Phaidon contemporary garden book

Phaidon, perhaps my favourite publisher, has recently come out with a great little modern garden design book, aptly named The Contemporary Garden.

It catalogues 100 gardens from the 1920’s to the present day, moves through early works such as David Hosack’s Rockefeller Center Roof Garden (1933) to today’s conceptual creations such as Tony Heywood’s Split (2003), and spans the globe covering leading designers such as Roberto Burle-Marx (Brazil), Tadao Ando (Japan), Adriaan Geuze (Netherlands), and Fernando Caruncho (Spain).

Planting out tomatoes in greenhouse

After a few weeks of hardening off, RB and I took advantage of this spell of nice weather to transfer our now foot-high tomato plants into the greenhouse. We had prepared a trench bed for them a few weeks ago, and gave all the windows a final scrub before moving plants in (we use vinegar as an environmentally friendly way to clean the windows, which works well).

We are growing three vine varieties, Rose de Berne, Gold Medal and Millefleur, which will all be loosely tied onto the 6 ft stake as they grow upwards. We planted them a little further down in the soil than they sat in their pots as tomato plants will send out more roots from their stems. RB thinks that as they are in the same family as the potato, it is effectively like ‘earthing up’.

Amazing to think how far we have come since the chilly January days when we were fixing greenhouse glass.

Building the framework for runner beans

We have constructed our runner bean framework this weekend, made from our own wood. We are planting 8 plants, so there are 4 bean poles on each side, plus the extra supporting pole on top and at each end. The poles are stuck securely into the ground and tied together using twine.

Chipper morning

RB and I invested in a chipper, as we have heaps of wood around that is just rotting away. It means that we are able to clear out some of the fallen branches in the woods, making it more pleasant to walk through, and also use the chips for paths and borders. The vegetable patch received the bulk of today’s effort.

We hope it will surpress a weed or two and keep the paths tidy, but for now we’re just pleased as it looks and smells wonderful.

Hardening off & tomato sunburn

What with the great weather a week ago in the South East, RB and I decided it was high time to push the little fellas out of our nest. That is to say, we started the hardening off process for a few of our more mature plants that had graduated from seedling status. It was a great day, and instead of easing our plants into the outside world for an hour or two, we let them bask in the sunshine for a whole 8 hours. Here is about half our bounty sunbathing on a south-facing balcony.

On the whole, the little guys performed exceedingly well. We’ve had only one casualty, and to be fair it was the weakest of the sunflower class, of which we had already had a high sowing success rate. Unfortunately a few of our tomato plants have suffered from a little bit of sun-scorch, turning a couple leaves slightly white towards the tips. Interestingly it was the centiflor variety Millefleur that took the brunt, whilst the Rose de Berne and Gold Medal are still a nice green.

Moral of the story is hardening off should be done, and should be done patiently. Here is a pic of the white on the leaves. They will recover just fine.

Something is coming

‘Spring is here’ just sounded too plain, and although my title is perhaps a bit spooky it is the perfect description of how I narrowed down my Spring garden photos to only two candidates. I have shot oodles of snow drops, daffs, hyacinths, magnolia, rhodies, and other blossom, but these two, to me, really convey the affirmation of life that is Spring.

The new shoots of a long dormant fern:

And the promising buds of a currant bush:

Adidas Guerrilla Gardening Video

I loved coming across this advertorial/documentary style video commissioned by Adidas and filmed in London. It’s great to see a young and very funky brand make gardening look so cool. We have plenty of canvas for guerrilla gardening in London, and lots of people to cheer up, so I hope the trend continues. Well worth the 3 minutes.

Companion planting carrots and leeks

We have sown our carrots and leeks this weekend, and decided to attempt companion planting to avert carrot-fly. Three rows of leeks ‘flank’ the two rows of carrots, which we hope will throw at least some of them off the scent.

We prepared the bed by working the soil well, down about a bit over a spades’ depth, followed by a layer of basic compost on top to provide the fine-tilth required. Using the short side of a paving stone, we created long shallow drills.

Carrot-flies are particularly attracted to the smell of the carrot leaves being crushed during thinning, so best to avoid this by sowing thinly. After sowing we lightly covered the seeds, watered with a fine rose and gently firmed down the earth. As carrot-flies like to find a nice protected hole in which to lay their destructive brood, it is apparently best to flatten the earth as much as possible without over-compacting the earth.

Carrot-flies are vertically challenged in that they only move horizontally, so we will be adding some sort of foot-high barrier around the bed as well. Here’s to hoping the carrots don’t come up bifurcated.

Making raised beds for our vegetable garden

RB and I decided to build raised beds for the many benefits they bring: they prevent you trampling your soil,  make it easier to maintain quality soil over time as you only manure where you grow, keep the earth above ground warmer, and eventually look great, which will motivate me to get out and weed.

If you are DIY-capable or know someone who is, I suggest building your own as it is significantly less expensive than purchasing ready made ones. We plotted out our patch and have created roughly 1.5 square metre boxes – the largest possible size allowing us to reach to the centre (we both have long arms!). Here is RB building one of our 12 raised beds.

And here is the finished product in situ.