Jogging Toward Summer Solstice 2020

There's about two weeks left before summer officially rolls in. Chez nous, the crop method is the preferred one and not succession planting. There's a push now to get all of the vegetables planted before the longest day arrives. To cheer me up as I sieve compost, wield spades/forks/rakes, and keep recently sowed beds moistened, I recall with great fondness of all the produce already harvested and processed since February such as asparagus, rhubarb, peas, and strawberries waiting to be included in delicious meals for the coming months. Sometimes I take a break just to check out crops getting closer to being picked to ensure I don't miss the best time to harvest, like blueberries. Lovers of acidic soil that blueberries are, they wouldn't flourish in the slightly alkaline earth in our garden. Instead, they do their blue thing in large pots filled with an acidic potting mix. Keeping one of them company is a cobalt blue, hand-blown glass fishing float which most likely made its way from Spain and got put on display at a flea market in France, specifically in Grenoble, where we became happy buyers. One of the highlights of my twilight garden exercise romps started when lockdown first began and which I still do is bending down here and there, sampling a blueberry, a raspberry, and a strawberry.

This berry-festooned branch is just one of many.

Below photo: the green beans are in and covered with horticultural fleece to prevent them from being eaten by birds.  The parterre with bushy plants directly in front of the beans is one of our two potato beds. The two unkept ones in the foreground will eventually be planted with strawberry runners and carrots. The silvery, boxy thing in the lower left hand corner is one-half of the coldframe we got at Lidl just before the Covid-19 lockdown. The splash of vivid red in the lower right are volunteer poppies.

The heat-loving, purple osteospermums were potted up last autumn and brought indoors. Two out of three plants survived the confinement and are flourishing in the front garden. This winter they will go into the coldframe, watched over judiciously, and if needed, brought indoors. But this time, I will put the pot on wooden slats placed over circular trays filled with water to provide humidity. Though they get enough light in our living room, the central heating is a stress. Hopefully these two specimens will continue to over-winter through the years.

Calendula were sowed in flats early spring and kept in the cold frame until it was warm enough for them eventually to embrace the big, wide wonderful world. Their hardening off started when the frame was first propped open during daytime for a week followed by the seedlings being outdoors for a few hours over a period of several days leading to spending an entire day before being transplanted into the big pot where they will spend their time until autumn. Having never grown them before, I wonder if maybe I shouldn't have pinched the young plants in the hope they will be less leggy when mature as I might have ended their flowering capability. I won't relax until I see their wonderful orange blooms!

The beets were sowed the other day. It is such a pleasure to work our veggie beds as the soil has been so much improved over the last ten years with the additions of compost, leaf mulch, wood chippings, grass clippings, and green manure. It's fluffy and a lovely shade of brown. Yes!

Turnips and carrots are the last two vegetables needing to be sown. Carrots have a specific set of challenges which when met will yield a most satisfying crop. Like all homegrown veggies, their taste has a depth of flavour that is incomparable. That paper cone holding up the seed packet in the below photo is a DIY tiny seed sowing device. The seeds being quite small means that too many may get planted hence becoming crowded as they grow in size which requires thinning. As they are thinned their distinctive fragrance will attract a certain species of low-flying, white butterflies who then will deposit eggs which become larvae burrowing down into the edible root completely destroying its comestible value by leaving it riddled with brown tunnels. This destruction is carried on out of sight, therefore it is only when the crop gets pulled out of the ground, the cruel realisation hits, that after all that hard work, there are no carrots to eat.

