Tag Archives: New Year

2020 Seed Giveaway!

09 Thursday Jan 2020

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Time to wake up the blog again!

I know: it’s been a long time. What can I say: writing and gardening got in the way. I won a Proper Award from the Garden Media Guild, for a year-long series I did in 2018 for the RHS magazine The Garden all about gardening without plastic: a cause that is now so close to my heart that I set up a whole website dedicated to it (with an equally neglected but soon-to-be-revived blog) at http://www.gardeningwithoutplastic.com.

Carol Klein on the left, Julia Boulton (Beth Chatto’s granddaughter) on the right, and some garden writer or other in the middle

I have raised a lot of vegetables, written another series for BBC Gardeners’ World magazine about growing food for your family (another cause that’s close to my heart) and seen my eldest daughter off to university in Newcastle.

I have gained a cat and lost 12 sheep: last year I sold my beloved flock of rare breed Dorset Down ewes, mainly because I really couldn’t justify producing that much meat when there are now only two of us to eat it and we’re mostly vegetarian anyway. They went to a very nice man in Dorset where they now live in splendid luxury in a little paddock where they are fussed over by all who pass.

You lookin’ at me?

But now it is the start of a new decade and I am feeling the itch to record what I am up to in the garden again. There is much to talk about: a rewilding project, rebuilding the chicken run in preparation for restocking after a couple of years’ break, experiments with exotic vegetables from far-off climes…

But first things first: before you bring in the new, it’s out with the old, and I’m having a big clear-out. As a garden writer I accumulate a lot of packets of seeds. Though I try to sow as many as I can myself, inevitably there are some left over.

I’ve done one of these seed giveaways before but not for a while now. So the stash has grown to epic proportions. Time for a bit of a declutter, I think.

Here are the rules:

  1. Make a donation of at least £5 to my JustGiving page https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/seedgiveaway2020 in aid of Plantlife, a charity which works quietly but tirelessly saving rarities like wild orchids, persuading councils to stop flaying the wildflowers from our road verges in the name of neatness, and generally campaigning for us all to be a little kinder to the natural world around us.
  2. Choose up to five packets of seed from the list below
  3. Let me know which ones you’ve picked, plus your postal address, via email at sally(dot)nex(at)btinternet(dot)com
  4. Once you have received your seeds, get planting!

List of available seeds (I will update this as we go along):

  • Asparagus ‘Mary Washington’
  • Basil (green) (4 packs)
  • Basil ‘Red Leaved’
  • Beetroot ‘Rainbow Beet’
  • Broad bean ‘Crimson Flowered’
  • Broccoli ‘Early Purple Sprouting’
  • Broccoli ‘Romanesco’
  • Brussels Sprout ‘Brodie F1’
  • Brussels Sprout ‘Evesham Special’
  • Calendula
  • Carrot ‘Autumn King’
  • Carrot ‘Chantenay’ (3 packs)
  • Carrot ‘Nantes’
  • Cauliflower ‘All the Year Round’ (4 packs)
  • Cauliflower ‘Amsterdam’
  • Celeriac ‘Monarch’ (2 packs)
  • Celery ‘Giant Red’
  • Celery ‘Solid Pink’ (Heritage Seed Library)
  • Chives
  • Courgette
  • Courgette ‘All Green Bush’
  • Cress (2 packs)
  • Dill
  • Fennel ‘Di Firenze’
  • Foxglove ‘Apricot’
  • Kale ‘Nero di Toscana’
  • Leek ‘Autumn Giant 2’
  • Leek ‘Lyon 2’
  • Marrow ‘Long White Trailing’ (Heritage Seed Library)
  • Mustard (for windowsills)
  • Onion ‘Ailsa Craig’
  • Onion ‘Bedfordshire Champion’
  • Onion ‘Red Baron’ (2 packs)
  • Oregano (2 packs)
  • Parsnip ‘White Gem’ (4 packs)
  • Pepper ‘Asti Red’Pepper ‘Friggitello’
  • Pepper ‘Corno di Toro Rosso’
  • Pepper ‘Skinny’ (Heritage Seed Library – dwarf bird chilli, tiny but very hot!)
  • Poppy ‘Flanders’
  • Radish ‘Albena’
  • Radish ‘Blue Moon and Red Moon’
  • Radish ‘Cherry Belle’
  • Radish ‘French Breakfast’ (2 packs)
  • Rocket
  • Runner bean ‘Scarlet Emperor’
  • Sorrel Red Veined
  • Spring cabbage ‘April’ (2 packs)
  • Spring cabbage ‘Greyhound’
  • Spring onion ‘White Lisbon’
  • Summer cabbage ‘Golden Acre’
  • Thyme
  • Tomato ‘Gardeners Delight’ (4 packs)
  • Tomato ‘Ildi’
  • Tomato ‘Moneymaker’ (2 packs)
  • Tomato ‘Red Cherry’ (2 packs)
  • Tomato ‘Red Pear’
  • Tomato ‘Super Mama’
  • Watercress ‘Aqua’
  • Winter cabbage ‘January King’

