Gardening with a dodgy knee #5

After the spring equinox we were into our last week of long dark nights. Around March 20th it was dark about 7:15 pm and suddenly spring arrived when we changed the clocks and twilight happened an hour later. It was 70 deg in my ( slightly) heated greenhouse. Time to switch off the frost stat and prepare the greenhouse for another season.

Fundamentally I had a glasshouse for two reasons: i) to overwinter geraniums and other plants as I have no room in the house and, as yet, no conservatory  

ii) to raise seedlings and successfully grow tomatoes with a reduced fear of the blight. 

The year before my greenhouse arrived I spent every day for ten days moving my French beans in and out of the kitchen to harden them off. As I sowed 90 plus seeds it’s a lot to do. Plus I hardened the geraniums, courgettes and small tomato plants in the same way. It was too much. And I don’t have the window ledges needed to house them overnight. And it was taking up my garden table space so we couldn’t sit on the patio to drink a cuppa without feeling we were starring in ‘The Day of the Triffids’. 

Now I have the space, light, warmth and shelter of the perspex greenhouse. So much easier. I open a window - or the door - to let air through. Introducing fledgling plants to outside temperatures is much easier now with exterior and interior staging. Sigh!

But work had to start in earnest. I removed last year’s pots and washed them with the aid of one of my three water butts. I cleared the greenhouse flooring and made a solution of Jeyes fluid. Then wiped down the walls, the perspex lights, the roof and the corners. I mopped the floor and wiped down the shelving and under the shelves. It was tricky to reach the skylight as I’m only 5 foot 2 inches but I wanted to ensure no spores nor air borne bugs had overwintered in there. Jeyes is specially formulated for greenhouse and tool use. 

I allowed it to dry out for a couple of days and put down fresh tarpaulin and matting. There was a chemical smell in there. Not too unpleasant. I certainly don’t like an over-chemicalised world. But as an annual, once a year only, event I could live with it. And my dodgy knee didn’t complain. 

Then the staging, pots and tools went back in. My bagged compost arrived and I put my potting tray in my potting shed ( aka Nina’s gin palace). Ready for the sowing season to begin. 

I began with leek seeds. Just placed them in seed compost in small nodule trays on the greenhouse staging. And I thoroughly cleaned all pots and saucers ready for tomato plants much further down the line. My spinach seedlings were growing away in their raised beds and last season’s leeks were thickening beautifully in their very enriched deep ( raised) bed.  

I like cosmos and I decided to try growing schizanthus. I created a few seedling trays of each, sprinkling the seeds on the compost without burying too deeply. Then just giving them a light covering. After labelling them and putting them on the staging I recorded my sowing activities on my gardener’s calendar. I like to use it for future reference. It’s also my attempt to track how warm our springs are becoming with climate change. 

That was my flurry of early sowings - veggies and flowers. Sweet peas were still in the greenhouse. I may not bother overwintering them another year. I don’t bother much with broad beans now, either. But I love French beans. However I never sow them until May. There was time for that. 

Gardening with a Dodgy Knee - early spring edition

For much of March I didn’t get a lot of time to work outside. It was either too wet or we were busy tidying, cleaning, decorating and sorting after having work done in the kitchen. The ongoing project. 

Other days we were in Bath enjoying ourselves with friends or with my brother and his family for my birthday treats. And our Latvian friends were helping fund long trips to rescue Ukrainian war refugees at the Polish border. We contributed, of course. We donated money for petrol ( it’s a long drive through Latvia and Lithuania to Poland and back) and we donated goods such as toiletries, dried foods, baby items and first aid packs. I also donated books for a separate fund raiser. 

Towards the equinox I had, however, managed to edge part of the lawn. The clods of earth were heavy to lift following successive downpours and at some points tugging them did pull on my neck and back. The dodgy knee didn’t seem to react to my digging, though, which was good news. I raked the lawn as it still hadn’t had its first cut of the year and I got up the last of the winter leaves. 

A beautiful new rose called ‘Molineux’ from David Austin Roses sat in the freshly dug flower bed. I had prepared the planting hole well with plenty of organic matter in and around the hole. It was a birthday present from my brother who lives a 10 minute hop, skip and jump from David Austin’s nurseries. It’s my brother who follows the footie at Molineux, though, not me.

