Allotmenting for wildlife

Well what a difference a fortnight can make. Two weeks ago I was lamenting the cold, wet, windy spring, and then – overnight – we switched to summer. Warm dry days are followed by warm dry nights, the cold a distant memory. I fall into this warm weather in the same way that one might sink into a hot bath. How easy it is to succumb! What is a coat again? What are socks again? I can not remember ever having had a need or a use for them.

The plants of course are tumbling over themselves in joy. In my garden, the beds are an eruption of pinks, purples and whites as the roses, aquilegia and allium vie for attention. The warmth has brought into life a massive population of aphids; they cover the roses with thousands of tiny green bumps, leaving their sticky mess everywhere. I’m fascinated by them and wander out each morning and evening to take a closer look, conscious that my garden isn’t mine at all, but a shared space for hundreds of species. The air literally hums with insects. The fledgling magpies hop around the trees and chimney tops, testing their wings.

On the allotment, it’s not full steam ahead just yet, but there are signs of things preparing for proper action. The peas, which two weeks ago I had written off as dead, are fighting back and have grown at least a foot in the last ten days. The broad beans too are reviving, and whilst I won’t be winning any prizes for best beans anytime soon, I think we’ll still get a crop.

Finally, finally, the peas have taken off in the warmer weather

Last weekend we planted out the climbing and dwarf beans – several varieties are jumbled up together – and once again, whilst they’re not quite thriving, they’re hanging on which I take as a victory. The same goes for baby chard, beet spinach, cavolo nero and flower sprouts. Everything is netted against the pigeons of course.

Meanwhile the climbing and dwarf beans are bedding themselves in
Chard and beet spinach sits undercover to protect from pigeons

I’ve not mentioned the hops yet this year. Two of our old plants are zipping up the hop twine, but Matt has replaced the others with new baby plants that will take a year or two to get going.

We will have two substantial hop plants this year, plus two babies

We also have fruit set. The green swelling of baby strawberries, blueberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants and gooseberries can all be seen, though I think it will be a small crop this year as a result of the April cold affecting the blossom.

A surviving strawberry finally bears fruit

As for the cut flowers, I took a tiny first cut of foxgloves and sweet william today. The latter all self-seeded last year and I made the effort to move them to their own block in the autumn, for which I will be richly rewarded over the next month as all 30 or so plants are thriving. The sweet william I had actually given up on but this few weeks of warm has revived them, their sweet scent a welcome reminder of summer.

I had given up on the Sweet William but they too look ready to put on a show
About 30 foxgloves are waiting in the wings for their moment

Back to wildlife. For the first five years or so I didn’t give much thought to the wildlife on our allotment, other than to be irritated by slugs and birds. (Lately the slugs seem to have moved elsewhere and I’ve learnt to net everything, which has solved the bird problem.) I certainly didn’t hate the insects and invertebrates but I had a sure sense of ‘This is my dance space, that is your dance space, let’s not get too close’. But over time my view has completely changed and I’ve come to relish being in close quarters with wild creatures going about their business – hence wandering out to look at what the greenfly are up to on the roses.

This has influenced how I keep the plot. There are plenty of weeds around the perimeter of our allotment which I purposefully keep in, as they are great food source for winged insects. An entire strip is dense with pollinator-friendly plants, some of which I have put in (alliums, lavender, sorrel) but others that have self-seeded (buttercup, foxglove, oregano, tansy) and I have either let them be or I’ve moved them to a slightly more convenient location. Take the mullein, for example, that seems to love our patch of ground and seeds itself everywhere. I have let four stay, and each is now home to the mullein caterpillar, a pretty little thing that will absolutely decimate the plant before it becomes a moth in a few weeks time, but is also a useful food source for birds.

The insect-friendly strip with sorrel, foxglove, mullein, buttercups, tansy, allium and lavender
Common mullein plant – my foot is there for an idea of size
The mullein moth has been busy: caterpillars can decimate the mullein plant

Elsewhere a few minor interventions can make for interesting rewards. Last spring I planted a few teasels, thinking they would be a lovely dried flower, but I hadn’t realised what an incredibly majestic plant this is when allowed to thrive. (I’ll share pictures when it flowers in a few weeks.) And this parsnip was left in the ground over the winter and is now ready to flower, so another food source for insects plus I’ll get to save the seeds. But what a whopper of a plant! It’s already reaching my chin and will be covered with pretty yellow umbellifers.

I left two of last year’s parsnips in the ground, and they are now preparing to flower
Parsnips are an umbellifer and part of the carrot family

Elsewhere by the brook there are nettles, cow parsley and brambles and no, it’s not tidy, but what a relief it is to let go of all those old ideas as to what constitutes beauty and worth, and instead think of oneself as inhibitor of a shared natural space. As long the allotment is productive – not just in veg, fruit and flowers but also in wildlife and yes in providing joy – that is how I measure success these days.

