2018 in the garden. What a difficult time. Brutal cold snaps, wide expanses of drought. Dead plants, neglected seedlings that dried to dust in the hot hot heat. It's nine years now since I started to tansform my back garden from a mess of rubbish and concrete into a soft green box, and it's much lovelier than it was; but now undeniably entering its difficult, tweenage years.
January started with trend prediction for 2018 in the show gardens; sadly, my regular garden show partner and I were both overworked, exhausted and unavailable to see if may of my predictions came through this year. Although, waterfall plants and flaming mutants have both had their time in the sun this year, and it's fair to say that there have been a lot of dead hedges too, although sadly most have been unintentional. In other news, the pale green checkerboard slipper orchid lives on, I never did make myself a lawn jacket, and nor did I bring back stumps and bark for moss to grow on - it was too cold, then too dry.
February saw me starting to get excited about ways of greening the urban environment, planting sweet peas, giving the garden a good spring clean and planting up masses of tomatoes and chillis - and feeding and watering up and taking out half my plants to get them started for spring, just in time for the beast from the East to kill them in a cold snap.
March continued cold. I got the fancy tree surgeons in to take out the overhang of my posh back neighbour's back hedge but their quote for the neighbour's willow tree was out of our range, so that's still a big and increasing problem. I took fleece off plants, I put it back on again. I pulled plants under cover, and then discovered that the plants under cover had also died. Everything browned in the frost.
April was mostly about teeth and green roofs. The moss on my verandah roof drew blackbirds who coould find food in it through the snow (there's still snow). Coltsfoot did well. Oh, and I caught the rumour of an allotment....
May I took on the allotment, and had an awesome time, when I wasn't being bored, lonely and knackered. I wouldn't say I really have this allotment thing nailed. Back at home, my tulips came up, my cane orchid reflowered, and I finally got the tomatoes out. All from seed this year - go me! I also found a plague of ladybird larvae down on Donnington Bridge and kidnapped a jar of them to eat the aphids on my apple tree. I can report that this worked much better than ordering them by post and I hope to do the same next year.
June I got the first fruits of the allotment - radishes and strawbs! But I've been waiting for good weather to move plants around for three months now, and none has come. It went straight from too cold to too dry with hardly a beat. My plants that have been waiting in staging are starting to die. I take some steps, but this year is already looking like a rearguard action in my garden, so I decide to indulge in some urban utopian speculation in my urban greenvasion series instead.
July things began to die in earnest. I yanked the strawberry pots after I failed once again to beat the slugs to the thin, mean harvest of a few sullen fruits. The blueberry bushes gave up the ghost. Most of the plants that had been in staging waiting for good weather to plant out were dead or being strangled by native weeds after I hastily shoved them into a border on a rare mild day. Even the tomatoes were reluctant to flower. But every year has something that likes it, and this year's success stories were starting to show; Kashmiri chillies. The grapes. Tweedia.
August the bindweed came. The Rhododendron tried to flower again. The apples set in absurd quantities. Tomatoes began to show here and there in the mess of the greenhouse, but keeping them watered was a constant struggle. Gardening was mostly a round of watering, wincing as the cold water from the rising main hit the fragile plants. Pretty much everything was showing drought damage by this stage. In retaliation I yanked a bunch more pots, including the blueberry container. I found a bench on sale and put it into the space where it had been. This was an instant hit with me and the cats, especially in the quiet of early morning.
September the first of the chillies came through - a pot of windowsill habaneros. They were wicked hot and delicious. Otherwise the month was spent watering, wondering if it would ever rain again and singing the praises of my new super-light hose which cut time spent watering to lovely waterfall ribbons. Drought continues, of course.
October was a full month of finding another thing that had died in the garden. After a bit it obviously became too big a job to sort out, though Tim helped me by encouraging me to replace the Tree Fern. Inbetween tutting at dead plants I stared at the grape vine, thinking, I really should harvest that. In the final week the temperature began to plummet and I realised we would have frost by Halloween and filled the shed with tender plants.
November I spent irritably looking for orchid pots after the situation in the bathroom just got silly. Later, in a sudden frenzy of activity, I harvested tomatoes, grapes, made chutney, made wine. It finally started to rain, to get cold, to get properly miserable outside. And it was in this bullshit horrible weather my cat was taken ill, in my garden, early one morning, in late November. And that was her gone.
December was little more than lurching into the shed to keep the overwintering plants moist. I planted some sweet pea seeds I found in an old pot, but they weren't viable any more, and didn't sprout. I bought more seeds, but didn't plant them. Just before Christmas I was bringing in the last of the chilli harvest - Kashmiris, green and fresh.