As with a lot of flowers and shrubs it’s best to plant the rose at the same depth as it was in its pot, keeping the roots deep. The graft union should be underground and the planting hole should be bigger than the pot, with the roots spread out. I also watered the new rose in even though the soil was damp - it was still only mid-March - and I added plenty of mulch. 

That same weekend ( mid-March) I showed off my lemon tree to my brother and my niece. I hadn’t watered it much over the winter. And, although it was in a slightly heated greenhouse, I’d wrapped it in bubble wrap. Just to protect against a real drop in temperatures. And it was truly exciting to be able to peel away the bubble wrap and reveal 12 developing fruits. Good little lemon tree! 

The year still felt young. Bright yellow-faced pansies and pretty blue and pink ones adorned the patio and the first set of steps up to the lawn. Family members in our guest bedroom could look down on their colours. It did look pretty, but the bindweed hadn’t started wrapping itself around more cherished plants. The sun tried hard to warm us. The garden was awake. But the hard work was yet to come.

More next time.

Gardening with a Dodgy Knee #3

My first foray into gardening this year was back in February. We’d had the cooker moved, new splash backs and a cooker hood installed and some painting and decorating done to spruce up the kitchen. That occupied us until the weather opened up.

On February 11 I put spent indoor hyacinths in the greenhouse which had had had the frost stat on for 2 months. It felt warm inside and all was doing well in there. The sweet peas were growing and the geraniums had overwintered well in the just-above-freezing temperatures.

As it was likely we’d still get a few days or nights of frost I planted the certified garlic bulbs in a small raised bed and a few more in the veggie plot in pre-prepped soil. The soil was workable - which shows we’d had a mild winter - and it was just like planting onion sets except that garlic is supposed to need frost to help them develop. Hence the need to get them in the ground without delay. (To keep the birds off I covered over the rows of planted garlic with fleece - so no hungry beaks could pluck at them.)

The next day the weather was still open allowing me to do some cutting back of old growth and the greenhouse was up to 50 deg F. I pinched out the overwintering sweet peas for bushier growth. And it was light outside until about 6 pm. Although it was still only mid February the day had the feel of shifting out of winter into almost early spring. 

A week later I’d created enough dead growth clippings to fill the garden waste bin. Then a few days after that I couldn’t do any gardening:  we were in the thrall of Storm Eunice which created turbulent winds. We were lucky not to have anything too wild here in the south west of England. And for the first winter in years no fence panels had blown down. But as well as the terrific winds it was very wet out. 

On February 24th the truly saddening news that Russia had invaded Ukraine was across all news media. February 24th. I will never forget the date. All I had to think about was sowing my leek seeds. Others were sheltering from bomb blasts or escaping to the West with babies, one bag and a dog - to a very uncertain future.

As a distraction from this disturbing news I bought pink and yellow primulas at our local farm shop and, as they were destined for the beds in our front garden, it didn’t affect my dodgy knee. I plant them at the height of the steps… going down. So it causes very little bending. It was a beautiful sunny day - by contrast snow was on the ground in Ukraine - and I got up the last of the winter leaves. Not a creative job. It makes my back ache but there are fewer drifts of leaves now we’ve had two deciduous trees cut back. 

By the last day of February pretty pink and blue pulmonaria were growing in ‘mum’s garden’. Crocuses were looking good at the front of the house along with the miniature daffodils. The patio tubs were full of white cyclamen and they needed very little tending but my miniature irises were doing very little. I would have thought they should have been displaying their violet and yellow petals. Yet they had the growing habit of leeks.

Were they leeks?

Had I got my planting arse over tit? Only time would tell. But given the plight of the Ukrainians it was nothing to be bothered about.In the scheme of things.

And on March 1 we officially entered a new season. Winter was behind us. 

Until next time. 

Gardening with a Dodgy Knee #2

As we wallow in and out of warm weather I reflect on my ideas for the garden ( and my dodgy knee) at the top of the year: 

It’s cold and dank out there. I want to plant primulas to give a little pale colour in my front borders, now we are entering a cold, dark season. 

