Time for some colour at last!

Been a while since I posted anything, gently reminded by two friends the other day - encouraging - but I know Rosie is the star attraction! 

As well as working at Kedleston Hall, I also grow plants for friends and family and I am now selling cards. Check out my new venture at  www.phoenix-trading.co.uk/web/mattdolman or please like my facebook page at  www.facebook.com/cardsviamatt


This has kept me busy to say the least.

I am behind with a lot of things in the garden, I think the late start to the growing season and then spring coming all at once threw me somewhat.

Recent ventures are creating a meadow area on the front - we are leaving a rectangle of grass uncut and letting the bugs and other wildlife enjoy this area, already we have a variety of plants and I have grown birds foot trefoil, yellow rattle, ox-eye daisy to name just a few wildflowers that are now growing to be transplanted to this area.

Having decided to add more height to the garden, Andrew made a lovely arch - all from reclaimed timber  - we have a native honeysuckle growing up it, and hoepfully this will attract more moths to the garden, as we have a bat that visits every summer - we have yet to see him/her yet!


Broad beans, mangetout, courgettes and runner beans are all growing well, calabrese and summer cabbage holding their own, BUT netted to avoid caterpillar devastation - the poor cabbage whites keep fluttering over them but I am looking out of my window at them with glee as they are unable to lay thier eggs on mine! - I sound mean don't I?!?

Time is short so will blog more soon, but some pics to show the changes in the garden - it's not all about veg -  flowers, herbs, fruit and more all make our garden.

This clematis is flowering away so well this year, not to be outdone Rosie climbed the new arch! Somehow I can't get the picture to rotate - but adds to the drama!




 

Alium after some rain

I promised colour, oriental poppy with blue geranium

Arch in all its glory - excellent for reclaimed wood - more projects on the way I feel

Rosie adopted this very unusual stance - ATTENTION!



Herbs beds offer a great variety in texture, colour, fragrance and you can use them in the kitchen too!

End of a long day.....

Garlic and Shallots

Planted in autumn the shallots and garlic are growing well.  A period of cold helps them along.  I have planted Jermor Shallot, described as a true french shallot and Cristo garlic, a french garlic with a strong flavour - great - watch out colleagues at work!

I covered the bed with a net to avoid Rosie rolling on them and birds pulling up the tips of the shallots. 

As you can see below they are now coming up well, and the net has been lifted.  Rosie loved the net and stayed in it for hours, she thought it was great fun pretending I couldn't see her then leaping out - or she had somehow fashioned a rather elaborate fascinator.  You decide!

Come summer we will lift them and store and use over the following months. 

May is upon us - black cat veg plot catch up!

Where do I start. What a winter, everything is behind and the last week or so of sunshine and warmer temperatures have really raised our spirits and the sap!  We thought we had seen the last of the snow but then we had another 'dump'   For the garden this has meant a late season getting things started.

Broad Beans and Sweet Peas

Broad beans and sweet peas were the first to be sown early in 2013.  I have gone for two varieties of broad beans - Wititkem and Sutton Dwarf.

I sow them in toilet roll tubes, and then plant out once growing well to avoid root disturbance.  An early crop tends to avoid blackfly infestations but this year I think due to the delay in the season we may suffer - I will try companion planting to draw them away - apparantly nasturtiums work well and with lots of plants to encourage greedy ladybirds, hover flies and other predators of aphids I hope we are not too affected. 

I warmed the soil up with cloches and then it snowed again!   I have at last planted the broad beans, with cloche protection, although I did harden them off to avoid a severe chill. 

Black Cat loves the cloches and has had great fun in them - see below - she does avoid the plants!

The beans are now growing well, with some protection, and cat warmth! 

Sweet peas are growing well, again I planted seeds in toilet roll tubes and planted these out directly and also I popped some in long pots - the pea and bean family create long roots and hate root disturbance. 2012 was a great year for my sweet peas, I hope to replicate this - comfrey feed was the answer I think?   Paul a colleague kindly supplied me with some hazel poles so this year I will have large row of them with smaller teepee's of sweet peas dotted around.  I have gone for a real mix and when they are out will post and name them for those interested. 

The hazel poles are a great addition,  I will hope to buy some more, but I have lots of bamboo canes to use.  The hazel is a great sustanable source, so will try and source some coppiced locally.

Black Cat in the snow and after

Ready to play!

Near the raspberry bed, something distracted me!

 And after all that fun, a sleep......

 

Snowed in still

 

 

Well not snowed in as such, but not able to get in the garden so I thought I might let you know a bit more about the garden and Rosie.

Rosie in the rhubarb!

Somehow, Rosie always manages to find a great spot, summer is her favourite time in the garden with lots of hiding places. 

 

This was in 2011, the rhubarb was replaced in 2012 with raspberry red variety, the old rhubarb was quite tough and old so that was removed, but the three  new crowns I planted failed,  thankfully they were replaced by Pomona fruits.  To prevent a failure again I have on advice planted the crowns in pots and kept them in the  greenhouse, and will replant when the weather warms up.  Soil preparation, manure and mulch will be key to giving them a good start.  With the current snow and cold weather I think I have done the right thing.

