Harvest without the labouring-in-the-fields
This year our garden has been pretty much out of action - the builders have been digging it up, covering it in scaffolding or storing all their stuff in it. PB and I, in particular, have really missed gardening. Every now and then, PB will say sadly 'I *miss* weeding' or 'Please, please, please can we do some gardening?'. We have pretty much only got into the garden to harvest things and we didn't plant anything this spring, so what's there is all self-sown or perennials. It's been very interesting (to me. Possibly not to other people if they are not interested in gardening) to see what continues to grow.
Today's harvest:
Almost a basketful of the early apples ('Forge'), about twice as many autumn-fruiting raspberries as this (LB ate the other half), lots of sorrel (my favourite salad workhorse), one solitary hazlenut cluster (a purple variety of hazel tree, hence the colour of the casings) (the squirrels got the rest, as ever), roses. Not visible - some nasturtium leaves and flowers, a little bit of rocket, a tiny bit of marjoram and mint.
In June, I took these photographs of what was flourishing:
(this last one used to be the vegetable bed)
The main survivors (not counting things I didn't plant in the first place like grass and that nice orange-ish slightly dandelion-featured weed in the LH bottom corner of this last picture. Possibly called 'hens-and-chicks'):
Today's harvest:
Almost a basketful of the early apples ('Forge'), about twice as many autumn-fruiting raspberries as this (LB ate the other half), lots of sorrel (my favourite salad workhorse), one solitary hazlenut cluster (a purple variety of hazel tree, hence the colour of the casings) (the squirrels got the rest, as ever), roses. Not visible - some nasturtium leaves and flowers, a little bit of rocket, a tiny bit of marjoram and mint.
In June, I took these photographs of what was flourishing:
(this last one used to be the vegetable bed)
The main survivors (not counting things I didn't plant in the first place like grass and that nice orange-ish slightly dandelion-featured weed in the LH bottom corner of this last picture. Possibly called 'hens-and-chicks'):
- all the trees. Yay for trees!
- raspberry canes
- blackcurrant bushes
- foxgloves, both common and white version
- swiss chard (the stuff with the red stalks, looking completely unbrassicaish)
- roses, especially this pink one 'American Pillar Rose' which is extremely prolific and usually hacked back savagely
- fennel, sage, rosemary, marjoram (the rest of the herb bed got buried 6 inches deep in builder's rubble. I am sad about this)
- rocket
- flat-leafed parsley (that's a very welcome surprise. It's taken me about 15 years to manage to grow parsley at all, so I'm delighted that last year's success then went on to self-seed for this year).
- lamb's lettuce
- some plants are remarkably resilient
- permaculture principles FTW
- sorrel is totally the salad vegetable of the gods (especially since LB eats is happily and PB eats it (if grudgingly)). We have been eating sorrel since about February and it is still going strong.
- strawberries need more attention than you think
- have a think about ways to encourage the yellow frog to continue to live in our garden once it is less ideal habitat. The children love him/her and I am deeply satisfied at the idea of it eating all our slugs. And I'm fond of it too.
- do gardening with PB. It makes us both very happy.