Aminopyralid poisoning?

We have been cultivating the Annecy Gardens organically & as I have mentioned previously, the Council have kindly provided us with manure. However, some plants are showing significant distortion & we are fearful that the manure, although well-rotted, may be contaminated with aminopyralid. This is a herbicide used to control broadleaf weeds in pastures. Unfortunately it appears to be remarkably persistent ~ when grass that has been treated with aminopyralid is turned into hay & then subsequently composted after being fed to livestock or used as bedding, the aminopyralid appears to remain active & can affect crops to which the manure is applied.

Here are photos of plants at the Annecy Gardens which have distorted leaves.

The upper leaves of this Tagetes are distorted

Sunflower affected by aminopyralid

We have only had manure on a relatively small part of the Gardens, so hope that relatively few plants will be harmed.

Other sunflowers are growing very well, some must have grown 6" since last week and the climbing french beans are making rapid progress up the hazel wigwams.

Beans shooting up the hazel wigwams; rapid growth of sunflower seedling in midground

The 'Sharpe's Express' potatoes, shown as very sprouty seed potatoes at the beginning of May are looking very well, just producing flowers. Generally, it should be about 10 weeks from planting first early potatoes to harvesting them, so still a few weeks to go.

'Sharpe's Express' potatoes looking well despite being planted as very sprouty & unpromising seed potatoes

The artichokes are looking magnificent & the first heads have already been harvested.

Also ready for harvest are gooseberries, the plants producing a crop despite only being transplanted to the Annecy Gardens in February.

Gooseberry, variety unknown but probably 'Leveller'

The lettuce 'Lollo Rosso' seedlings are also coming on nicely.

'Lollo Rosso' lettuce seedlings

We were also very pleased to find a significant number of self-sown seedlings of the tomato 'Yellow Currant', this is a very vigorous bush variety, apparently blight-resistant, which produced a crop last year despite it being so unfavourable for tomatoes.

Self-sown seedlings of tomato 'Yellow Currant'

Cheltenham Green Doors gardens (some of them)

This weekend, a number of Cheltenham houses & gardens have opened in order to showcase environmentally-friendly technologies & approaches for houses & gardens. I visited a number of the gardens, all of which were not only attractive but also good for birds & insects through use of appropriate plants & gardening techniques.

In the garden at Cleevelands Avenue, use is made of raised beds for growing vegetables; the soil in this garden is naturally very heavy clay & difficult to work, so creating of a raised bed filled with compost has made growing vegetables easier.

Raised bed with broad beans, peas, lettuces, french beans, chicory etc

Within this garden is a mini-orchard, & among the trees the grass has remained uncut to favour wildflowers; the vigour of the grasses is reduced by use of the hemi-parasite Yellow Rattle, Rhinanthus minor.

Rhinanthus minor growing among grasses

View towards mini-orchard with wildflowers underneath

There were many plants attractive to bees, but the bumblebees seemed to love an Echium best

Echium vulgare or possibly Echium lusitanicum polycaulon

The front garden here was particularly pretty:

Chives, forget me nots & alchemilla will be succeeded by lavender & sage: a succession of flowers is particularly favourable in trying to encourage pollinating insects

The next garden at Fieldway, Ham Road is on the edge of town, adjacent to a very pretty meadow. The wildlife pond is a particular feature of this garden:

Wildlife pond, in front Geranium phaeum, loved by bumblebees

Geranium phaeum 'Lily Lovell'

Other plants which I saw being visited by pollinators:

Nepeta

Aquilegia vulgaris

Allium christophii

Iris sibirica

At Grosmont, Charlton Drive, the emphasis is on permaculture. Here were some fine tomato plants watered by a drip-irrigation system fed by tanks filled with collected rainwater:

Tomatoes watered by rainwater-fed drip-irrigation system

Mixed cropping in the greenhouse with Calendula to encourage pollinators

Comfrey, Symphytum, very good for pollinating insects & also very good for making liquid fertiliser 'comfrey tea'

This was also the garden with its own beehive:

Beehive in a sheltered spot

The final visit was to Garlands on Cudnall Street. Here is a really pretty garden, filled with flowers & buzzing with pollinators.

The main border with many pollinator-friendly plants, including Erysimum 'Bowles' Purple', Euphorbia oblongata, Allium christophii, Anchusa, Nectaroscordum siculum

This might be Ranunculus acris 'Sulphureus', but it was exceedingly pretty

Anchusa variety

A very bad photo of a good plant: Linaria dalmatica, very long-flowering, loved by bees

Euphorbia oblongata

Lavandula stoechas, a dwarf variety

Artichokes are upon us!

Last year we planted two artichoke plants (Cynara scolymus) at the Annecy Gardens, they grew a little & one, I seem to recall, flowered. This year both plants have grown & both will flower, but whereas one is a vision of spiky grey luxuriance, the other is not so magnificent. The reason for this is not apparent.

Cynara scolymus, globe artichoke, producing its first head at the Annecy Gardens

We grew sunflowers at the Gardens last year, a multi-headed variety called 'Earthwalker' with reddish-brown heads. At the end of the season we left the heads, these are a good food source for finches & the like. However the birds don't eat all the seeds & this year we have quite a number of self-sown seedlings.

