In a rare day of sun and a warmth, I ventured into the big skies of Rye Harbour and heard my first skylarks of the year. And then in the garden, blackbird, robin, great tits and blue tits are starting to sing. Even a distant thrush can just be heard. Winter dawn is glorious when the weather is clear and dry. Full of hope and fresh fragrance. To attract the rare bee and even a small tortoiseshell butterfly waking up from hibernation, our own mahonia and Christmas box are now in full flower and fill the air with fragrance.
January and February bring the arrival of our snowdrops. Each year in our new garden I have planted snowdrops in the green. Now, four years later, you can start to see the white drifts of them under our silver birch trees. Snowdrops, to me, are as English and perfect as the haze of woodland bluebells in May. For it is our weather that perfects their growing and flowering. They need a freeze to flower well, and also hate to dry out in the summer. Rare varieties can sell for over £1,000, so I keep wondering if one day we may find a new variety ourselves. I will be attending the first Plant Fairs Roadshow this Sunday. It is being held in Hole Park, Rolvenden. There is a charge to get in, but it will include interesting garden nurseries, and lots of snowdrops as well as other plants to buy. Go to the following website for more information: www.plant-fairs.co.uk.
Winter storms have meant that grasses we would leave for their drama until March are now flattened and need to be raked up. Grape vine need to be trimmed back, and some of our roses are showing some brown diseased branches and need further pruning. It is also the time to review our whole garden structure. Before plants start to grow, it is still relatively easy to move bushes and smaller trees around. I have had to move a number of plants to make room for an apple tree I ordered last year- it is a “family” tree, with three different varieties of apple. And I realise it needs much more space than the pot I planned for it… Thinking forward for how plants will look in the next five years at least, or even 20 years for trees, is why gardening is such a hopeful, future-focused exercise.
Ground in our allotment is now finally workable, after such a wet winter. We have trimmed out lower branches of our gooseberry bushes to try to reduce the threat of sawfly attack. We have also spread out well-composted manure and planned out where our annual vegetables will be planted. What worked? Where does the sun shine most? Which area is most windy? What crops can be coordinated to give room for a second sowing? What should we be planting now?
So 2024 gardening begins. I have only just ordered seed. Fewer potatoes this year. What we are growing needs to be chitted – which means starting to collect egg boxes for keeping each seed potato separate and spaced for its new shoots to sprout. Chili pepper and aubergine seeds have already been sown. We will be using our radiators as our extra heat source to get good germination. We have also decided to grow onion again from seed. Our white onions were amazing – and we are still eating the stored ones from our shed so we will be repeating the variety called santero. The red ones also grew well, but they all sprouted green shoots and could not be stored. So we have switched to a new seed called red baron. It isn’t too late to sow hardy annuals like sweet pea, poppies, nigella, calendula and ammi. I like mushroom containers for sowing seeds – they are lightweight, small, and relatively deep. Easy too, to put in a plastic bag or cover with clingfilm to create a little greenhouse for the seedlings.
Image Credits: Great Dixter , Abigail Cooper-Hansen .