To ensure that a nice steady stream of seeds are sowed, wet ordinary paper, like from a notebook, rolling it into a cone with a narrow opening. Press the outside edge to seal while still wet so it won't unravel. Moistening the paper and letting it dry roughens up its texture, slowing down the flow of seeds. If any thinning is necessary, the late afternoon is the best time as the butterflies are not around too much at that time. Another approach is to cover the thinned seedlings with horticultural fleece for about a week so their scent would have dissipated. In addition to keeping them free of larvae, they like loose soil which is as stone/pebble free as possible. Our bed is spaded and forked well, but it is not obstruction free so the only variety that I have had any success with is Carentan which has a mid-length and stout top half. If its growth gets forked by a stone, there's still enough carrot for the pot. Keep in mind during the several weeks it takes for the seeds to germinate, the soil must be kept evenly moist. A hose nozzle that makes a fine mist is a way to water without bunching up the carefully spaced seeds. Last year's harvest is still feeding us at the moment; I am guessing that it will supply about eighty percent of our annual needs. Hence just a few months of supermarket buying will suffice to get us to this season's harvest. 

Besides getting all the crops in before the solstice, I also try to get any desired cuttings from existing evergreen stock started. After getting dipped in growth hormone, planted in small pots, and thoroughly watered, they are drapped with clear plastic bags and kept under the pergola. When new growth is detected then they will be placed in the sun. If they do not reach nursery-bed transplantation size before winter, then they will go into the coldframe. All that condensation inside their little plastic homes is a comforting sight because it means until their roots form, they will still receive moisture through their leaves. A ton of laurel and heather cuttings already have been propagated leaving Leyland cypress, ivy, and rosemary to be done. Whew!

À la prochaine!

Signs of Spring 2019

Winter will be officially over when the spring equinox occurs this coming 20th of March, but there is evidence that the season is changing. Here in southwest France, trumpet daffodils bloom around this time and they are a lovely sight swaying in the breeze. But my favourite harbinger is . . .

. . . seeing sedge after sedge after sedge of glorious, honking cranes, flying in from North Africa.

About a hundred and fifty tulips were planted last fall, and I can't wait to see them strut their stuff. A bunch of late-blooming, fragrant, peach-toned Dordogne tulips were nestled in an angular crook of the front garden lavender hedge. Here's hoping they will flower together sometime in late May, early June as they each would provide for the other a wonderful complementary colour contrast.

A mostly self-seeded bed—just a few plants were put in about eight years ago—measuring roughly five feet deep and twenty feet long flanking the western side of the house is a simple expanse of fragrant sweet violets. Such expansion was possible due to their explosive seed dispersal. Mowing down the bed with a line trimmer in the autumn ensures that the late-winter blooms will be visible otherwise the lusty foliage will hide them.

I saw a large bee on this peacock-blue towel hanging on the clothesline. From its energetic 'kneading' and size I am guessing it is a Megachilid species.

It soon figured out that there was neither nectar nor pollen to be had and flew off to the heather in full bloom which at present resembles a bonsai cherry tree exuberantly spreading its branches, laden with puffy deep-pink flowers, way over its cozy, patio cut-out.

Late winter is a good time to do any tasks that can be done now so as to avert a traffic crush of garden activity come spring. Therefore six evergreen, small-leaved globe Japanese hollies along with one in conical form were transplanted from their nursery bed to their permanent location flanking the central garden path, and then were mulched with our own wood chips. Eventually two other areas which are still planted with overgrown bearded irises will get the same kind of treatment, giving some much needed 'green bones' to the garden.

The bearded irises became so packed that they spilled onto the garden path. Making sure that days of rain soaked the soil, I sliced through the rhizomes with a lawn edger, and then removed the sections with a spade.

The peas sowed several weeks ago are just beginning to sprout. Yay! Since they were planted so early the harvest should be able to be completed for the first time in the history of this garden before it gets too hot for these lovers of cool weather.

As I was transplanting our very productive blueberry bush into a bigger pot, I whispered, blueberry muffins are your destiny. If your garden soil isn't acidic and you love blueberries as much as we do, the solution is filling a pot with packaged soil mix made just for plants needing a growing medium with low pH.

À la prochaine!

Summer Is Right Around The Corner . . .

