Spring green manures

Cornish hedges are an exuberant delight. I visited in April a few years back, and every lane was awash with alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum). This year, in May, they put on a stunning display that would put a Chelsea show garden to shame.

The fashion world used to work so far in advance that if you wanted a new swimming costume for your summer holiday, you would have to buy it in the spring. By August, swimming costumes were nowhere to be seen, and it was time to buy your winter coat. Things have changed with the rise in long-haul holidays; it’s always summer somewhere in the world, and you can buy clothes of all types year-round.

I’m not a politician. I’m not a diplomat. I’m not an expert on foreign policy. It’s hard to watch what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank with any equanimity; over 1300 Palestinians have been killed so far, including 315 children and and 166 women.

It is one of the big ironies of gardening that the pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers we use to keep our lawns green make them one of the least ‘green’ areas of the garden. Many gardeners put a lot of effort into maintaining their lawns, and this diligence can be a real asset if you want to go green, because it requires a fair amount of work to keep your lawn in top-notch condition using organic methods. The good news is that a more relaxed approach rewards you with a beautiful, wildlife-friendly lawn.

Most vegetable gardeners lucky enough to have the use of a greenhouse use it for raising seeds early in the year, extending the season into the autumn, and of course growing tomatoes and cucumbers in the height of the summer. If you’d like to find something a little more exciting when you open the greenhouse door, these unusual crops will appreciate the extra heat.

Move over, Mark Watney, there’s a new space botanist heading for Mars! Ryan and I have just finished watching the new Netflix series Away, which follows (over 10 episodes) the quest of five international astronauts to be the first people to set foot on the red planet.

ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli will carry a special greenhouse during his expedition aboard the International Space Station and he invites young science enthusiasts to carry out experiments there with him.

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.

Ryan and I have just spent a few days in Dorset, and – apart from Friday when it rained non-stop – the weather was lovely. While we were there we popped in* to see Joy Michaud at Sea Spring Seeds, a small company that sells plants and seeds, specialising in chillies. You may have met Joy on the Sea Spring Seeds stand at a gardening event – she loves taking her seeds on the road and meeting her customers, even though there’s plenty of work to be done back at the farm!

Two things came together to prompt this post on edible spring flowers. The first was that we invited Ryan’s parents round for dinner on Mothering Sunday, and I pondered buying some spring flowers for a table decoration that I could later plant out in the garden as additions to my edible flower collection.

It started at the garden centre, where I was helping to put newly arrived plants out in the autumn/winter ‘tub and basket’ display. There’s a good range of ornamental plants on offer, all looking very cute in their youthful stages, in various colours and textures. They might not have the showy flowers of summer bedding, but they’re all interesting plants. The winter garden doesn’t have to look dull! The ones that caught my eye were Gaultheria ‘Very Berry’, cute little plants with dark green leaves, white bell-shaped flowers (they look exactly like little blueberry flowers, because they’re related), and quite large berries ripening from white to pink (ultimately they should go red).

I spent an hour or so in the garden yesterday. What I went outside to do was take care of my ‘Ruby Beauty’ dwarf raspberries, which were planted together in one container (which is OK, they’re designed for relatively close planting). In 2015 they looked fine; in 2016 not so much. I think I forgot to prune back the fruited canes. So yesterday I pruned out all of the dead wood, transplanted one into a container on its own and repotted the remaining two in the same container, so they’ve got more space and some fresh compost underneath to lift them out of their ‘slump’.