All seeds are in date and in a sealed packet ready to go. This giveaway will run until the end of January (or longer if it’s still going strong beyond that point). Enjoy!

New beginnings

01 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by in chicken garden, France, my garden

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img_4237

Thank goodness 2016 is over.

I’m not sure things look a whole lot better for 2017, but like all gardeners I’m always up for a bit of optimism. And besides, within the safe confines of my garden it is easy to drift off into a world blessedly free of the likes of Herr Trump, Brexit and the wholesale slaughter of my popstar idols.

The world may seem a bit post-apocalyptic beyond the garden gates: but inside, there are sweet peas to pinch out, onions to sow, the last of the veg beds to clear and the compost to turn, just as there were last January and for every January before that. And – assuming Trump doesn’t, in another misguided attempt at ‘locker room banter’ decide to see what that big red button does – for every January to come, too.

I don’t really make New Year resolutions: much too vulnerable to my slightly distracted and forgetful state of mind these days. But January is always a time of promise: of plans made and not yet abandoned, events anticipated and surprises as yet unguessed-at.

So here is what this year promises: and I look forward to every minute.

  • A new life less plastic: I have for some time now been angsting about the quantities of plastic building up in my garden. So this is my year to cut it out, stop taking the lazy option and find some more environmentally-friendly alternatives. I will be blogging about it right here.
  • New fruit: You can never have too much fruit. This year’s trees are apples: James Grieve, Warner’s King and Egremont’s Russet, I think, all on MM106 rootstocks. I am also going to have a go at growing my strawbs up on shelving in a bid to save a few from the mice (who must, by now, be getting very fat indeed).
  • New tomatoes: I’m delving further into the intriguing world of heritage tomatoes, thanks to the packets of tomato seed sent to me from the collection from Knightshayes a year or two ago. Last year it was Sutton’s Everyday – great all-rounder which I’ll be growing again – and ‘White Beauty’, a white beefsteak which had good novelty value but not terribly productive and the flavour was a bit ‘meh’ too. I have half a dozen left to try and new favourites to discover.
  • La nouvelle vie en rose: I shall be spending a lot of time in France. First of all, beginning the long process of sprucing up a little house and garden the family have bought near Bordeaux; second, leading an HF Holidays garden tour around Provence in lavender season.
  • A new book: I have my first book out in September! Look out for it at all good bookshops near you: it’s all about fitting in self-sufficiency around everyday working and family life, from baby-leaf salads to meat and eggs. Basically what I’ve been doing myself for the last decade or two, really. Here’s the official blurb.
  • New days in the garden: Just try to keep me out. As well as my own garden, I’m looking after a beautiful rose garden, ably assisted by a bevy of feathery under-gardeners; building a kitchen garden complete with polytunnel; and tending two little gardens on hillsides where the view is breathtaking every time I raise my head. I anticipate much muddiness and quite a lot of happy days. Bring it on. 

A very happy New Year to you all, and may all your carrots grow straight in 2017!

New Year’s non-resolutions

02 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by in my garden

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snowyhouse4

Our house, about this time a few years ago: remember snow?

I have decided to make a New Year’s Resolution. It seems to be the traditional thing to do, so heck, why not.

Here it is:

I hereby resolve: not to make any more New Year’s resolutions.

Like everyone else I seem to break them by about January 5 (if I’m doing well) so there really isn’t any point. I am lucky enough to be able to eat chocolate, drink wine (and my favourite tipple, a good well-brewed lager), and stay up late without any unfortunate side-effects. Or nothing I can’t live with, anyway. So there’s no reason to give any of those up and so I don’t see why I should.

My exercise is built into the day job: if you’re a gardener you don’t need a gym. Nor do you need regular sessions with a psychotherapist, as you’re constantly being reminded a) how good life is, b) how miniscule and unimportant you are in the grand scheme of things which has a refreshingly humbling effect and c) how generally miraculous the natural world is, especially when it’s five millimetres from your nose. It’s kind of hard to be depressed when faced with so much that’s so damn beautiful all the time.