Also this week:
Planting out: Dahlias, chrysanthemums, sweet peas, ammi, peas, red kale, chard, spinach, cavolo nero, flower sprouts, echinacea, climbing beans, dwarf beans, courgette, fennel, tomatoes.
In the garden: Roses are at their best, plus aquilegia, allium, fennel all looking good. Planted out sunflowers. Cut back forsythia.
Harvesting: Start of the foxgloves and sweet william, ammi, cow parsley.
Cooking and eating: Strawberries, first cherries, first barbecue of the year. Inspired by Rick Stein’s Venice to Istanbul book (which I borrowed from the library via a Covid-safe appointment system straight from a Victoria Wood sketch) made Kisir, a bulgur wheat salad from Turkey, and now want to cook the entire book.
Also: Visited Chatsworth, our first proper family day out since September. We could really do with a holiday.

Rain stops play

It’s been a week of gales, rain, intermittent sunshine…and a rat attack. On last week’s only sunny day I took Harry to Bourton House in the Cotswolds to take a look at their famous summer garden. The planting was amazing of course – though it’s hard to take anything in when running after a sprinting two year old – but actually it was the use of wood that caught my eye. Just look at the incredible shadows created in this shade house, and the magic quality of the kinetic sculpture in the meadow.

The shade house at Bourton House, Bourton on the Hill
Kinetic sculpture in the woodland walk

A quick trip to my parents’ yesterday wielded another bootful of goodies. Corns, fennel, carrots, beans, spinach, and 14 castaway snails that I rescued from the sink, one by one. Apparently it’s been “a crap year for growing” (direct quote) but I am not sure that my Dad truly understands what crap is. My folks have been spoilt by years of living with tons of space and a protected walled garden – this isn’t as posh as it sounds, believe me, but the result is that even a massive harvest of corns is considered substandard. It occurred to me later that these children of the 1940s were possibly the first generation to grow things purely for pleasure rather than necessity, but the cultural memory of growing for need lives on. These days the winter store cupboard can always be replenished by a trip to the shops, but the age-old instinct of the country people to squirrel away the harvest for winter remains. I share this instinct, of course, and so the freezer is now full of sweetcorn, raspberries, blackberries, sliced apples…the list goes on.

Apparently it’s been “a crap year for growing” says my Dad, whilst hauling two buckets of corn and giant fennel bulbs
Corn being prepped for freezing, a still life

It’s a good job that my parents’ “terrible” corn harvest has still yielded extras, for on the allotment mine has been obliterated by rats. Or maybe mice. Whoever the culprit, they took their fill then scarpered, leaving only the evidence of a feast.

Corn left desolate after attack of the rats/mice

In fact, it’s a pretty sorry state of affairs down there after the terrible winds and heavy rain of the weekend. Two sunflowers completely capsized, and the rest are growing horizontally, their bronze faces battered with wind burn. The new dahlias also took a beating, and I make a mental note to stake them properly next year. I think there is still a few weeks of cutting left but the real high point of summer has surely passed and it’s sad to lose the best of the crop so early. Like vegetables, I have started to think of my flowers as seasonal friends, here for a few short weeks and then gone again for another year. When they leave, I feel genuine sadness.

At least two sunflower plants have been lost in the weekend winds, and the rest are leaning on the wonk
Dahlias flattened in the wind – the lesson, next year we stake

I’ve been distracted this week with the nature of things, post-lockdown. Apparently there is a term for people like me, who have seen their income drop by a mile due to Covid-19: we are the nouveau-skint. Actually I don’t have a problem with it per se – as long as there is food on the table and a roof over the head, that is what counts – but as I’ve emerged from the lockdown bubble, what has also re-emerged is that nagging feeling that I should still be achieving everything at the same time. Earning a living whilst keeping work interesting, renovating the house, sorting the garden, coming up with amazing things to do with Harry, getting fitter/stronger/healthier, working out what I think about 21st century feminism/decolonialisation/race relations, writing my book, the list goes on.

The problem is that all the other domestic stuff gets in the way, things like getting the boiler fixed, doing the Aldi shop (nouveau-skint, no Waitrose anymore), mopping the floor, sorting the allotment aftermath of the weekend winds. Last week I had an 8am Zoom with colleagues in Pakistan and then promptly turned round and scrubbed the bathroom. This is the reality of the educated working mother. We are the central rock around which everything else revolves.

And then yesterday I was given this picture of my Granddad, taken some time in the 1940s when he would have been around my age. Ivor Yapp works the fields of Herefordshire, ploughing the dense clay earth with his horses – apparently to use three horses with your plough was unusual and meant the land is particularly solid. It’s a picture that asks many questions. Who took this photo? For what purpose? What’s this lone farm-hand thinking of as he walks miles a day, earning a few bob to keep his wife and children in coal and bread? You can almost hear the silence on this image, punctuated only by the snorts of horses, squeak of plough, sqwark of crows.

My grandfather Kenneth Yapp ploughs Herefordshire fields, 1940s

Would this man be able to imagine how the working world could change so quickly in two generations? Our society has transformed in less than 80 years to a place of hyper-speed, hyper-connectedness and so much NOISE. No wonder the adults are knackered and no wonder the kids and teenagers are confused. I think this is why I put so much time and effort into growing things and cooking things, even if they don’t turn out quite as planned. It’s a connection to a shared history, a previous life. Amidst all the nonsense of the 21st century, it is a return to the elemental.