In about a week, it will be officially summer. There has been consistent rains for the last month which has delayed garden tasks that would have been best done before June such as sowing annual flowers like varied-coloured, long-term-flowering cosmos and zinnias; the last of the edible crops, graceful, stylish Tuscan kale with its smoky green-black leaves; fast-growing cover crops like mustard and tansy to revive the completely harvested pea beds (they provided about 5 litres of pods!). Hopefully, if we can believe the forecast, the next week will be sunny and the soggy soil should be workable fairly soon so those postponed tasks can be eventually completed. Regardless, the garden is humming along, with beloved-by-the bees, aromatic lavender, punchy poppies that reseed themselves through the years, and haughty Queen Elizabeth roses.

The potato variety, Daifla, flowers profusely. (That's the raspberry patch in the background, and if you look closely you will see the berries.) Potato blooms signify that the tubers are being formed. In about two months, when the haulms (the growth above ground) have wilted yellow, it will be time to harvest.

The dark green of ivy makes a good backdrop for rhubarb and potatoes. In the upper left, a drooping branch of a Mirabelle plum tree can be seen with its immature fruit looking like green olives. When ripe, they will be a glorious gold flushed with red.

Most of our potato blooms are pure white but there are a few which are tinted mauve. An interesting aside is that Marie Antoinette, a passionate lover of flowers, was known to have tucked some potato blossoms in her hair during the time Antoine Parmentier was trying to convince the movers and shakers that the New World upstart wasn't poisonous. 

Every other day, there's enough raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries to fill up the dessert bowl. Since blueberries must have acid soil to flourish, our bush is grown in a pot with the desired potting mix.

The rambunctious wild area which harbours lizards, hedgehogs, birds, and insects is festooned with bramble blossoms. The middle bed is filled with bushy Roma tomato plants and in front of them are beets which since have seen the trusty cultivator tool which has cleared away the prolific clover.

During a month these well-established daylilies put out many blooms, each lasting just a day. There are cultivars which are everblooming from early summer to autumn which will soon find a place in our garden.

David Austin climbing rose, Falstaff, is beginning a second round of flowering.

In the front garden, yet more lavender and also Shasta daisies are just starting to bloom. The other day, our neighbour across the street told me that she loves seeing, as does her visitors, the small green haven in front of our home. After all this time, it is known by a few that je jardine comme une folle (I garden like a madwoman). The English lavender is putting on the show right now while the late-blooming French lavender waits to take the spotlight in about a month.

From the vantage point of a reclining, cushy chair under the pergola, this is what I get to see: foliage of mums, rose of Sharon, calla lilies, ivy, two enormous, neighbouring spruce trees, and the imperious blooms of a Queen Elizabeth rose. All of this exuberant growth exists in an urban space. Though I can hear the distant din of traffic, I pretend that it's the sound of ocean waves.

À la prochaine!

Maintaining One's Cool

A hot spell has started in the southwest of France and will continue for at least a week. Shade-loving plants invite you to come out of the heat and spend some time in their haven of freshness. Several months ago, I lightly covered three fragrant, cascading tuberous begonia bulbs with potting mix. Each were given a separate pot of around 20 cm/8 inch diameter. They were kept warm and slightly moist until the weather became mild which is when they were put outside in the shade until their foliage appeared. They then could have been planted directly in the ground or as in my case kept in pots. In the latter instance, the frost-tender bulbs do not have to be dug up but just brought indoors during the winter. Blooming heavily from early summer through autumn, tuberous begonias beckon with their soothing perfume, gorgeous flowers, and stunning leaves. Not to mention they thrive in gloomy areas of the garden.

A potted begonia nestled in the deep recess of a small sous-sol window

Any horticultural specimen that can bush out in verdant lushness, whether in the sun or the shade, is a welcomed sight in the parched garden.

Beauty bush (it recently flowered) and lavender. 

Green is not the only garden coolant, so are blue and purple.

