Spot the difference: fences and beds

It’s at this time of year, I think, that a polytunnel or greenhouse really comes in handy in the garden. Over the summer it may just be a tangle of tomato vines – productive, but a space that you really only go in to keep up with the watering chore, or to harvest ripe tomatoes. You know you’re going to come out with green stains on your clothes and hands that smell funny – tomatoes are like that. Those tomatoes will hang on longer into the autumn than you thought they would, and by the time you’ve cleared out the polytunnel the season will be so far advanced that it will be cold and dark and your crop of overwintering salads will barely be growing – just marking time until the days are long enough for them to actually grow.

Earth Day seems to be an auspicious day on which to being a new blog series. ‘The Hive’ is going to be a collection of positive news stories about the environment, with a solarpunk vibe – demonstrating that those of us who care about the environment are not alone, and that in fact there are legions of people around the world who are actively making a difference, and who share a positive vision of how the future could look, rather than the gloom and doom of a dystopia forced on us by a broken climate.

By the end of last month, the paving was finished and I had planted my three front garden planters with peppers, bergamot and salvias for the summer. They’re coming along very nicely, and in fact the first cool chilli is appearing on one of my Fooled You plants.

The Pantry contains information about some of the items that are useful for a peat-free gardener, and gardening terms you may come across on your peat-free travels.

When the sun shone on Saturday morning, and the rain promised to delay until midday, we hatched a plan to build two more of the raised beds in the garden. One half of the garden – 6 beds – was completed last year, leaving 6 more to go. We don’t have space for them all until we take the old shed down, but we found room for two next to Ryan’s workshop.

On Saturday we managed to build the remaining 4 raised beds for the back garden, which is now nicely symmetrical. They’re made from (eco-treated) half sleepers, which are not light – building a raised bed means a lot of heavy lifting. Even so, it was the weather and not the effort involved that has slowed us down. We’d been waiting until the garden dried out!

Over the bank holiday weekend, Ryan and I came to the conclusion that the front gardens aren’t working for us as they are, and came up with a fairly drastic plan to annex one of them into the back garden, in order to provide us with an outdoor dining area. That plan is simmering away in the background, as we work out one or two niggly little details.

We’ve had the Hydroponicum for over a year now. It has kept us supplied with salads and stir-fry veg, and I’ve grown one or two more experimental crops as well. Not everything I have tried has been successful. My spinach bolted (I’m not sure why, and I haven’t tried again yet). Alliums don’t seem to like germinating in the hydroponic seedling tray, and coriander downright refused. Coriander seedlings will grow hydroponically, though, so I may try allium transplants at some point.

One of the great joys of spring is seeing trees leaf out and bloom. They bring so much joy, and do so much for us, and yet are rarely valued as they should be. In particular, ancient trees are wondrous, magical things. Impressive and complex structures, they have lots of nooks and crannies in which wildlife can find a home. As fungi feed on the tree they provide food for woodland creatures, and a hollowed out trunk provides shelter. Although ancient trees are in the final stage of their life, and technically in decline, they have a lot to give, and can go on living for a long time, depending on the species.

I’m hoping to go and see The Martian soon, one of the few films to feature a botanist as the hero. Astronaut Mark Watney is one of the first humans to set foot on Mars, but accidentally gets left behind and has to survive on his own – and to do so he grows potatoes. He wouldn’t be the first person (or even population) to rely on potatoes for survival, but here on Earth there’s a slight snag. The potato (Solanum tuberosum) has an arch nemesis – late blight, caused by an organism called Phytophthora infestans. It cuts down both potatoes and tomatoes, and was the biological cause of the Irish Potato Famine in the 19th century.

For two glorious years, this garden was cat-free. And then just at the point where the garden was mostly ‘finished’ and all I needed to think about was playing with plants, a feral cat moved into the neighbourhood. And started leaving ‘gifts’ in the raised beds.

Three minutes of loveliness