Also this week:
Cooking and eating: Plums, eating and stewing for the freezer; also freezing blackberries, raspberries, apples, blueberries, spinach.
Harvesting: Sunflowers, dahlias, cosmos, ammi, calendula, amaranth, delphinium, courgettes (marrows really), spinach, chard, french beans.
Also: Reading Still Life by Elizabeth Luard, her account of travelling Eastern and Northern Europe in the 1990s to learn of peasant cooking.

Kiftsgate Court Gardens

Despite my best efforts, life has completely returned to normal. Matt’s working long hours (including weekends) so my days are a juggle between work and childcare, with the occasional foray to the outside world. I’m not complaining too much (I’m lucky to have any work at all, frankly, as the creative industries are currently screwed) but our leisurely days of lockdown are absolutely over. Plus there’s potty training. And renovation of my office. It’s been ages since I posted because my headspace for creative activity is pretty much zero. But there are still socially-distanced playdates to be had: thank God for Warley Woods, Lightwoods Park and our back garden, which are the setting for many hours of pre-school adventure.

Me and Harry in Warley Woods
Blowing bubbles

Harvesting has notched up on the allotment. The cut flowers are providing the interest at present, with the intense Venetian jewel colours of the sweet peas, soft purple lavender, romantic cornflowers, long-stemmed vivid orange nasturtiums and – just today – my old friends the dahlias have started to flower. The strawflower, sunflower and chrysanthemums will be out within the fortnight, I predict.

The veggies, on the other hand, are taking a while to get going this year. There will be courgettes and French beans – though the runner beans have gone AWOL – and the chards and kales look fine. Today I planted out an unexpected bounty of brassicas gifted by Matt’s parents, cauliflowers, purple sprouting and sprouts, which have had to be nestled in between overgrown broad beans and the self-sown alpine strawberries. Come January I will curse myself for planting them right in the middle of the veg patch, surrounded by a quagmire of soil, but there was nothing else for it.

There’s a lot of self-sown plants on the allotment this year, which previously I would have called ‘weeds’, but now I see as pollinator-fodder who have chosen to set up home with us. Some are the hangover of previous summers (borage, ammi and nasturtium have all seeded themselves from plants introduced by me) but the alpine strawberries, poppies and mullein are truly wild. I am leaving them be, seeing them as a food source for hungry bees and, potentially, extra harvest for me.

On the allotment, things are happening – self-sown poppies, borage, nasturtium, ammi and alpine strawberries have taken up home amongst the squash, corn and cut flowers
Photos do not do justice to the thicket of cornflowers, nasturtium and sweet peas
Ten days ago I was just harvesting sweet peas…
…today I add cornflower, lavender, achillea, nasturtium and dahlias to the mix

For my birthday treat, I had intended to visit both Hidcote Manor Garden and Cowley Manor, but The Disease put an end to that plan. Instead I took myself on a rare child-free few hours to Kiftsgate Court Gardens near Chipping Campden. Dear reader, it was glorious. Clear blue skies, warm (but not hot) sun, the sweet scent of old rose in the air, and no-one telling me they’ve done a wee. After so many months of being in one place, it felt so good to be free, even if only for a lunchtime.

The border at Kiftsgate Court, which was heavily scented with sweet rose

Kiftsgate is both a family home and a national treasure, which is quite a difficult trick to pull off. A garden created by three generations of women, there are design influences from the 1930s, mid-century and contemporary periods. Late June is the time to go if you can, for the roses are incredible. Incidentally, the Kiftsgate rose is famous for its vigour. The visitor guide warns against purchasing one unless you are entirely sure you can cope with it: apparently it can take the roof off a garage with ease. But in its natural habitat it looks an innocent mass of white froth amongst the pink.

The inner courtyard, a mid-century design filled with the gentle sound of falling water
The rose garden is bordered with pink leading to a sculptural focal point.
Above it, the white mass of the Kiftsgate rose.
I always enjoy a makeshift bit of engineering, such as this rose support

For me though, the unsung hero of the garden are the sculptural trees that frame the landscape and lend the eye to the rolling Cotswold valley below. I’m always fascinated by trees in a landscape, for whoever plants them never sees their vision come to fruition; I am no expert but these must be decades, even centuries old.

The trees are the real stars of Kiftsgate

The Cotswolds are, of course, hilly, and Kiftsgate answer to this problem is steep terracing to echo the gardens of Tuscany. The black pool that looks out and down to the valley is a genius of design: infinity in front, infinity below.

Looking down to the 1960s pool and beyond it, the Cotswolds
Italianete terracing

Cotswold buildings are often a joy, and this one is no exception. The slightly-off symmetry makes one wonder…was this intentional ? An accident? What stories this old house could tell.

The off-symmetry of the side of the court is pleasing

The cafe is shut for the present but the meadow is open for picnics. (Surely an unexpected bonus of lockdown is all this time out-of-doors). For a time-poor working parent, I am so pleased that I took the chance to seize the day. This is an English garden at its midsummer best.

