The butterfly defect

When did you last see a butterfly in your garden, indeed anywhere?


I think I saw one in Greece, but I've certainly not had any in my garden ever. In my hazy warm childhood memories you couldn't move for a suicidal Cabbage White or sun-drugged Red Admiral, hurtling towards you in that predictably unpredictable way only to duck and weave out of danger at the last second and head merrily on as if nothing was about to happen. 


What's going on?! Well, I've done some investigating and national treasure Sir David Attenborough, president of Butterfly Conservation has issued a call to gardeners arms. It seems our current nemesis RAIN is at the heart of the decline. It happened in teh deluges of 2007, with the winged population plummeting faster than you can say 'burnt moth'.

You can read more at the Butterfly Conservation website, which seems to have a photo of pretty much every butterfly out there. The photos reminded me just how striking they can be. I'm easily seduced by the absorbing colours on the wings, but of course it's all designed to distract you from...the face (sorry butterfly fans, that was very mean of me, I'm just jealous not to be called, or look like an Adonis Blue!). 


But my real reason for writing about them is this:

A photo of a caterpillar that I recovered from an old digital camera yesterday. I've not seen any caterpillars this year either and it got me wondering why. Most likely they realised there ain't no goodies to be had in my garden this year!


Even these little creatures have a beauty of their own, I'm sure you agree. So this little muncher is going straight into the rogues gallery! But before you go snapping your own ones, take note of this little link:


10 beautiful but dangerously poisonous caterpillars


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If you have any photos of pests you'd like to submit for the gallery I'd love to hear from you? I haven't had a new rogue for a while so do get in touch if you have Thehaplessgardener@gmail.com

Puns and roses...

You know what's coming...I've not posted up a tune for a while to be fair.


But before we all rock out with our air guitars, a pause for thought. There is no doubt that all gardeners get attached to what they grow, be it flowers, fruit, vegetables or weeds. It brings out the nurturing side of us, and for those of us without children yet is far more socially acceptable than harbouring 35 once feral (and if you're honest still feral despite what you think) cats.


There are days of course when you feel like a bad plant parent. Perhaps you think to yourself, I'm just not doing enough to fulfil their potential, these wonderful living things who if only they had more soil/plant food/ SUNSHINE (hear me up there weather god?)/gardening tlc would produce more flowers, bigger berries, larger pods. 


Coming back from holiday, that's how I felt. I saw my wreck of a garden, realised just how little I had been able to provide for it, and I could see that nothing was really growing. A failed parent.


First of all, I thought I was alone, but your comments on 'Minging in the rain' showed I was not. We all feel the same this year. But if you do, take a closer look outside.


This evening I took advantage of a rare clear blue Bristol sky and spent a bit of time clearing up. Whilst doing so, I started to notice a few things. Firstly, one of my two blueberry plants still had healthy looking berries (lets not talk about the other one for now).

Suddenly, I discovered my first raspberry of the year, hidden under all the leaves. It's not there now of course. Yum!

And finally, I'm not sure how I missed these, sitting in a tray on the ground were some flowering sweet peas. I had planted them nonchalantly in February, rescued them from a fallen growhouse in March and forgotten about them. Yet to my surprise, and (whisper it) delight, they have come good despite remaining in a seed tray all this time.


The flowers are bright and the fragrance is wonderfully reassuring; and even as I feel the sense of neglect in my bones, they clearly had enough self belief and determination to come good. I couldn't be more proud.

And to celebrate?

Minging in the rain

This post is about June and July 2012... 


It has not been my finest hour in the garden - and in truth that's about all the time I've spent there.  It has got to the point where I'm considering dropping the 'gardener' and leaving myself as plain old 'Hapless'.


For regular readers, I'd like to apologise for the lack of entertainment on here lately but I do hope that the following update gives you reassurance that yes there is someone so utterly inept that you're not such a bad gardener after all. And for the skilled gardeners, belief that there is always someone in need of help!


So why such little time gardening? Over the next few posts I hope to explain. Today though, let me start with the Great British Weather.


We Brits love a good old moan about it, but this year I think we've all finally lost our rag. It's been rain all the way, day after day after day.


And with that, the warmth has decided to bugger off too, leaving the energy companies rubbing their hands with glee just as much as we're rubbing ours to heat up.


What has that meant for the garden? A failure to clear up the remnants of last year's vine and buddliea demolition and a utter failure to cut the now totally wild grass:

It hasn't taken long for this fiend to take hold on the lawn. Anyone know what it is?

