A Fresh Start

  NEW PLANS FOR 2011

 The beginning of January is the perfect time to look back over the previous year and analyze your gardening activities so that you can learn from your failures, build on your successes and plan new ventures. This applies to both my gardening activities as well as my painting projects.

Of course we are always at the mercy of our unpredictable weather and climate change brought on by global warming seems to be giving us a more extreme climate. New weather records get broken at a more frequent rate, whether it is the warmest summer, coldest day, the highest rainfall, or the heaviest snowfall.

Keeping in touch with weather forecasts is more important than ever before so we can plan seed sowing, planting, weed control and soil cultivations at the best times. It is even more important to make sure any spraying for pest, disease or weed control is done when a few days dry weather is forecast. There is nothing more infuriating than to have completed crop spraying then see it all washed off a few hours later. Last year was a very difficult year for spraying as the rain was never very far away.

The garden and allotment have never been subject to routine. There are so many new and improved plants to try, and ones that were previous favourites have gone out of favour if they have not been able to cope with a wetter climate. However I may be making a wrong assumption. Just because we have had four wet years and two severe winters in a row does not mean you can expect this to be a pattern. Prior to this we have had years of mild winters with hardly any snow, 2006 was a heatwave and my memory from childhood records seeing the first winter snows every year in November

However, it is great fun to experiment, so although I have tried many grape varieties outdoors in Dundee and discarded most of them, I will still continue with other varieties. Our climate may well get warmer and drier again and maybe I just have to find the right variety for Scottish conditions.

Paintings

With winter starting at the end of November, gardening has been put on hold till the snow melts and pruning and digging can continue. However the winter landscapes have been brilliant for painting ideas, so I have been going through the phase of planning art projects for the year ahead. The recession has had a big impact on art sales in the middle price bracket, but less so for smaller paintings. There is also a trend towards simpler images on unframed large stretched box canvases. So projects are being planned for a series of watercolour winter landscapes with minimalistic images, and some contemporary figure studies on large box canvases.

Now that could keep me occupied till next autumn unless of course we get a great summer and I will find it hard to choose between the spade, the hoe, the trowel or the paintbrush.

Flowers

The wet years have really sorted out the roses. Climber Golden Showers was always very reliable as was shrub rose L D Braithwaite, a gorgeous deep red, but they just could not withstand attacks of blackspot disease. Spraying with Dithane was not effective with the continual rain. They and many others have been dug out. The climber has been replaced with shrub rose Graham Thomas which is much stronger and will be trained as a climber.

I have a lot of very steep banks around the house where access to cultivate is a problem, despite a fair bit of terracing so these will be planted with drift of Fuchsia Mrs. Popple, Shasta daisies and some flag iris. This permanent planting will help to stabilize the bank.

Some of the bank was bedded out with spray chrysanthemums last year. I am hoping that these will survive the winter outdoors and grow again this year as a drift, of close planted stems that will not need any attention. Time will tell.

Vegetable Crops

Most vegetables cropped very well last year resulting in gluts of the usual courgettes, cabbages, lettuce, beans and sweet corn.

This year I must grow a wider range of crops and less of each as I am only feeding two people.

Although last year was a bit too wet for onions, I grew a Sweet Spanish Yellow variety from seed.

It was late, but produced an excellent crop that stores very well. I still have plenty firm onions left. I will grow that one again this year but must sow it a bit earlier.

Another success to be repeated this year was a super sweet type of sweet corn, and Swiss Chard Bright Lights has been very prolific, so I do not need so much, especially as we use a lot of Kale leaves in stir fries, and that is just as healthy.

With brassicas both cabbage Golden Acre for summer and Traviata, a savoy for winter will be grown again as well as Brussels Sprouts Wellington.

In the greenhouse it is hard to get a better tomato than Alicante for a large fruit full of flavor and my favourite cherry type is Sweet Million though the seed is expensive and not supplied in large quantities. Do not sneeze when sowing that one.