English meadow on a summer’s day

Also this week:
Harvesting: Sweetpea, cornflower, nasturtium, very first dahlia, very first cosmos, achillea, lavender, broad beans, peas/mange tout, rocket, lettuce, first blueberries, alpine strawberries. Gifted tayberries, blackberries and last asparagus by Jean and Gary.

Allotment: Planted out cauliflower, PSB, sprouts

Garden: Planted out annuals – zinnia, cosmos, sunflower – and false indigo and rose from Kiftsgate. First dahlia blooming.

Other things: Potty training and work so been housebound for a bit. Not had much time for cooking and it’s back to simple mid-week meals: sausage pasta, leftover roast beef stir-fry, make-ahead moussaka. Buying up nectarines & strawberries.

Planting out

Note: No pics this week due to technical issues. Imagine small plants in soil and the occasional flash of a foxglove, and you’re pretty much there.

Last week was hard, no? We may be easing out of lockdown but it’s now that the reality of the situation hits home. Jobs are uncertain as businesses have to respond to social distancing and spooked customers. What does this mean for my industry, my work? It’s not yet clear, but people are worried. On top of that comes the renewed and emotional debate about racial equality, which because I have both professional and personal interest, always feels challenging. The world is realigning itself, perhaps, but centuries of engrained injustice will not be resolved overnight. It did not help that the sun has been replaced with relentless concrete grey skies.

I was cheered though to see the antics in Bristol and the removal of the Edward Colston statue over the weekend. Young people taking matters into their own hands and not putting up with the status quo – marvellous. The removal of a statue of a man involved in slavery isn’t denying history, this is saying that the story we’re telling about history is not a story we are proud of. We don’t want to be defined by the subjugation of one group over another. And so we choose to tell a different story, a story where the people of a city work towards equality. That statue now has a new history attached to it, the story of ‘now’. It’s brilliantly evocative stuff; the curators, story-makers, historians of Bristol have been given a gift with this symbolic gesture. This article by the historian David Olusoga explains all this in a far more articulate manner than I ever could.

Aside from all that, there is peace to be found with the plants. Take your sustenance where you can find it. Today I found it with planting out a heap of dahlias and other flowers grown from seed – isn’t there a joy in raising a plant from infancy to maturity without messing it up too much?

I’m pleased with this year’s allotment planting plan, which is blocked and – unusually for me – in straight lines. Usually I only grow for the allotment but this year I remembered to hold things back for the garden as well, so we now have cleome, amaranthus and chrysanthemums settling into Bearwood soil. It will be interesting to see how the same plants respond to differing conditions.

This year’s updated planting plan

Meanwhile, the harvest has started again – only slim pickings for now, of foxglove, sweetpea and broadbeans – but experience tells me that the late May/early June lull after the spring explosion of tulips and daffodils is just that – a lull – a rest before the abundance of July begins.

Planting out: Dahlia, chrysanthemum, lace flower, grasses, cleome, amaranthas (garden). Amaranthas, calendula, zinnia, annual delphinium, all the beans, cosmos (allotment).

Harvesting: very first tiny sweetness, first broad beans, foxgloves, cos, round lettuce, rocket.

Cooking and eating: My first Lockdown banana cake, about two months after everyone else. Strawberries topped with vanilla mascarpone and demarera sugar with biscotti on the side. Beetroot hummus. Watermelon.

Reading: Family Life by Elisabeth Luard, coinciding with European Peasant Cookery by the same writer. Couldn’t read last week though, the combined hit of centuries of endemic racism, economic meltdown and disease finally broke my ability to concentrate. On order from the library: Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddi-Lodge.

Reaping what we (didn’t always) sow

It was Harry’s birthday yesterday. Birthday meaning, the anniversary of the day of birth, which also means the anniversary of the day when – if it were not for 21st century medicine – I would have left this mortal coil. The days and weeks after giving birth were traumatic. So for all the joy of new toys and chocolate cake, the 10th September is quite a raw day for me and it does not help that there has been no space lately for stillness and quiet. I took a few hours out from the work emails and never-ending WhatsApp messages and got around to those small but important things that I know are grounding: lit some incense, popped to M&S for new knickers (how middle aged is that?), went to the allotment to strim the grass and harvest raspberries and sunflowers, and made a beef shin and mushroom pie from scratch. That, and drunk up half a bottle of very decent rose (last of the summer wine).

Knocking up a beef pie from scratch

I dislike how my late summers always seem to get consumed by work – it’s arts festival season, which means intense bouts of brochure-editing, planning out city-dressing (translated: the horrible job of lugging flags around) and worrying about visitor numbers. Festival management is a bit like childbirth in that when you’re going through it, it’s hideous, but then the event itself goes well and there’s a bit of a buzz and gradually the pain of it all gets forgotten about. I have events every weekend for the next month but after then……I can smell the sweet scent of freedom!

