This Year's Failures - 1

I said in my last post that there were a few plants on the balcony which I've had to give up on - they've either done generally badly or just haven't bloomed. This is the case of four plants on the back balcony - my hollyhocks, lychnis, sweet peas and foxgloves. The first three are in the photo, and the fourth would have been but it finally died completely.

After last year's really good results, I was particularly disappointed by the hollyhocks, Althaea rosea. I'd planted loads, intending them to be a focal point this year, but though a good number made it, they've remained very small and haven't flowered at all. they were also amonst the plants most damaged by the caterpillar plague, as you can see from the photo.

The caterpillars don't explain the weak growth, however. I did a couple of things differently this year, any one of which might have made the difference. Firstly, I didn't sow them direct but in small pots, and then potted on gradually. Secondly, they were all on the back balcony rather than the front - and nothing does as well there. Next time, needless to say, I'll be sowing direct and out front. Being at the back also meant they were in different containers. Was it a size problem? I don't think so as there wasn't really any difference. Was the soil not rich enough? Did I sow too late - the books say May, but mine always go in in September. I can't keep seedlings over the summer - my plant sitter always drowns them while I'm on holiday - and as we have a long warm autumn here, I can usually get away with sowing biennials as soon as I get back in September. It certainly didn't cause problems with the previous plants.

So - do I start again, or should I just move these out front, and see what happens the second year? One thing I hate about gardening books (and there are others - but that's for another post) is that they often tell you things without giving an adequate explanation. In this case, concerning hollyhocks - "They are often treated as biennial plants though true perennials". (from Percy Thrower's Everyday Gardening - one of the old gardening books I inherited from my Dad but still find really useful. I mentioned it in a previous post last September.) OK, but why? Is it because they're invasive or get too big otherwise? Because they don't flower so well in successive years? Because they don't make it through a hard winter? Tell me why Percy and I can decide what I want to do.

One of the other plants in the photo, Lychnis coronaria, seemed to be growing as well as usual, but just didn't flower. They like sun - maybe they didn't get enough - except that in this case they were in just the same position as last year, and last year flowered.

The sweet peas, lathyrus odoratus, are very sad as you can see, and were pulled out as soon as the photo was taken. I love sweet peas and try obstinately to grow them here even though I know that they hate the hot, humid conditions that we have. The same thing happens every year. They're doing well in spring, but then succumb to red spider mite - and no amount of spraying seems to make a difference. Last year I got one flower spray from them. It's the most I've ever achieved.

Much the same happens with my foxgloves, digitalis purpurea. They seem to be doing well all spring, but never flower. And then when the heat sets in give up the ghost. Here I wonder if I might not do better if I could sow earlier - that way they might be ready to flower while it was still relatively cool.

Sadly, these are not the only plants which haven't done well this year. More in the next post ...

A much neglected balcony ...

I was having a look at other people's blogs today and, when I got to Carol's, saw she had posted for Gardener's Bloom Day. Why so early? I thought, convinced it must be something like the tenth today. Time flies ...

If you drop in regularly, you'll have noticed that I've not been posting much at all recently, and the posts that I have managed to get up have ignored the balcony all together. Unfortunately, I've been hit by a nasty attack of the dreaded lurgy which has had me covered in hives and swelling up painfully - especially my hands. Not ideal for either gardening or typing. Back in June I mentioned it, saying I thought it was an allergy. But no, it's a virus. So I have to apologise to the loquat tree yet again, this time for false accusations. I've spent most of the past two months lying down covered in packs of ice. The doctors have cheerily said that it's not serious and will pass of its own accord in three or four months - perhaps a bit longer. Gee thanks.

All this to explain why the balcony is currently a bit of a disaster. I've hardly been out there except to water. Add to that the fact that half of it was destroyed by the caterpillar plague of a couple of months ago, and that I had actually intended to be in England for July and August and so hadn't planted anything which would bloom in those months. All made worse by the fact they came to repair part of the balcony railing the other day. A chunk had fallen off the balcony above, and an inspection showed that all the balconies on our corner were suffering from rust and needed to be seen to urgently. Which meant they had to move half my containers - not terribly gently. They're all now piled up at one end while we finish repainting. Or rather while my husband does. I'm using the few hours a day when the pills kick in and I have full use of my hands for other things.