Now, they call it the breezy south west. Actually, they don't, I just made that up to reflect the combination of laid back Bristolians, Gloucestershire hippies, Devon ruralites and the Cornwallian surfers. In truth it's been howling a right gale down here since April. Meaning everytime I try and plant precious seeds in the grow houses, which are necessarily in locations I can't tether them down in, I get this:

I have lost pretty much all the beans I've planted this year, along with nearly all sweet peas and my precious chilli seeds I planted from last year's dried chilli. Seeing the toppled plastic towers filled me with despondency and hurt as much as annoyance.


So, the British weather has basically thrown a strop even McEnroe would be proud of and left my garden in tatters - overgrown and pretty much veg-less this summer.


And what has this meant for me?

Poolside in the Greek sunshine. Damn right.


I'd like to think that the hardier gardeners and allotmenteers out there have made some headway with their vegetables, and please do let me know if you have.

Do snails drown?

No.

Brute farce

Growing vegetables is easy isn't it? You plant the seed in spring, water it regularly, watch it grow as you keep weeds away, and then when it's ready, usually harvest time in summer or autumn, you pull it out of the ground and devour with pride.


Unless of course you're me.


My approach to celeriac has been somewhat unconventional. Late last summer I decided to plant some celeriac seeds, not really paying attention to what Mr Fothergill advised on the packet. I planted the seedlings out in the ground possibly August time, perhaps a month or 5 too late but I was thinking to myself "root vegetable, will be ready in time for Christmas..."


It wasn't.


I had planted them in a somewhat crowded part of the garden, where the best sunshine falls. I blamed the raspberries for the lack of growth in the celeriac and in a rather cavalier manner uprooted the root and moved it to a place it could spread it's legs.


I had also planted one in a pot, to see if that too were possible. I realise that this most ugly of beasts can reach a size that would make most plastic pots ill fitting, with all the lumpy bits hanging out much like an inappropriately dressed overweight teenager in that dodgy bit of town you only go to to scour the charity shops for a bargain.

Not much has been happening in my garden of late, at least not much that I have designed. Having left the celeriac to get on with itself I noticed that it had in fact been growing, both in the ground and in the pot. I had left the pot on the soil next to the planted celeriac and it was only when I lifted the pot up forcefully that I realise I had torn the roots apart from the vegetable. They had gone through the holes and down into the soil.


At that moment, I guessed it was a goner. And sure enough, so it has proved.

However, in happier news, the planted celeriac appears to have found its vigour and the stalks are green, firm and growing and there is a hint of flesh on the top. Not particularly attractive flesh but then a hapless gardener like me is never going to get the prettiest vegetable... 

And oh! Before I forget, when you pick the leaves you get this amazing celery like fragrance on your fingertips. Does anyone know if you can you cook with the leaves?

My only other thought is whether, upon ripening (do vegetables ripen?), the celeriac will be edible after a stunted growth? Let me know gardeners!

Challenge hapless

Dear readers,


In the past couple of days I've been asked to help two people out with two very different challenges. Now, I admire my friend Fraser and the brave @FrenchCathy for approaching me for gardening advice - I can only assume they have more faith in me than I have in myself.


However, rather than risk ruining their changes for a summer full of juicy fruit and hearty veg, I thought it best to pass on the challenge to you. These really are ones for the experts, requiring speed of thought and instant ideas to tackle two very different pressures.


Let me introduce them


Fraser


The boy has a bit of time on his hands, and with the sun shining has been let loose in the garden. Here's what he asked:


Dear hapless,


On a lovely day, I  decided to dig a new veg patch, alongside a current one. It's seven paces long, and two paces wide.


It has been just grass for at least the previous five years, but has quite a crumbly texture soil once the turf has been removed.


I've no idea how notorious the soil is, and realise its fairly late in the year, especially as I have no plan what to do with it.


Quite keen on having stuff for the stewing pot.


So, what should Fraser plant, recognising he has itchy fingers and we probably only have sun for one more day..?


@French Cathy


A rather different challenge, somewhat urgent!


Argh!! Need help! Got a great white currant bush but dreaded GREEN caterpillar are munching away!! Any tips??


I would say "squish" but I appreciate that is probably not going to solve matters. Slugs and snails I understand, but caterpillars are a new beast to me. Are there any pest experts out there?