This time of year again…a pallet of Weekender brochures has arrived at Matt’s workshop

September is harvest time. Whether it’s babies, festivals or produce, it’s time to reap what we’ve sown. This week it’s time to bring the hops in which – as ever – are tall, majestic, and now expanding outwards to take over entire beds.

 

Some items are always a mystery though. This monster has turned up where the pumpkins should be – Lord knows it’s not a pumpkin – but I’ll leave it be in case it ripens up into something interesting.

Mystery squash

The leeks and parsnips have done OK and I pulled a first harvest for Harry’s birthday lunch on Sunday (what two year old doesn’t want creamed leeks?!).

Leeks and parsnips tell of seasons change

I am picking two baskets of flowers of week, and they’re all wonderfully rich and colourful: after their very shaky start the sunflowers and cosmos have come into their own, and I adore the madness of the strawflowers. As ever it’s always a surprise to me how late the summer colour comes to the allotment – we seem to be a month after everyone else – but when it does come, it’s marvellous.

Baskets of sunflower, dahlia, chrysanthemum and strawflower are a regular feature now

At home, the mantlepieces are adorned with vase after vase (rubbish picture I know).

Several vases adorn the house

So birthday survived; just 3 big events to get through and then we’ll be all ready for autumn.

Also this week:

Harvesting: Punnets and punnets of autumn raspberries, the best they’ve ever been. Runner beans, French beans, purple beans, kale, chard, courgette, leek, parsnip, sunflower, chrysanthemum, strawflower, first hyssop, cosmos. Mum’s tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and aubergine.

Cooking and eating: Birthday roast beef and yorkshire pudding with first leeks and parsnips of the season, birthday cake, beef and mushroom pie from scratch, apple and plum crumble, lots of tomatoes on toast.

August pickings

The last fortnight has been consumed with work and childcare, meaning that the allotment is a wild rumpus. The high winds have given the sunflowers a bit of a battering – but given that they are so stunted this year compared to previous summers, and the stems are therefore short, they could have fared much worse. The courgette and squash are finally thriving, the greens are fine, we may actually have a few bean plants that make it to maturity. Blueberries are at their peak and the raspberries are just starting.

My joy at all this remains marred by the ever-encroaching bind weed, brambles, nettles, grasses and other unidentified self-seeders, and the irritation that I get about 1 hour a week to sort it all out. (It’s been a long day and I am deeply tired.) So in the absence of anything intelligent to say about any of it, photos of August cropping will have to suffice.

The wild rumpus. In my defence, Matt’s hops – now extending sideways and using the ammi as support – are part of the problem.

One good thing about brambles is that we will have a harvest of blackberries for the first time

Last week’s cropping – start of the chrysanthemums, dahlia and sunflowers

And today’s: the dahlia and chrysanthemums are now joined by the first achillea, grown from seed, plus strawflower, ammi, dill and a single sunflower

Not an allotment success but finally some joy from the veg trug at home. I was dead chuffed with these.

Finally some down time yesterday for making strawberry and redcurrant jam

This week:

Harvesting: Dahlia, chrysanthemum, first sunflowers, first achillea, ammi, dill, strawflower. Cornflowers are finished now. Courgettes, kale, chard, blueberries and a very few first raspberries.

At home: The back garden was looking great a few weeks back (within reason) but is now full of bare patches and tiny plants again. The slugs are ravaging the dahlias and the young plants don’t get enough sun. Something actually gnawed the head off a giant sunflower!

Cooking and eating: Redcurrant and strawberry jam (strawberries £3.50 a kilo bought from Harborne farmers’ market and grown at Hints near Tamworth). Cinnamon and blueberry buns. Flapjacks. Pasta. The usual. Lovely pizza from Baked in Brick on 10th August, which happened to coincide with Harry’s first trip there exactly one year previously, on his 11 month ‘birthday’.

Also: Tenbury show. Working on the Birmingham Weekender brochure etc and 5 other projects and therefore a distressingly unbalanced work-life balance.

Learning to live with chaos

At various points through the year I wonder what the point is of having an allotment. It is another call on my time, and because my child-free hours are now taken up almost entirely by work, I simply don’t get the opportunity to care for it as well as I’d like to. People talk about ‘mummy guilt’ – the idea that women feel they should be at home rather than earning money / having a life – and I have no truck with that at all. But ‘allotment guilt’….well, that I am familiar with. See also ‘allotment resentment’ (the sentiment of “oh bugger I really ought to weed the sunflowers but I just want to have a bath”), and ‘allotment self-doubt’ (the sentiment of “why do I even try, when I’m not even that good?”). Why bother, when my efforts will never result in the outcome that I want, such as these gardens that I saw at the weekend?

The summer border at Packwood House, Warwickshire

The extraordinary cutting garden at Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire

And as I take a rushed thirty minutes to weed those sunflowers, and ponder the question of ‘why do I bother’, I find myself coming to the conclusion that tidiness, finish, lack-of-weeds etc, do not actually matter. That the point of a kitchen garden, an allotment, a cutting garden, is productivity. If there’s a crop, then it’s all fine. And I also notice that the areas that have given way to weeds, to grasses, to brambles and to self-seeded friendlies such as the massive patch of oregano by the greenhouse, are now feeding a massive ecosystem of bees, insects and birds. So, far from being a scourge, the chaos is actually a source for good.

