Geranium Bronze Butterfly

I noticed this butterfly for the first time in August of this year sheltering from a shower of rain in the tomato plants, and being unable to find it in either my guide to European insects (a French, or better still Pyrenean butterfly guide is on the to buy list) or on a couple of good identification web sites I thought I might be onto something rare or unusual. 

But no, this is another invasive species, a geranium bronze butterfly from southern Africa. Presumably it arrived on imported plant material. 
I have a couple of hanging baskets with the classic red geraniums (actually pelargoniums but they will be forever known as geraniums here!) paired with spider plants outside their summer holidays, so went and had a quick check on them. 

Sure enough there was one empty chrysalis, but with no sign of damage to the leaves I reckoned it was just a one off. The plants have grown well this year, but flowering has been poor, especially late on in the summer, something I had put down to the very hot weather and possibly inadequate watering on my part.

However, further reading and research revealed that it is actually the flower buds and not the leaves that are favoured by the caterpillars. Closer inspection showed that almost all of the flower buds were just empty husks, entirely consumed, with a couple small fat caterpillars and quite a bit of frass on each plant.

I now face a quandary. My normal reaction to an invasive species is to try and eliminate it, but I'm not so sure in this case. After all, our bird life is in crisis in part due to a lack of insects, and I actively plant food for insects in the hope that supporting the bottom of the food chain will help those further up. As far as I am aware, the butterfly is not out-competing any native species or devastating an important food crop, but it is destroying an iconic plant of the French domestic landscape!

It will be interesting to see both the progress of this butterfly and the reactions to it over the next few years. My geraniums will be coming inside for the winter soon giving me a few months to decide quite what to do about this new arrival.

Empty Ground & Green Manure

An empty patch of ground will rarely stay empty for long - even the tidiest garden will have weed seeds blowing in from somewhere. Although, I must admit that as a jobbing gardener I'm delighted to have clients who like bare ground around their plants and shrubs because it creates a never-ending job for me! At home I try to have no bare soil at all in the vegetable garden, partly because I just don't have time for endless weeding but more seriously because an exposed soil can easily become a damaged soil. Drying winds or heavy rain can both damage the structure of the soil, can wash nutrients out or even leave the top surface to blow away. Think dust bowl in the US. Just the baking of the sun is enough to render the soil unworkable.

A Small Patch of Bare Soil Between the Zinias & Tomato Frame

But don't worry, this post isn't about mulch again, although of course that is one very good way to protect unused soil, but is about growing what are known as green manures. Broadly speaking, this is a crop which is grown specifically to be turned back into the soil to add organic matter, nutrients and structure. I admit that I've never really been very successful with this aspect of green manuring. Because the cut down and then turned in vegetation rarely seems to break down in time for using the land again, I've opted for a kind of half-way house. Plus, as someone who is trying to practice some form of No Dig gardening, the idea of digging unrotted vegetation into the soil doesn't sit well with me. 

So instead, I cut my green manure down to the ground and simply leave it lying on the surface as a mulch. When I need to use the ground I clear the semi-decayed foliage away to the compost heap. Any remaining roots can be forked out (along with the ubiquitous mole tunnels) and also composted.

Bee on the Phacelia

My green manure of choice is phacelia, a purple-flowered plant beloved of bees and other pollinators. To be honest, I grow it as much for the benefit to insects as its quality as a green manure. Ideally sown in spring or late summer, it is a plant that can be sown at anytime apart from during the winter; it will stand drought and a small amount of frost, although a bitter winter will kill it off. I like to leave it growing and flowering as long as possible, and only cut it back about a month or so before I anticpate needing the patch of ground again.

I currently have a little patch in my brassica bed where we've eaten all the spring cabbages (they lasted into July this year!) in an area that won't be used again until next spring so is a perfect location to sow phacelia. Apart from a block of summer cabbage, the rest of the brassicas are kale and broccoli plants that will be in the ground right through the winter, so it makes sense to just fill in the gaps.

