In a typical year, I do my garden planning before Christmas. But last year wasn’t normal, and normality (whatever that means) has yet to return. I thought I’d thought about it, but it turns out – not so much.
So, at the weekend, I put together a garden plan for 2021. It’s a bit minimalistic. I have been itching to get sowing and growing in previous years, but that feeling hasn’t hit yet, and it may not. It feels as though our local climate has degraded into just two seasons – Bog (Oct-Mar) and Bake (Apr-Sep), and I don’t look forward to either of them.
I currently have two beds of leeks and three of purple sprouting broccoli, which gives me five beds to play with at planting time. (There are also two of onions and one of garlic, which I will harvest later in the year.)
I have two varieties of potatoes (Pink fir apple and Sárpo Mira) chitting on the windowsill, and they will fill two beds. Three weeks ago, I sowed enough broad beans for a third.
So that only leaves me two beds to think about. We’ll want courgettes. I’d like to grow two different varieties of climbing French beans (Blauhilde and Hunter); it looks like they will have to share!
It’s been a long time since I grew achocha, so I thought I would again this year. It can clamber over the arbour and doesn’t need a raised bed. Neither do Spanish Pádron peppers, which I fancy trying again. They’ll go in pots.
We’ll want more leeks and sprouting broccoli next year, so I will need to sow those this month. I can do the peppers indoors.
In April, I will sow the beans, courgettes and achocha.
So that’s my 2021 garden plan! It helps that salad production is now a continuous process in the Hydroponicum, so I don’t need to find space for leafy greens.
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If you're after a completely free-to-enter garden to relax in and explore this summer, then Manchester's Ordsall Hall has it all — a gorgeous garden, a historic hall, and a lovely allotment. Everything at Ordsall is free to explore, making it a must-visit this season. Want to find out more? Our team took a tour this summer to show you what Salford's oldest building has to offer. The Gardens Ordsall Hall has lush sprawling grass to the front of the property… But to the back? This is where you can find their impressive time capsule garden. The rear garden is designed in a traditional Tudor style knot, similar to what would have been grown back then. Rose bushes stand out among carefully pruned hedging.
Hot off the presses, I have a garden plan for 2017. It’s not set in stone – last year’s got changed around during the season a bit due to unexpected arrivals and departures – but I have a guideline for what I’m hoping to achieve in the garden next year. 2017 will be the first year in which I start the year with all 12 raised beds in the garden built and available for planting. We still need to finish the margins of the back garden, and there are plenty of plants in pots that need permanent homes. We planted the front garden this year, and there are only minor additions to make to that.
A lot of new gardening and plant books have landed on my mat this spring, and I need to up my book reviewing game! I like to do them justice, and spend some time reading them before I write a review, so that does create a bit of a backlog. Right at the time when the garden is demanding my attention. Anyway, the book that has found itself at the top of the list is one that really encompasses the gardening zeitgeist – The Community Gardening Handbook, by Ben Raskin. I looked him up, and he has impeccable credentials. He’s currently Head of Horticulture for the Soil Association; prior experiences include working for Garden Organic, running a walled garden and being a Horticultural Advisor for the Community Farm near Bristol.
This was the garden earlier in the month, when it experienced quite heavy snow. We had a bit more over the Christmas break, but it gone again now. Like many people, I choose to use these wintry days to plan my spring/summer garden!
Now that the arbor is up, I need to think about surrounding it with plants. I have climbing achocha and mashua which might (hopefully) provide some shade. Once you’ve eliminated the possibility of heat stroke, you’re left with that other perennial summer problem – pests. How do you stop bugs great and small from bugging you, or committing suicide in the jug of Pimms?
In previous years, my garden plan has revolved around what I want to grow. There are a lot of unusual plants that grow, or might grow, in our climate, and I enjoy trying them out. With my experimental impulses mainly focused on the Hydroponicum, I have been thinking about what we would like to eat from the garden.
Last autumn I started thinking about what I wanted to grow this year, and I decided that – given the current Brexit situation – it might be wise to have a garden of more traditional crops, ones that we enjoy eating, and which would give us fresh food in the event that all of the imports are stuck in a big parking lot in Kent awaiting customs checks. Since then I haven’t given it too much thought, mostly because I’ve been waiting for the government to get its act together and decide what’s happening.
Ever since we started building this new garden, I have been pondering what I would grow in 2016 – it’s first season as a complete (I hope!) garden. It has been hard to decide. During my garden-free years I built up a long list of things I really wanted to grow, but couldn’t. I can’t grow them all at the same time, so which ones to choose? And, to be honest, my gardening mojo has yet to fully return. I’m not feeling the same pre-season excitement as I used to. So whilst I have had some ideas about what I might grow this year, I’d been avoiding putting them down on paper and finalising a garden plan.
One of the stories that I read as a child that has stayed with me is The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. For a long time I had a copy on my bookshelf, but when I had the urge to read it last week I discovered that was no longer the case. Fortunately it’s easy enough to find a free copy, particularly as it’s part of the new range of free Amazon Kindle Classics, which you can read via the free Amazon Kindle app – you don’t need an actual Kindle.
The political weather has been stormy of late, and as the sun has come out to play at last, the garden seems the safest place to be. There’s a lot to be done to get it ready for the growing season, so time spent outside is never wasted. A lot of what I’m doing at the moment could best be termed ungardening, clearing out the contents from last year’s containers, and reusing the potting compost in the bottom of new pots, or as a soil improving mulch.