Puzzling it out

Treefield Path

It’s not that I’ve been doing nothing the last six months, it’s rather that I’ve been doing too much! Not just on the holding however, and not just plant related.  Things are changing – priorities, the way plants change the landsape, family and work commitments all change the way I interact on this platform.  It looks today like WP have made some more changes to the editing software that may make it a bit easier for me to edit and post at least on the PC, so I’ll give it another go and see how I get on this time. Unfortunately they also seem to have changed the scaling, I gues to suit mobile phone screens, but it leaves a lot of blank space on larger screens.

Elaeagnus branch with growth

It looks like it is going to be another really good growing year for the trees, and I didn’t lose as many plants as I thought over the winter.  I thought I’d lost one of my Elaeagnus in the former Dog Resistant Garden, (FDRG) but I noticed this week that one branch is showing quite a bit of growth and is in flower.  The unknown citrus in the polytunnel likewise is shooting up from the base.  However the kiwi is a goner, as is my larger gevuina shrub and one of the seedlings.  I still have one Gevuina seedling that looks pretty happy in it’s pot, so I need to find a slightly more sheltered spot to plant it out.  I’ll have to source some more seeds, since it doesn’t look like any more of the seeds are going to germinate now.  I still have a few in pots, but I am not hopeful that they are still viable.  The Arbutus unedo looks a bit tatty, but still seems to be alive.

Tatty Arbutus unedo

I’ve done a bit of work on the front garden behind the FDRG – trying to get out the creeping grass and plant it up.  There are a few currant bushes that are doing OK, some local elder cuttings ditto. I’ve also planted out the miscanthus grass seedlings and various other things that will do better in the ground that stuck in their pots. I was lucky enough to be given some dwarf jerusalem artichoke, and some chinese artichoke, so have planted these where the grass is more likely to come back – the theory is that If I have to dig to harvest then I can dig out the grass at the same time.  I could probably do with doing some more mulching in this area too.  We’ve had quite a warm summer, and so far the Yacon here seem to be doing better than in previous years.

Yacon and lush growth by FDRG

In terms of new planting, I haven’t done any broadscale tree planting this year.  I had intended to replant the area that I had cleared the ash from with small leaved lime, beech, italian alder, local hazel and rowan, however I didn’t really have time for much this spring due to commitments in the shop.  The experimental plantings of lime, and italian alder have done very well, however the sea buckthorn has struggled.  Some of the bushes are still alive, but I wouldn’t describe it as much of a pioneer.  It may be that it really dislikes my acid soil, or it might be that they take longer to get established and will romp away in a year or two.  All I know is I’m not about to go out and splash out on expensive cultivars if they’re not likely to make it through.  I bought four hazel cultivars this year and have been disappointed that two of them seem to have died.  I probably will replace them next year though, since I do think that they have a good possiblity of good yield here.  Next year I am also thinking of getting some Walnuts, and maybe some japanese heartnuts.

Baby Monkey Puzzle with bottle protector

I managed to germinate quite a few monkey puzzle tree seeds over the winter, and have started planting the seedlings into the treefield.  Ideally I would leave them to get a bit bigger, but I have a poor record of keeping things alive in pots, so I think they will do better in the ground. I have marked various places around the tree field where I think the monkey puzzles could go with long sticks, and started turning the turf over to prepare planting holes.  Unfortunately the spade handle finally splintered during this process, so there are still quite a few places to be prepared, and about half the seedlings still in pots.  The trees in the fruit jungle really look impressive now.  I have learnt from them not to plant the monkey puzzles too close to pathways since the leaf spines are really sharp!

Monkeying around

Wintry Showers

I’ve been a bit busy with shop projects recently, and with the daylight being so short at the moment, I haven’t actually done very much outside.  It is just past the solstice and it is dark till 8 a.m. and dark again at about 4.30 p.m.  The days are supposedly getting longer.  Usually by the start of February the difference is appreciable.  Some plants are already starting to show spring growth; the celandine leaves are already forming, others don’t seem to have realised yet that it is winter!  Some of the fuchsias still have most of their leaves.  Although the winter hasn’t been too bad yet, this week is set to be colder and drier, so at once will be frostier, but nicer for working outside.

