My plan for homegrown salad this year, clematis armandii, bits of string, and things you mean to do but don't
Hello friends!
Rain and wind and general dastardly weather has stopped play this week really so I have no idea why this newsletter is so abominably long! Skip down to the bottom for my timetable to have green things on my table from now until winter and, in a nutshell, if you can get hold of some Clematis armandii (see pic) to put indoors then, like DO IT!
Monday
What wind and rain! We wuther about in our coats trying not to freeze up completely. Both of the myrtle trees (in containers) have blown over in the wind - this has never happened before and luckily they sit on a path made from compacted sand, so the pots don't crack as it's a soft landing. I leave them on their sides as the weather shows no signs of abating and start digging a hole to transplant one of them into. These trees are suffering from living in pots; the foliage is sparse and they're just not as pretty as they once were. It's time for them to be absorbed into the ground. Digging makes me instantly warmer but the ground is hard and I don't get very far before I am accosted by a small child who wants to know about worms. She is curiously freaked out by them which is odd, because I've always handled worms in front of her. Perhaps it's her nursery peers. I do vividly remember, at four or five, assimilating the idea that it was somehow not cool to be unafraid of dogs...I consequently told everyone I was afraid of them and they believed me. I knew I was lying. Very odd.
I resolve to get the hole dug and the tree in at some point this week. Can't be that hard, can it?
Tuesday
I am lucky enough to have neighbours with endless clematis armandii, but up until now I haven't quite had the nerve to nab it for myself. The one that peeps over my back wall is, however strangling one of my hornbeam trees and as I release the branches from its grasp, I also furtively tie the strands in to my side of the trellis. This is totally allowed and frankly if I were my neighbours I'd want to share, but for some reason (perhaps because I'm a Londoner) I still feel a bit naughty doing it.
The hole digging hasn't gone any further, and the pots are still on their sides.
Wednesday
It's still raining. Today I take five minutes to cut some jute twine into pieces, about 30cm long...lots and lots of them. I then divide them up into the pockets of each of my coats. I seem to have accumulated a lot of coats in my life, and having basically chopped my entire wardrobe into a sliver of its former self, the coats are still resolutely there. Each one seems to serve its own particular purpose and I simply cannot live without it. So the bits of string go into the pockets of about twelve coats. I like doing this as it means I always have string when I need it. No, I am not some weird incarnation of a Just William; I just like to have string for those random occasions when I am passing a waving tendril, so I can tie it to a spot where it will be useful and give good coverage. I put on my anorak and go outside to stare at the rose that I am still wondering whether to get rid of. The thing is putting on rampant growth. The deep red shoots are sprouting and I know in my heart that I won't be able to bear to take it out of the ground now that it's started growing again.
The hole digging hasn't gone any further, and the pots are still on their sides.
Thursday
Lots of indoor bustling today. Tomatoes are coming up left right and centre, as are chillies and cobaea, (whenever I sow cobaea there is always one plant way out in the front - the keen one, germinating at least a week before the others, and then there is a group of them that pop up a week later, one after the other, and then finally a couple skulking along behind at the back...a bit like children on a school trip really) Anyway they are all up and out of the propagator except one, and my children have been busy sowing wild tomatoes from their Mudnbloom boxes. I found these boxes at the press event thing the other day and ordered some immediately (this is not an ad) The children have made wind chimes and sowed tomatoes...goodness knows where all these tomatoes will go, but here they are, making us proud and causing much excitement. I wipe the leaves of the fiddle leaf fig and the monstera and the hippeastrum with a damp cloth and am shocked at how filthy they are. I water and feed everything and call it gardening.
The hole digging hasn't gone any further and the pots are still on their sides.
