider, so you can see how I’ve done this if you look closely. This is so that you can attach the cladding across them to form the ends of the coldframe. Again, you don’t need to be too exact – just cut the battens off straight and fit them in as snugly as you can.

I’ll get on to cladding the ends next time, and all this will hopefully start to make a bit more sense.

In case you missed the previous bits of this inordinately long series, here they are:

How to make a coldframe #1

How to make a coldframe #2

How to make a cold frame #2

05 Wednesday Mar 2008

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

cold frame, hard landscaping, plant protection

Hmm… photography never was my strong point, but bear with me here.

For my mega-coldframe I’ve adapted the design from Terence Conran’s Garden DIY, a very handy little book which has lots of useful projects and explains things simply enough even for novices like me. I’ve made both my compost bins from a design in this book, and very successful they’ve been too (when I make the third, I’ll put that on here too). So if anything in my description of how to make these doesn’t make sense – get the book.

After getting the base right, it’s time for some woodwork. This design centres around dividing frames, which are then held together using the cladding. I suspect it will have little structural strength in the long run – i.e. I won’t be able to move it much – but that doesn’t bother me: if it bothers you, you’ll need to work in some stronger connecting pieces to hold the dividers together.

The dividers are made from 2×2 (5cmx5cm for the metrically-minded) treated timber. Measure the depth (front to back) and width (side to side) of the space you have available – the good thing about this particular design is that you can have as many or as few dividers as you like, so the coldframe can be whatever size you wish. Mine is made up of three sections, so I’ve made four dividers (two at each end, two in the middle), which will eventually be spaced a little over 2ft apart.

For each divider, cut a length to fit the depth, then two more for the uprights: one at 1ft (30cm) and one at 18″ (45cm). Finally, cut the length that will slope across the top: it’ll need to be the same length as the base, plus about 4″ (10cm).

Nail the two uprights on to the base at each end, using 2 3″ nails at each joint, driven in at an angle – this will mean the joint is much firmer and won’t pull apart.

To set the top rail, lay it across the two uprights so that it rests lining up with their top surfaces, and mark off the angle it lies at. It’ll only be a very slight slope. Saw this off so that the top surfaces of the two uprights are now at an angle (hopefully the same).

Nail the top rail across them, using the same angled-nail technique as before, and leaving a length of rail sticking out from each end. Finally, saw off the ends of the top rail so that they lie flush with the uprights.

Next: putting on support battens (you can see a couple in the picture above – sneak preview!)

How to make a cold frame #1

23 Saturday Feb 2008

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

cold frame, hard landscaping, plant protection


Just occasionally I’m not so much a gardener as a builder. When you’re developing a garden, the first several stages involve an awful lot of digging, lugging stone around and construction – it all seems to take ages and hasn’t got a great deal to do with plants. But if you have the patience to do it, it’s worth it.

I’ve been struggling to manage in recent years without a decent coldframe, so this spring I’ve decided to bite the bullet and make myself a super-deluxe model, the entire length of my 8′ greenhouse and about 3’6″ from front to back. This is not small for a coldframe – but then my greenhouse is already groaning with seedlings and I’ve only just started early sowings, so I do need the extra space!

As you’ll see in the picture, the first step, before I so much as banged in a nail, was to sort out the area where the coldframe was to go. There were two blackcurrant bushes here, which were always a bit close to the greenhouse for comfort, so I moved them to the allotment this winter. I had to hoick out a spare gooseberry bush, too – not such a well-thought-out manoevre as I hadn’t anywhere to put it. Luckily I’ve got two more to the right of this area, so I’m not exactly going to go short.

Then I marked out the area and dug it down to half-a-spade’s depth. This is a really useful depth for hard landscaping – it does for paths, patios… pretty much anything, really.

Next I edged the area with boards – I used 4″ boards, but you can use standard gravel boards which are 6″. These were attached to short stakes at the corners and checked for straightness with a spirit level.

I roughly levelled out the earth inside the boards, and then put down some weed-suppressing membrane, stapled to the boards on the inside to about 1/2″ from the top (you can just about see the edges in the picture). And, finishing touch, about 9 bags of gravel from the local DIY store. This means you can level it easily, and the coldframe isn’t resting on bare earth – which means it won’t rot so quickly, either.

Next instalment… the start of the woodwork!

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