My very first cucumber- La Diva F1

La Diva F1 cucumber

Its time to talk cucumbers!  Finally, after a whole years wait I cut my very first cucumber at the tail end of June.  This may not seem very momentous but consider that all my plants last year wilted and most of my cucumber seedlings this year did the same and you can understand that to me, this is more than just a cucumber.  This is a battle between a particular vegetable and I, and I finally won.  I cannot help but smile thinking back to that day; I was so thrilled and my boyfriend thought I was such a nut.

Nobody is going to grow cucumbers for the flowers alone, but they do add a little splash of vibrant yellow 

After watching my baby.... er..cucumber get fatter and fatter and straighten out over two weeks, which doesn’t seem like very long really, it was decided in conference with the mother that it was time.  I forced the boyfriend out to admire it in all it’s glory on the plant (he really couldn’t have cared less but did admit he was impressed at its length and growth rate having been forced to look at it a couple of weeks before) before cutting it and carrying it around for the next ten minutes like a proud mother.  The sense of joy I felt at clutching 15 inches of green water based vegetable to my bosom is immeasurable, and needless to say absolutely nobody was allowed to go near it with teeth until it had sat in the bottom of the fridge and I had swollen just a little more with pride at every visit until I gave in and cut him open. 

17th June: Young and curly

Just look at it, isn’t it beautiful?  I hope cucumber production never becomes blasé.  I think they are one of the best vegetables to grow because they grow so fast and so satisfyingly big.  I basically photographed every move the first one made, and the photos of its growth are only taken over a week or so, which is difficult to believe looking back but the dates on the photos do not lie. 

19th June: Still a bit bendy!       21st June: Straightening out and fattening up

I have several varieties of cucumber, some known, some unknown which is always fun.  Luckily this is a known one: La Diva f1 by Gardeners Kitchen, an outdoor variety and I declare myself a fan.  Of all my cucumbers I would happily say that this is my favourite.  It shot up the cane faster than I thought possible and set about making cucumbers with little to no fuss.  Described on their website as ‘Bitter free, sweet and seedless Producing glossy green cucumbers’.  Ok couple of bones to pick with that statement; firstly that as shown by the photo of the sliced cucumber there are clearly seeds in this cucumber.  What I think they must mean by ‘seedless’ are seeds that aren’t so huge that you find yourself choking on one half way through your sandwich which has happened to me with another variety.  But they are right; definitely no choking hazard here.  Secondly: ‘glossy’.  Glossy??  I may not be an expert cucumber grower but I have eaten a fair few in my time and I have never, ever seen a glossy one.  A dull sheen maybe but we aren’t going to be achieving high shine with some serious polishing.

26th June: D-day.  I think you will agree that is a 'dull shine' and not a gloss

Its not until you devour your first home grown one of the season that you realise how shop bought ones are basically watery tasteless disks in your salad.  This one has a very pleasant almost minty flavour, and while my others don’t lack flavour I do find this minty-ness wins out. Mmmm, refreshing.  Also luckily while the skin is solidly built and robust, it is not inedibly tough.

Nicely sliced, and clearly with seeds

I have not photographed every cucumber I have grown because that would be terribly, terribly sad, but a few have turned out a little interestingly so I will share them with you in another post.

Producing Peas: Sugar Snap

The very fist peas I plucked off the plant, here, immortalised forever jus the way I like it

Since declaring myself back from holiday, I appear to have fallen off the face of the planet.  Unfortunately as one always does when one returns from holiday relaxed and refreshed and ready to hit the road running again, I caught a bug on the plane home, struggled through work and took to my bed for most of the weekend feeling pathetic, but I am properly back now and ready to talk peas.

I grew both Sugar Snap Peas and Mange tout this year. I will be discussing both in this post as neither you shell before eating and instead just shove straight in.  My main crop was Sugar Snap in nature, and it would be at this point that I would disclose the variety but stupidly I stuck the label in the ground, never made a note of it and now the label has gone and I have absolutely no idea what it was; smooth.  So if you wanted to grow it as well you can’t, mind you if I want to grow it again I can’t either!  As I started picking them in June this is a bit of a retrospective, but talking about it afterwards means you didn’t get a daily post of ‘I picked a pea!’