2012 was such a difficult year for growing, low lightlevels, rain and cold in the main growing season made gardening hard work.  Early crops were great such as our broad beans, but I stuggled with all my greenhouse crops and things like sweetcorn were a disaster.  Later in the year courgettes did improve but didn't fruit as much as I hoped.

SLUGS - 2012 was the year of the slug, I went out most nights picking them off, beer traps worked, so did traps of water and yeast - this proved quite smelly. The problem of emptying traps is then what to do with the waste - I composted it!  I hate killing things in the garden, but the lack of bird life in our area impacts on the slug population.  The lack of garden birds is related to our position - we are quite high up, we have a lot of gulls and jackdaws in our area, unfortunatley there are a number of cats who roam and will predate .  Our area is quite devoid of trees and cover so all these factors must have reduced the amount of birds we get or birds that can survive.  

We do aim to try and alleviate this, we keep Rosie in at night - a key time for cats to hunt - well at dusk and dawn especially.  We have tried so many times with a collar - she loses them, quick release one never stays on - we have thought about other things such as a cat enclosure for the garden - but I think in 2013 I want to make the garden secure so Rosie can't wander onto the front - she has been on the road and I dread her going further afield, she has been in a few scrapes and one possible minor bump with a car. This will be challenging as the garden is surrounded by a hedge and has lots of holes  - which foxes, cats and hedgehogs use!  More of the cat wars later in this blog. 

 

Anyway we do try and ensure that our garden attracts all sorts of bugs and other wildlife, so hopefully we can then encourage more birds as a result - without Rosie stalking them as much as possible. 

 

 

 

 

What about the garden

I inherited the garden,  well my partner did actually.  It was gardened extensively  by a chap who grew from all accounts champion sized onions and leeks!  A fair sized greenhouse and a couple of sheds came with the garden, a huge added bonus.

The previous owner loved concrete, the plot includes a lot so much so we christened the front garden Stalag - this isn't ideal, but basically raised beds were created and paving.  In an ideal world I would like to start again, but funds don't allow.  Reading a good article by a professional gardener who said something along the lines of "work with what you have got, why waste more resources if you can re-use what you have or modify it" - so I'm thinking along these lines, and trying to be a bit greener in the process as well as saving money.

The front faces due south, gets baked dry and it gets quite breezy, therefore the back is north - so a portion of the garden is in shade a lot of the time, and dry shade against the bungalow.  Some challenging conditions.  The soil is clay and hard to work, but I am a following a no dig approach, nourishing the soil with added compost, green manures and crop rotation.

Introductions cont.

I love gardening, I'm no expert, everything is self taught or by talking to other folk.  A bit like lots of things in my life (books, music, art & more) I have a wide range of interests garden wise but the following sums me up

• Herbs - love them - their variety, ability to add that crucial missing part to a dish, the fragrance on a hot summers day, or that in winter you can go out and rub along a rosemary plant or  pick some sage - I've been growing a wider variety lately and in 2012 had my very own herb stall at Kedleston Hall - something I want to develop.
• Growing your own - can't beat picking something fresh from the garden - I have my favourites and some that I struggle with - why oh why won't my celeriac grow well?
• Composting - strangely addictive - nuff said
• Sweet Peas - possibly my favourite flower, always seem to have stuggled with them until 2012, a mega year, I think my homemade comfrey fertiliser did the trick!
• Cottage garden plants - a bit Barbara Cartland, but you can't beat a big blousy in your face cottage garden - a jumble of colour and fragrance
• Wildlife (not slugs) - organic gardening, growing plants for a wide range of critters, native plants and growing plants that attract as much as possible 
• Auriculas make me go weak at the knees

Where does this  love of gardening come from?  Well  some of my earliest garden memories are visiting my lovely Great Aunt Dot, she had the kind of 1930's long garden with old knarled fruit trees, a bit overgrown but with lovely plants such as poppies, flag iris, bluebells,  crimson peony and more   - I remember walking with her and being fascinated by it.  Growing up I was lucky to have a greenhouse and veg plot, and famously my first real triumph was a glut of courgettes - my brother still talks about the summer of courgettes with everything.  My dad loves to garden and this is one of the things we share now in life.  Somehow  once I turned 17 I lost the plot  - literally - moving around and not having a garden, working too much, going out a lot and being a bit nomadic I longed for a garden to potter in.

Introductions

Black Cat - I first saw Rosie when I had been living in Lincolnshire for a couple of weeks. I had already met her brother Coco, who was a permanent fixture at Woolsthorpe Manor.  When exploring my new garden I saw this little cheeky face peering at me, she had a red collar on but looked like Coco.  I spoke to my friend Marg who confirmed it wasn't Coco but his sister Rosie, she was very timid and didn't come to the Manor as per Coco. 

Coco and Rosie had a family in the village, but both spent a lot of time outdoors.  I think as Rosies' family was very busy with two big dogs, small children and other cats, and knowing her like I do now I think she felt lost - Marg confirmed as much.  The picture on the right shows how timid she was, she would not come in the house, looked very thin and would not let me touch her for long if at all!  Think she was enjoying some tuna I had put out for her in this photo!

