We are moving!!

We are swapping London for Bedfordshire in less than a week, very exciting! The new garden is south facing (and much bigger), and I'm already daydreaming about what I'm going to do with it... In the meantime, here are my plants, all ready and waiting for the removals van. 

Luckily I've kept them in pots from the last move, less than two years ago. I'm leaving a few behind, but there's a good reason for that and they're not irreplaceable. 

My dicentra spectabilis alba (white bleeding heart) I put in the one and only strip of soil in my patio garden. It is still underground and I can't find it, so I can't transplant it. And my lovely blue clematis, which is about to flower, is in a pot that is way too big to move, and would suffer too much from a transplant. So I'm leaving it for the new tenants, and hopefully they'll enjoy it!

The rest are coming with me. I've moved some from heavy glazed pots to plastic ones, easier to carry, and I gave some of them a prune. I think they are looking quite good, I hope they will not suffer much from the move and will enjoy the new garden. I can't wait!

Tomatillo crop

This is my best so far crop of tomatillos. I had to pick most of them a bit green, because I know they won't have tone to ripen now - frosts will kill the plants, and the sun us too low now. But they will still be tasty! This is one plant I will definitely grow again. They are delucious, super easy to cook with, and very easy to grow. The only thing to remember is to sow them as early as possible, as they take a long growing season.

Mi cosecha de tomatillos. En el clima ingles no les da tiempo de madurar, pero aun verdes estan buenisimos!

Autumn harvests

It started with the beans back at the end of September:

En septiembre empezamos con las judias (la cosecha fue pequeña, pero los colores son impresionantes):

But now in November the real stars have been the root crops that I sowed in the spring. They've been in the ground for a long time doing very little, but they're perfect now!

Ahora en noviembre es el momento de las zanahorias, las chirivias y los colinabos que sembre en primavera. Han tardado meses, pero ahora estan dando muy buen fruto:

This is a very simple trick, but it took me way too long to figure it out: wash your root veg at the allotment when you pick them, where the soil won't clog up the kitchen sink (unlinke the carrots above). These are drying out in yesterday's sunshine:

La cosecha de ayer, lavada en la propia huerta (en vez de en casa, donde la tierra atasca el fregadero – ojala hubiera pensado en este truco antes) y secandose al sol:

And finally the beautiful chards, the red cabbages and the black kale, perfect for winter stews:

Y por ultimo las acelgas multicolores y unos repollos colorados, que nos van a dar (ojala) buenos cocidos:

Autum colour

These are the plants that are cheering up the garden these days. Plantas con color para el otoño:

A whole load of beetroot

This year's surprise glut has been beetroot. Well, and lettuce, but those went to seed when I was away on holidays, so I never got to eat most of it. And the rest of the crops have been a bit of a wash-out this year (no green tomatos - no tomato plants at all, in fact!, only two courgettes, and the cucumbers are few and far between so I'm keeping up with eating them). The beetroots, however, are perfect for the picking just now. And there's A LOAD of them. I picked three already the other day, boiled them and froze them sliced. I gave three more away to a friend. But this mountain of beetroot is the rest of my crop, and I plan to try roasting (at least a few of them). I think I will leave a few raw ones out, the prettier ones, and see if I can donate them to some other friends! All I need now is to find beetroot recipes that I like, since I'm not a fan of the vegetable myself (yet). 

 La cosecha de remolachas ha sido un exito total, y ahora me salen por las orejas... Es la cosecha mayor de este ano. Ya coci y congele tres, regale otras tres, y el resto lo voy a asar, y probablemente regalare otras cuantas. Lo siguiente que tendre que buscar son recetas con remolacha, porque no es mi vegetal favorito (todavia), pero ahora no me queda mas remedio que aprender!

Tidy up for autumn at the garden and allotment

This weekend I've been mostly tidying up the garden and allotment, which had become a bit overrun with weeds over the summer. And I've been planting a few things that will look good over the next few months - end of summer, autumn and even winter.

Este finde he estado arreglando las malas hierbas y excesos del verano, y plantando cosillas para los proximos meses. En casa, me dedique a quitar malas hierbas de entre los adoquines, transplantar una salvia y un romero de la huerta a casa, reorganizar las macetas (ahora queda mucho mas espacioso), y por ultimo compre en el vivero unas flores para el otono e invierno: una erica con flores rosas, unos pensamientos (violas), e incluso unos alhelies para la primavera.

At home, I was busy clearing the weeds that grow between the bricks in the ground, transplanting a sage and a rosemary from the allotment to the pots at home, rearranging the pots to make it look more spacious, and finally I bought some autumn/winter flowers that I planted: a pink heather, lots of violas, and even a few wallflowers for the spring.

 

Above, big pot planted with violas, wallflower small plants, and a few daffodil bulbs. Below, the herbs transplanted, on the left, and a few colorful violas to brighten up this dark(ish) corner.

La maceta de arriba tiene violas, alhelies y unos bulbos de narciso. Abajo, la salvia y el romero transplantados, a la izquierda, y unos pensamientos para darle color a este rincon.