That change in pace. That change in feelings, in thoughts and in our sense of comfort. We emerge from a period of self indulgence; scoffing mince pies and chocolate, watching films and adjusting biblical figures in our nativity scene. 

My knee, barely oiled through indolence, suffers from negotiating the steps at eight o’ clock in the morning. Sharp spikes of cold hit my damaged kneecap. It’s barely light. There’s a film of frost glinting on the tarmac. We have to get the car out but the shock of scraping the windscreen pushes the festive period back into the shiny box of Christmas memories.

This is no longer hogmanay. It’s a bleak, barely back-to-life winter’s morning. The world is cold. I want to retreat to the comfort of the warm sitting room and not be concerned about whether the car will start. Or whether my knee will hurt. 

Down the hill the village square is devoid of human life. The lights are on at the supermarket and seem unusually welcome. We can wait in there, stay warm, do a shop, until the bus arrives. The bistro and the cafe won’t open for an hour. The bus shelter affords no protection from the icy roars belting around the corner on to this treeless pavement. In summer the heat beats through the bus shelter’s perspex roof. There is no shade. In winter there is no protection from the wind.

The farm shop with its early spring-coloured hyacinths and primulas is still in darkness. No colourful flowers for our front garden this morning. 

It’s barely dawn. We haven’t been out so early for weeks. Back then we were having the warmest December on record. It was hardly daylight but there was no winter chill. 

Now is a time for stillness. The garden will need to be still too. Not even a snowdrop has emerged. We wait.

Gardening with a dodgy knee #1

One of the glories of late spring, when thermometer readings race above 50 deg F, is that it’s time to start growing flowers and veg, under glass. But also the pain in my knee seems less.

There’s something about warmth: warm sunshine, warm water or even a hot water bottle, that soothes a dodgy knee. And physical activity gets easier. But I do have to garden in a slightly less vigorous way now. It’s not because I’m ancient that I have a dodgy knee. It is a result of having to jump off a boat that ran aground in Exmouth 30 years ago. The trauma to the knee when I landed badly ( trying to protect my back which had caused me some pain) meant I lost cartilage. I was told I’d likely get trouble with that knee in years to come. So here we are.

More positively there’s a scientific explanation for heat therapy. Warmth makes blood vessels dilate which means more oxygen flows to the muscles - presumably around the knee in my case. And when the muscles are pliable the knee joint is flexible - and lubricated - and the stiffness goes. Also, we all know how we feel when the sun is out. Warmth, on a neuro-psychological level, is good for us and decreases the pain signals to the brain. So warmth is good.

It doesn’t alter the fact that I have 3 or 4 prescription pain killers a day when I’m back out in the garden. I can’t kneel to weed as shooting pains charge up my thigh and I can’t get up. So I dig - with a fork or spade - and weed that way. When the soil is really dry I have a hefty hoe to weed between plants, if I’m lucky, or between rows if I’m not. There are ways around gardening with a dodgy knee. I get less done per hour than I used to. But, as I have all the time I need, now I’ve stopped tutoring, I don’t have to garden in a rush. 

Weeding between patio slabs, where I can’t dig with a spade is a trial. Sometimes my husband helps. Occasionally I resort to the least harmful weedkiller possible. There may be a tool on the market for such a job. I have joined a fb gardening group. They are so helpful - I’d better ask them.

Being outside at least 10 minutes a day is good for us psychologically, so says Dr Michael Mosley, who researches such things. It has been a very dry few weeks and I’ve barely been out to a pub, restaurant or to see friends over the last eight days as there’s been so much to do in the garden. But there’s also been much sitting out in the sunshine. 

A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot?

As I write I remember I left my amaranth - celosia plants out overnight. They should have hardened off by now. And the same goes for the romanseco ( calabrese) which arrived a fortnight ago in a cardboard book wrapper from cousins in Leeds. I repotted them and they are a good few inches bigger now. My lovely dwarf beans have also hardened off and I told my brother I would send him photographs of the rose he gave me for my birthday. It’s called Molineux. No guessing what the colour of the petals is!

But I’d better get on with it! A day’s light gardening to do. I may have to put a few plants in at ground level but many will go in the raised beds. The latter is much easier to do with a dodgy knee. Far less bending is involved. 

Until next time.