Fruit Crops

I grow just about every fruit available for eating fresh in season, in jams, compotes all year round, puddings, scones, pies, crumbles, smoothies and juices. It is very important to make sure selected varieties are the best for our local climate and soil. I have not always got it right, so there are many changes to be made this year.

I have several apple trees that provide eating apples from August till mid winter from those in store.

However,  I have too much Arbroath Pippin, (the Oslin) which is very early but does not keep so some branches will be changed to new varieties by grafting this spring.

Pears have the same problem as I have a large Comice tree that gets wiped out by scab in any wet year. Grafting will also be done to replace some of it. I will retain some Comice just in case we go back to warm dry summers again, as there is nothing to beat Comice in a good year.

Raspberry Glen Ample suffered a terminal root rot disease slowly killing the row over several years. The symptoms indicate it could be phytophthora. This fungus disease is spread in soil water so could be a problem if drainage is poor, or during prolonged periods of wet weather. I suspect the disease came in on infected new raspberry canes. There are several strains of phytophthora, some being quite specific to one plant host whereas others can attack a wider range of plants. I must have the latter as I also lost a white currant, and a gooseberry and some blaeberries also got infected. These were growing beside the raspberries, but lower down the slope. Different strains of this disease causes potato blight, sudden oak death and many other plant diseases.

I have replaced the raspberries with a new variety called Cascade Delight bred at Washington University and selected for tolerance to root rot. Hopefully the new canes planted last year will give me some crop this year. I will be sorry to lose my Glen Ample as it is an excellent variety.

I will also replace the white currant but will choose a different location.

I planted a new perpetual strawberry, Malling Opal last year, but it did not make a lot of growth so I will need to assess its performance this summer. It was replacing another perpetual, Flamenco which stopped producing runners, then died out. Perpetuals help to extend the strawberry season into the autumn without any protection.

Last year I tried another superfood fruit called the Chokeberry. Botanically, it is known as Aronia melanocarpa and the popular variety in Viking. The fruit can be a wee bit astringent if eaten fresh. Even the birds leave it alone till the end of summer, but it makes a terrific jam, compote, a deep red wine, and a very healthy smoothie. The berries are almost black and very high in vitamin C and antioxidants. The Aronia has one of the highest levels of anthocyanins of all known plants. The health benefits of aronias are being studied by food scientists. I have a batch of these sown in a tray and hope to have some plants by summer.

I now await delivery of a new cherry tree on the very dwarfing Gisela 5 rootstock, as well as a new grape vine called Solaris which I will try outdoors on a south facing fence, and hopefully I will see some white seedless grapes from a new vine, Perlette planted last year in the greenhouse.

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Healthy Food in Abundance

HEALTHY FOOD IN ABUNDANCE

August is a crucial month for harvesting in the gardeners calendar. There are so many edible vegetables and fruit available that it is impossible to eat your way through the crops, so friends and relatives all benefit and the freezer starts to get used in earnest.

Salad crops of lettuce, radish, tomato and spring onion have to be eaten fresh, but courgettes can be used either for immediate cooking or used for soup which can then be stored frozen.

Other crops of vegetables and fruit can have a very short shelf life so need to be prepared for freezing.

Vegetables

My summer cabbage Golden Acre may be an old variety, but it is very reliable and has been cropping for nearly two months with large, very tender, delicious heads. Caterpillar attacks were kept down by inspecting and picking off as soon as seen. Although they will soon be finished my winter cabbage Traviata, is heading up very well so I will try them out long before winter arrives.

Onions are now ready to ease up a wee bit with the garden fork to help them ripen in the late summer sunshine, if only it comes. They will get dried off and stored in a frost proof garage on wire trays. However they do lend themselves to roping up for storing in the garage.

Dwarf French Beans are now getting picked in abundance, then topped and tailed before blanching for the freezer. Those cooked immediately are extremely tender and delicious with a wee bit of butter melted over them.

My early salad potato Charlotte suffered from blight due to yet another wet year, (four in a row) so I am lifting all of them, and so far the crop has been excellent. Brilliant in salads, but they can boil away very quickly so keep an eye on them.

