Monthly Archives: August 2011

Composting the Priory

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I like to build compost bins.  Can’t seem to stop.  Stick me in a garden and before you can say, “Sticky Toffee Pudding,” I’ll have knocked up a range of ‘bins.   Whether you want me to or not – I just keep on building them;


at the other garden I tend,

My own garden with partially built compost bins on left with raised veg beds, olive tree and Jim, Spring 2011

in my own garden

The Priory compost bins, with mixed hedging on left - freshly cut a few weeks ago with clippings waiting to be burnt in foreground

or at the Priory.  I’ve written about the compost bins at the Priory before (see “Compost, Compost and Yet More Compost“).  They sit out on the footpath over on the western boundary.  In the above photo you can see the (as yet uncut) beech hedge and the three oak trees I transplanted back when the world was young and I was but a lad (Feb 2011 – Ed).  They’ve survived their ordeal (see “Planting for the Future“) and whilst not truly flourishing they seem to be fine.  Here’s hoping they make it through the coming winter.  If they survive that, I think they’ll be home and dry.

The front of each bin has six boards that slide up and out

The bins are big – five foot wide, eight foot long and three-foot high and with seven of them you’d think my composting facilities could take all that I could chuck at them.  But, of the seven bins only three were, until recently, available for this season’s grass clippings and garden waste.  Two were filled with last year’s compost and two with last year’s leaf mould.  The gardens produce so much  in the way of lawn cuttings  that I was worried I’d exceed Priory Composting Capacity.

My lovely, lovely leaf mould is in the bottom two bins.

Recently though, and since the above photo was taken, I’ve managed to amalgamate all of the leaf mould into one bin and, by now having four available bins, averted Complete Composting Chaos.  Shudder.
I turn the contents of the bins regularly as this adds much-needed air into the mix and helps the composting process.  Ideally though, there should be a lot more other plant material mixed in with the clippings.  Left to their own devices and unturned, heaps of clippings mixed with a similar amount of ‘brown’ waste (i.e. leaves, cardboard, paper, etc), should heat up to an extraordinary degree and produce wonderful compost in about three months.  Grass clippings on their own also heat up amazingly but need to be turned regularly if they’re not to become just a slimy, foul-smelling mess.  In the above photo the grass clippings are fairly young and yeah, boy do they stink. No, I mean really.  I suppose this is understandable considering that they are being digested, consumed by heat, microbes, fungi and bacteria with, hopefully, sweet-smelling compost as the main waste product.

This collapsed cardoon is actually off to the bonfire - its stems are too woody for the compost bins.

 I add huge amounts of waste to the bins.  Trailers and trailers of stuff.  Wheelbarrows and wheelbarrows of stuff.  And yet it all continuously breaks down and reduces in bulk.  ALL of last year’s garden waste now sits in one and a half bins.  Remarkable.
In a bid to help the breakdown of all those grass cuttings, I add as much brown waste as I can.  The bins devour all the old paperwork from the theanxiousgardener.blogspot.com offices, as well as increasing amounts of cardboard, newspaper and kitchen waste from the Priory, and recently the chopped up beech hedge clippings.  The sheer bulk of the latter was perfect for mixing in with the smelly grass.  Obviously all the general garden waste (dead plants, prunings, etc) is also added to the heaps, as well as some wood ash from the house fires.
I was seriously worried with the overwhelming amount of cut grass I was adding to the bins last year.  But I continued to turn them from one bin to another (great upper body workout) and to add more and more newspaper and cardboard and leaves.  And, miracles of miracles, it seems to have worked.  Look – chock-a-block full of worms and what was nasty, foul-smelling gunk is now becoming lovely, pretty much odourless, compost. So much so that I’m happy to stick my hand in it. Wouldn’t have done that a few months back!

The Long Borders - Aug 2011

I should be able to use all of this compost during the coming autumn and winter months as a mulch and improver for the beds and borders, and so reduce the considerable amount of mushroom compost that I usually buy in.  Last year that was four cubic metres … so the money saved can be spent on tequila.

Priory Picture Post # 12

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A couple of months ago, I was in a well-known DIY shop (starts with B and ends with Q) and, as is pretty much always the case , I felt the urge to rescue one of their plants.  (Have you seen how they treat their tree ferns?  Very big, very old Dicksonia antarctica’s left out in full sun and as dry as a bone.  Shocking).
This little Nepenthes (I think that’s what it is  – it was close to death, unnamed and only 50p) was just screaming out, “Help, help” in a Penelope Pitstop kind of way and, as my crew of insectivorous plants in the Priory greenhouse can use a little help, I had to take her home with me.  (For similar reasons never take me to dog rescue homes.  Or second-hand bookshops).
It wasn’t long ago that a pitcher plant caught a Great Tit and made headline news around the world.  Just look – here.  Oh, OK then  – headline news in Somerset.
My little plant would be hard pushed to swallow a blue-bottle.  But …. just don’t get too close.  Might give you a nasty nip.  She’s recovered from her ordeal nicely; has three pitchers (each about a third full of water in which the insects drown) and I’m really quite fond of her and her gruesome little lifestyle.

New Life and Poppy’s Triumph

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A while ago, Margaret (the farmer whose land surrounds most of the Priory) bought a cow in calf, and the other day, long, long after all her other calves were born we had a new arrival.