And that was 2018, in the garden.
January started with trend prediction for 2018 in the show gardens; sadly, my regular garden show partner and I were both overworked, exhausted and unavailable to see if may of my predictions came through this year. Although, waterfall plants and flaming mutants have both had their time in the sun this year, and it's fair to say that there have been a lot of dead hedges too, although sadly most have been unintentional. In other news, the pale green checkerboard slipper orchid lives on, I never did make myself a lawn jacket, and nor did I bring back stumps and bark for moss to grow on - it was too cold, then too dry.
February saw me starting to get excited about ways of greening the urban environment, planting sweet peas, giving the garden a good spring clean and planting up masses of tomatoes and chillis - and feeding and watering up and taking out half my plants to get them started for spring, just in time for the beast from the East to kill them in a cold snap.
March continued cold. I got the fancy tree surgeons in to take out the overhang of my posh back neighbour's back hedge but their quote for the neighbour's willow tree was out of our range, so that's still a big and increasing problem. I took fleece off plants, I put it back on again. I pulled plants under cover, and then discovered that the plants under cover had also died. Everything browned in the frost.
April was mostly about teeth and green roofs. The moss on my verandah roof drew blackbirds who coould find food in it through the snow (there's still snow). Coltsfoot did well. Oh, and I caught the rumour of an allotment....
May I took on the allotment, and had an awesome time, when I wasn't being bored, lonely and knackered. I wouldn't say I really have this allotment thing nailed. Back at home, my tulips came up, my cane orchid reflowered, and I finally got the tomatoes out. All from seed this year - go me! I also found a plague of ladybird larvae down on Donnington Bridge and kidnapped a jar of them to eat the aphids on my apple tree. I can report that this worked much better than ordering them by post and I hope to do the same next year.
June I got the first fruits of the allotment - radishes and strawbs! But I've been waiting for good weather to move plants around for three months now, and none has come. It went straight from too cold to too dry with hardly a beat. My plants that have been waiting in staging are starting to die. I take some steps, but this year is already looking like a rearguard action in my garden, so I decide to indulge in some urban utopian speculation in my urban greenvasion series instead.
July things began to die in earnest. I yanked the strawberry pots after I failed once again to beat the slugs to the thin, mean harvest of a few sullen fruits. The blueberry bushes gave up the ghost. Most of the plants that had been in staging waiting for good weather to plant out were dead or being strangled by native weeds after I hastily shoved them into a border on a rare mild day. Even the tomatoes were reluctant to flower. But every year has something that likes it, and this year's success stories were starting to show; Kashmiri chillies. The grapes. Tweedia.
August the bindweed came. The Rhododendron tried to flower again. The apples set in absurd quantities. Tomatoes began to show here and there in the mess of the greenhouse, but keeping them watered was a constant struggle. Gardening was mostly a round of watering, wincing as the cold water from the rising main hit the fragile plants. Pretty much everything was showing drought damage by this stage. In retaliation I yanked a bunch more pots, including the blueberry container. I found a bench on sale and put it into the space where it had been. This was an instant hit with me and the cats, especially in the quiet of early morning.
September the first of the chillies came through - a pot of windowsill habaneros. They were wicked hot and delicious. Otherwise the month was spent watering, wondering if it would ever rain again and singing the praises of my new super-light hose which cut time spent watering to lovely waterfall ribbons. Drought continues, of course.
October was a full month of finding another thing that had died in the garden. After a bit it obviously became too big a job to sort out, though Tim helped me by encouraging me to replace the Tree Fern. Inbetween tutting at dead plants I stared at the grape vine, thinking, I really should harvest that. In the final week the temperature began to plummet and I realised we would have frost by Halloween and filled the shed with tender plants.
November I spent irritably looking for orchid pots after the situation in the bathroom just got silly. Later, in a sudden frenzy of activity, I harvested tomatoes, grapes, made chutney, made wine. It finally started to rain, to get cold, to get properly miserable outside. And it was in this bullshit horrible weather my cat was taken ill, in my garden, early one morning, in late November. And that was her gone.
December was little more than lurching into the shed to keep the overwintering plants moist. I planted some sweet pea seeds I found in an old pot, but they weren't viable any more, and didn't sprout. I bought more seeds, but didn't plant them. Just before Christmas I was bringing in the last of the chilli harvest - Kashmiris, green and fresh.
And that was 2018, in the garden.