In the former DRG I have staked the Gevuina, which is starting to rock in the wind a bit.  I’ll prune the leader out this summer coming and see if I can start a new plant from the removed tip; it is supposed to be fairly easy to take cuttings.  The two seedlings that grew this summer are still doing well.  I have just left them outside in the wet and they seem to be thriving.  I wonder if they prefer the cooler damp conditions, rather the drier, warmer conditions I tried in the polytunnel with previous seeds.  Maybe a little warmer to germinate, then outside to the wet again?  I still have several pots with seeds in that have not started to germinate but look healthy.

Large female Monkey Puzzle Tree in Portree Skye (May 2019)

I am rather keen to grow many more monkey puzzle trees.  They grow so nicely and shrug off the winds here.  The plan would be to put them all down the hill (not near paths) and let them grow until they fruit.  Then the female trees can be kept to provide nuts, and the male trees harvested for timber. To this end I bought a moderate amount of Scottish harvested seeds from an ebay seller, and have put these to germinate in the kitchen.  Based on the instructions provided by the seller, I soaked the seeds overnight, placed a layer of  damp vermiculite in a couple of old strawberry punnets, pushed the seeds in about half way, put the lids back on the trays and put the trays stacked on top of each other near the stove flue.

Seeds by Stove Flue

Every few days I sprayed the tops of the seeds with water to keep them damp.  After a couple of weeks I taped up most of the ventilation holes in the lids, since the seeds seemed to be getting a little dry in between sprays.  As I noticed that there were a few roots developing the other day I tipped the seeds out and sorted them.

Sorting sprouting seeds

About one third were sprouting so I potted them into small pots.  They are still in the kitchen at present to keep them warm, I’ll transfer the pots to the study windowsill in a week or so, when they seem to be settled down, and keep spraying them till then.  There were a few seeds that had rotted, so these were removed and the rest put back in the vermiculite, to carry on germinating.  It may be a few months before all those that will have started sprouting.

Planted up sprouting seeds

The tomato and shark’s fin melon seem to be doing well on the window sill, however the tamarind has died. I think it was too cold for it on the window sill. I moved it through to the kitchen, but I’m pretty sure it is too late.

Overwintering

Destruction of the Dog Resistant Garden

Flowers in DRG previous life

The dog resistant garden (DRG) was enclosed when our first dog Douglas was a youngster.  He did like to ‘help’ – dig where I was digging, and so on.  I constructed a windbreak fence around what was then mostly a vegetable garden in the front garden.  Over the years this evolved, first into a flower garden with the idea I night grow flowers for the shop, and then into a shrubbery with interesting edibles.  Now with Douglas gone and Dyson a mature dog, the fencing had seen better days and I was finding the square corners of the garden annoying.  I took down the majority of the enclosure in the spring and recently took out all of the fence posts.  The original paths no longer go where I want to wander, and the soil levels between the DRG and the barn bank were humped according to where the soil had been moved when the roadway above the barn (known as Lara’s road after our croft-Rover was parked there for a while) was excavated.

Fences collapsing

Over the last few weeks I have been energised to level the soil and re-landscape the area and plant up with some of the plants I have been propagating.  Dyson was a bit of a nuisance helping when I was levelling the soil.  He is generally very good, but when something is scraped over the ground, like a broom, rake or vaccuum cleaner, he likes to bite the head of the implement.  That’s all very well for those implements, but when it came to biting at the mattock head as I was chopping the turf, I had to put him inside out of harm’s way.  I cleared the soil off the barn road bank to stop it falling in, making a precarious walkway.

Levelling soil with more or less dog help

It was a bit of hard work to clear the old paths out of the DRG.  I had laid woven weed membrane along the paths, and when it was a vegetable garden I had transferred stones I found whilst digging to the paths.  These stones had then been covered with soil, so there was quite a bit of grass and the odd docken or raspberry growing through it.  I have pulled it all up now I hope.  One of my friends in the glen has a new polytunnel and they may be able to reuse the weed membrane, since it seems to be in pretty good condition overall, as long as they don’t mind a bit of cleaning.