The fabulous heuchera Stormy Seas.  Purple stems carry delicate clusters of tiny, creamy flowers

Since Eli the Kitten is a feline, he has built-in cool which guides him into shady nooks.

A heuchera and candy tuft sandwich with Eli the Kitten filling

High temperatures can't make a dent in the exuberant green of the laurel hedge.

Peach and fig trees are in the background

Twenty-four cuttings were taken from the hedge about a week ago. Each one was dipped in rooting hormone, had their leaves clipped in half to prevent evaporation until roots are formed, and placed in incubators outside under the pergola to keep the humidity high and afford protection from the sun. In a few weeks, when new foliage shows, they will be planted in two nursery beds. Not this autumn, but next, they will increase the length of the existing hedge.

The vents are kept open at present because of the heat

Mostly unripe, but some blueberries are turning, well, blue.

Yes, I am depriving the house sparrows by using netting! But it's green and cool.

Even reds can appear cool if they are blue-reds.

Lacecap hydrangea keeping its cool in the shade

Under the boxelder and purple-leaved cherry plum trees, coolness abounds. The asters and Japanese anemones are leafing out well. In the fall, they will softly light up the shade with their blues and pinks. Until then, the asters are sporadically pinched back as to avoid staking.

Ivy growing up the tree trunks increases the green quotient 

David Austin's fragrant Falstaff climber thrives in the sun, but with its quartered, purple-red blooms, brings a touch of cool regardless. The best colours for roses in hot climes are the deeper tones as they tend not to fade as the lighter-coloured ones do.

Cool velvet!

À la prochaine!

Fresh Berryade

Each summer I reserve enough blueberries harvested from our potager to make blueberry cupcakes, and each summer I actually make something else with those precious berries. Something cool. Something that doesn't require any more baking than the self-roasting I have achieved by picking them in the hot sun. Something which highlights their sparkle and tart sweetness.

Thirty-year-old pitcher with FRESH juice

INGREDIENTS
per sweetness and consistency desired, makes a pint to a quart

• 3 cups of berries (several large handfuls)
• simple sugar syrup made from 1 cup sugar/1 cup water (mix in pot, simmer until mixture is clear, about five minutes)
• berries for garnishing
• additional water for desired dilution

A few raspberries and strawberries along with a handful of blackberries were added to the abundant blueberries.

All from our potager

Eschewing various aides of the electric persuasion, I just put the sieve of washed and trimmed berries over a mixing bowl. My fingers did the rest. You be surprised how much fun it is to squash them, especially the blueberries, almost equal to the pleasure of popping bubblewrap. Those grape-stompers have nothing on me.

This gorgeous pulpy mass will find a loving home on the compost pile

A fork and a wooden spoon was used at the end to finish mashing and to press juice through the sieve. Make sure to use a clean spoon for scraping the outside of the strainer.

Burgundy bliss!

With a small amount of syrup and water added, the 'ade was closer to juice. With more syrup and water, it became cloudy, somewhat dulling the fresh edge, but still so much better than any packaged/bottled versions. If the syrup, berries, and water are cold, then one can enjoy it right away. If not, refrigerate or add ice.

The pink froth tickled in a welcoming way

In the potager, various plantings done in March and April are either close to harvest like onions and potatoes or are being harvested as in the case of shallots. They are a valued ingredient for bringing a delicate piquantness to dishes. For my first crop, I had chosen a rose-coloured variety. It seems that the grise (gray) shallot is more esteemed so I will try those next season.

Jermor variety curing in the shade

Basil, like all annual herbs, need to be pinched back frequently to keep the plants nice and bushy. When I have some in hand, I sneak them in wherever I can, for example, by tucking a few leaves in grilled cheese sandwiches.

Next time, I will add minced shallots

During a late-evening perusal of the garden, I was delighted to see flowering fennel transforming itself into the likeness of a delicate Asian print.