I like to intermingle vegetables and alliums, after all they are onions effectively/ the mother stuffed this in when I wasn't looking

As nobody knows the variety there is not much point discussing the flavour at length but they did taste particularly good, certainly worthwhile of the time spent growing them and it was a good cropper producing enough for several meals for three people.  That’s if I managed to get them in the fridge.  The mother has opposing views to me on what to do with produce.  I like to go to my patch daily, gradually gather a nice bag full that I can place in the fridge for a few days to enjoy the smug swell of pride when I go in there, and then people can eat them.  The mother just likes them straight off the plant and unless I keep a beady eye on her is down there munching away and then they are gone and there is no evidence of my hard work.

A nice satisfactory pile

One area that will definitely need improving for next year is in the planting and the staking of the plants.  As I put in a previous post, I didn’t get my patch ready quick enough so I had to plant clumps of pea plants together: not ideal.  Next year I will endeavour to keep my patch in better condition through the winter to prevent a last minute panic.  I was still using fuchsia sticks to stake my plants when I spotted the first peas, but they had all flopped over and started growing horizontally across the lawn hiding the peas from me.  By the time I saw them they had grown into huge, mutant sugar snaps which were sadly, inedible.  Trust me I tried one and it wasn’t pleasant.  Tough and woody, as much as it hurts you just have to throw those big boys away.

Again the first ones I picked all laid out and lovely, not the huge mutant ones thought

After planting my first crop I purchased some half-price mange tout; Mange tout Oregon Sugarpod.  In hindsight I should have left them in the garden centre.  They did not appreciate such late planting, did not grow well and only produced a minimal amount of peas.  On top of that the flavour was terribly weak and watery and after my sugar snap beauties it was quite a disappointment.  Plus at this point I was so bored of endlessly tying twine round stakes Im afraid I did give up on them a bit. 

Overall though a resounding success and next year I plan to grow them from seed, or pea if you will myself so I will be able to stagger them more effectively.

Im back from Morocco and it was beautiful!

Ah Paradise! But only at night when the temperature goes down, bit more like hell during the day

Im back! And I had a great time.  There is only one way to describe Marrakech in early September: hot.  The type of searing continuous boiling heat that makes me want to crawl under a damp dark rock and stay there.  Its wrong but I enjoyed coming home and putting on a sweater.  Although I enjoy seeing the world I am not a natural born traveller, I dislike flying intensely and enjoy home comforts like a soft bed that a bunch of strangers haven’t been in and proper English brews too much.  I believe that essential holiday packing is a china teapot and bags not sun cream. Im not a great one for heat, so I decided to visit a desert in the middle of summer, go figure.  If this was a beauty or fashion blog I would insert a picture here of me in my bikini lounging elegantly by the pool, but such a photo does not exist.  I just look hot, sweaty and bothered and even took to wearing a vest upon my head turban style to survive the endless sun.

As thrilling as my holiday was, I have not brought it up here to rub in how I spent a week drinking cocktails by a pool.  I mention it to just confirm that a. I haven’t fallen out of love with my garden although I did abandon it for a week, and b. because despite being an incredibly dry, dusty desert, Marrakech is also a surprisingly green place and I have lots of photos of plants and wildlife to share over the coming weeks.  I braved hailing a cab in order to visit the Jardin Majorelle; a garden once owned by Yves Saint Laurent so will definitely share that with you.  Im not going to lie, the plant life tends to fall into one of two categories, palm or cactus, but there are some other interesting specimens in there as well.

Palm trees in the Jardin Majorelle 

 The absolute highlight of my holiday, above seeing the medina and haggling, swimming in the pool, the daily consumption of my own body weight in food and just generally not being at work, was small, green and moist.  The hotel we stayed at actually had really excellent gardens with ponds that weren’t overly interesting during the day but at night were chock-a-block with toads; beautiful, big green toads.  The night air was thick with the sound of them ribbiting away to each other, and boy did they have a lot of chat!  The evening entertainment in the hotel was unfortunately not that great, but I spent several nights engaged in ‘toad hunt‘ trying to capture the little beauties on camera so that passed the time.

With over 400 pictures to sort through my Moroccan posts will be interspersed with my normal posts over the next few weeks, but here is a toad and a few pictures in the mean time. 

