Windswept Sunday

What is going on with this weather?! Warmer than average for this time of year, no rain and wind wind wind and more wind! I shouldn't complain as all the beautiful sunshine has been wonderful for the garden, however the fact that we haven't had a decent spell of rain for a number of weeks is not so good and on top of that all this wind. Poor Cowick Garden is taking a beating!

I wanted to transplant some beetroot seedlings today but with the galeforce winds we've been having I've been transplanting turned-over pot plants to calmer surroundings, namely the kitchen - hence the photo below. Getting to the kitchen sink has turned into a bit of a challenge. I also spent quite some time tying up the poor campsis who's had four of five branches, some of them quite large, completely ripped off. The lovely banana leaves who were just opening up into large proud green leaves have been shredded and the bamboo who is normally quite hardy has lost a lot of his leaves all over the garden.

Apart from this chaotic weather it's been a busy month in the garden. The sweet peas, peas and mangetout are all doing well and after a slow start the spring onions are looking sturdier than the wispy blades of grass that first appeared out of the soil. Parsnips have been slow to come up but some are now making a gutsy appearance above the soil and I'm hoping the rest of them will overcome their shyness soon too. Some tiny slugs made a midnight feast of a few of our beetroots seedlings a few nights ago. One day the beetroot was standing tall, colourful and proud and the next day they had been chewed back to their stems. The cheek of those slugs! Well we put an end to their after-hours parties.

My partner in amateur gardening crime was very keen on planting some potatoes this year so he bought some potato seeds and growbags and after weeks of chitting (leaving the seedlings in egg boxes to allow the sprouts to grow) and earthing up (covering the stems as they grow) there are some lush green leaves appearing at the top of the grow bags. Below is a photo of the bag with the King Edward potatoes. In another bag we have Maris Piper.

Strawberries are growing (they're on the kitchen sink at the moment - see photo above), apples are forming and the nectarine has a lovely little fan trellis to keep him attached to the wall. Bought in the nick of time yesterday afternoon before the war of the winds began!

The beasts are out and about

I'm writing this post from a sunny corner of Cowick Garden. It's been another glorious day, however, extremely windy. All the plants are looking a little windswept, probably not a good day for gardening. A good day for hanging out the washing and flying a kite, according to the weather man, but not a good day for planting. However, seeing as tomorrow is back to work, it was either do all the planting today or wait till the weekend. So I decided to hold onto my hat and plant some dill in the vegetable patch, plant a fuscia near the deck (the one we had last year didn't survive the winter) and plant a colourful reddy orange plant called a Georgia Peach!

So, in the vegetable patch we now have rows of marigolds and some rows of dill in an attempt to ward off the aphids. Still no sign of ladybirds in our ladybird tower however we have spotted some ladybirds around the garden so hopefully it won't be long before they set up home. We're also finding more greenfly unfortunately. There are still quite a few on the rosebush and on some of the peas and sweet peas. We've also discovered a large number of caterpillars on the blackberry bush. We never had such a problem with caterpillars last year until we started growing broccoli. (Damn that broccoli!) Looks like there isn't much out there to deter caterpillars, however, you can buy some eco-friendly, non-chemical sprays and we found some specifically for caterpillars on www.greengardener.co.uk. (Thanks very much Sheila for recommending the site.) We'll give that a go when it arrives and in the meantime we are cutting away the badly affected leaves and getting rid of any caterpillars we see.

We also discovered scale insects on the campsis outside the kitchen. Scale insects apparently stick to the branches and leaves on plants and suck all the goodness and nutrients out of the plant until they die. We removed as many of the scale insects as we could by scraping them off the branches (yuk yuk yuk) and then gave the campsis a healthy dose of fertiliser to help it recover after that traumatic experience of being eaten alive.

So it's been quite a battle in Cowick Garden these last few days. Aphids, caterpillars, scale insects, black fly, snails, slugs, it goes on. Can't let your guard down otherwise you are under attack by the beasts! This gardening business is hard work!