Tidying up and first shoots

Walking through the garden taking stock. Some semi-hardy plants like my Solanum alba have dropped some leaves after the deep cold. I also wonder if my Fuchsias grown against a sheltered wall have survived. Hope that they will perk up again.


I have decided that I just can't keep up anymore with the ivy growing up my wall which was initially planted to hide an ugly downpipe. So I cut it off to wither away and dug most of the roots out. I am thinking of growing a jasmine instead which is much easier to handle and will also provide a nice scent, or go with another Solanum.


I only noticed a week or so ago that the huge sycamore tree in my neighbour's garden has been pruned. Most of the branches are gone with only two big ones remaining - one of them still is a bit over my garden but very high up. I'm not sure if they'll take it all down or leave it like that but it's already a big improvement in terms of light. I gathered together the trimmings that fell into my garden so I should have plenty of kindling and a few logs when they are dried out.

Browsing through another gardening catalogue I came across two things that piqued my interest: first, curly kale. I always liked to eat it but have never grown it. Second, grafted tomatoes (a tasty variety grafted on to a vigorous root stock). Who knew such a thing existed! I will stick to normal seeds though.



In final news, I have spotted garlic shoots (along with shoots of the hyacinths and daffodils). It's nice to see something growing in this cold and damp season.

just-in-time planting: garlic

Today I planted Lautrec Wight garlic - due to go in by the end of November as it is an autumn-planting garlic. It called for a soil that won't get water-logged, and I chose three different sites to spread the cloves around: one near the bay tree and herbs (gritty soil), one underneath the sycamore which is hopefully going to be taken down soon (also gritty), and one near the wall of the house (probably on the poor side).

All in all I planted one and a half bulbs, having given half a bulb away, which still left me with about 16 cloves - each of which should grow into one whole bulb. Even with an enormous failure rate I should be able to fend off Dracula easily...