This insight may lead to a whole new approach to allotmenting:  planting, or tending, for productivity and insects alone, rather than some concocted notion of what is pretty and proper. To whit, the rocket that bolted several weeks ago is still in the ground, providing nectar and pollen to those who need it. The self-seeded poppies I’ve left alone, for the same reason. And the groundsel and other unidentified green things that are rampant on the cutting patch….well, if they’re not doing any harm to the flowers, but they are providing a home and food for a critter, maybe they should just stay put.

My cutting patch is a bit more….loose around the edges

Letting the rocket set seed amidst the kale and lettuce

This is not to say that I want to let nature do entirely her own thing. I’m not happy with the grasses that have encompassed the strawberry patch, and the greenhouse is an ongoing concern. But I am reminded of the yogic idea of ‘santosha’, which roughly translates as contentment. It means do your best, do what you can, but find contentment in whatever result comes your way. Letting go of our ideas of what things should be like, ought to be like, but finding the good in just what is. It’s an incredibly freeing notion. I love it when the allotment has lessons for living like this.

These grasses – nearly as tall as me – have staged an assault on the strawberry patch

The greenhouse has been taken back by nature – more specifically, by self-seeded marjoram and brambles

But this is what happens when you let nature run its course: food for bees

So in the spirit of doing only what I can do: the cornflowers have become top-heavy now so I’ve attempted to stake them up with stakes and hop twine. In another life they would be beautifully trained using hazel poles…but as long as the stems stay up-right, and I get a crop, then ‘good enough’ is OK.

Staking the cornflowers

And the crops are lovely. Weekly bunches of ammi and cornflower are now joined by the first dahlias and chrysanthemums. The beans are late this year due to the pigeon and slug damage, but we do have early kale and chard, the first courgettes and a wonderful supply of fat blueberries. I’m also feeding bees and pollinators with my efforts. For two self-employed working parents of a 22 month old, in the middle of the city, that’s not bad going.

The patch is still productive. So does a little chaos really matter?

Also this week:

Harvesting: Cornflower, ammi, strawflower, first allotment delphinium, blueberries, blackcurrants, last broad beans, first courgette, pentland brig kale, russian red kale, lettuce. Sunflowers and chrysanthemums are just starting. From my mum’s house, french beans, runner beans and beetroot. From Clives, first plums and proper, sun-warmed strawberries, a million times better then the chilled ones we get from Waitrose and Aldi.

Cooking and eating: Tomato and ricotta tart; plum crumble cake; meringues; blueberry cinnamon buns; Nyonya chicken curry; homemade sushi.

Also: Despairing over British politics, a PM voted in by a tiny number of rich people living in the Home Counties, Brexit and the pointlessness/horror of it all. Distraction comes by watching the Tour de France, visiting Baddesley Clinton and Packwood House, and meeting Abi and Sam’s delightful new baby Edie. That, and work work work.

Cornflowers, broad beans and blackcurrants

I spent several minutes this morning flicking back through photos from this time last year. Aside from an extremely smiley baby who has now become a very active toddler, the main difference to notice is how late our produce is compared to last summer – this time in 2018 we were harvesting spinach, kale, runner beans, sunflowers, dahlia AND chrysanthemums. This year’s cooler spring, and cooler summer come to that, means that climbing beans are still weeks away. The broad beans, on the other hand, are fantastic: tall, bug-free, but the beans still small and tender. Growing some in pots from February, with a second lot direct sown later in April, has extended the harvest very successfully. One thing that hasn’t changed is the blackcurrant harvest, which returns like clockwork during Wimbledon fortnight.

Harry likes to get involved with processing the produce

The star of June was the sweet William. Although it’s now going over, its warm, musky, slightly spicy scent still fills the air. Taking its place now are the cornflowers, lavender and ammi, whose ethereal tall stems are to me the essential sight of summer. These are the best cornflowers I’ve ever grown – usually they are short and stunted, but somehow this year they are dense, tall and abundant.

Sweet william, cornflower, ammi and lavender

Cornflowers have grown incredibly tall this year

The lavender is vast and hums with bees

Cornflowers and ammi – a taste of the country, in the heart of the city

The strawflowers are also now coming into bloom and are without doubt the weirdest thing I’ve ever grown. Like dried flowers even when still in the grown, the flowers are crisp and dry, with no scent at all. They take me right back to 1980s dried flower arrangements; a bit of retro kitsch.

Strawflowers are the strangest thing I’ve ever grown

Life is busy again at the moment, with two major works projects, lots of other smaller ones, and a toddler to keep alive. So whilst we’re waiting for the real summer goodies – the French beans, runner beans, borlotti, courgette and squash, and raspberries – the twice-weekly baskets of lettuce, broad beans, blackcurrant and cut flowers are still a welcome reminder to be still, absorb the moment and appreciate the richness of the season.

Yesterday’s harvest

Also this week:

Harvesting: First blueberries, blackcurrants, lettuce, broad beans, first kale, cornflower, lavender, ammi, strawflower, last of the sweet William.