Fruit

My first early apple the Oslin, also known as the Arbroath Pippin is now ready. I do not grow too many of them as they do not keep and only last about two to three weeks on the tree, but they are delicious with a unique flavour. The growth is quite healthy and disease resisting, but there has been some brown rot on the fruit not helped by the wet weather. The Oslin was brought over to Arbroath Abbey by the cistercian monks in the 12^th century and although they established extensive orchards as a food source and for cider production they have mostly all disappeared.

Scotland was once a major centre for top fruit production growing apples, pears and plums from Melrose in the borders, Clydebank in the west and Carse of Gowrie in the east. These served local markets for years with excellent tasty fruit, but major supermarkets required cheap produce with perfect unblemished skins and evenly sized fruit that can withstand bruising during the picking and cleaning processes and have a long shelve life within the store. Older varieties did not posses all these qualities so they have been passed by for other modern varieties, mainly from abroad that travel well and may look good on the shelf, but do not have the distinctive flavours of older varieties.

Other pressures on land for housing, roads, railway and other agricultural crops together with orchards getting older and little replanting of young trees resulted in the demise of the Carse of Gowrie as a top fruit growing area.

However there is an interest in going back to these older varieties to ensure they are not lost forever as they are perfect for Scottish gardens and smaller estates who may be well capable of picking them carefully and selling them locally in farmers shops and markets. If the price may not compete with the supermarket the flavours, aromas and taste will be well beyond anything they are currently stocking. In time as the price of oil increases, affecting transport costs, it may be economic to establish commercial top fruit orchards with varieties known to do well here but grown as a commercial undertaking.

My young Peregrine peach tree grown on a south facing fence has now ripened the first of seven large fruits. The cold prolonged winter and late spring held back flowering so that frost was not a problem, but even so there was very few insects around to pollinate the flowers so hand pollination with my sable watercolour brush did the trick. Peach leaf curl disease has not appeared this year so the tree has excellent vigour.

It may not be a huge crop, but they will ripen on the tree with an intense flavour, and in Scotland it is quite a challenge to ripen them outdoors.

My saskatoon bushes have now all been picked. I cannot understand how last year I picked all the crop in one week, yet this year I have been picking for over four weeks. I will have enough in the freezer to last till next years crop.

Brown Turkey fig tree has started to yield a few ripe fruits which will continue for several weeks. A return to some summer weather would not go amiss to dry and sweeten them up, but the continual rain may tend to favour botrytis as they need to be left to ripen till they are quite dark and soft.

Raspberry Autumn Bliss has also started to crop. This mild wet weather is in their favour as the fruit is huge and sweet, but the canes are very tall at over six feet, and bramble Helen also favours the climate, but may do even better if the rain went off. We are not short of moisture in the ground this year, just a bit like the last three years.

The three year old goji plant continues to grow but there was no sign of any flower or fruit this year. As this is very new there are numerous gardeners all over the UK awaiting the first fruits. Sounds a bit like my new saskatoons, but hopefully 2011 will be the year.

Flowers

Gladioli and sweet peas are providing ample cut flower for the house and soon my spray chrysanthemums will be in full bloom as they are already showing a lot of colour.

Greenhouse

Tomato Alicante fully ripened on the plant is pure pleasure to eat in a salad and my Sweet One Million cherry toms just melt in your mouth. Alicante is a bit late, but now has very heavy crops that end up in the freezer to be used for tomato soup in winter.

The damp air has resulted in a fair bit of blight rotting the foliage. This must be picked off before it spreads to other leaves and fruit, but to compensate for loss of leaves, very relevant as the lower leaves are removed as the cordon grows upwards, I allow some of the top sideshoots to grow. This ensures there is always enough green leaves to draw up the sap and feed the developing tomatoes.

Grape vine Flame is colouring up well so hopefully I will have a fully ripe bunch to display on my stand at the Dundee Flower and Food Festival in Camperdown Park which runs from Friday 3^rd September to Sunday 5^th September. As well as my Scottish grown saskatoon fruit bushes I will also be showing some outdoor grape vines suited to this location, now we have a wee bit of global warming in Scotland.

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