Living artwork flanking one side of our house

In the flower garden, a trio of lavender, perennial snapdragons, and roses form a calming melange.

In the front garden, hydrangeas add a bright accent to foliage, rocks, and brick path.

À la prochaine!

Petticoat Puffs, Lavender Bundles, Tomato Structures & the First Strawberries of the Season

Étoile de Hollande, a robust, full-fragrance climbing rose, is still putting out tier upon tier of ruffled petals or to which I fondly refer as petticoat puffs.

No cancan* dancer's skirt could match this!

The spare secateurs are kept nearby the front door so my going out on the entrance balcony to snip off an enormous bloom becomes a cinch. Keeping one in a small vase near the computer allows for an instant break: all I have to do is bury my nose into its plush centre and take a few deep breaths in order to be refreshed or as the French say reprendre mes esprits (to take back my enthusiasm).

The colour in this photo shows much better how dark crimson this rose really is

The English lavender which along with some French lavender form hedges flanking the entrance path in the front garden is budding as it is the earlier bloomer of the two. For various uses, from culinary to cosmetic, lavender buds, not the flowers, are the best.

Beautiful blue-violet buds!

Leaving most of the budded stems so they can flower which will scent the air straight out to the street regaling passersby, I harvested just a few bundles of lavender, then corded and hung them in a sheltered place.

Upside-down bouquet swaying in the wind

For many a year, The Calm One has been musing about how to keep the individual, cork-screw tomato supports, tuteurs, from bending every which way with the weight of their luscious burden.

These plants as they grow will be twirled upwards around the tuteurs

Such long rumination has given forth to this: twelve tuteurs, each tucked into a hole drilled just for them within a framework of rigid plastic tubing with corners made and a crosspiece added via L or T-shaped connectors glued to the tubing. Stored as is, it will provide a template when staking in the future. To increase its stability six cords were attached to the top of the frame at various strategic points and staked into the ground. A starling resting for several minutes on it was taken as an indication that The Structure which is our pet name for it will hold its own. And it has so far including through a patch of stormy weather. Perhaps this will be the season when skipping down the path flanking the tomato beds, I won't be skewered by a tuteur.

The learning curve for growing strawberries has been sharp; in fact I can't think of one wrong thing I didn't do including growing too many. Too many strawberries, you say? Yes, too many to care for properly. Having enough room is necessary not only to afford rotation to soil that has not seen a strawberry in a while in order to avoid pesky disease but also to propagate those countless, ever-eager strawberry runners, that is, the baby plants put out by the original whose productive lifespan is about three years. So I have started afresh with just twelve plant-nursery beauties which have been carefully mulched with flattened egg cartons to keep the berries from rotting on damp soil.

Lookin' good

Just a few handfuls of berries this season, but are they wonderful, especially the Gariguette variety with its sublime flavour and convenient 'outie' belly button which can be cleanly sliced off.

Strawberry, the first of the pea pods, and dill, all from our potager

The older and larger of our two potted blueberries are developing many bunches of numerous berries.

Packaged, acid potting mix gives them the right substrate they need as our garden soil is neutral

One of my favourite spots is the northeast corner located in the front garden. Though small, it is cozy enough with two trees, bushes, aucuba, ivy, and deep shade to make me think I am in a forest.

Tall rose of sharon bushes in foreground; a purple maple & box elder whose foliage oddly is partially variegated

À la prochaine!

*When a child, I intuitively picked-up that many thought the cancan was scandalous. I concluded on my own as no one gave me a reason why that since the word can was involved somehow it was the revealing of buttocks that was considered unacceptable. I have  now discovered one of the real reasons when researching this post: the pantalettes which women wore at this time, that is, crotchless (for hygiene purposes) leggings. Hence the high kicks associated with the can-can (corruption of coin-coin=corner-corner, probably a reference to a French square dance, quadrille which inspired the cancan) revealed much more than just the energetic skills of the dancer.