Friday
I have a wide shallow pot on my terrace, usually home to herbs. I pulled out the sage a while ago because I just don't eat enough sage to warrant having it in a pot right next to my back door, and I also pulled out the mint, because it had broken free from the confines of the plastic pot in which it was buried, and was attempting to take over the larger space. I am left with a measly parsley plant, and another one which I bought recently. The idea was to have a large pot filled with the stuff, but I realise now that I need to get ready for sowing my salad leaves, which I am planning to sow successionally from next month every two weeks. I am a cut-and-come-again queen, never quite having the patience (or, indeed the confidence) for fully hearted lettuce but that's going to change this year. All this is to say that this 'parsley pot' is now going to be one of my cut and come again salad pots. It is wide and shallow and terracotta and beautiful, and so today I empty it of its old compost (which must have done a good two or three years, and use that to mulch the base of my sarcococca shrubs. I've been having very interesting conversations recently about mulch, and the received wisdom that mulching with well-rotted manure or rich garden compost is never not a good idea. This is of course, totally wrong. Plants all have different requirements and if you dump a load of nutrient rich stuff around a plant that likes things poor, then it'll just put on loads of leafy growth and no flowers - or worse, it'll die. As always, the trick is to be instinctive and never take anyone's word for anything.
I cut three large sprigs of my neighbour's clematis, heavy with flower, fill a vase, drop in a frog and plonk the stems in. The scent is out of this world. I may have to take this vase to bed with me tonight.
The hole digging hasn't gone any further and the pots are still on their sides. 🤷♀️
Free greens from now until winter and beyond: A timetable of sorts.
I'm a world away from being self sufficient, but I am constantly looking for ways to cut my food budget and increase the nutrient density of our meals. Obviously, like any sane person on this precious planet, I also want to cut out plastic, and I've managed to do this pretty effectively when it comes to grains, meat and fish, by switching over to a bulk store, butcher and fishmonger respectively. This means that a lot of the plastic I'm still getting comes from the bagged salad I'm receiving in my veg box and buying from the supermarket. I thought I would share the plan I'm plotting, to keep my family in greens for the majority of the year, starting right now. Here it is:
Immediately:
Peashoots in a pot: I will be sowing a wide, shallow pot of peas this weekend indoors, which will give me pea shoots in a matter of days. I will be sowing a second pot in a fortnight and keep this going indefinitely, moving the pots outside when the weather is warm enough. These shoots are delicious and even children love them. You can get more detailed instructions on how to sow them in the link above.
Microgreens in a pot: Pretty much the same deal as for pea shoots, I'll be doing a fortnightly sowing of micro greens in two wide, shallow pots or plastic seed trays. Again, click the link in the title for more detailed instructions on how to sow micro greens.
Hearted lettuce: On the advice of Alex Mitchell, I'm going to have my first stab at hearted lettuce with 'Webb's Wonderful' which I'll sow individually in jiffy 7's, perhaps in a group of four, and pot on into a 20-30cm pot. They are supposed to heart up and be ready in eight weeks, and each one will yield an entire family salad. We eat two to three family salads a week (well, yes, I eat most of it, so yeah, they're not really 'family salads are they' but still, I reckon I'll want two crunchy lettuces a week to feed my salad addiction). That means sowing four or five seeds every fortnight to keep things ticking over. I'll begin this escapade indoors and then take it outside in May when I know there won't be any more frosts.
April and beyond:
Cut and come again leaves: I'll be sowing a very large wide container on my terrace with Johnson's Ovation mixed leaves, recommended to me by Alex Mitchell. These I'll be thinning to 5cm apart and then picking off single leaves as and when I want salad, and I'll be sowing a new pot's worth every fortnight all the way through to early autumn.
I'm hoping that with these four seed packets I'll be able to stop using bagged salad entirely. I'll be keeping a tally of the cost of seed, compost and time spent also, because it interests me, and might also interest you too. I'll also try and chronicle in all on Instagram stories (because if it's not storied then it hasn't happened right?) and if you have any suggestions for me on this particular thing, then do just hit reply and get in touch - I'd love to know your thoughts.
xx Laetitia
ps you might have missed:
Night scented plants you need for summer
My favourite cold frames
Daily posts on instagram
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