Bedtime

It’s finally dropped to 50 deg F in my small greenhouse and I’ve picked the last of the tomatoes. It’s been a long season: our first fruits were ready on July 3. And, so powerful are the cherry tomatoes, I could put away my chutney ingredients: Almost overnight, with my cherry tomatoes in the same bowl, the green medium-sized ones turned red. Hoorah.

Many weeks later than I expected I dismantled our last two tomato plants. There was some mould or maybe even blight on a stem on their last day. But it was academic as the plants were headed for the incinerator. I never compost tomato plants. I don’t want to spread blight but nor do I want the seeds from discarded tomato fruits to randomly germinate in the veggie plot.

I haven’t used Jeyes Fluid to disinfect the greenhouse now the temperatures outside have dropped. It was time to bring my lemon tree under glass and I felt Jeyes would be too strong for it. I could disinfect with a milder cleanser but I don’t want to upset the lemon tree which is full of fruit.

Now I am on that last bowl of tomatoes - the cherry and medium-sized fruits - it will be November when I cook with shop-bought ones. For four months we have enjoyed our own tomatoes and French beans, dwarf and climbers. I have a freezer-full of beans but never fear…the August-sown broad beans are in flower. And right on cue. We may yet have full pods in December. The ‘Luz de Otono’ variety is new to me. If they produce pods this side of Christmas I will include them in my future growing plans.

Meanwhile my thin leeks are gradually fattening and I plan to dig them in deeper, as suggested by a helpful member of the ‘grow your own’ group. I await the spinach crop but until then I can be picking the salad leaves. It’s hardly cold out there this late in the year.  I may even transplant the salad crops closer to the house. It’s then much easier to cover them with frost-proof netting this end of our long garden. 

So relatively warm has it been that my miniature iris bulbs are already 12 cm high. They are spring-flowering and shouldn’t even be showing themselves yet. I’ll be interested to see what Monty Don suggests for garden maintenance in the last programme of Gardeners World. It’s time to let nature go to sleep. 

Sunshine

It has been a joyous, warm and sunny September. And today, October 12th, I had to come inside as it was so warm sitting on our patio. The ‘sweet petite’ tomatoes are continuing to grow and fruit in the greenhouse which is recording temperatures of 62deg F. Still.

My shed/ workspace reached 66deg F yesterday afternoon - with the door open. In a few weeks’ time I will have to dismantle my tomato plants, move begonias, geraniums and others into the greenhouse to overwinter. It has a frost stat and a small gas heater for very cold January/February days. But not yet. 

But where do I put my lemon tree? It has produced lots of fruit, hasn’t dropped its leaves, and is healthy. However the fruits haven’t yet turned yellow.Maybe next season. 

Should I wrap the whole lemon plant in bubble wrap and put it in the (well-made) shed where it’s a few degrees warmer than outside? (But I can’t heat the shed easily). Or should I put it in the greenhouse - still bubble-wrapped - where it’s lighter and where I can put in a few hours heating as temperatures drop? 

These questions don’t have to be answered yet. 

In the meantime I’ve been reflecting on what a good life I have. Yes my husband is ill with depression and I can get tired as he is debilitated by it. So I have to do more. ( I do get help in the home and garden and get lifts when required). But sitting in the sunshine, surrounded by apricot and orange begonias, my newly grown pansies, the last of the bedding plants and feeling the warmth it is a time to be alive. The news, post-Brexit, post-Afghanistan and mid-Covid is depressing and politicians have a lot to answer for. But if you are lucky enough to be able to sit in the sun this late in the year you have riches untold.  

I was listening to Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Only Livin’ Boy in New York’ and admiring the view from my patio. I saw colour; shocking pink, blousy pot plants and a long, productive, cared-for garden. As I sipped my coffee I felt huge contentment. And I realised I’d grown up. When I heard ‘Only Livin’ Boy in New York’ first time around life was for the having - in the US, in California, in New York. But I’m older now. I’ve grown up. Yellow cabs don’t enthral me. My garden is a place of gladness and serenity. And I feel blessed. It takes work but it’s a bit of Eden, just outside my back door.

Now I’m going outside again, to wallow in ‘The Boxer’, ‘Cecelia’, the sunshine and a fresh cuppa. Bliss.