Vegetables in January

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It’s been a while since I blogged about my garden (you haven’t missed much) so here’s a brief catch up. The herb cuttings I took last year were a complete disaster and all died slow deaths on my windowsill in a plague of aphids. I think maybe lack of water did it, or miss timing when I took the cuttings, or not using a growth hormone, or just plain old cluelessness! One of those is responsible. I’ll admit, though, that while I was taking the cuttings I felt like a ‘real’ gardener – even though I killed them all eventually.

Yesterday was gorgeous here in Hampshire and for the first time in ages I took a proper look around the garden. There wasn’t much to do, just a little weeding – but even that I’ve put off as I want to know what some of my ‘weeds’ are before removing them (see identifying weeds 1, 2, 3 and 4).

I was relieved to find the chives (which I though I’d killed by splitting them) look like they will recover nicely and have plenty of new growth.

Recovering chives

I also discovered that my lavender and sweet marjoram will need replacing as both looked dead. The lavender has left an intriguing skeleton as a parting gift.

My not-too-well lavender

My overwintering veg are fine except for the spinach, which looks very not fine indeed. I’m meant to have two rows of it, similar to the spring cabbage, but all that’s appeared so far are a few measly (now withered) leaves.

The runt in my garden

The spring cabbage survived the onslaught of caterpillars in my garden thanks to Spritz’s early warning :o) and will soon need thinning out (must check when). But it looks like the caterpillars got half a row of before I caught them.

Can you guess where the caterpillars stopped for lunch?

The overwintering onions and garlic both look in good shape and I like the look of my garlic shoots, they’re slightly more structured than onions.

Garlic shoots

Sorry for the long-winded catch up, I’ll try to write less more often from now :o)

As an aside, I watched Around the World in 80 gardens last night. I didn’t think it started too well but I really liked the jungle folly, despite what Monty said. I also loved everything about Cuba (maybe it’s the veg grower in me) from the beautiful allotments to the network of advice centres, it looked amazing, and all in a city!

Happy gardening.

28 Jan, 2008
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Comments

Spritzhenry

You have something to show for all your hard work, Peter! Don't worry about the marjoram, my flowering Origanum plants all die back and new ones grow up from the base. Have a look, I hope you will find new growth there. Sorry about the Lavender, it does not look well at all. Probably terminal, I'm afraid. My cuttings in the greenhouse were patchy in success, no luck with Lavender at all, the Osteospermum looks very poorly, the Helianthemums are doing - er - not a lot, but the successes were Verbena bonariensis, 100%, Penstemons, 100%, other Verbenas, 80 %. So all is not lost, like you!

28 Jan, 2008

Andrewr

I liked the jungle garden in Mexico as well - very quirky. Looking forward to next week from the Antipodes - I might have been to some of them a couple of years ago.

28 Jan, 2008

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