New garden layout:

New sowings: Rocket, parsley, spring onions, and a cutting of pelargonium. Siembras de: Rucula, pereji, cebolletas, y un esqueje de geranio.

These gladioli are looking good at the back of the allotment, and they only cost me one pound back in the spring! I have planted next to them a clump of crocosmias that weren't doing well at home in a pot. Next to the flowers I have a couple of trailing cucumber plants.

Estos gladiolos los compre en un "todo 100" (£1) en primavera y estan preciosos en flor. Acabo de transplantar unas crocosmias, que tenia en casa en una maceta y se estaban secando, asi, y en este momento en el suelo hay dos plantas de pepino que estan dando fruto.

I cleared this patch of soil of weeds (until recently it had onions), and now I've planted out some tiny plants I bought from the garden centre on Saturda. These should either be ready in the next few months (before the cold), a few lettuce plants and spring onions, or stay in the ground until spring, leeks and purple sprouting broccoli.

Aqui plante unas plantitas que compre el sabado: lechugas y cebolletas (para comer en los proximos dos meses, antes del frio) y puerros y brecol (para la primavera proxima).

Garden plans colour-coded sketch

I keep trying different ways of planning the garden and/or allotment design, and this is my latest attempt. My drawing skills are appalling, but I hope the photo makes some kind of sense (it made sense to me while I sketched it!)

This is the basic shape of my garden. Minus any sense of scale or proportion, unfortunately, but I tried my best and I had to re-draw this several times to get this "good" (believe it or not). The bit at the top of the pic is the bit next to the house, then there's a corridor and the bit at the bottom half of the pic is the bit at the back of the house. The door from the house is to the left at the top (I drew the door step as a black narrow "box"), the shed is along the line at the very bottom of the picture.

What I've done is mark out all the containers (the whole area, except a narrow stretch along the fence in front of the door from the house, is paved). Then I've colour-coded them according to which season they have the most interest: BLUE for winter, YELLOW for spring, PINK for summer, ORANGE for autum, and GREEN is for ever-green perennials that have pretty much all-year interest.

And the second thing I've highlighted, with a blue outline around the container, is which ones have annual plants, so I can get a better idea more quickly of what space I've got available when I'm buying bedding plants at the garden centre... (or sowing seed trays in the spring!).

I always feel the planning of the garden gives me almost as much fun as the actual planting or sitting among the final result. Hopefully this visual plan will help me organise and group the plants that I've got better, stop me from buying the wrong things at the garden centre, and place those things I do buy in the right place.

I am going to try to go for a mediterranean-ish look. Stuff that will survive some heat an sun (not that we get much here) without much damage. Since the space I've got is quite small, I'll stick to small and simple things such as lavenders and other herbs (which I already have), and annuals such as pelargoniums next summer (a bit too late to get new ones this year). If I can keep my one pelargonium of this year through the winter, so much the better, but I expect I'll buy a couple new ones next year, along with some tagetes and the like.

Most of my pots at the moment have perennials, but i think for next year I'll leave all the empty ones (with the blue outline) free for annuals because it's also very interesting to buy new things each year and change the look of the garden - it's like buying a new summer outfit every year, I suppose.

Esto, aunque no lo parezca, es un plano de mi jardin. No esta a escala y las proporciones no son correctas, porque no se me da bien dibujar, pero me sirve para hacerme una idea. La mitad de arriba de la foto es la parte cerca de casa, el escalon junto a la puerta es esa franja negra de la iquierda. La mitad de abajo de la foto es la parte de atras de la casa, junto a la caseta (justo abajo) y el banquito (a la derecha).

Lo primero que hice fue delinear todas las macetas (la unica parte directamente en tierra es la franja enfrente de casa, a la derecha). Lo segundo, he indicado con colores en que estacion del ano tienen mayor interes: AZUL para invierno, AMARILLO para primavera, ROSA para verano, NARANJA para otono, y VERDE para plantas que mantienen el mismo interes practicamente todo el ano.

Lo tercero que he indicado, con un borde azul, es cuales de las macetas van a tener plantas anuales. El resto (la mayoria) tienen plantas perennes, pero quiero dejar tambien espacio libre para anuales que puedo cambiar cada ano, porque es divertido cambiar parte del diseno cada ano, un poco como comprarse un vestido de verano a la moda todos los anos. Con suerte este plan me ayudara a elegir mejor que plantas compro, no comprar lo que no quiero o no pega bien, y agrupar las que ya tengo mejor.

He decidido darle un aire mas “mediterraneo” al jardin, en parte porque me gustan las plantas (algunas huelen de maravilla) y ademas sufren menos con el calor y la sequia del verano (no es que tengamos mucho ni de lo uno ni de lo otro en Londres, pero al estar en macetas se secan mucho antes). Ya tenia algunas lavandas, tomillo, salvia y romero, que son plantas simples (y ademas comestibles), y como no tengo mucho espacio seguramente con esto casi me baste. El verano proximo comprare unos geranios (pelargonios), algunos tagetes, etc para darle color, y posiblemente con eso baste. No creo que el geranio de este ano sobreviva el invierno en la caseta, pero estaria bien!