Get cracking with your comments or tweets and hopefully we'll have two very happy gardeners, along with a rather nervous BBC Radio 4. It's about time Gardener's Question Time faced a young upstart!

A little treat

Sometimes, I get so caught up in growing veg, I forget about the end product and the hypnotic pleasure of eating what you grow.


As regulars will know, raspberries are a favourite of mine, and one of my few successes.  I did a lot of things with them last year. I ate them fresh, I dunked them into my porridge, I made raspberry and mint ice cubes after a tip from my friend Kate, I put them in a cake, and on a cake. And I froze a load, just as they were.


I'd forgotten all about the frozen gems until today, with almost bare freezer I saw them nestling at the back. So I said to myself, it's time to let them shine.

Nothing complicated but something luxurious to mark the first day of summer. Pancakes, ice cream and blitzed raspberries (with a bit of sugar). Heaven.


If only I hadn't I burnt myself on the pan.

Location location location

When planning your garden, keep soft fruit away from where the birds, um, sit.

Sting in the tale

'Every picture tells a story' goes the phrase uttered by people like me too lazy to come up with their own lines.

We all have stories about stinging nettles, and we all have views on dock leaves - friend or fraud?

When I was a young cub scout there was an annual camping trip where we were free to run about and explore the grounds. Yes you could earn your badge learning to cook, map read or make a fire. But to truly earn your stripes you had to run through 'Stinging Nettle Valley'. In shorts.

So when Jay at Hedgehog Gardens (@gardensinfo) offered me the following rogue I knew exactly where she was coming from. A fear ingrained from childhood:

Here you can see them like media wolves at a celebrity's door, howling over Jay's young veg bed, scenting the opportunity to scoop.

Admirably Jay wrote "Whilst I appreciate their use for nettle tonic and their attractiveness to wildlife there is only so much nettle soup one woman can bear! If I get many more stings whilst trying to keep them out of my veggies they'll be able to hear my screams in Scotland!!!"


Yet this photograph, for me, perfectly captures the battle between the weak and the strong, and the role us gardeners play in choosing who to protect and who to cut down; the battle between good and evil, which ultimately is at the heart of any good story.


Thank you Jay for this most appropriate of rogues. If anyone else has a rogue they wish to nominate for the Rogues Gallery, the drop me an email Thehaplessgardener@gmail.com, or tweet @haplessgardener. And remember, I'm looking for a photo that captures an unseen beautiful side of the rogue, or indeed as above artistically shows them in their most menacing light.


For more rogues head over to the Gallery

Guest Post: YIKES by Sarah Coomer (@ChantsCottage)

YIKES

I don't think there's a single real word that sums up the emotion I'm going to write about. None quite hit the nail on the head as well as the exclamation of consternation so beloved of Dennis the Menace and chums. It is a kind of fear, but it's not completely negative. There's a kind of adrenaline surge whenever I think about just what I've let myself in for. I begin to breath a little faster, a lump comes to my throat and I think “I'm really not sure I'm cut out for this”. But, no, dear reader, I am not about to chuck myself off Victoria Falls in a brandy barrel (though I may keep the idea in reserve for when it really goes pear-shaped). This is a gardening blog, not an Edwardian upper-class extreme sports blog (though if you or any of your friends write one of those do let me know). The white knuckle ride of which I speak is creating a kitchen garden... 

Last year we lived in a very nice end of terrace house with barely a garden of any kind. I took it upon myself, pretty much out of the blue, to fill our tiny back yard with pots and containers and plant them with salads and vegetables and herbs and a few companion flowers. I'd never done any gardening before but I was completely hooked by this form of alchemy – you put a bit of a plant in some mud, wait a bit and lo – amazing fresh vegetables and usually a jolly nice plant to look at by way of a bonus. (Not MANY vegetables, admittedly but that's what comes of cramming everything in like so many John Malkoviches in the restaurant scene in Being John Malkovich.) 

So when we moved, the one thing I knew we would have to have was room for a proper vegetable garden. And now I have that vegetable garden, sort of. And now it's Spring. And everything's getting a little bit scary. I've dug six beds, made two lasagne beds and have one hugel kulture bed (which is a kind of natural raised bed made from rotting stuff around a 'frame' of big branches). I went a bit overboard on the seed buying and sewing front, and now have enough seedlings to fill the beds about sixty four times over. And I can't possibly just get rid of them. And because I was very impatient and sowed them all about six weeks before I should have done, the seedlings themselves are bursting out of the sides of the trays or, for the lucky ones, pots they are in.