Cooking and Eating: Lots of summer eating now: salads of broad beans and feta; burnt red peppers with tomatoes and beetroot; crunchy green lettuce with parmesan and lemon. Peach sherbet (ice cream) made by blitzing poached peaches with their syrup and whipped cream, then freezing. Pissaladiere, fougasse, meringues. Lots of supermarket-bought strawberries and raspberries, which I am not happy about – so much plastic waste – but there are few other places in Birmingham to buy them.

Also: Slipping back into pre-baby working ways, with full days in Warwick for Imagineer’s Bridge project (imaginebridge.co.uk) whilst simultaneously planning Birmingham Weekender. Time spent at home is precious, like last Sunday’s Picnic in the Woods at Warley Woods, where we happily bumped into friends and neighbours.

Cornish wild flowers

We got back from a blissful week in Cornwall to a work sh*tstorm – why is this always the case? – the result of which is that I’m now sick with summer cold. The trick is to not get too drawn in; to have the confidence to take criticism (fair or otherwise) in good grace and to try and pass that skill on to the youngsters now coming up. And in the meantime, rather than dwelling, there is watering and harvesting to be done.

Every year I say this, but I’m always surprised by how late our allotment comes together. It’s now the start of July and it’s only this week, really, that I’m getting our first proper food harvests of the year. The broad beans are the best I’ve ever grown; tall and lush, with no hint of black fly, and because I succession sowed we still have a few more weeks of picking still to come. Harry and I picked a bowlful of redcurrant at the weekend and so, with the fresh green salad leaves and edible flowers (calendula ‘Indian Prince’ and viola ‘heartsease), it feels like summer is truly here.

July 1st harvest: broad beans, lettuce, edible flowers

We’ve had some cut flowers already (sweet william, foxgloves) but the next tranche is approaching its peak. The ammi, cornflowers and strawflowers in particular are thriving, and the sunflowers are now picking up after the cold May and early June. The cosmos and cleome are abysmal, perhaps from being planted out too soon, or from not liking the cold spring. It is curious how one can feel grief when a flower fails: the opportunity lost, the effort that has led to disappointment.

The flower patch on June 1st…

…and July 1st. The cornflowers (back, left) and strawflower (back, centre) are doing well.

I’ve had to direct sow a load more beans (borlotti, French, runner and dwarf) after the pigeons ate the first sowing and the slugs got to the second. This time I have remembered to net the entire area. Speaking of pigeons, they’ve also managed to decimate the cavolo nero by pecking through the brassica cage, which is my own fault for letting the plants grow too close to the edge of the netting. The rocket did not like the change from cold spring to heat AT ALL and bolted almost instantly; it’s nearly too spicy to eat now but I’ll leave the flowers be for a few weeks for the insects.

The veg patch on 1st June…

…and on 1st July. The lettuces and brassicas are doing well, rocket has gone to seed, leeks and courgettes are fine but (as usual) the beans are struggling

The star of the show is the sweet William. From one sowing of seed in 2016, they are incredible: there were no flowers in 2017 but then in 2018 they put in an amazing performance, which they’ve matched again this year. They last for weeks in the vase and smell divine. One of the best things I’ve ever grown.

Sweet William are at their peak now

Also doing well – of course – is the wilderness. It’s now a mess of creeping, unkillable brambles, 6-foot tall stinging nettles and grasses. Amazing how the plants we grow ourselves, so mollycoddled, can fail and yet this area is actually kind of frightening in its fecundity. In just a few weeks, the space where the greenhouse was (and will hopefully come back to once it’s been rebuilt) has become like the Lost Gardens of Heligan, with a tuft of grass grown taller than me and with bramble taking up residence. The buzzword in gardening at present is Rewilding and we are achieving this with no effort at all.

The greenhouse base has already been taken back by nature

I mentioned holiday. The week before last we were in Cornwall, glorious Cornwall. I meant to publish these images last week but didn’t get any desk time (did I mention the sh*tstorm?).

Sunset over Mawgan Porth, late June

Sun, grass, shorts: what childhood should look like

A sea of cornflowers planted on the cliff above Mawgan Porth

Cornwall in June means wild flowers, which are in colourful abundance right now. As it’s coastal, the timing and genus of plants are quite different from the ones we see at home. Here’s a pick of my favourites.

The coastal path is filled with acid yellow flowers – oil seed rape escapees that are thriving in the wild

Some kind of umbellifer – notice the tiny, lone red flower amongst the pink and white

Hottentot Fig, a native succulent

Anyone know what this is? It grows all over the place but looks like a garden escapee

Waves of valerian

Another mystery plant that is abundant

But my ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE is the echium pininana, or ‘giant vipers bugloss’. It’s another garden escapee that must love the Cornish climate because you can see it on roadside verges all over the place. It’s actually a native of the Canary Islands, and is related to the much much smaller echium vulgaris, the regular ‘vipers bugloss’. The light on this image does not do it justice so trust me that the spikes are enormous, at least 8 foot tall, and covered with little blue-purple flowers that the insects adore. I know it’s daft, but obviously I want some  echium action in my life so I’ve spent a whopping £6 on a packet of seeds and am giving it a go, in the hope that next year our garden/allotment can have a little (well actually, quite a lot) of a Cornish feel about it.

