New year resolutions

Random planting notes as I am sitting in the train three weeks later and trying to make sense of my typed scrawl. I seem to recall I had a rush of blood at a garden centre and bought some more objects for the orchard: I know I planted two fig trees (well tiny little sticks really) outside along the same area as the other thriving fig. I think they are called Madeleine des deux saisons so that seems to hint I will get two crops a year like the main one. And I also put in two more Blackcurrants   cassis andega and blackdown around the rest of the blackcurrants. Sorry, the soft fruit orchard. Which sounds mighty grand for an agglomeration of bushes near a septic tank. But hey, we are feeling grand today.

And then I moved an awful lot of soil create a bed for the rose and the artichokes that I need to get in. It was a project I was going to delegate to Nicolas. But he is so far behind on the wall work that I realised that I’m just going to have to do most of these things myself if I want them in time. And just like the big wall being built nearby (oh so slowly) I knew I had to create a little retaining wall as well. Otherwise the whole bed would slip inexorably into the compost boxes at the bottom. My walls are a pathetic attempt, but so satisfying. And when I watered like mad there wasn’t a landslide. Result.

And then I started musing on creating the potting shed as a proper place to raise plants. Too often it’s just a dumping ground for all the tools I keep unearthing around the property. Found a sturdy but rusty sickle of all things in a thicket of brambles down near the vineyard. Obviously the brambles won that little battle.

And all this tidying and actually spending time in the garden meant I had
thoughts on the path steps. I think it will be thyme as a border down the side. I’m too chicken to recreate a rather glam late summer border scheme that I read in an RHS book from the library. I think I’ll stick to monoculture for a bit. Just thyme bushes all the way down. It will take a lot of plants. But at least they will give good winter structure. I don’t think I spend enough time just looking and thinking.

Back from forking out for the wall work. And not physical fork work, but cash. Mighty expensive labour. But I guess I just have to hope they last a hundred years and earn their keep.

I need to come up with a solution to our little veggie garden visitor. We have a deer that likes my cabbage plants. I can see the tracks it leaves behind in the frosty soil. Dare we go back to tahsome fencing? I feel we spent all summer removing the darn stuff. Anyway these are my preoccupations this New Years Eve.

It was still sunny and almost mild so I decided (rashly perhaps) to plant broad beans and peas in the potager. I’m giving one whole quarter of the garden to these lovely plants.

And then just when I chilled off from creeping about the bed putting in the seeds, it was a brisk session up to the potting shed (a bit like an assault course through the rocks and up a barely there path) to get more soil to put down over the new tulip bed. They do say to put your tulips down a good depth if you want them to come up more than one year. So instead of digging deep I have to pile em high.

There is’t much you can muse on while hefting a wheelbarrow of soil but I did think that all my reading of soil improvers might have yielded a good idea. Leaf mould. We have so much up in the forest. Perhaps I can create a sort of wire cage up near the top potager and leave it for a year to make good mulch.

So here are the new years resolutions
Walls walls walls, protect the potager
Grow lots
Buy a freezer and store the produce (thunder and lightning storms willing hate to lose it all with an electrical power strike)
Plant more flowers.
Not fuss too much about how long this garden is going to take. Enjoy each process rather than creating long lists of things to do.