He’s a very handsome chap and I can’t but marvel at how clean he is.  He looks like he’s been scrubbed in a bath of buttermilk. Margaret denies that she bathes her calves on a daily basis but I remain suspicious.
Itchy ear
I went up to her farm today for a chat.  For the last few days there has been barely suppressed excitement in the farmhouse kitchen.  Poppy, Margaret’s youngest dog, has been heavily pregnant with her first litter of, according to the vet, three puppies.  She’s a beautiful and lovely tempered dog and we were all sure she would make a fantastic mother.
The night before  last, from 10pm till 2am, Margaret attended as Poppy (her real name) gave birth.  She was two days early and labour was a long protracted affair with the last puppy being breached.
She is a Sprocker spaniel (a springer/cocker cross) and one of the nicest dogs I know.  She and her mother, Bunny, always bark loudly (and at length) when I go up to the farm.  Then, when I’ve opened the gate, they run up to me, launch themselves at my feet, roll over onto their backs and invite me to rub their tummies.  A bit like this:
A chip of the old block

Poppy surprised us all with delivering not three puppies but four.

Having paid stud fees, Margaret had planned to sell all the puppies.  However, she is now so excited and joyful at the new additions to her family that she’s talking of keeping them.  All  of them.  Can’t say I blame her.

Mother and puppies (and Margaret) are all doing well.

A Backlog of Plants

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OK, so I might be overdoing the whole plant acquisition thing:

Bought from a local nursery at a third off. I do like a bargain.

More bamboos, more rudbeckias, more grasses, more achilleas …..

The sheer number of plants stored around the greenhouse is a worrying reminder of how much planting I’ve got to get on with.  Some are grown from seed, some from cuttings, some are divisions, some bought in; it’s beginning to resemble Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.  I shall soon need a machete to reach the door.  But by the hair on my chinny chin chin, if I have to buy every plant in East Sussex, I WILL make this garden beautiful. Or at least full.

A Quick Catchup

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I’ve been painting gloss work at home; door frames galore and literally mile upon mile of skirting – or so it seems.  I’ve also grown increasingly annoyed, irritated and badmouthed at a new laptop.  A new laptop that  won’t connect wirelessly to the net.  I’ve tried so many ‘IT solutions‘ but it still won’t OBEY me.  Next up is solution 36 – hurling it against a brick wall.  So what with painting, a sulky laptop and a couple of novels that were physically impossible to put down, there has, I’m afraid, been a bit of a gap since my last post.

The days are whizzing by and we’re hurtling into autumn with no brakes. STOP!  Please.  Despite writing a few weeks ago how I was relishing the prospect of autumn, I have now changed my mind (a gardener’s prerogative) and am savouring these long, hot and hazy summery days.

Turks Cap Lily growing in the possibly mythical and …

I have built up a logjam of photos over the past few weeks – my computer is groaning under the weight of them all.

… certainly mysterious Priory Fern and Turks Cap Lily Boat.

So here’s a quick splurge to free up some disk space.

Mina lobata
I hadn’t grown Spanish Flag (Mina lobata) before.
Technically it’s a perennial but not in Sussex, where I grow it from seed and treat as an annual.  I’ve been impressed by how easy it grows and the sheer amount of flower, and at how pretty it is.  I’ll certainly grow it again next year.
Dahlia ‘Dark Spirit’
Normally, my dahlia tubers sail through the winter wrapped in newspaper and stored in a cool, dry place.  But this year I lost about a third to fungus.  I suspect I hadn’t dried them out as well as I ought to have done.  The ones that did survive were potted up and nurtured to a height of six inches or more before planting out into the new ‘Tropical’ bed.  Otherwise, I find planting the tubers directly out into beds results in an almighty battle with slugs and snails.   It’s the same if I leave them in the ground overwinter (heavily mulched against frost, of course).   Planted out when they are of a size and a little more robust seems to afford them some protection.  That and organic slug pellets.
Dahlia ‘Fire and Ice’
I did lose some varieties of dahlia altogether though – which is sad but an excellent shopping opportunity next spring!
Dahlia ‘Smarty’
This is a tall elegant dahlia with no two flowers the same.

Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’ is just so reliable and so darn cheery.  Couldn’t be without it; here growing with linaria.

A combination that I’ve really enjoyed (sunglasses required) is Achillea ‘Cloth of Gold’ with the vibrancy of Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’.

Far, far more muted is Hydrangea Kyushu (the only hydrangea in the garden – apart from the climbing, Hydrangea petiolaris) and Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’.

Here, shasta daisies (Leucanthemum x superbum – a glorious name, which is reason enough to grow it) against a backdrop of Helenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’.
The amount of self-sown flowers has been wonderful this year.  I think that is down to an absence of late frosts in May.  This Cosmos sprang up on its own accord in one of the kidney beds – with errant Stipa gigantea seedhead.

Also self-sown is lovely Cosmos purity

and Zinnia ‘Red Spider’.

I’m not a huge fan of fuchsias but this hardy Fuchsia molinae just drips flowers at this time of year.  Here growing up against Zebra Grass (Miscanthus zebrinus) and above Ajuga reptans ‘Braunherz’.  The latter is brilliant ground cover with loads of blue flower spikes in spring.  All three plants went in during late 2008 and are now well established.
Like the dahlias, I find it a battle to get Salvia patens up and out of the ground without a titanic life and death battle with slugdom.  This is one of my favourite perennials though so worth the trouble.  That blue – wow.
I should be able to show you a photo of my favourite salvia, S. ulignosa, growing in this spot in the kidney beds.  Sadly though it was one of the plants I lost during our last, severe winter.  You’ll have to use your imagination.  Thanks.  A real shame as it’s a tall stately plant that flowers for yonks, and the flowers are of such a pretty pale blue.   I was still willing it to emerge long, long after it was obvious it was dead.
And finally (I’ve still got an awful lot of gloss work to do and a laptop to beat into submission) the badly named toad lily (Tricyrtis formosana).  I was given a pot of this gorgeous, if unusual, beauty and I’ve split it again and again to increase my stock.  It’s only just come into flower in the past few days, is happy in shade and just invites close study.