May

Corrina took the camera around the garden yesterday and captured the promising start that May always provides. Some of the promise was short lived thanks to high winds that followed and smashed through our borlotti beans and knocked the broad beans and the garlic around too. We always seem to get hit by high winds at least once in May, usually in the last week, but they've not damaged garlic before!

The garlic (Albigensian) and the Borlotti (Solista) before they were beaten by the spring breeze.
The bamboo's throwing up new shoots and they're growing a centimetre of two every day at the moment.

The Clematis Montana (Warwickshire Rose) has recovered from the hard prune I gave it last year after the patio was laid and I'm hoping it will soon be covering the shed.

Meanwhile, the Alliums are almost out in time for Chelsea

The rose (Dublin Bay) outside the front door is looking better than ever - not a hint of disease or pest damage (yet)!

And finally the Athyrium niponicum 'Pictum' is already the star of the fernery

It started a while ago...

OK, so I'm a bit late posting it but back in February the snow drops flowered and brought with them the anticipation of spring.


And at the end of March we started harvesting the purple sprouting broccoli, which was of course absolutely delicious. We ate this crop for lunch, quickly boiled with and topped with a poached egg and a liberal sprinkling of Cornish sea salt and coarsely cracked black pepper. So was it worth the effort of picking off the caterpillars and the space that it took up for 9 or 10 months? Corrina thinks so!

Fernley Goes To Bedfordshire

Back in November I put Fernley to bed for the winter and worried about quite how hardy he would be I decided to wrap him up well...

I started by wrapping his trunk with netting - my reasoning was that I didn't want the trunk to be constantly wet as it might be if it had fleece or bubble wrap directly against it and also the air gap, I hoped, would provide some insulation for the trunk.

I read that the crown is the most sensitive to the cold so I stuffed it with straw and dead leaves to provide a dry protective layer.

Then he had his trunk wrapped in horticultural fleece before being covered in a fleece house, constructed by Dad a few days earlier...

And then, just before his birthday in April, I woke him up...


We had a pretty cold February when the snow settled on his house but other than a few burnt fronds he came through the winter looking pretty good and now he's throwing up a few new fronds.
So Fernleys' winter home was certainly a success, though I think it might have been a touch over-engineered as I've since seen plenty of tree ferns left to the element for the winter with only a bit of straw stuffed in to the crown. However I'm not sure I'd take that risk, even though we're pretty sheltered here.