What a beauty with his puffed out vocal sack, and spot the terrapin sneaking up behind!

Hollyhocks in Penshurst Place

You can see the black and white Tudor building in the distance and note the circular wall ties in the old church wall behind the Hollyhock to stop it bowing into the road too much. 

I am very lucky that on my epic voyage to and from work I not only drive through some beautiful English countryside, but also several very old, very traditional little villages.  Being English I see 600 year old buildings every day and I have got terribly blase about it.  However I can see that my readers from the USA would rather like the village of Penshurst in Kent.  Built above a river which floods far too regularly and in which I nearly got my car stuck last winter: a rather alarming experience, this little village is the epitome of picturesque.  With three little bridges, Tudor buildings, a church, a 14th century manor house and an unhelpfully narrow road that I spend a great deal of time trying to navigate, Penshurst has it all.

I always enjoy being able to see flowers from the road after all I get to enjoy them twice a day without any of the work of growing them.  I say always; Im less thrilled when flowers decide they really do want to be admired by passing motorists and actually grow into the road as a clump of Hollyhock spikes did in Penshurst.  There are enough hazards to avoid on that particular stretch that make every morning a little hairy without having to avoid hollyhock as well, as nice as they are.  But being such glorious specimens and complimenting the image of the village so well I have managed to forgive them.  So much so I again risked my life by nipping along the verge right by the narrow part of the road to take a few pictures.

Balls on a stem- Im a fan!

In many ways I think the inconvenient nature of their positioning is part of their charm, for such a tall statuesque plant these particular ones have the slight air of "I will grow here! Am I in the middle of the road?  Is this inconvenient for you?  Well thats life my friend!  Deal with it".  The clump at the top of the stairs particularly resonates with this, it appears to be growing straight out of a concrete slab which of course isn't possible so it must have found a toehold of soil to support all 5 foot of plant.  Remarkable what plants can do when they set their mind to it, shame my seedlings can't have the same thrive instinct.  The stairs in question belong to a very old building which I believe is part of Penshurst Place; a 14th century manor house and gardens which I have never been in but I hear is lovely.

Its going to be a bit quiet on here for the next week- Im off to Marrakech today!  Super excited and hoping to see some greenery including a garden by Yves Saint Laurent so will definitely put some posts together when I come back.

See you then x. 

Is growing from seed out of fashion?

Broad Beans and Peas I grew this year from seed

Ken Thompson; plant biologist and author of several books wrote an article for The Telegraph entitled; ‘Is growing from seed out of fashion’; an interesting exploration of the astronomical prices gardeners appear to be willing to pay for baby plants rather than the more economically sound option of growing from seed, placing it almost in a 'niche' category only attempted by the most enthusiastic or traditional of gardeners rather than mainstream.  

'Fashionable' does not necessarily mean most bought, so surely it is necessary to consider the wider context?  For example, I recently myself purchased a £120 pair of sunglasses, a vast amount of money that hurts me every time I look at said glasses.  I could have bought a pair off the high street for £5 that would have looked good and suitably protected my eyes, but I didn’t because the £120 price tag was not enough to put me off obtaining the image of ‘cool’ pertained by the glasses.  The high price is not paying for exceedingly high workmanship, although the quality is undeniably much higher than that of a £5 pair and this of course is one element of the appeal.  They are fashionable because of the image of 'cool' the glasses give the wearer due to their celebrity endorsements and other social connotations, they are expensive because the company knows that mugs like me are willing to pay whatever price (within reason) to achieve 'cool' in wearing the item.  Clearly £120 is within reason in my book.  The same applies to seed companies, if people are willing to buy baby plants to achieve the connotations of 'grow your own', then those companies are going to make you pay for it.  I do not think it is so much a question of seeds going out of fashion, as the concept of 'grow your own' is fashionable but the time and effort element of using seed does not fit in with our fast 'have it now' culture.