Last night I was repotting limp courgette plants until it got dark after I found that there was virtually no compost left beneath the surface of their pots. I felt like reporting myself to the RSPCC (Royal Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Cucurbits). I'd planted too many too early and now they're dying because they have nowhere to go. It's not very warm and it's blowing a gale so I don't feel inclined to wing it and plant them out. When I do plant them out it will be in the bed I had earmarked for my asparagus bed. Because I've never got round to sorting out the asparagus because I couldn't decide on whether to plant seeds or crowns, get posh expensive ones or risk the cheap ones because frankly I didn't have a clue. And asparagus is a scary, snooty, precious kind of vegetable, way out of my league, surely. Now it's too late, and anyway, I need somewhere to put my cucurbits, and quick. 

And then there are the weeds. As a novice gardener, I had no idea about weeds. I thought they were a bit annoying but you just kind of mangled them up with a hoe, and bosh, job done. I know. Stop laughing. No, actually, carry on. I deserve it. Weeds are terrifying. Horror film stuff. As fast as I cut them down they are pushing up through the soil, like Carrie's hand. Couch grass. Brambles. Dandelions. You don't want it? We've got it. And dock plants – I have never seen such incredible roots. Because I've never bothered looking much at roots before. It didn't help that I doused everything liberally with some of the horse manure we got as a free gift when we bought the house. Manure is great stuff undoubtedly but it seems that nettles really quite like it too. 

And I have no idea what these are imitating my peas, but there every time I look there are more of them. My slightly smug excuse is that I would never resort to using weedkiller but there again there are plenty of organic gardeners whose veg plots do not resemble the municipal tip after garden waste collection day. 

I'm a natural worrier and now I have a billion more things to worry about, it seems (that's one worry for every seedling). Is my sweetcorn going to get blown down? Are those cabbages supposed to be that colour? Does it matter if there are ants in my lasagne bed? How can a thistle that small have roots that long? And there's so much to do, it bamboozles me to the point that often I think of something more urgent that needs doing elsewhere (this usually involving eating something). I still haven't put either pea sticks or cordons up for my tomato plants. I don't even know how to do it. There is literally nowhere at the moment for the runner and borlotti beans to go. I really should finish the other hugel kulture bed. Tackle the weeds properly. Mend the greenhouse door. Yet here I am, writing a guest blog outlining what I should be doing instead of doing it. But I suppose if I did all that and then wrote the post I'd have to write one on feeling smug, and no-one wants to read that do they?

But here's the thing - even though it's all a bit scary and I'm a bit rubbish and I have probably wasted quite a bit of time and energy in some places and not nearly enough in others this year I still love it. It still excites me. The fear means I'm bothered about it. I will get most of the things I need to do sorted. My potatoes are looking amazing. My experimental chickpeas are thriving and I just scoffed my first proper sized radish. If I squint the whole thing sort of looks like a real allotment. I am learning all the time and next year I will be more organised and have a much better grasp of what I need to tackle and when. And if it really gets the better of me, there's always the barrel...

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Sarah's 'YIKES' is the latest in a series of emotions that gardeners are releasing into the wild, only to be captured and tamed over on my Guest Bed page.

I've recently started reading her blog, Chants Cottage, over at http://www.chantscottage.blogspot.co.uk/ is a great read - with the lively passionate style above a regular feature. I've also added her to my list of blogs on the right hand side so you can keep tabs. Definitely one to follow.

Sarah was bold. She knew deep down there were feelings kicking and screaming inside of her desperate to get themselves onto a page; to be shared with the wider gardening world. She wrote to me asking to jump into this bed and you too can join in the fun by emailing Thehaplessgardener@gmail.com or contacting me on Twitter @haplessgardener

If you're new to the guest bed then check under the covers and see what takes your fancy from the following:

Love   ----------    Disappointment  ---------- Frustration  ---------- Sorrow  ---------- 

Hopeless Romance  ---------- Anticipation  ---------- Guilt  ---------- Surprise ---------- 

Enthusiasm  ---------- Helplessness  ---------- Wonder  ---------- Oh What the Hell!  ---------- 

Awe  ---------- Hope  ---------- Planternal Instinct  ---------- Pride  ---------- Glum  ---------- 

Or failing that, just jump right in and see what you find