So - what is blooming on the balcony. Not a lot, but a few things are coming on. The plumbago which I featured last month is still blooming strongly, as are the geraniums. The periwinkles are doing well too. The only one in bloom is one I picked up at the garden centre, but I've also got a few which were grown from seed which are coming on well. Periwinkles are a funny flower. I find them difficult to start off, but once they're established they don't seem to be bothered by pests, diseases or any amount of neglect. The antirrhinums got their second wind and have been good over the past few weeks, especially one beautiful bushy plant which was covered in pale pink flowers, and the zinnias and marigolds have come into bloom. The zinnias in particular made a sudden spurt just after I'd said last month that they weren't doing well. They've doubled in size and, apart from the blooms already out, are covered in buds. The melons are in bloom and starting to form fruit, and my little oleander has bloomed. There are several plants that I've had to give up on though, and accept that if they haven't flowered by now they're not going to. This year's failures. But that can be the subject of the next few posts ...

In Defence of Marrows

A post by Carol of May Dreams Gardens made me laugh the other day. She was bemoaning the fact that she'd forgotten to check her zucchini (courgettes to the British - not to mention the French) and they'd exploded into growth overnight. I grew up having no idea they could be eaten small! In fifties and sixties England they were always left to get huge before we harvested, and for us they were called marrows. I must have been in my late teens before I came across these suspiciously foreign-looking things called courgettes that they ate in France. And it was a long time afterwards that it clicked that they weren't a "new" vegetable, but nothing but baby marrows. I still have a cookbook which I bought in about 1971 when I went to university. It's called The Robert Carrier Cookbook and is a book I still use regularly - his recipes always seem to work, even when it's me doing the cooking. He says : Courgettes, once so hard to come by in Britain in any but the most exotic food departments of the major London stores, are now available in regular supply in shops throughout the country. I suspect that time they were still pretty trendy, however. I doubt you would have found them at our local Co-op.

But however much I like courgettes (especially raw and grated with olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon juice), now when I grow them I always leave some to get big. I love cooking marrows. If you type baked marrow into Google you'll come up with loads of recipes, both vegetarian and otherwise. For all of them you need to cook (or part-cook) the marrow first, and then add the stuffing or topping. Cut off the two ends and then either cut it in half lengthways and scoop out the seeds to make two canoe shaped containers for the filling, or cut it in thick rings and again scoop out the seeds to leave a hole for the filling. Bake it smeared with olive oil and covered in a medium oven (180°C, 350°F or Gas 4) for about thirty to forty minutes - you need the flesh to have become soft but not soggy.

While it's baking, make the filling. One of my favourites is button mushrooms, brown rice and cheese - cook the rice, and at the same time fry the mushrooms in half oil half butter, covered so that the juices don't evaporate. When the rice is cooked, add it to the mushroom pan and reheat uncovered until the juices have been almost absorbed or evaporated. At that point, add the cheese and let it melt into the mixture. What cheese you use will depend on your taste - I like Gorgonzola while my son won't touch it unless I've used processed cheese slices. Fill the marrow halves with it and serve.

Or try marrow peeled and cut into cubes, then baked for 40-50 minutes together with skinned, sliced tomatoes, chopped onion and thinly sliced celery. Smear a casserole dish with olive oil or butter,and put in alternate layers of the vegetables. Add a little salt, sugar and pepper to each layer. Finish with a layer of marrow and a few chunks of butter or a bit of olive oil - enough to soak through the layers, but don't exaggerate. Cover tightly and bake in a medium oven as above for forty or fifty minutes.

Of course, any marrow recipe can be used with courgettes too. And even I would admit that if for the rest of my life I could only eat either cougettes or marrows, I'd choose courgettes. But it's fun to grow them - if you're trying to get your kids involved in gardening, they'll have fun seeing how big they can get. And then, and what's wrong with having something slightly different on the table occasionally?

I'm not growing marrows on the balcony this year, so thanks to citricut for making the photo available under Creative Commons Licence on flickr.

Sadly, not my balcony ...

Had a couple of days away last week to see my brother who was on holiday in Liguria. We took a boat ride from Santa Margherita to San Fruttuoso and stopped at Portofino on route. There are some fabulous villas there. I could kill for their bougainvillea ...

The whole area was full of it. Liguria is the area on the north-east coast of Italy, and as you can see from the photos, the coast borders immediately on the mountains - the southernmost part of the Alps. They're very low here - the locals refer to them as hills rather than mountains - and heavily wooded, particularly with chestnut trees. On the coast, the mild Mediterranean climate means that the vegetation is fantastic, with a mix of endemic mediterranean plants, and imported North African and tropical varieties, which flourish. I'd have taken far more photos, particularly of one gorgeous purple flowered vine, which was everywhere - but the batteries in the camera ran out.