All this saves you a lot of money: when you don’t have to buy gym membership, psychotherapy sessions or comfort shopping you don’t generally speaking have to make résolutions to cut down on credit card bills either.

However: the other good thing about gardening is that it’s always setting you a challenge or two, thereby keeping you on your toes and making sure you don’t go to sleep.

So around this time of year, when you’re thinking about what lies ahead and what’s gone before rather more than is usual, my thoughts often tend towards how I’m going to improve things a little: avoid making the same mistakes, tweak the routine a little, try out a few new things. Call them résolutions if you like: but they’re really just ways of making me a slightly better gardener.

I shall sow my seeds on the first of each month, like I planned to do last year. I was great at it for the first three months, then (as always happens) got derailed in about June and only caught up again in September. It wasn’t the end of the world: but it was annoying and cost me my winter salads.

I shall buy more plants on impulse. I am an awful ditherer when it comes to buying plants. I see them and think, oooh, that looks interesting, maybe that would go here… but I’m not too sure… and then I wander on and forget, and then I get home and curse myself for not picking it up when I had the chance. This year I shall buy lots of plants just because I want to. Which brings me to…

I shall regularly empty the Corner of Shame. Like Dan Pearson, who confessed to such a corner in his lovely book Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City, I have a corner of my garden where plants languish. They arrive there for various reasons: plants I’ve raised from seed just to see if I could, plants people have given me, the surplus plants from an over-enthusiastically sown seed tray, plants I’ve bought on impulse yet don’t have a home to go to in the garden yet… I will empty this corner regularly if only to avoid the reproachful stares I imagine from its mournful inhabitants each time I walk past.

I shall take photos of my garden each month just to show myself how far I’ve come. It’s a habit I got into a few years ago and it pays dividends when I remember to do it. That moment of despair when you feel like you’re paddling away furiously yet nothing is really changing? Dig out the photos of your garden from two or three years ago and you’ll realise what a difference you’ve made.

I shall not beat myself up for all the things I haven’t done. This is my no. 1 priority for the year. No, my garden is not perfect; no, I didn’t get half the things done at the time when I should have done. But late-planted tulips will still bloom; late-sown beans will still fruit; and unfinished paths will just stay unfinished till I’ve got through other, more urgent jobs. Giving myself a hard time isn’t going to make it happen any sooner. So I will be kind to myself and remember that the garden hasn’t got a calendar and a few weeks here or there doesn’t – usually – make much of a difference.

May 2016 be full of sunshine, soft rain and lushly growing plants for you all. Happy New Year!

New year – new blog

01 Tuesday Jan 2013

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Sunrise on a new year

Sunrise on a new year

Hello again, and a very happy 2013 to all.

I do hope this year will be a bit of an improvement on last year’s – with eyepopping statistics just about to be announced, no doubt informing us – as if we needed the rubber stamp – that 2012 was indeed the wettest since records began. The evidence here is all around: the Levels are under water, and driving over the Salisbury Plains to my Mum’s house after Christmas was like driving through Waterworld.

Still, in the spirit of New things, I’ve got a shiny new blog to unveil today: I’ve been tinkering around a bit as I’d got a little jaded with Blogger, and a bit annoyed by the fact that my URL didn’t fit my blog’s title. It still doesn’t match but at least it’s now relevant and doesn’t secretly annoy the wonderful and admirable Wellywoman. So I made the well-worn trek across to WordPress and here I am.

(please don’t look at the rest of the website just yet: I am a baby where website building is concerned and Do Not Know What I Am Doing so it’s rather rubbish while I’m fiddling about figuring out the answers to various niggly little difficulties).

Anyway, to celebrate January 1st I thought I’d start a little annual challenge, based on a competition I used to enter (and come last in, every year) with the Surrey branch of Plant Heritage – an organisation worth undergoing ritual humiliation for every January if it raises a few pennies to save some long-lost garden cultivar from oblivion.

We had a little form to fill in, on which you listed every plant in flower on January 1st. Mine was a very, very short list: in fact I claimed the prize for the shortest list pretty much every year I was there. The best I heard about was a stoic 28: I can only sit back and admire in wonder at such wintery prowess.

So here’s your challenge. Since it’s now dark outside I won’t stick to Jan 1st, but during this week pop out and count how many flowers are out in your garden, and let us know about them. There is a virtual bunch of (winter and highly scented) flowers for the winner, plus a major allocation of smug points.