Cleared and Ready to Sow

Sowing is easy: while clearing the few weeds I lightly forked the surface leaving it fairly level. The seeds are scattered across the surface and then gently raked in. I didn't water as we'd just had a lovely twenty-four hours of rain but will do so if the weather returns to a typical hot and sunny August. The seedlings should be up in about ten days or so and hopefully will be dense enough to suppress the majority of weeds. In a few weeks it will be flowering and all being well will do so until into November.

A Vegetable Bed Full of Phacelia Green Manure Last Year

Given that I almost always add compost into the ground when planting out my vegetables I'm happy to use my green matures on the compost heaps rather than the more conventional method of cutting them down and digging them in. There is nothing wrong with trial and error and working out the best methods for you and your garden!

Weeding After the Rain

So, after a post about embracing the weeds (Here if you missed it) I am of course following it up with one about getting out there and having a good weeding session. These tiny cabbage plants are not doing well thanks to a combination of flea beetle, brassica bug and competition from weeds.

One of the things I discovered in our very first summer here is that weeding is not an all year round activity. In my UK garden the ground rarely baked solid so it was pretty easy to get out even stubborn and deep-rooted perennial weeds like dandelions with a two-pronged weeder. Not so here - a few weeks of temperatures in the high twenties or above combined with my heavy clay, turns the soil into concrete! 

I've already talked about mulching to keep the moisture in and the weeds out, but some more persistent ones still get through and if you don't want them to swamp your 'proper' plants the only solution is to get down on your hands and knees and remove them. It does mean I can get up close with this beautiful Japanese herb, shiso perilla.

I must say that I find hand weeding incredibly therapeutic, a perfect combination of having to think a little, but leaving enough brain space to daydream too! And I love to see the wildlife living amongst the weeds, like these caterpillars of the heath fritillary butterfly. This species, although incredibly rare back in the UK is fairly widespread in France, but to keep it that way these weeds (a type of speedwell, I think) will stay at least until the caterpillars have pupated.

The other plus side about weeding is the generation of green material for the compost heap, a subject for another day. I pretty much compost everything, including standard no-nos like the roots of dandelion or creeping cinquefoil. My excuse is that as I put almost all my compost through a sieve before use I can pull out anything that has not broken down and put it through the system again. In fact I think the only weed of which I have loads and don't directly compost is the roots of bindweed. Normally I separate the white roots from the green stems, the stems and leaves go straight into the compost bin while the roots are laid out on the ground to completely dry out. They either then go into the compost or get chopped up with the mowings and get used as mulch. But be careful: unless utterly desiccated they may reroot.

Much tidier and with some new lettuce plants filling in the gaps. But after twenty-fours hours the ground is once more too hard to weed 
effectively, but hopefully a top up of straw mulch will keep the soil clean until the next storm!

Embracing the Weeds.

For me, one of the joys of gardening is to share my space with wildlife; this is my tenth summer in this place and yet I am still seeing new insects - today was a bright orange wasp of some kind. It was long gone before I found the camera!  But yesterday I saw this brown Argus, the caterpillars of which can be found on various species of crane's bill

But to have a range of native insects I need a range of wild flowers, many of which also get labeled weeds. I forget who said a weed is just the right plant in the wrong place, but it is a approach I embrace as much as possible.

Beating the Heat: Watering.

We are quite lucky to have not been hammered by the temperatures in the mid-forties which have hit the east of the country, but a few days with highs of thirty-eight or nine has seen me getting through a lot of water. I have four large water butts to collect water from the roof, holding round 1500 litres, but a period of intense heat will see those emptied in just a couple of weeks.

Watering in the heat is often a matter of contention and not simply a question of 'just watering' but rather more complex - morning or night, on the leaves or down at the base, and critically how often? Well, the answer to all of that is if course a bit of everything, because it depends on the plants and also on how established they are. 

Lifting the Garlic

Tradition has it that garlic is planted on the shortest day of the year and harvested on the longest. Garlic is grown by 'sowing' the individual cloves; they need a period of cold at the start of the growing season in order to trigger splitting of the growing head into multiple cloves, rather than simply growing into one bigger clove, as is the case with onions. I don't claim to understand the science but have previously harvested garlic where many of the heads were no more than a single fat clove, following a mild winter. This past winter was very, very dry, but we had plenty of sub zero nights so I was confident the heads would contain multiple cloves but I could already see that they were pretty small, thanks to that dry winter. My other big worry is the allium leaf miner fly - see my post about leeks for more info on this pest. 