Bougainvillea (bougainvillea spectabilis is the most commonly seen) is itself one example of an imported tropical plant, as it comes originally from South America. It was discovered by a botanist, Philibert Commerson, who named it after the captain of the ship he was travelling on - Louis Antoine de Bougainville. Bougainvillea are part of the Nyctaginaceae family, and therefore cousins of mirabilis jalapa, which I've posted about before. The brilliant purple colour comes from the bracts, not from the flowers. They can be grown in pots, but need a lot of sun and dry conditions, and constant warmth - one reason why I've never tried it on the balcony here is because I doubt I could get it through our winters, which are much colder than in Liguria. In colder climates it needs heated greenhouse or conservatory conditions - at least 5°C in winter. One UK grower, David's Exotic Plants, lists varieties which are described as "tough", but unfortunately they don't give details of what they mean by this. How tough is tough? The one on my neighbour's balcony is not doing too well, incidentally. The bracts have lost colour, whereas they should stay vibrant for months. They may have overwatered it, or maybe the red spider mite have hit. Or perhaps they're not feeding it enough - a fertiliser that's high in phosphorus and potassium helps to maintain the colour.

Back to the boat trip. San Fruttuoso is an old monastery nestled at the foot of the mountain ...

Although you can't see it from this picture, just the other side of the landing stage was a load of prickly pear, all in bloom ...

Prickly pear is native to North and South America. I can't work out if this one is opuntia littoralis or opuntia ficus indica - they both look the same to me and both have been imported to and are now common in southern Europe. In Italy however, opuntia ficus indica seems to be most common, and in Sicily and a few other southern regions, is cultivated for it's edible fruit -Fichi d'india, or Indian figs. They're easily available in the shops, though I have to say I've never tried them - perhaps I will now. But the sculptor Bernini must have liked them - he sculpted them into his Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona in Rome.

Yarrow - Achillea Millefolium

This month’s plant on the calendar is Achillea Millefolium – yarrow. I have to say that I only knew yarrow by its common name and I’d never linked it with the Achillea that I see in my garden centre every spring – which if I remember correctly is Achillea Lavatera, but I’m not sure. It’s not a plant which has ever particularly attracted me – the flowers were OK but the stems always seemed thick and gawky. And of course it's yarrow stalks which are used in the I Ching - the Chinese form of divination. The Chinese considered it to be a spiritual plant, and would plant it on the graves of their ancestors.

According to the calendar, yarrow can be turned into a tea to be used against period pain, while on the web Purple Sage lists a range of uses including action against fever, high blood pressure and diarrhoea. Purple Sage also mentions the origin of the name – it was apparently named after Achilles, who frequently used it to heal wounds after battles, and in fact one of its many common names is Soldier’s Woundwort. One of the reasons its now so common in Europe is apparently that wherever the Romans went, they planted it around their camps so as always to have a ready supply. And then for the same reason the British army took it to North America when they colonised.

Back to the literary references. I went and found my copy of The Iliad (probably for the first time in thirty years!) and found the passage. A wounded Greek lord asks Patroklos to use some herbs which Achilles has told him of to heal his wound :

… Patroklos laid him there and with a knife cut the sharp tearing arrow out of his thigh and washed the black blood running from it with warm water, and, pounding it up with his hands, laid on a bitter root to make pain disappear, one which stayed all kinds of pain. And the wound dried and the flow of blood stopped. (The Iliad, Trans. Richmond Lattimore Book 11 lines 843-847 Uni. of Chicago Press)

It also pops up in Longfellow’s Hiawatha (section 15). Hiawatha has a sort of breakdown after the death of his friend, but is sorted out by the medicine men in a healing ceremony :

There a magic drink they gave him,

Made of Nahma-wusk, the spearmint,

And Wabeno-wusk, the yarrow,

Roots of power, and herbs of healing;
Beat their drums, and shook their rattles;

Chanted singly and in chorus,

Mystic songs like these, they chanted.
…
And upstarting wild and haggard,

Like a man from dreams awakened,

He was healed of all his madness.

This links to another use, common in Scotland, of using yarrow tea as a remedy for depression – a sort of countryman’s Prozac.

Yarrow can cause an allergic reaction, though this is said to be rare, and is not advised for epileptics.

Gardener's Bloom Day - June

Gardener's Bloom Day again - I'm a day late but I took the photos yesterday so I hope it counts. Not much to report this month. I have to admit that I planted almost exclusively for spring this year. I'd thought that I'd be spending the whole summer away from Milan, and so there was no point focusing on the later months. But plans changed, and I'm still here. Plus the devastation that's been wreaked by caterpillars this year - it's left me a bit flowerless. So you'll notice a decided lack of wide angled shots in the pictures. I admit to having chosen the best bits.


The best thing at the moment is the plumbago (top picture), which is an execption to what I've just said. As are the ivy-leaved pelargoniums. A second group of nasturtiums are now out, and the surfinia and antirhinums are hanging on well - boosted by the marigolds which are just starting to flower.