I have always wanted a cat, but unfortunately being allergic to them it was never an option - I used to get my cat fix by feeding our neighbours cats - Wilhelmina and Tatiana - yes Willy and Titty for short!  When I was very young we lived next door to a beautiful cat called Elsa, and she would sometimes come in to visit us which was great.  However on the occasions I would pet any cat too much it resulted me wheezing, sneezing and with scratchy eyes.

Anyway cut to several months later, in 2010, Rosie was a full time fixture of my life, she followed me to work, waited for me to finish, attempted to encroach on Coco's  Manor - literally  - with limited success, they had severe sibling rivalry.  I had been at Woolsthorpe nearly a year when my partner who lived in Nottingham and I decided it was time to live together.  I took the painful decision to leave Woolsthorpe.  WHAT was I going to do with Rosie? She still had a family up the road - even though I was now her dad!  I spoke to her owner who said straight away "take her with you"  her owner felt she was mine anyway, and thought it was funny she had moved out to live with me.   So Rosie swapped rural Lincolnshire for Nottingham.  That whole cats picking their owner is very true for me.

Rosie in the orchard with the Manor behind, before city life.

 

 

Why am I blogging about Rosie? Well since owning a cat it has opened up a whole new interest in cat behaviour, learning about them and actually becoming a bit of a hobby on the side.

 Rosie really helped me when I was in Lincolnshire,  I was very lonely at times, but by taking Rosie under my wing we helped each other and she blossomed into a more confident, sociable and characterful cat. It was real joy to have Rosie waiting for me at the manor back door and walking across the orchard with her, or a friendly face at my bedroom window - she is an expert climber!

Rosie loves gardening, she helps me out if I am digging, weeding and planting.  She has her own bed in the greenhouse, spends hours in there and really makes our garden come alive.  I can't imagine a garden without her, she patrols the plot, takes us on walks around it and generally has laid claim to it.

Rosie in one of her favourite garden spots,  in the greenhouse keeping the aubergines warm, and taking some shade under the outdoor tomatos - on the rare occasion of sunshine.

Then came the snow!

Well not much to do garden wise, I tidied up the other day, cleared leaves from the calabrese and cabbages - I got some great tips on brassica growing from the following blog www.springfieldgarden.blogspot.co.uk  I met the blogger at work and enjoy catching up with their garden adventures.

For 2013 I will try and win the war on slugs, caterpillars and pigeons - a brassica cage will be the solution.  However we have had some success with the greens this year, I've always been afraid of the brassica family as they seem hard work and in the ground a long time before you can enjoy the crop - ever the impatient! I'm an organic grower, so will be trying out and sharing what works for us as the year goes on.

I tidied up the greenhouse a bit and I have some plants overwintering in there, including pineapple sage, lemon verbena, french tarragon roots and lemon grass.  The bay tree or tree-let as it is still young, is also in the greenhouse, a very useful addtion to winter stews, soups, sauces - we tend to use it fresh.

Woke up to snow, so my plans to give you a view of the plot have been scuppered a bit - however the snow does disguise all the work I need to do!

Black Cat found the snow very amusing, infact at 6.00am she led me outside to show me and ended up running wild in it - later on after my brief stint early in the morning we toured the garden together - a habit she does with both of us.

As much as I want light nights and spring to arrive I do enjoy our seasons, with the heating on and my cosy clothes (yes there is a onesie) I can indulge myself with Sarah Raven - not actually I add, but with her beautiful seed and plant catalogues.  Our city library also stocks the RHS magazine so I am currently taking out back issues and dreaming of great plans for the garden. I save a lot of money by using the library, and Nottingham libraries have a great selection of gardening books.

 

Rosie in ready to pounce mode!

 

 

Rather bleak view of the garden, trust me it looks better than this!

Typical for a Piscean, I've been pondering a blog for some time, even lying in bed composing my posts - so it is about time I put fingers to keyboard. 

So why Black Cat Veg Plot and what will my blog be about..... Hmmm just realised I will be potentially sharing this to many people.

Black Cat, well Rosie is my black cat - more of her later, but she is a key part of my life joining me on my garden adventures.  She is rarely never far from me when I'm in the garden or greenhouse

Veg Plot - this is my main hobby, growing  herbs, vegetables, salads, greenhouse crops and flowers and generally trying to be a better gardener. 

I have a bit of time on my hands at present and very little money, so rather than drinking endless cups of tea pottering about or fannying around which probably would be more of an apt description, and before the main garden season kicks off I thought I could drink endless cups of tea whilst writing the blog.

Perhaps I should have some objectives for this blog - thinking about this I have come to the following thoughts;

• Hopefully I can keep a diary and visual record of my gardening successes and failures! Useful for planning in the future, sharing tips and hints with fellow green fingered friends and having a photographic record of my garden development, as well as a record of varieties of plants and seeds used, and images of them in growth, flower and fruit!
• I love cats, and Rosie is a key part of my garden life, I want to post her pics and the mischief she gets up to!  Gardening and cats do mix!

Right enough about the blog, I am going to put the kettle on, sort out some bits and hope to be back soon