Planting Garlic and Broad Beans in November

We had a lovely day out on Sunday so didn't get any gardening done, but Monday was still fine and dry and I didn't have to go to work, so I went out into the garden and planted the last of the bulbs I'd bought, so for once I shan't have wasted my money on bulbs that didn't get planted.

Even better, I then planted my garlic and sowed the broad beans. November is the best time to do both these things so long as you don't have heavy clay which is likely to get waterlogged over Winter, in which case the cloves and seeds are likely to rot.

Planting garlic in November gives it a the chance of a long growing period.

This year I picked up a packet of 3 Thermidore cloves, supplied by Taylors, from the local garden centre. This is said to be a full flavoured French Garlic. Thermidore should be planted in the Autumn. Other varieties are better for planting in the Spring.

At the end of the row, up the top of the picture below, you'll notice a clove of garlic that is substantially bigger than the others. This is a clove of elephant garlic, which is a British grown garlic, sweet and mild in flavour. There were only 2 cloves in the packet and I put one in each end of the row as an experiment.

For late Autumn/Winter sowing Aquadulce Claudia is an old favourite broad bean. My local garden centre were selling Duchy Originals organic broad bean seeds, so that's what I bought.  I've sown the seed a bit closer than recommended because I often find a few don't come up and it's always possible the squirrels will help themselves to one or two. If they are too crowded in the Spring I can thin them out then.

Sowing broad beans in November gives them a better chance of escaping the black fly.

While I was enjoying the garden I was joined by a robin who seemed friendly, but his cheery song might have been meant to warn me away from the juicy worms.

I've got my beady eye on you

I'm still watching that worm

Garden Makeover

I'm pleased to say that my recent lack of blogs is mostly due to being too busy than too tired. Once the iron tablets started working I had more energy than I can remember having for a long while. Hubby and I have spent most weekends for the last 2 months giving the back garden a bit of a makeover, although there's not much to show at present as many perennials are dying back for Winter and the bulbs won't be visible until spring.

Hubby has dug out several shrubs that had become overgrown and were never really in the right place, including a couple that were already in the garden when we moved in more than 16 years ago.

Here's how things were looking just a couple of weeks ago.The frost has reduced the beauty of the flowers.

Above, to the right of the path. The patch in the foreground still needs clearing of lilies of the valley and a bramble and I plan to move one or two plants.

 This is to the left of the path.

I'm hoping this will be beautiful in the Spring as there are a lot of bulbs lurking under the soil.

We've also tackled the big bed in the middle of the garden again. The right hand side has a tendency to get overgrown very easily. We've pulled out a lot of day lilies and some montbresia and have replanted that side with yellow flowered plants.

The idea is that it will run from reds on the right through orange in the middle to yellow on the left. Again I have planted bulbs to come up in the Spring.

Gardening involves imagination and a great deal of hope. We certainly hope all these plants survive the Winter. Autumn is meant to be a better time to plant hardy perennials than Spring as they have longer to establish themselves before warmer, and potentially drier weather sets in.

Autumn update

Well, Autumn is upon us and the leaves on our sumac tree have to changed rich shades of yellow, red and orange, but most other trees are still looking green. The blueberries are also showing autumnal hues. Now we have bees I'm pleased that we have sources of nectar and pollen in the garden at this time of year. The bees were all over the sedum earlier and last weekend they were still covering the ivy.

As far as we can tell the bees are doing well. The first hive is very strong and well provided for. We acquired the second hive later in the season so this is not as big, but has still multiplied well and has a reasonable amount of stores.

The tomatoes are slowly ripening, especially the cherry variety. This is the first year I've not had any signs of blight, but they are in pots on the front doorstep, which is sheltered and catches the sun when it is present.

Our runner beans are over now. We have quite a few small potatoes left as well as some garlic and I'm working my way through a Sainsbury's tub full of apples from our apple tree. We've had some pies and crumbles and I've stewed some up for the freezer. I also took my mum a bag full when I visited her last week.

On a less positive note, we lost Amber yesterday, but she must have been about 4 years old as we have had her since February 2009. She was getting a bit stiff in the last few weeks and we wondered if she was succumbing to Marek's disease like the other two who arrived with her, but she didn't seem to have any of the other symptoms.

Smokie is giving us an egg most days as is Fudge, but Fudge's eggs usually have very thin shells, in spite of adding extra oyster shell to their feed and giving them copious dried meal worms. In the last week Amber hasn't been at Fudge's eggs before we could get to them, so we've cracked them straight away and put them in a pot in the fridge for omelets. 

While We Turned Our Backs

A few days after my last post for 'Notes on a Garden' we went on holiday to the Ionian island of Kefalonia (Kefallinia).

They had luscious grapes growing everywhere.

Courgettes, aubergines and tomatoes were also growing well in many gardens.

Unfortunately when we got home we found our own garden was not doing so well.

The cabbages weren't doing too badly, although the slugs and snails were obviously attacking some of them.

The new strawberry plants are looking good, if somewhat overgrown. A good session of weeding will put that right, when I've got some energy. Mind you, we want to leave some flowers for the bees.

Our first hive of bees seem to be doing well, although we acquired them too late in the season to expect any honey this year. Due to the bad weather most of the summer we are feeding them sugar solution.

Thursday before last we acquired a second, smaller colony known as a nuc(leus).

Our legumes, however, are not thriving. The peas are past it, between the slugs and the warm, dry weather back home during the second week of our holiday.

The French beans were clinging on to life, but the slugs and snails have removed all their leaves now in spite of another application of slug pellets.

We still have a few runner bean plants left, which are producing beans, 3 of at least 7.

Mystery Bee

I took the above photo on 26th April and have been trying to find out what it is. I've finally had it identified, thanks to Twitter, by Ian Beavis, Natural History specialist Entomologist ‏from Tunbridge Wells Museum & Art Gallery, a follower of Brigit Strawbridge, who is pretty passionate about bees.

I am told that it is a female Anthophora plumipes, which wikipedia tells me is the Hairy-Footed Flower Bee. You'll see from the picture to the right of the article that the males have quite different colouring.

The internet certainly can be very useful at times.