Echium Pininana – giant vipers bugloss

Also this week:

Harvesting: Broad beans, lettuce, rocket, redcurrant, sweet william, marigolds, viola

Sowing and planting: Direct sowed more beans: runner, French, borlotti and dwarf. At home, putting in perennials in the hope of filling in the border, notably cat mint and fennel from the Duchy nurseries in Lostwithiel. Tomatoes are staying in the cold frame as the greenhouse isn’t ready; will be interesting to see how they do in small pots as a bit of stress can lead to tastier tomatoes. The slugs finished off the brachyscome multifida (daisies) that I sowed back in February so I’ve filled their pot with a lovely penstemon and some cat mint. Potted on the salvia, basil and baptisia australis seedlings. Lots of watering now as temperatures hit over 30c at the weekend.

 

In praise of horta

As we edge towards midsummer there is a general lightness, in all senses. Light mornings and light evenings. Lighter food. Light, frothy flowers in the back garden. A lightness of spirit (longer, warmer days translate to having more energy, for me anyway). It’s my absolute favourite time of the year, with days filled with discovery and adventure.

The border in our back garden is coming into fullness. This is only its second season – and it’s still rife with gaps and errors – but I love watching for daily micro changes as the roses bloom, delphinium hover on the edge of flowering and foxgloves provide food for hungry bees. The allotment, as usual, is a mixture of disaster and fecundity: the climbing beans have been all but destroyed by the birds, and the cut flower annuals are as tiny now as when they were planted a month ago. The perennials, on the other hand, are thriving, with Sweet William the latest arrival to the June cutting party.

Roses on the edge of bloom

All the flower annuals are now planted out, though most are stumpy and far from thriving

Sweet William now in flower

I added a few stems of wild, self-sown cow parsley and foxgloves to today’s cut flower harvest of allium, sweet rocket, persicaria, flowering sage and the Sweet William; I’m particularly pleased with this pink, purple and pale cream arrangement.

June pickings: allium, sweet william, sweet rocket, foxgloves, flowering sage and cow parsley

Same arrangement in the vase

When it comes to home-grown veg, it’s still a sparse time of year, and it will remain so for ages, given the stumpiness of my seedlings. And this is where the joy of GREENS comes in. I don’t mean the massive, leafy cabbages or lettuces that we’ll get in a few weeks time, but rather the small, palm-sized leaves that thrive in early summer. There is a tradition in parts of the Mediterranean to collect wild greens – called horta – which are then eaten raw, or very slightly cooked, to supplement the lean, home-grown diet. In warmer climates this can go on year round, but here in England we only really start to see lush green growth in late April. Patience Gray discussed horta in great detail in Honey from a Weed, and makes wild claims that a plateful of herbs has an ‘oiliness’ to it that can keep the eater going for hours. Whilst that may be disputable, there is an undeniable vigour to freshly picked young greens that can not be replicated by any supermarket packet.

I do not collect wild greens (though I could – the allotment is FULL of nettles, and they would be grand) but I do look forward to this time of year, when the fridge has a constantly re-filled bag of fresh greens in it. Currently on the go is cima di rapa, which I grew in the veg trug from a sowing about 6 weeks ago, rocket from the allotment, and young spinach, radish tops and beetroot tops that I thieved from mum’s vegetable garden (her pickings always come a month earlier than mine).

Cima di rapa

All these young, gentle greens need is a quick wash, then to be wilted in a hot pan with a lick of butter or olive oil, perhaps a few thin slivers of garlic or chili, and a bit of salt. They take mere seconds to cook. Have them as an accompaniment to something else or – my preference – turn them into the star of the show. Horta on toast with a poached egg is my June brunch of choice, and orecchiette with cima di rapa and fennel sausage is a classic for a reason.

Saute the greens and serve on toast with an egg

Horta need no recipe or any grand instruction. They are the essence of what it means to grow, and cook, your own food. In this age where we are so deeply indoctrinated into supermarket food culture, I find that a plateful of simple greens can root me back to the peasant tradition – born of necessity of course, but none the worse for that – of eating what nature provides, when she provides it.

 

Also this week:

Allotment and garden: Planted out chrysanthemums, marigolds, chard, spinach and bulls blood. Netted the blueberries. Grass is growing at a distressing rate. Annuals are not doing so well – it is so dry – and climbing beans have been eaten by the pigeon. Broad beans have set. Back garden nearing its peak, with roses, foxgloves and delphinium.

Harvesting: Sweet William, last Sweet Rocket, alliums, cow parsley, persicaria, flowering sage, foxgloves. Rocket, spinach, broad beans (from Mum’s garden), chives, oregano, mint.

Cooking & eating: Chicken in white wine with tarragon from garden; gateau with strawberries and raspberries; Lincolnshire plum bread from work visit to Grantham.