Removing weed membrane

I marked out the new paths, including a curved one through the DRG, with bits of wood from the old fencing.  Some of the old telegraph poles that had acted as retaining walls for the raised central bed of the DRG were used to create a border to one side of the main path that curves round to the secret garden.  I could do with a quantity of wood chippings to cover the path with and weigh down some newspaper to keep the weeds down there.

Swales and marked out paths

Having levelled the soil, I then proceded to mound it up again between the path and Lara’s road edge.  Three banks were formed perpendicular to the prevailing wind direction.  Hopefully this will create wetter sheltered parts and drier more exposed parts at least in the short term.  The whole area is fairly well sheltered and shaded by the sycamores in the front garden, and this shelter should increase as the shrubs I have planted start to grow.

The final steps I have done so far have been to lay out the plants and shrubs and plant them.  I dug up some self heal and sorrel with particularly large leaves from the tree field and transplanted these to act as ground cover.  Most of the plants however are ones I have propagated myself.  I was going to plant out the two Gevuina avellana seedlings that have survived being repotted and are doing pretty well, but I decided that they are still perhaps a bit small to plant out.  I did plant out some of the plum yews I have (both japanese plum yew; Cephalotaxus harringtonia and chilean plum fruited yew; Prumnopitys andina, which were bought as seedlings.  Again they are pretty small, so I hope they will do alright in the ground.  I need both male and female plants to survive if I want to get fruit in future.  The Miscanthus grass is the other plant I recently bought.  I’m hoping to divide it in future years to screen the barn and create a bit more quick growing shelter if it likes it here.  I was very impressed with it at the East Devon Forest Garden when I visited a few years ago.  The one I bought from Edulis when I was visiting my Mum last year got a bit swamped by the nettles in the early part of this year, but also seems to be surviving so far.  I’ve put in about 6 asparagus that haven’t found a home yet, some blackcurrant seedlings which had self seeded in the pallet garden and various known and unknown plants that may do alright there and are big enough to plant out.  When I’ve finished planting I will create an annotated planting picture like I did for the drivebank.

Final layout

Still to do is to mulch between the plants, lay down paper and chippings on the main path, level the curved path in the DRG, and mulch between the DRG and the main path.  I may try and seed some of the area that is less likely to resprout turf since it was dug quite deeply.  I’ll leave replanting the other side of the path for a while to try and clear some of the weeds.  These are not buried enough to stop them regrowing, so need a thick mulch for a few months, maybe till next autumn.

New plant time

Some of the repotted plants

This week I chose to spend a few hours in the polytunnel tidying up and sorting out some of the various pots and trays that I have been attempting to grow new plants in this year.  I bought three bags of compost in Portree at Skyeshrubs last week, together with three plants, and the compost is already more than half gone!  I have potted on lots of the plants and seedlings that have been languishing outside the polytunnel for most of the summer.  Some of them were rather pot bound, including the remaining honeyberry that never made it to the orchard (I took some cuttings of this when repotting).  Some actually looked as if they had plenty of room, but will probably benefit from fresh compost anyhow.  Some are showing no signs of life in the pots other than the usual weed plants, which include lots of what I believe to be willow seedlings.  I think I’ve lost the wild garlic that came free with one of my plants bought earlier this year – there seemed to be nothing in the pot when I inspected it.  I’m not too worried about that, since it would be pretty easy to get hold of if I choose to introduce it.

Money tree, Chillean myrtle and Sechuan pepper

I also potted on my window sill plants: not the orchid (which is fine), or the christmas cactus (which I made a branched log pot for earlier in the summer), but the money plant (which I don’t know the proper name of) and the cuttings of Sechuan pepper and Chillean myrtle.  The money plant actually only seemed to have been using the top half of its pot despite being quite a large plant.  The cuttings have rooted very well, but I’m intending to overwinter them indoors to try and give them a good start.

