Gardening 2010

At the beginning of a new year, thoughts inevitably turn to the garden in 2010. Not so much the making of new year resolutions as the drawing up of new schemes and plans.

There are fundamental decisions to take, such as where to place a new compost heap and polytunnel, how best to source a steady, and hopefully free, supply of manure, and what is the best approach to see off the rabbit plague.

I have been making lists - what vegetables to grow in 2010 and when to sow them, new additions to the flower garden, big jobs to do etc.

Of course, such plans don't come cheap. Already I have bought an 'allotment vegetables collection' (onions, shallots, garlic), as well as horse radish, jerusalem artichokes, beetroot (bolthardy and a cylindrical variety), and broccoli calabrese. Still to come are seed potatoes and a few exotic seeds such as cobaea scandens alba.

The temptation with vegetables, as always, is to start plants early. I have put in a few peas and broad beans in pots in the greenhouse, in an attempt to get early crops.

Sweet peas are similarly in the mind, although we seem a long way from the fragrance and bright colours of summer. I did manage to start some ‘White Ensign’ in late October and have a number of healthy plants. I also have grown seedlings of two perennial sweet peas (lathyrus latifolius) from seed I collected in late autumn – pink and white. The dilemma will be what to do with so many seedlings.

Today, I started off a number of other varieties of sweet pea, including 'Mrs R Bolton', 'Beaujolais', 'Noel Sutton' and a mix called 'Elegant Ladies'. I germinate them indoors on blotting paper in various containers and contraptions, then transfer the germinated seed into tall juice/milk containers full of good compost. The tall containers allow the roots to go deep.

I am not one for new year resolutions, disliking the artifice of making them and perhaps lacking the will-power to see them through successfully. However, if I were to make a new year resolution, it would be to buy less at B&Q in 2010... It may be relatively cheap and nearby, but the quality of plants can leave something to be desired. I made the mistake of buying garlic there just after Christmas, and yesterday stumbled upon far bigger and better cloves and more interesting varieties at the Mid Ulster Garden Centre.

Like the sweet pea, garlic should really be planted in late autumn, to make sure they get a month of temperatures below 10 degrees centigrade, which they need to form cloves. I will play catch up by starting them off in pots in the greenhouse, then transplant. I have three varieties - a big supermarket garlic (Sainsbury’s), garlic Casablanca (small cloves) and garlic Thermidrome (big cloves). Which grows and tastes best will only be decided at the end of the year.

Outdoors, the cold snap continues and the garden remains icy and snow bound. But the first (tiny) snowdrop has still managed to poke its head out.

David Lewis

Growing Vegetables

Growing vegetables is so rewarding. Vegetables fresh from the garden taste quite different and if grown without chemcial fertiliser or pesticides you know they are truly organic.

If you have only a small space you are limited as to what you can grow, so grow the plants which will give you the most return for your labour. Here are a few plants, I wouldn’t be without.

Everyone should have a few plants of everlasting onions, also known as scallions. They are so easy to grow and if you just use the green tops leaving the bulb in the ground, they will go on and on and on. My original everlasting onions were given to me almost 50 years ago!

Used in salads, stir-fries or champ they are very tasty, much more flavoursome than chives which tend to get tough and dry, or the white Lisbon seedling onions which are usually sold as spring onions. They can be planted as the edge to a border or even a clump in a large pot.

Most varieties of lettuce mature at the same time so try varieties such as 'Salad Bowl', which give you a continuous picking over several months. The curling leaves are also quite attractive.
Given rich moisture retaining soil a few plants of asparagus grown at the back of a flowerbed will give you a treat for a few weeks in April/May.

Runner or climbing French beans can be grown up a fence or a wigwam of canes – given a mulch and plenty of water – and picked frequently will give you beans for at least three months.

Spinach can be picked continuously but I prefer a few plants of Swiss Chard which give you a crisp green vegetables for about nine months of the year. You not only can eat the green part of the leaves, in salads or cooked like spinach, but also the thick white centres, cooked like asparagus). There are coloured varieties that can be interplanted in flower borders as can beetroot. Seedlings can be grown on early in small pots to give you earlier crops.

A few herbs such as parsley, Jerusalem sage, mint etc do very well in pots. The black plastic pots which are used for cut flowers, I find can be recycled by making a few holes in the bottom. Because of their size they don’t usually require watering unless the weather is particularly dry and given a weak liquid fertiliser will surprise you with the results.

I grow tomato plants from my own seed, which is an obvious hybrid between 'Gardener's Delight' and 'Sungold'. I grow these in the greenhouse but in recent years have tried growing them outside.

Don’t be discouraged by failure. If seedlings get eaten by rabbits (as has happened to me recently) or shredded by caterpillars, there is usually some other vegetable you can grow as a catch crop, such as Chinese cabbage. Useful for salads, stir-fry etc. No need to cut the whole cabbage, just take off the outside leaves. Of course this can be done with ordinary cabbages – they go on growing just the same. Nutritionists say there are more vitamins in the outside leaves. Whether, this is because they have been growing longer and absorbed more vitamins, I don’t know.

These are some of the vegetables I wouldn’t be without. But every year I like to try something different. Last year it was chicory, black salsify and Florence fennel. Who knows what it will be this year!

Doreen Moody