But the surfinia and marigolds are nothing like the ones I had last year. The surfinia (bought) are a different variety - I couldn't get the same ones as last summer - with smaller leaves and flowers. But they're also growing far less enthusiastically and look weak and spindly. The marigolds are suffering too, and lots haven't made it.


Odd, when I've treated them exactly the same as before and last year got such great results. The same is true for some of the other stuff I've sown this year, especially the zinnias and hollyhocks which were my pride and joy in 2006 and this year look considerably stunted. as far as the zinnias are concerned, I wonder if it's because I tried growing them in eggshells? It's not worked well for anything, which with some things I put down to too much calcium in the shells. But zinnias are calcium lovers, so I was hoping they'd do well. Oh well, chalk one up for experience.


And then there are these rather weedy sunflowers, which is what you get if you steal seeds out of the hamster's food box rather than going and buying some decent ones. They're pretty but a bit straggly.


The seedlings which are doing well this year are the white and purple surfinia which I sowed with last year's seeds. They're not flowering yet, but look healthy and happy. With the plumbago and the ivy-leaved pelargoniums, they're more or less the only thing that does at the moment. Watch this space next month!

Luxury Flat to Let (One Room to Share) with Built-In Restaurant

I have posted before on the plague of caterpillars which are devouring almost every plant I've got this year. I'm having to pick them off daily and am still not winning. But as I'm not into killing things, they all go into the caterpillarium.

The caterpillarium started when my son was small and I wanted him to see how caterpillars turned into butterflies. It's an old toy box partly filled with soil into which go various "extra" seedlings which I'd otherwise have thrown away, plus any plant which is too far gone to save - this year there have been a lot of the latter. In go the caterpillars, which then chomp away, pupate, hatch - and lay their eggs on my plants once more. So we start all over again.

I had to redo the whole thing today as everything had been eaten by previous generations. On the menu we have : spider plant, antirrhinums, alyssum, hollyhock and various other bits and pieces. Needless to say, I make sure to put in the plants that they seem to attack most in order to encourage them to stay put. Now if only I could find a way of directing the butterflies straight there ...

Not So Loony Gardening ?

Do you garden by the moon? I get a monthly gardening magazine which gives a guide to the phases of the moon and advises on what should be done in the garden at each stage - from sowing to pruning. But I have to admit that I rarely follow it. My gardening schedule tends to depend much more on what I've got time for each week than what I think really ought to be done. Occasionally I do follow the guide, but always forget to label the plants so that I can compare them with others which were sown (or whatever) at the "wrong" time, so that I can see if it makes any difference.

But I was interested to see an article on the BBC site from back in May explaining how 600 volunteers were going to be working on a National Trust site planting annuals in sync with the moon and also explaining why it's supposed to make a difference. The article explains :

The Biodynamic Sowing and Planting Calendar predicts how plant sap and water table levels will be impacted on by the moon's gravity, and identifies optimum times for sowing certain types of plants.
According to the calendar, the moon's gravity produces varying conditions for planting, and is much more specific about the exact time when a flower, root or plant should be placed in the soil than conventional planting schedules.

Too late now for my summer planting, as everything's in. But perhaps it's a project for the autumn. Watch this space ...

Acknowledgement

Thanks to gonzalo_ar for making the photo of the moon available under Creative Commons Licence via the flickr site

The Revenge of the Loquat

Never insult a plant - they have their own ways of getting back at you. A couple of weeks ago I made some very disparaging remarks about the fruit of the Japanese medlar (or loquat) tree. But only a couple of days later our caretaker picked the fruit of the tree in the garden of our apartment block and gave me several kilos. And they were delicious. He must have picked them at just the right moment, as they were soft and sweet but not at all gungy. The rest of my family declined anyway, but (with some sturdy help from the hamster) I gorged for about a week. And then started to itch ... and scratch ... and swell up. And it turns out I'm allergic to the things.

As always with these things, it flared up really badly on Friday, just after the doctor's surgery had closed for the weekend. So I had a thoroughly miserable weekend. It's easing up now, but if you happen to be in Milan and come across a madwoman with ears like Dumbo violently scratching her scalp, you'll know who you're looking at. I'm sorry, tree, I'm sorry ...

Invasion of the toxic caterpillars

I've mentioned before that I've been having problems with caterpillars this year, and it's been getting worse and worse. We always have some, but nothing like this year. I've been going out every day to pick them off, and I've still lost about a third of my plants. For the first time ever red spider mite has paled into insignificance in comparison.

So I was interested today to come across a videoed news report on the BBC site about an invasion of toxic caterpillars in Belgium. It's such a plague that they're having to mobilise the army to deal with them. I can't link directly to the video, but click here and it will take you to the right page to find it (see the right hand sidebar).