The Organic Gardening Catalogue’s statement that it is new gardeners such as young families who are buying these baby plants is more than likely true.  Why?  Well for starters we are discussing the ‘Organic Gardening Catalogue’ which nicely fits the ethos of people who would find the concept of ‘grow your own’ appealing as a hobby not a requirement and who like the idea of the countryside but still enjoy fast broadband, phone signal and buses after 6.  Countryfile watchers, Range Rover drivers and if a pair of wellies are to be purchased for a walk, Hunter wearers.  The same people who spend £10 on a fancy dibber (I use the end of an old wooden spoon) and a small fortune on slate plant labels (lollipop sticks-£1).  In reality any green welly will do and despite driving for over 30 miles through some of the narrowest country roads Sussex has to offer every day, I have a 2 wheel drive Polo that does me just fine except in the depth of winter when any car would struggle on complete sheet ice.  Im not a farmer, my need to go off road is very limited and all the farmers I see drive the most battered old cars on the road, generally denoted by the encrusted dirt and sheepdog hanging out the back, tongue lolling merrily in the wind.  This disparity between the 'idea' and reality is discussed in The Telegraph's own article 'Countryfile, the TV show that likes to walk on the wide side'.  

The reality is growing from seed is beyond time consuming, requires you to garden in conditions that may involve rain and a coat and actually is not that easy.  I love growing from seed, I revel in the challenge but half the time they don’t even bother to come up which would put most people off after the first attempt.  This summer I wanted to buy two cucumber plants for guaranteed results but was convinced into buying a very expensive packet of cucumber seeds costing a full £5 for five, therefore making the difference in price between plant and seed not very big at all .  At a pound a seed I required results; I got nothing.  Even if they do beat the odds and germinate normally all do and one finds oneself potting on 30 Zinnia plants when 10 would have been more than ample.  Collating 30 small pots with enough crocs took literally hours and my nails were dirt encrusted for days afterwards.

People are not growing 5 organic leeks to feed their family and cut down on food bills, they will be plucked from the ground and presented on a plate when dinner guests are over so the phrase ‘We grew them ourselves!’ can be slipped into conversation as much as possible.  In these days of increasingly urban living gardening is becoming cool among the young, but only if its clean and quick, too things gardening most definitely isn’t.  Seed companies are merely taking advantage of our desire to have things now without waiting, and we are prepared to pay through the nose to get it.  Plants are bought large and in flower when at their most expensive because we see it, like it and want it as it is rather than putting the time and effort in to nurture a smaller plant.  At some point growing from seed would have fitted into the 'make do and mend' and 'upcycling' trends, but even then I think most people would rather buy a new cabinet created in that style to making over an old one themselves, me included.  There isn't time in my day for sandpapering old furniture.  If it was possible to get the same imagery and ethos associated with home baking from a shop bought one most people would throw away the cookbook and nip off to the shops.  Unfortunately that isn't possible with baking, but it is with gardening; you just buy the plant ready started.   

But Mr Thompson is right; growing from seed is economically a far better bet, and if we consider the old adage 'time is money', supermarket ones will be cheaper than both these expensive baby plants and growing from seed.

Read the original article here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/plants/11058870/Is-growing-from-seed-out-of-fashion

A slug who ate all my runner beans before they germinated- one of the many things making growing from seed less appealing

Drilling holes for Gladioli

Anyone who has read my post on what I bought at Hampton court will know that come spring next year I am to receive a slightly terrifying delivery of forty Gladiolus bulbs.  What you won't know is that I actually had a little foray into growing them this year.  Back in the early spring I was in the garden centre when a packet of Gladioli bulbs was thrown into the trolley, shortly followed by another as I threw caution to the wind, but being my second favourite flower its not surprising I couldn't resist.

The varieties I bought were: Passos and Wine and roses.  Not exactly a match made in heaven but I love a good clashing colour combination so I didn't let that hold me back.  In the front garden is a rather large fuchsia hogging a lot of space without exactly adding much to the overall ambience of the garden.  That was hacked back and the resulting area has become my gladiolus patch for the year.  I don't plan on leaving the bulbs there indefinitely, and now I have bought a thousand more I might need to just completely jettison these altogether.