 

New Zealand flax newly planted by road

The first of the new plants I bought in Portree is a Phormium tenax: Maori queen, which is a lovely striped pink New Zealand flax plant.  It will grow to about 5ft high and wide, which is maybe a bit big, but the lovely thing about these plants, as Martin Crawford demonstrated in his forest garden, is that the leaves can be cut and split to make handy biodegradable garden twine.  I’ve planted the main plant up by the road, where it should make good ornamental screening.  Phormium are supposed to be pretty wind and water resistant so I think it’ll do OK there.  You can also see the good growth and flowers of the white fuchsia that I moved to the roadside earlier in the summer.  As I expected, it has settled in there pretty well.  I chose a flax plant that had several offsets growing in the same pot, so now have another 5 baby plants for free!  These I will leave in the polytunnel for the moment until they have established roots in the pots, then I think I’ll put about three more on the road bank to the north side of the house.

Mrs Popple flower

The second plant is a Fuchsia: Mrs Popple.  I wasn’t going to get another Fuchsia, but this one looks really strong, with large bicoloured pink flowers and (the real selling point for me!) large fairly sweet berries.  They are perhaps slightly insipid, not so peppery in flavour as my thin flowered plants’, but quite pleasant.  I have planted this plant in the front garden near the failed mangetout peas and had to pull out several raspberries to make room for it.  It is a little bit shady for it there perhaps, but it is reasonably sheltered which is probably at least as important.  It is also quite near my established white and  dark pink Fuchsias.  After planting I cut back some of the non flowering shoots and made several of them into cuttings, so hopefully again I will have several plants for my money.  While I was at it I took some cuttings of my murtilo (Myrtus ugni) which is flowering well at the moment.  I’d like to put some on the drivebank, since I think a bit more heat may be required to get the fruit to ripen here for me.

Buy one get five free!

The third plant is a blueberry: Vaccinium floribundum, also known as mortiño or Andean blueberry, you can see it in the top photo next to the shelves.  Having since looked it up I am pretty happy that I bought this.  I wasn’t quite sure what it was when I saw it, but again I thought what a healthy looking plant it was –  and you can’t go wrong with a blueberry can you?  Although the fruit should be black or red on this variety not blue!  I need to have a think about where to plant this.  It is slightly tender, which shouldn’t be too much of a problem here (they wouldn’t sell it at Skyeshrubs if they thought it was too tender for the island), but it will fruit better with a bit of sun.  I’m wondering if I can find a spot for it in the pallet garden, although it is so pretty, it is worth a place in the front garden: maybe near the front path near the snowbell tree (which seems to have survived this time – the first one I planted didn’t survive its first winter).  I will have to clear a space for it in the grass though!  I’ll try and take some cuttings from this plant, but it looks like these are less likely to take.  They apparently are more difficult to propagate.

Now I’m in the mood to plan my planting for next year.  I have already ordered some more Gevuina avellana seed (eventually found with an US ebay seller) and excitingly both japanese and chillean plum yew, which I’ll post a bit more about another time.  I’ve got a little spreadsheet of plants and potential sourcing that I try and stick to, but inevitably some extra exciting plants get bought that aren’t on the list!

Mycelium covered logs

Remember the mushroom logs I made back in March?  Well so did I this week.  I checked on them as I was passing the trailer on the way to get wood in from the woodshed.  Peeling back the rubber mats covering them, I found that the ends of the logs were all covered nicely in mycelium.  I am hopeful  therefore that the logs are now ready to start fruiting.  It was quite warm in the early part of the summer, and cool latterly but the location I chose seems to have protected the logs suitably.  The instructions say to put them somewhere shady now and they should start fruiting.  I have leant them against the north end of the workshop behind the Hablizia trellis, where I found (to yet more excitement!) that the Hablitzia has set seed.  The only odd thing is that the logs still haven’t realised they’re dead; as well as patches of mycelium on the trunks, all the logs had little twig shoots.  I’ll try and remember to check them more often now for mushrooms forming, so watch this space!

