Sunshine

This post is part of the UK Herbarium July blog party hosted this month by Debs Cook at Herbaholics Herbarium

I'm a Leo, this is my time of the year! And I love hot sunshine colours.. they warm and uplift. Bright splashes of bold oranges and yellows about the place declare that it IS summer, whatever the weather has decided to the contary. So I have a sunshine insurance policy .. each year, very very early in the year, I sow my annual seeds. I sow sunflowers, marigolds and nasturtiums.

And then I can settle back and enjoy the unfolding of spring with lush green foliage, beautiful purple and pink and white flowers.. safe in the knowledge that I'll have my hit of sunshine colour, too. Once we get to the lavender and strawberries and last of the roses, then we're getting warmer.. the St John's Wort at midsummer heralds the start of the bright yellow sunshine colours in my herb garden, which I feel is so appropriate for this celebration of the sun. And then more and more yellows seem to start popping out all over.

But I'm a big cheater! I sow dwarf sunflowers stupidly early, in February, so that they are flowering in May, usually. I harden them off in my little growhouse (you know, the sort which is basically a small shelf unit with a sort of pac-a-mac over the top!) and then I've got instant sunshine to pop into the garden. This year, I had a good little display which flowered on an indoors windowsill.. and if I'm not getting to see those outdoors, I have no compunction about cutting them for a jug on the kitchen table.

I got into dwarf sunflowers when I lived in Tottenham and had my roof garden - there was no way I could grow tall ones up there! Bad weather then meant not visiting or seeing the garden at all, as I had to climb a ladder through a hatch up onto the roof which kind of let the water in! That was when I got into the habit of taking a camera with me and snapping the plants on my brief forays to see what was happening up there.. a habit I still have. The best thing about where we live now is that I can see the garden from our living room anytime I want.. I love to stand at the door looking out watching it all in the rain from the comfort of a nice dry house!

Now marigolds I originially sowed to companion plant with tomatoes, and still do. But I just put them everywhere I can find space now, as they are just such a useful plant and such a hit of hot colour. And the more you pick the heads to use them, the more flowers you are rewarded with, it seems. Last year I grew 'Indian Prince' and was deeply satisfied with the really zingy bright orange ... they flowered into November last year, cheering up the onset of autumn and winter, and a pot of last years marigolds which I took out from the tomato planters once they were over gave me amazing huge almost fluorescent orange flowers from April this year.. WOW! Needless to say I put the pot right by the door so's I could see them from indoors.

I've grown nasturtiums the last couple of years, since we were given some seed for one of the marbled leaf varieties and just loved them. Nasturtiums, too, will also go really late into the year. This year I have hanging baskets about the place with a mix of marbled leaf/yellow flowers and dark foliage with deep red flowers. I had known this was an edible plant, but was delighted last year to find I could make a great vinegar with them (thank you, James Wong). I made it really as a catarrh remedy, but it tastes wonderful on salads.

The greatest thing about planting these annuals is sharing the whole growing process with the little'un who, at 3 this year, has had his own garden for the first time. He planted his own marigold and sunflower seeds in February and was able to plant them out into his own little plot and water them and watch them grow and flower. The sunflower and marigold photographs I've used above actually show his plants. And here he is, carefully picking the petals off some marigolds of his own that he grew and contributing them for making infused oil.

Seeds

no words needed .. the pictures tell it all .. unadulterated bliss!

today we planted sweetpeas and a tomato or two in the incubator, a tray of calendula, some rocket and basil for the kitchen windowsill and last, but not least, trays of six different types of sunflower (spot the Leo!)

Mystery Peas

Ok, here are my mystery peas ... if you think you know what they might be, I would be very grateful for some help in identifying them?

They are the ones I picked up from the North London Organic Gardeners' Society stall last week .. all I know is that they're heritage varieties.



Not a great picture, I'm afraid (best I could do on my phone camera today!).. I will take more photos as they grow .. will be fun to see what they turn into!

Garden Update

I was excited today, to discover that my mini-growhouse is working!!!

You remember my 3 heritage dwarf beans ? Well here they are in the growhouse, reaching for the sky...

Its had something of an initiation ordeal, as the weekend I assembled it, it got snowed on and then on Friday it had a fairly decent storm to contend with. Spurred on by its success, I've put my Brandywine tomato seedlings in there as well today. And I don't think I've shown you my sunflowers...










I sorted out my coldframe too, today, by removing all the paraphenalia I'd been storing in it and actually clearing some space for plants. Here are the first batch of herb seedlings awaiting transport from the kitchen to the coldframe on the roof..


















... there are dill, borage, clary sage, marigold .. and some sweetpeas, which I adore, and will be a surprise as a friend collected the seed so I've no idea what colour they'll be.

Forgive my over-enthusiasm .. I'm still new to raising plants from seed and so whenever something grows, I'm afraid I'm just an overgrown child jumping about with glee!

Capel Manor

Today I went to Capel Manor Gardens for their Spring Show. It is a horticultural college and has 30 acres of beautiful themed gardens, including Sunflower Street - a series of spaces designed for the front and back gardens of normal houses. My favourite was called Rustic Garden and influenced by Tuscany..
















I loved this one, too, which had a formal area with a willow screen in front of a great space for growing veggies with a green house and shed...






And then this garden is just plain pretty..




