March in the Garden & le Confinement

We have been in Covid-19 confinement in France since mid March and although some jobbing gardeners have been out at work, we have been following the advice to stay at home. This means that for possibly the first time, I'm largely getting through my weekly gardening to do list and not rolling over too much. I've also had plenty of time to take advantage of the mostly sunny weather (we won't talk about the snow this morning) to take and organise some photos.

Pear Blossom

From a single plant, the coslips are slowing spreading themselves around.

A warm day brings out the butterflies, perhaps this scarce swallowtail likes the warmth from the tyre?

Daffodils at the start of the month, now long-finished.

This new border on a steep bank has railway sleepers at the bottom and is now planted up with (very small) old French roses - hopefully there'll be some progress pictures later in the summer! 

Never forget the birds - will anyone nest in this smelly old boot?

Jobs for the Month - March

March can be a bit of a treadmill - sow seeds, prick out seedlings, pot on young plants, and repeat. I love it! And all the spring tree blossom that is everywhere, too.

Into this frenzy of activity we have to fit in the first cuts of the grass, although as both January and February were so warm and dry, many have already started around here. 

And Sow it Begins! Chillies.

This week is chilli week, a highlight of my seed sowing calendar. I love French food and cooking, but when it comes to buying chillies we are pretty much limited to Espelette, the Basque red pepper which have a pleasant enough flavour, if not especially fiery and the doux de Landes pepper, doux meaning soft or mild in this context ... The large supermarkets in the big smoke of Tarbes may have habaneros from time to time, but the supply and quality is unreliable so not worth the trip. Growing chillies it has to be!

Chilli pepper growing is a huge thing, even for non-gardeners so there is a massive amount of (sometimes conflicting) information out there. As a consequence I'm just going to be sticking to what I do; I would recommend reading around the subject if you wish to become an aficionado! Many people grow, not necessarily for the kitchen, but as a horticultural challenge, and sometimes, I suspect, for the kudos of having the hottest chilli in the world (currently one of the nagas, I think) or the funniest (the peter pepper - look it up with care) growing in the greenhouse. Personally, flavour comes first and second; I like a hot chilli, but it has to have flavour as well as heat. Indeed, I'd rather have something mild and tasty, over one that just blisters the mouth!

February - Jobs for the Month

February always feels like the last calm month in my gardening calendar - from the end of the month until the heat of the summer in July I will be dedicating almost every free moment to the sowing, potting on, planting out and caring for my tender vegetables. This month can give us anything from heavy snow to almost summer like conditions, so be prepared to grab the chance to do the important stuff when you can. So if this sounds like me getting my excuses in early for the paucity of new posts, you could be right.

Once we hit July the focus will switch over to preserving as much of the harvest as possible for the winter months; we don't buy in much veg beyond the potatoes and onions which I struggle to grow, so if the harvest or my ability to preserve it fails, then we could be reduced to a very limited winter diet. This is partly choice; we eat seasonally and also try not to buy food that has covered great distances, bananas and the occasional pineapple excepted. Consequently  we don't eat warm climate veggies such as tomatoes, peppers or courgettes right through the year. This keeps our small housekeeping budget in check, reduces our carbon footprint and makes the first freshly picked tomato all the more sweet!

Seed Sowing - Getting Ahead

I am always tempted to try and get ahead with sowing the seeds of tender vegetables that require a long growing season, things like chillies. We're proper chilliheads and if I cannot get a load of jalapenos pickled for the winter my name is mud!

Last season I had a very average chilli harvest, mostly because the really long, cold and wet spring meant that the plants were slow to get away once planted out. In truth I probably put them out into the ground too soon; cold soil or limited sunshine & the cool weather will have stopped the plants from growing on.

Jobs for January

When the weather is grim and the days short in January, it is tempting to simply curl up indoors with a book and ignore the garden, but there are plenty of jobs to get on with at this time of year. 







And for me there is no better way to beat the winter blues (apart from a day on skis) than to potter in the garden, if only a for an hour or two. And even in January there are pretty plants to admire.

Garlic Planting

Traditionally garlic is planted on the shortest day of the year and then harvested on the longest, a regime I broadly follow. Garlic needs a period of cold weather during the growing season otherwise the individual cloves that we plant will simply grow into one large single bulb rather than dividing into more usable individual cloves. 

So with the 21st scheduled for more important tasks (Christmas tree erecting, mince pie & cookie making, plus a batch of toffee creation) and after a couple of days of dry and warm weather following a deluge last week, the day had arrived.

As ever with most planting jobs, it is the preparation that takes the time. Garlic doesn't need a lot of nutrients to grow but does like a well drained spot, always a challenge with my heavy clay. The best solution is to grow it on/in ridges to try and stop the cloves from rotting.

The bed has been under a mulch of chopped leaves and grass clippings since the tomatillos, courgettes and chillies gave up the ghost in late October, and topped off with black plastic to keep the worst of the wet weather out. The plastic was removed when the rain stopped a few days ago so the first job was to rake back the leaves to soil level. The soil beneath was lovely and light and crumbly. As the leaves break down the worms pull them underground, but inevitably the presence of worms also means moles so the bulk of the work was a quick fork out of all the mole runs in the bed. I've posted before about the conflict between a no-dig approach and the presence of very keen diggers like moles. If they want to eat my worms they'll have to work for their supper and dig some new tunnels!