You can tell our compost is home made a fruit label has snuck in my hole with the corns

Here I am planting the bulbs on the moon.  No I jest, this is the front garden.  Look at that soil!  Isn't it beautiful?  Soft and crumbly and beyond easy to dig holes.... but only when using a pick axe.  That isn't a joke by the way; we have had to use a pickaxe in the past to break up the soil.  Every time I buy a plant the mother reminds me I will have to dig a hole and Im like ‘yeah yeah thats fine!’  Five minutes of hole digging as the sweat runs down my brow and Im blowing I regret those purchases. As I write this I have literally just finished planting 3 plants out there which took about two hours, mainly because I had to dig one hole 3 times as I got almost deep enough only to find a cracking great root.  That plant nearly stayed in the pot and even now is not really deep enough but it’s lucky to be there at all!  I chose to ignore the advice on the packets and look to the gardener Sarah Raven for guidance.  On her website she suggests a depth of 8 inches and uses a bulb planter.  Oh Sarah, 8 inches?  Clearly she has soil where 8 inches is achievable in under 40 minutes of digging, I don't think I managed more than 6 and it was hard graft, reduced to four by the time I put a layer of manure in the bottom for when the corns get hungry.  I also decided to dig trenches rather than individual holes which also proved to be a mistake.  Sarah advices planting the bulbs in succession to provide staggered flowering which I did do, less for the flowering and more because I would have keeled over and died if I had to plant them all at once.

The slugs have provided aeration in my leaves

So this was a few months ago and I have waited and watched the leaves sprout and grow and be devoured into threads by slugs because evidently they eat absolutely everything, and then waited some more.  We already have gladioli growing in the garden in the form of Alba, a small white variety that is very pretty.  Alba grew, flowered and died and still my leaves remained merely that; leaves.  Clearly Gladiolus are perfectly capable of flowering in my soil, but mine are slow burners. And so the wait continues...

I really am partial to white flowers with green highlights like this one.  Here on the left we have freshly opened and perfect and on the right with delightful crimped edges having been nibbled.  It appears that Gladioli are a particularly tasty plant and no part of it is safe!

An ode to grass

It turns out grass can be rather intense pink

Every year in my quant English village a large agricultural show full of cows and extremely fluffy bunnies and the like is held.  In preparation for this the council comes round a few weeks beforehand and cuts the grass on all the verges that don't 'belong' to a house to make the place all neat and tidy ready for the hoards of people who pass through for the show.  Only this year something seemed to go seriously awry and the mowers never came.  The grass got longer and longer and began looking really untidy.  But as when growing anything such as your hair or a beard for example, there is a really ugly stage you have to get through and then suddenly it comes into its own. 

Look at all that variety: the shades of purple! The textures and structure! And the overwhelming birds nest mess effect.  How I appreciate a bit of chaos

One day I got out of my car and was amazed at the amount of colour and variety of flower there was in what had before resembled just scrubby green grass.  Obviously the overwhelming colour of the verge was still green but it had a real purple and red hue running right through it.  For the first time ever I finally appreciated the joy of wild meadow-type planting.  The flowers were not big and showy but the mix of structures and the sheer number of them all intermingled just had a beauty all of their own.

Also a significant amount of red in patches, the varying colours stuck to particular drifts.  Why it has photographed orange tinged and almost pink in two different pictures I don't know

I couldn’t resist whipping out my camera and taking a few pictures, although I did wait until a time when as many of my neighbours were out as possible because if people see you randomly squatting in a verge of grass taking pictures they will naturally assume that you have gone nuts.  To get a nice angle I had to get real down and dirty getting right in that grass with it, which is fine, I have very little dignity to lose these days.  The real problem was I have hayfever, I have hayfever bad and my pollen of choice is from grass.  By the time I had finished taking my few snaps I was sneezing approximately every 20 seconds continuously, and the nose was seriously a-running. 

The verge remained long and luscious and beautiful for a week or two, and then one day I got home from work, and it was gone.  The mowers had come and we were just left with hay.  I wish they had left it, but maybe its' real beauty lay in the fact that it wasn't meant to be there and it was never going to last.  It has made me wonder, why do grass verges have to be kept short and green and boring?  Why not leave them to turn into little wild stretches that break the formality of our neighbourhoods and bring a little excitement to a tired eye on the return home.  Yes, I doubt dog walkers would be pleased but if anything that is a bonus in my book.  One lasting effect it has had on me is a wish to incorporate grass into my actual garden hence the purchasing of bunny tails at Hampton.  They remind me of open fields and are terribly tactile, long and yielding to a hand and that is good enough; not everything must produce flowers to be worthy of a place.

And then it was gone and we had a mini hay field blowing debris down the street
I think they should have left it...