Here’s my list: just four, though beauties all. General verdict: could do better, I think. If I’m still here I’ll repeat the exercise this time next year (giving us all time to plant a few more January gems in the meantime).

Cyclamen coum

Cyclamen coum

janflowers_nerine

Nerine sarniensis ‘Blanchefleur’

janflowers_mahonia

Mahonia japonica

janflowers_viburnum

Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’

At the setting of the year

31 Friday Dec 2010

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I’ve been reading Alys Fowler’s rather lovely list of things she wants to do this year (and rather envying someone who is still young enough to use words like ‘moxie’ and still be taken seriously).

It inspired me to make my own list: a little shorter but nonetheless one I hope will help me give myself a little direction in the months to come. In the interests of avoiding any mention of the word ‘resolutions’ – here it is.

1. Crack the secret of getting strawberry jam to set
2. Take my gardening to another level by going back to school again
3. Spend more time just being with my kids
4. Breed my first little bundles of fluff (chickens, in case you’re wondering)
5. Acquire some sheep
6. Cook more muffins
7. Finish the never-ending rabbit fencing in the veg garden
8. Grow and eat something I’ve never tried before
9. Keep at least a few square inches of my desk free of paper
10. Make the time to stop and stare
11. Plant the beginnings of an orchard
12. Find out what disaster they’re inflicting on Ambridge on Sunday
13. Join my local choir
14. Finish that book synopsis lurking in my computer for two years now
15. …and send it off
16. Tackle the scary Kaffe Fassett pattern my husband wants for a sweater
17. Put down more and stronger roots in my adopted county
18. Get back in a boat and start sailing again
19. Harvest some elderberry flowers for making cordial
20. Find a little more space for people as well as plants

Happy New Year everyone and I hope your 2011 is everything you hope it will be.

Happy New Year! and some answers…

01 Friday Jan 2010

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Reasons to be cheerful in 2010:

1. It’s so bloody cold at the moment we’re sure to have a lovely warm spring. (I hope the gardening gods are taking note).

2. I’m going to Borneo in March. (yay!)

3. Against all predictions, the Chelsea Flower Show is looking like it’s going to be a corker this year.

4. We’re all still here! I wonder what we’ll get up to…

Reasons to be a bit apprehensive in 2010:

Say it quietly….

I’m going to be moving house…. probably.

Yeah, I know. Scary. The “probably” is because from where I’m sitting at the moment, the chances of getting someone to agree to buy our slightly dog-eared (and dog-haired) not to mention small-children-soiled semi, and at the same time finding something that’s a) ridiculously cheap, b) stunningly beautiful and c) satisfactory not only to me but also to hubby and small people seem vanishingly small. But anyway, I shall be sharing every terrifying twist and turn with you in mind-numbing and gruesomely gory detail through the year, since of course I’m looking not for a house, but for a garden. But don’t tell my hubby that.

Now, it has come to my notice that I made the advent calendar just too damn difficult, as I haven’t had a single correct answer. So I’m going to go the other way now and make it just pathetically easy by giving you the answers to what’s behind the windows. I shall then sit back and wait for the deluge. Once you’ve unravelled the anagram, send me the name of the prize (three words, two of them a well-known designer, you know the drill) plus the plant genus I’m looking for (one word) and if you’re first off the mark you can have a nice late Christmas present from me.

So: with the letters you need highlighted in bold, here are the answers to the 2009 Garden Bloggers’ Advent Calendar:

1. Rus in Urbis (http://www.rusinurbis.com/)
2. The Urban Gardener (the-urban-gardener.blogspot.com)
3: Urban Wild Plants (urbanwildplants.blogspot.com/)
4: Spook (of course): the Sock’s adorable if mischievous kitten
5: Another pussycat: this time Pushkin from Victoria’s Backyard
6: The Inadvertent Gardener (http://www.theinadvertentgardener.com/)
7: The Artists Garden (www.artistsgarden.co.uk/)
8: One of the many Chilean guavas to turn up at Mark Diacono’s rather gorgeous Otter Farm (http://www.otterfarm.co.uk/)
9: Look closely and you’ll see VP of Veg Plotting fame
10: Ryan’s Garden (ryans-garden.blogspot.com)
11: A Digestive biscuit: its merits as the perfect dunker are discussed at length during Encounters with Remarkable Biscuits.
12: The Fat Rascal, one of this year’s prizewinners at the Emsworth Village Show (emsworthvillage2009.blogspot.com)
13: I wanted the name of the blogger for this one: it was of course the inimitable Arabella Sock (sea-of-immeasurable-gravy.blogspot.com).
14: This competition taught me that garden bloggers have a lot of cats, but also a lot of amphibians: this one is Nina the Lizard from Plants are the Strangest People. I appear to be the only garden blogger to admit to having a dog.
15: In the Toad’s Garden (toads.wordpress.com)
16: The Garden Monkey (thegardenmonkey.blogspot.com)
17: Ros Badger (http://www.rosbadger.blogspot.com/)
18: The Mini-White Cucumber, star of many an unaccountably violent film at Cleve West’s blog Tilth and Tillage
19: The Inelegant Gardener (inelegantgardener.blogspot.com)
20: Tricky, this one: it’s the Nasturtium from Esther’s original blog Esther in the Garden.
21: The greenhouse is called Wendy, she lives at Silvertreedaze, but she is of course owned by the wonderful Nigel Colborn.
22: The Patient Gardener (patientgardener.wordpress.com)
23: The multi-award-winning Blogging at Blackpitts (web.me.com/blackpittsgarden/Site_2/Blog/Blog.html
24: The delectable but not altogether horticultural Sabrina Duncan International, star of this year’s Malvern Spring Show and the first woman/man ever to deprive James Alexander Sinclair of the power of speech. Appeared first on the Sea of Immeasurable Gravy, I believe.

That really is it now. If you could email your answers to sally[dot]nex[at]btinternet[dot]com I can get rid of the parcel currently cluttering up my desk. And if you don’t do so by next weekend (Jan 7-8) I shall donate it to the Constant Collection of Horticultural Yummy Things.

Happy New Year everyone!

STOP PRESS: We have a winner!

VP, who must have been sitting poised and waiting over a hot keyboard as I typed the above this morning, was first off the block with the correct answers.

They are: Dan Pearson, Spirit – his new book, which was the prize and will be winging its way over to Chippenham shortly. The plant genus was Viburnum.

Well done VP! And commiserations to anyone else who also sent in their answers or was on the point of doing so. You’ll have another chance next year if I can muster the energy to do it again – with a bit of luck and some technical advice, it will hopefully be a bit better, too!

Indoor gardening

01 Thursday Jan 2009

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Frost has stopped play. The pond hasn’t defrosted for a week, and part of the lawn is permanently white. As for the allotment… we had to go and buy some parsnips the other day as the ones I’ve grown so lovingly are now concreted in to a rock-hard veg bed (yeah, I know, should have lifted them and heeled them in somewhere sandier, didn’t get around to it).

The BBC’s rather awe-inspiring monthly weather forecast says this will carry on for the rest of January, as it’s caused by a wodge of high pressure that’s apparently “notoriously difficult to budge”. Oh help. I’ll be reduced to making curtains soon.

Anyway, I’m trying to comfort myself with the thought of millions of tiny slugs freezing solid, and meanwhile doing some indoor gardening. This is long overdue: I’m very late in planning my seed order, which I must send off this week as otherwise the spuds won’t be chitting in time. I’ve also, at last, come up with a coherent design for the front garden, and I’ll be measuring up those bits of the back garden I’m not already digging up shortly – all part of the Great Garden Makeover of course. The only trouble with plans is, you then have to put them into some sort of action… which in my case almost always means half-finished projects all over the garden as the summer rush takes over yet again.

I’ve also been making some New Year’s Resolutions to ring in 2009. A bit of a pointless exercise, of course, but I like to see how quickly I jettison them each year. This year, they are more informed at least thanks to all this blogging (mine but more frequently other people’s).

  • I’m going to start a diary (I do this every year. Never got past March yet. At least I know what I was doing in early spring back to about 1975).
  • While I’m taking those photos for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day each month, I’m also going to photograph the whole of my garden, warts and all, as a record of all these improvements I’m making (this of course will be strictly not for publication: all photography found on this blog is a triumph of the macro lens over reality).
  • I’m going to start some of those projects I’m planning (see above)
  • I’m going to finish some of those projects I’m planning (see above)
  • I shall try not to get impatient when my eight-year-old wants to plant tulips in my potato beds, but shall let her with a beneficent smile in the interests of keeping her gardening (and will secretly replant the tulips back in the same spot after harvesting the potatoes).
  • My reading of other people’s blogs shall not take over my working life
  • … and nor will surreptitious trips to the allotment when I should be at my desk
  • I shall cram in as much knowledge as I can about gardening, plants and plantspeople, and hopefully end the year a better gardener.

Right, that’ll do for now. I wish everyone who drops by this blog from time to time all the very best for 2009. Happy New Year!