The runner beans are in!

We've planted runner beans (variety 'Painted Lady') on some of our bean wigwams. The Annecy Garden is quite a sheltered space & while there were frosts last week on my allotment a mile distant, we think tender plants like runner beans & french beans should be ok.

Runner beans planted on a hazel rod wigwam. Note the mushrooms ~ a consequence of using spent mushroom compost as a mulch.

There are some pretty flowers now, Phacelia tanacetifolia has just started flowering. Insects, particularly bumble bees love this plant. But apparently the sugar content of the nectar is too low to attract honey bees.

Phacelia tanacetifolia with unidentified bee

Also flowering:

Viola 'Eastgrove Blue Scented', a lovely derivative of Viola cornuta. The plant is a good perennial & the flowers are edible, even if too pretty to eat

Broad beans are also flowering & they too have a pleasant scent

I'd just like to flag that we will be holding a Plant Sale at the Annecy Gardens, The Strand, Sandford Park, Cheltenham on Saturday the 1st of June from 11am until 2pm. Please do come along ~ we'll have a good range of plants for sale (all at very reasonable prices). As well as fruit & veg plants, we'll also have plants that are attractive to insects.

Wisteria time

The wisterias on the pergolas that line two sides of the Annecy Garden are coming into flower, they're beginning to look very pretty.

Wisterias in flower on the pergola, with mustard 'Red Frills' flowering in the foreground

A number of other plants are now in flower, mainly annuals that have survived the winter:

Self-sown violas, seed of which survived in the soil from 3 years ago when the beds were last planted with flowers, before being turfed over

Borage, Borago officinalis, there are also many seedlings of this appearing & these should flower through the summer. Not only are the flowers pretty, but also attractive to bees. You can eat the leaves, depends how much you enjoy chomping on bristles

The rocket (Eruca sativa) which we sowed & planted in the autumn is now flowering, we enjoyed a tasty salad of the leaves which are now particularly luxuriant & scarcely damaged by flea-beetles which make innumerable pock marks in spring-sown rocket (& also other brassicas)

The red & green salad bowl lettuces, planted out a month or so ago will soon be ready for harvesting:

The leaves on bloody dock (Rumex sanguineus) are now also looking lovely. They're edible. But really not that nice to eat. Still, maybe if you had them in a bowl of mixed salad leaves you might not be able to taste them, which'd be best.

Rumex sanguineus, looks prettier than it tastes

Preparing for peas & beans

A heavy shower of rain passed before we were able to start gardening in earnest this evening.

Here's the Annecy Garden, the rain has just passed

The mangetout peas that we sowed a couple of weeks have germinated nicely.

With the eye of faith, you can see a row of mangetout peas here, just germinated

In order to provide the peas with a support, we've given them some hazel twigs; hopefully the presence of the twigs might help to deter the voracious local pigeons.

Putting in pea sticks for the mangetout; we've saved these hazel twigs from last year, they're now a bit brittle, but hopefully will prove sufficient support for the pea vines

The field beans, sown in the autumn to make a green manure, are now coming into full flower & therefore this is the point where they are best incorporated into the soil.

Cutting down the field beans

We didn't dig the field bean tops into the soil, just planted seed potatoes amongst the cut down bean plants

Planting seed potatoes (variety: Anya) among the cut down field beans

We're also preparing for planting runner beans & climbing french beans. Once again, we were able to reuse the hazel rods from last year. It's nice to use local hazel, rather than bamboo canes imported from the Far East. The hazel was provided by Graham Saunders of Cotswold Woodland Crafts.

Creating wigwams for our climbing beans

All ready for beans

The seeds we've sown have been germinating nicely

The red & green lettuces have germinated well but are being overgrown by self-sown  mustard 'Red Frills' (with the feathery leaves)

An Alternative to Plastic Pots

Adrian Skilling, one of the Annecy Gardeners, has been experimenting with soil blocking in an effort to find an alternative to using plastic pots.

Soil blocks made with a special tool which makes 4 blocks from the compost mix

Adrian has been taking his own garden compost & leafmould, sieving them & then mixing them with sand & coir, this last is important as it holds the blocks together.

Here's the sieve which Adrian has made to fit over a wheelbarrow & through which the garden compost & leafmould pass before being mixed into the blocking compost

The advantages of this technique is that no containers are required & the plant roots don't swirl around, as they stop when they reach the edge of the block ~ this makes for easier & more successful transplants. However, the blocks do require more watering than conventional pots.

Adrian is currently trialling different mixes of homemade compost & comparing them with New Horizon peat-free compost.

Warmer weather means... watering

We've been busy at the Gardens over the past couple of weeks. In addition to sowing seeds of broad beans, lettuce & chives, we've also been planting some of the hardier vegetables.

Swiss chard, variety 'Ruby' is attractive & hardy

Here we're planting lettuces among parsley plants that have survived the winter

 The warmer weather means that those plants that have survived the winter have been growing fast:

Field beans (Vicia faba) and Phacelia tanacetifolia

The field beans and Phacelia tanacetifolia have survived the winter, we sowed the beans in the autumn, the phacelia plants are self-sown. Both plants are used as green manures. For maximum benefit as green manure the plants should be dug into the soil just as they come into flower (right now for the beans), but as their flowers are not only pretty, but also attractive to insects, the digging in may not happen until after they've flowered.

Very sprouty 'Sharpe's Express' seed potatoes

I couldn't resist a garden centre bargain, this bag of seed potatoes. First early potatoes, like 'Sharpe's Express' are traditionally planted on Good Friday, so I was a month late with these ~ we'll see if they come to anything. I've also just planted some Jerusalem artichokes, Helianthus tuberosus 'Fuseau' ~ these always emerge very late, so I hope I've not been too late in putting them into the ground. 'Fuseau' is a modern variety with regular, spindle-shaped tubers, much less of a labour to clean & peel than the very knobbly older varieties.

All this sowing of seeds & planting in the bright sunny weather inevitably means:

Watering, by hand