Lifting garlic is a pretty simple job, but be aware that the post harvest drying period is essential for keeping your harvest right through the year. With a heatwave in progress and the thermometer heading into the high thirties and more critically no rain forecast in the next five days, I decided to ignore the anti-canicule advice to stay indoors and went out and got the job done. The leaves begin to turn from green to yellow when the garlic is ready to harvest; mine has started this process and with the hot weather I doubt they'll grow any bigger.

The garlic has been subjected to the straw mulch treatment and I was really please to find the ground positively moist when I pulled the mulch back, and with few slugs. At least the digging wouldn't be like trying to crack concrete!





It is important to get the fork beneath both the bulbs and the bulk of the roots - they are very shallow rooted - and carefully lift. Obviously putting the fork through the head means the bulb won't dry, but the same applies to damaging the roots and the base plate of the bulb. It is therefore important to carefully tease each bulb out of the ground and then gently remove the excess soil from the roots.

Once lifted, the garlic needs to be racked out to allow it to start the drying process; once the leaves are dry and rustling the bulbs can be strung up ready for storage. You can of course eat the fresh, or 'green' garlic straight away. We will be having garlic curry this week, a once a year only treat!

I use a pallet to lay the garlic out, the advantage being that I can lift the whole lot up and move it under cover if needed. You can also plait the fresh green garlic on the day of harvest, if you like. I prefer to dry flat to start with because then I can spot any that have any potential drying problems before I've tied them all up.

But a few plaits of garlic hanging up in the kitchen ready for use are just great!

Tomato 'Armpits'

The tomatoes have been quite slow to take off this spring - the mostly cold weather has not been to their liking but today they finally needed their first tidy up and prune.

The bulk of my plants are being grown as single cordons up string (see Tomato Planting here) so the plants require removal of any side shoots to keep them straight and tidy. At each point above the joint where a leaf leaves the main stem tomates send out a side shoot. In their native habitat they are plants that like to ramble and scramble through other plants, but we need to keep them under control and as open and uncluttered as possible. Limiting the amount of foliage allows sunlight to better reach the fruits and ripen them and allows air to circulate, reducing the risk of blight and disease.

The photo above is of a very vigorous black cherry tomato; the already quite large side shoots are indicated by the red arrows. These are what we need to remove, either using a sharp pair of secateurs or simply pinching out the smaller ones with thumb and finger. Be aware that if deeply planted, the lowest side shoots may appear from just below the soil surface.

The best thing about these side shoots - or tomato armpits as they are called in my household! - is that they can be easily rooted to increase your stock.

As with taking any cutting, it is crucial to get the cut plant into either a pot of compost or water, or at least a plastic bag as soon as it has been cut: because it no longer has roots it will lose water and wilt very, very fast. Here I have prepared my pot of compost and an old blunt knife to act as a dibber before I've cut the armpits.

With side shoots cut (using sharp secateurs to ensure a clean cut) I then make a hole right up against the edge of the pot and push the side shoot right down. I want as much stem as possible in contact with the compost because tomatoes will produce roots from any part of the stem that comes into contact with the soil and not just the base. The more roots the plant can quickly produce, the more chance it has of surviving!

I've put three in this pot and you can see the cutting on the left is deeper than the first leaf.

Remember to label the pot; these are San Marzano, a plum variety for bottling. A couple of my original plants are not growing on well, so assuming these cuttings take and do well, I may replace them, or find a home elsewhere. You cannot have too many tomato plants!

Finally, water well whilst trying not to get the leaves wet, and put in a shady place.

This pallet table on legs houses the bulk of my seedlings and young plants beyond the reach of slugs and snails. It lives in the dappled shade of a honeysuckle but can be moved out into full sun or under the shelter of the covered terrace when thunderstorms threaten. 

Roots should be visible out of the bottom of the pot within about a fortnight, but you will know if the plant has taken after a week or so as it will still be alive. Once the plants have a healthy root ball you can pot them on into individual pots or just straight into the ground.