Happy Habby bed (with logs)

Going forth and multiplying

Whilst the weather is less clement (we’ve had a reasonable amount of rain since last Friday, and it continues a bit showery at the moment),  I can again spend a little time in the polytunnel and this time use the potting bench and give my cuttings and seedlings some individual space.  I had quite a lot of plants grown from seeds since I have been a member of the hardy plant society (HPS) and they do a seed distribution every year.  My interest is in edible plants, but more garden plants than you would think are also edible.  I therefore managed to get quite a selection of seed to try and nothing lost if they don’t make it.

Two out of the three varieties of passionflower have germinated: Passiflora edulis var. flavicarpa from chiltern seeds, and Passiflora incarnata  from California which was a gift.  I grew these for the polytunnel in the hope that they will not only flower (and fruit!), but overwinter in there.  I’ve put them mostly along the northern wall.  I think last year things suffered slightly in the tunnel from lack of light, since I grew so many climbers on the south wall of the tunnel.  I also planted out some of my akebia seedlings (which turned out to be Akebia trifoliata), two on the north wall, and two by the apricot.  Hopefully they won’t compete too much with it.  I still have several left, and a few passionflowers, which I have potted on into bigger pots, I may bring them in over winter to hedge my bets.

New climbers planted along Left hand (North) wall

I had various other pots of seedlings that need pricking out.  Two sorts of campanula: C. Takesimana (Korean bellflower) and C. Latifoliata, these have edible leaves and flowers.  Asphodeline lutea (Yellow asphodel) is another edible (roots, shoots and flowers).  Apparently slugs love it (which does seem to be an indicator of ediblility!). It prefers more dry alkaline conditions but it does tolerate maritime exposure.  They did each seem to be producing a substantial little rootlet when I potted them on, despite having been a bit congested in their first pot.  Also from the HPS seed were some dahlia, allium, hosta, martagon lily, angelica and fennel.  The last two didn’t do anything – maybe too hot.  I should have sowed earlier directly on an outside bed I think.  The dahlia seed produced four lovely plants with dark coloured leaves.  I have planted two directly in the polytunnel, and two just potted on into larger pots.  The allium germinated well but seemed to freeze at the tiny hook seedling stage.  The hosta seeds suffered from the dry weather, but I seem to have a few germinating just now.  I did have quite a few martagon lilies germinating, but again had a few losses due to irregular watering, just four left.  Sadly my Gevuina avellana seems to have died.  I was just thinking it was time to risk potting it on, but when I inspected it I realised that the stem had rotted.  I am quite upset about this, but am determined to try again!  It must like it really dry as a young plant, and just couldn’t cope with the recent inundation.

Rootlet on Asphodeline lutea seedlings

I potted on a new type of globe artichoke which I think were from chiltern seeds and some wild rose seedlings which I grew from seed from a rose on the river bank which has larger hips than most of the dog roses around here.  I had pricked out some self sown good king henry, but almost all the tray perished in the dry heat (it was too shallow for them to stand much neglect!)  The last few survivors were potted into slightly larger pots, so they may have more chance now.  I’m going to try and spread some more of the seedlings, which are still close to the mother plant, around the garden.  They do seem to make a healthy plant for ground cover.  I have collected some seed as well to pass on.

I have cuttings of honeysuckle, escallonia and some perennial kale cuttings.  I have one surviving grape cutting (the rest all given away now).  These I grew by accident!  When I harvested the grapes last year, I cut them with a bit of stem attached (as recommended by Bob Flowerdew) and placed them in water, which is supposed to make the grapes last longer.  All the stems subsequently rooted in the water, and I had about eight quite nice little boskoop glory grape vine plants!  I have taken some cuttings of the little fuchsias that grow in my shop hanging baskets.  They do so well flowering, but are about four or five years old now, so I feel the need for back up. I have also taken cuttings of some of my tea plants since I lost so many over the winter, and some more escallonia which makes a really good hedge around here.

Some of the new plants.