Very recently I had two glorious weeks of doing little but allotmenting and gardening but then I had to very sadly go back to the day job. But now at last the weekend has arrived, and it feels like an oasis in time. Monday to Friday I have been dragging my backside through the day to day rat run and today Saturday I have reached an oasis and can drink heavily from the pool of gardening that is the weekend. Was that a bit mixed metaphor heavy? Apologies for that 😊 here is the saturday six. #sixonsaturday #six-on-saturday
1. National Vegetarian Week – week before last was NVW and you are probably wondering why it is being featured in a gardening blog. Well it is because we have been able to take advantage of having some perennial vegetables up at the allotment. Am particularly interested in perennial veg having read Mark Diacono ‘A Taste of the Unexpected’ a few years ago and realising then that there was veg that I could grow that would come back each year. This last week as well as taking advantage of salad and leeks, we have had spinach and welsh onions. I have also started Hablitzia Taminoides from Incredible Veg and Spis Bladene from the Twitter Seed Circle co-ordinated by Beryl who writes Mud and Gluts. I also grow egyptian walking onions, skirret, globe artichokes, jerusalem artichokes and lots of fruit amongst others. I love the twisty shape of the egyptian onions, here is one from the allotment.
Twisty
Welsh Bunching Onion
2. Wysteria – well it is finally flowering. I love my wysteria and it is not only a very lovely flower but very pretty leaves too. It also provides a bit of shading in the suntrap that is the bottom of my garden. I used to have a huge one growing over the extension of my house but sadly we lost it a few years back in a storm where the whole lot blew off the roof and was chopped back and never recovered. However this year I am not the only one treasuring my wysteria, the bees are too. It is covered in bees in the warm sun we were having this last week, so much so I have to duck every time I walk under for fear of catching a few of the little fellas in my hair. Here is the said wysteria, one day I will have a white one too 😊 , there is a climbing rose coming through it but unfortunately I don’t remember its name but it has a lovely scent.
3. Medlar – My medlar is flowering but it caused a bit of a mystery this week.
(Apologies for pop culture references in the following bit). My son and his partner moved into their new house about 18 months ago and I was lucky enough to win for them a medlar from Tracklements. It arrived in the Autumn 2016 and was planted up but didn’t survive the winter. Or so I thought. In the Spring of 2017 initially it looked dead and because I thought we had lost it I bought another medlar to replace it. Ah, but then I spotted some sprouting leaves and we thought it had survived. We even named it Groot after the Marvel character in the recent Guardians if the Galaxy film, here is Groot last year.
Last week I posted the picture of my flowering medlar on facebook. My sons partner came straight back with a ‘hang on a minute those leaves are different to Groot’, and she posted a picture (am wondering if any if you gardeners have yet spotted the reason). Here is Groot now,
Definitely not a medlar, but what is it. Then suddenly it occurred to me, most fruit trees are grafted on to root stock. The original grafted medlar must have not survived and what has sprouted is the root stock. I have emailed Tracklements to see if they have records or if the supplier they purchased from can tell us what tree it actually is. They haven’t come back to me yet but I think yesterday I solved the mystery. Doing a bit of research on web it seems that Medlar are grafted on to either quince or hawthorn as the rootstock, I know this isn’t quince as I have one growing and the leaves are certainly not that therefore it must be hawthorn. If anyone has any other ideas please let me know but for now we will treat it as a hawthorn – which by odd coincidence is our family name.
4. Scented Pelargoniums – I love flowers with scent, especially if the scent has a citrus or rose base to it. Every year I increase the number of scented pelargoiums from cuttings taken in the Autumn. But I just keep coming back to Attar of Roses, Lemon or a combination of the two (was eyeing up a Sweet Mimosa and Prince of Orange today). The flowers are small and not quite as splendid as their zonal cousins but sometimes it is quite perfect and just so pretty,
5. I might have featured strawberry beds recently as we had covered them in strultch after weeding and feeding. This is what they looked like a month back,
And this what they look like now (although photo angle is different and the polytunel frame is sitting in its temporary spot),
6. She-shed update – The walls are up, the roof is on, the door is in today and next are the windows, hopefully by the end of the Spring bank holiday weekend some of these will be done too.
Well thats my Saturday. It’s a busy weekend, I am hoping a lot of tomatoes might be planted but in that the polytunnel still needs to be moved it’s only a small hope. Don’t forget to catchup on all the other #sixonsaturday #six-on-saturday on thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com
betagardengirl 