A Relaxing Bank Holiday Weekend

Whilst everyone else appears to have been rushing off to the coast this weekend, I awarded myself an extra long weekend and stayed at home. My idea of a relaxing break doesn’t involve sitting in traffic for several hours then squeezing onto a beach with hundreds of other people. My chosen method of chilling out is (I’m sure you can guess where I’m going with this) to spend time tootling around in my garden and on my allotment. Actually, there was less tootling and quite a lot of digging, weeding and planting.

On the allotment I dug over my tomato bed, yes I’m going to try some outdoor tomatoes again this year despite losing last the last two years’ crops to the dreaded tomato blight and swearing that I’d never do so again. I planted my three favourite varieties of tomato – Ferline (supposed to be blight resistant, but hasn’t worked so far), Sweet Olive (tiny plum tomatoes with a gorgeous flavour) and Marmande (a large, beefsteak tomato ideal for making sauces). I disinfected their canes with some dilute Jeyes fluid to ensure there were no blight spores on the canes from last year, gave them some manure and fish, blood and bone and crossed my fingers. They look bushy and healthy now, but its early days. I’m going to give them a spray with some copper sulphate in a couple of weeks just to give them the best possible chance of survival. I’m also growing all three varieties in my greenhouse just for backup, although outdoor tomatoes taste much nicer than ones grown in the greenhouse.

I also planted out my Gherkins – it’s the first time I’ve grown them, but my cucumbers are always a hit and I love pickled Gherkins so I decided to give them a try. One of the plants (which I raised in my greenhouse) already has some tiny fruits on it – very sweet! I planted two carrot varieties – Purple Haze (decorative and delicious) and Flyaway (carrot fly resistant) and just to be extra safe I planted a row of marigolds on either side of them to deter the carrot fly. I also planted a row of Parsnips – we don’t eat many Parsnips, but home grown ones are gorgeous. I planted two more rows of radishes and harvested my first bunch of both varieties – this year I’ve grown a round variety and also the French breakfast ones and they are fab!

In the front garden, I plugged some gaps in my herbaceous borders adding some Veronicastrum ‘Fascination’, Phlox ‘Velvet Flame’, and Aster frikartii ‘Monch’. I moved some Penstemmon ‘Raven’ which were in the way of my Paeonies, had a good old weed round and applied a top dressing of fish, blood and bone. In the back garden I planted some more Hemerocallis (purple and orange with a purple eye) in a space created by moving a Trachycarpus and had a sort out in the greenhouse. I potted up a new Acer and re-potted one that’s on my lower patio and not looking very happy. I put all my saved coffee grounds around my potted Hostas and it’s really done the trick – slugs 0, Linsey 1.

Forgot to take any pictures on the allotment, but here’s a photo looking up the garden and, yes, I am still waiting for the landscapers to come back and finish rendering the wall of my herb bed!