There was a 'step towards Greener Living' marquee, which was great! I met a wonderful lady from the North London Organic Gardeners Society who pressed a packet of heritage peas collected from her own plants into my palm in return for my meagre 50p donation! How exciting.. she thought they would be OK on my roof and I could pinch them out once they were thigh-high without them minding.. watch this space.



I also picked up a moth and butterfly identification poster and some interesting information about making your garden friendly for wildlife. And I left the marquee with a letter to send to the Secretary of State for the Environment objecting to GM crops and a flyer for an open day at the national collection of hyssop and thyme garden in June.. not a bad morning's work!


















Here are my treasures from the Herbal Haven stall ... I thought I was very restrained, to be honest(!) I got another lovage plant, because its a favourite. I got a chicory, which I have never tried before but hope to use as a salad leaf. I got a bronze fennel, because its SO beautiful and I'm thinking of using the fronds as foliage in vases of cut flowers. And I got some Southernwood - the fragrance is amazing and I'm planning to use it to pack some punch in my herb sachets this year.





If anyone's in the UK and fancies going along, its on Saturday and Sunday this weekend and I'm putting the link here ... there's a real punch & judy show, sheep-shearing and a brass band at the weekend!

Kitchen Greenhouse

This is going back a few weeks, now, New Moon at the beginning of March to be exact..



I spent a happy afternoon at the kitchen table with the radio for company, surrounded by newspaper, compost (not always ON the newspaper, sadly!), milk cartons, seed packets, tin foil cat food trays, cardboard tubes and miscellaneous other extremely handy bits and bobs.. attempting to construct little comfy homes for my seedlings. There was something very cathartic and Blue Peter about it all, I haven't had so much fun in ages..

Elsie the cat was very helpful in attempting to eat, biff or sit upon my carefully organised chaos and has since been most displeased that the sunniest spot in front of the kitchen window (where she sun-worships and watches for passing pigeons to make the Ack-Ack noise at) is now occupied by a number of recycled DIY incubators of dubious construction.

Nevertheless, I got some herb seeds planted in my 'proper' propagator (try saying that quickly!), potted on the February seedlings and generally got very very grubby. Brilliant!



I picked up a tip from somewhere (will try to find it and post the link) recently to use the cardboard cartons that soup or milk comes in for plant pots, as when you want to plant out you can just snip down the sides with scissors and slide the plant out intact. So I did this for a few of the bigger seedlings. I also used the bottom half of plastic milk bottles (with drainage hole punched in the bottom) as plant pots. And I'd been saving the plastic trays from food shopping to use as drip trays to stand things in .. or as lids for incubators, if transparent.

In fact, things might be getting out of hand now because I can't look at anything now without working out how I can re-use the packaging.. its addictive!

---> LINKS:

yoghurt pots as mini greenhouses

make seedling pots from newspaper

make recycled seed pots

Bean Update

Ooh, I forgot to show you how my little bean seedlings are doing ..

First they looked like this, if you remember?

They soon got potted up and looked like this (on a typical grey day, a week or so back!)


.. and now we're getting a bit of sunshine, they look like this


.. and I think they mean business!!

Hey Pesto!

I had a great afternoon in the kitchen today, listening to the radio and knocking up a batch of pesto.

I have a basic recipe which gives the right proportions of the ingredients (see below), but I basically just keep adding olive oil until the consistency is OK. Oh, and I always put more garlic than it says, because I like it and its so good for me. Today I had two good handfuls of basil and one of parsley and I substituted the pine nuts with walnuts, which is a nice variation. Incidentally, I've seen a recipe somewhere lately for a three herb pesto with Lemon Balm which I might try in the summer.

The motivation behind today's pesto-making was Daughter of the Soil's wonderful post last week about growing peppers - especially the long pointy Ramiro peppers, my favourite.

http://daughterofthesoil.blogspot.com/2008/02/peppers-and-ice.html

I've never tried to grow peppers, but felt inspired to have a go so I decided to get some to roast and use the seed. No time to lose, as peppers need to get going fairly early in the UK so that they have chance to ripen - I think the advice was by early March.

I like to make roast peppers by halving and de-seeding them, then stuffing them with a mixture of cubed organic feta cheese, halved organic cherry tomatoes and home-made pesto. Cook for about half an hour in the oven.



Pesto Sauce

2 garlic cloves, crushed
8 tbspn chopped fresh basil
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
50g pine nuts
100g grated Parmesan cheese
150ml olive oil
seasoning

Instructions: Put it all in the blender and press 'go'.. hey pesto!

Seedlings

Warms the heart, doesn't it?

Sowing seed

At the first signs of dusk I planted my first seeds of the year. Always a lovely thing to do, looking forward to the season ahead.

I have a little propagator with individual cells so that I don't have to prick out the seedlings. This first batch was to get my tomato plants started. I'm growing a big beefsteak type tomato called 'Brandywine' that I love. Alongside I started some Pot Marigold to companion plant with my tomatoes.

I've also done an early batch of Sunflowers - one of my favourites, so I want to see them in flower as soon as possible. I'm growing two dwarf varieties, as they will be living on my roof .. and the tall ones would just sail away!! One day, when I have a real garden, I'm going to have huge sunflowers. I was really inspired by a house I saw last summer where someone had trained them up round their front door - it looked amazing!

Sown February New Moon. Germination time approx 1 to 2 weeks. Recommended germination temperature 18 degrees C (so might need a hot water bottle!)