Self-sown sunflower seedlings, Helianthus annuus from 'Earthwalker', already 12" tall & looking far better than the plants I have been nurturing in pots

A number of other plants have also self-sown, including Californian poppy, Eschscholzia californica, and snapdragons, Antirrhinum majus. We planted Californian poppies in the garden last year, but the snapdragons must have come from seed buried in the gardens at least three years ago, as that was the last time the Council had bedding plants in the area prior to grassing it all over.

Antirrhinum majus, snapdragon, a dwarf, but very floriferous variety

Eschscholzia californica, Californian poppy, a self-sown plant

The Phacelia tanacetifolia, borage, Borago officinalis and rocket, Eruca sativa, are flowering beautifully at the moment

Phacelia tanacetifolia, Borago officinalis & also, in the cente, a single red poppy, Papavery rhoeas

The flowers were buzzing with bees

However, in order to ensure a continuous supply of flowers for the bees, we have removed some of the phacelia & have planted some more sunflowers, which we hope will flower into August & September.

One of the carrot plants has survived from last year & it is now coming into flower & it is very fine:

Daucus carota (carrot), coming into flower with the white head towards the top of the picture, in the middle

Also appearing this week are the first flowers on the Tagetes 'Linnaeus'; we saved the seed from last year & sowed it indoors in March. It's very pretty, grows to about 18" tall & unlike many varieties of Tagetes currently available, has single flowers, which we hope are of greater benefit to insects than the more showy double varieties that are generally available.

Tagetes 'Linnaeus', a beautiful tall-growing variety which did well in the garden last year.

Black gold & other treasures

I'm not talking about oil, but something of far more interest to us in our organic gardening activities at the Annecy Gardens: well rotted farmyard manure.  The Council was kind enough to provide us with a heap of this:

We transferred some of this to the beds:

This manure is a great way of improving the soil texture, increasing the soil's ability to retain moisture during dry periods & the soil's capacity for remaining oxygenated when it's wet. Also a good way of increasing soil nutrient levels, something particularly significant when growing greedy crops like courgettes, pumpkins & squashes.

Courgette seedling

We planted quite a few different varieties of these, including 'Verde di Milano' courgettes, & winter squashes including 'Anna Swartz Hubbard' squash & 'Blue Banana' squash. The last of these is a rampant grower if provided with adequate moisture & soil fertility.

As well as providing us with manure, the Council has very kindly created two new beds for us, either side of the main gates to the Annecy Garden. We have mainly planted ornamentals here, but also some courgette plants, edible Alliums & lettuces, including 'Really Red Deer Tongue':

'Really Red Deer Tongue' lettuce in a compost block

These lettuces were grown in the compost blocks mentioned in an earlier post & they're looking really nice plants.

Because the new beds are probably the sunniest of any in the Annecy Garden, they're more prone to drying out than any others & we spent a significant amount of time this evening watering the new plantings:

Watering brassicas which had been planted by a guerilla gardener since our last Monday evening session

The beds in the garden are looking very pretty, a mass of flowers of rocket, phacelia, kale 'Redbor' & borage & the flowers are humming with bees, mainly bumble bees, but also some honey bees.

Beds full of flowers: Phacelia tanacetifolia, rocket Eruca sativa, borage Borago officinalis & kale 'Redbor'

The bees were also visiting the broad beans & field beans. Looking particularly pretty were the 'Casasa Midwinter' broad beans, this strain has flowers in shades of pink, red, black & brown. The seeds of this variety are initially pinkish-red or green, but ripen to a dark purple colour. I have been selecting this strain on my allotment for nearly 20 years now, the plants are derived from a number of  heritage varieties including 'Crimson Flowered', 'Red Epicure' and 'Estonian Purple Seeded'. I generally have some spare seeds, so do get in touch via this blog if you'd like to try growing this strain.

'Casasa Midwinter' broad bean, here being visited by a bee

A colour variant with the 'Casasa Midwinter' beans

A brighter red

I heard this charitably referred to as being 'sepia coloured'

Apologies for the blurred photos this week, must have got my mucky finger over the camera lens.

Some unusual South American vegetables

Many of the vegetables we commonly grow in England originate from South America ~ potatoes, tomatoes, courgettes, squashes, french beans, runner beans & sweetcorn for example. But there are many further species historically cultivated in the Andes & other temperate parts of South America that also grow well here in UK.

But first of all we needed to clear some space, so here's Cherry chopping down the phacelia & field beans:

Phacelia tanacetifolia and field beans are grown as green manure for incorporating into the soil to improve  soil texture & nutrient levels

In the place of the phacelia & field beans, we've put in some more wigwams made of hazel rods & at their bases we've planted mashua (Tropaeolum tuberosum 'Ken Aslet') ~ this is a nasturtium relative, grow in the Andes for their edible tubers. But, like many nasturtiums, it's also very ornamental with red and orange flowers.

Tropaeolum tuberosum 'Ken Aslet'

We've also planted the sunflower relative, yacon (Smallanthus sonchifolius). This is grown for its tubers, which are produced in the autumn. They are very sweet, but diabetics can eat them because the sweetness is not derived from sucrose or fructose.

Yacon, Smallanthus sonchifolius

The plants have been in my greenhouse up to now as they're not frost hardy.

The third unusual plant we put in was variegated corn, Zea mays 'Quadricolor'.

Zea mays 'Quadricolor', a variegated maize. The variegation doesn't appear in seedlings until they're a few weeks old. I'm hoping these plants come true, as they're from seed saved from plants growing in my garden ~ the chances of cross pollination should be low, as my garden is in the middle of town, the nearest sweetcorn plants on allotments a quarter of a mile distant.