Myrtle in the snow & biodynamic gardening

Yet more snow, which is why I haven't blogged for over a week. Looking back, my last post was full of new shoots and promise! The snow was a magical transformation to start with, becoming more and more of an interruption as it lingered, preventing garden work. In the picture you can see the east wall (west facing) which is ivy covered, a wonderful resource for all kinds of wildlife, to birds for nesting, to insects for nectar and shelter, with its flowers and berries a magnet for wasps, butterflies, bees and hover flies. The bench is a sunny place to sit, warm even in winter if the sun is out.

To the left is a myrtle, Luma chequen, which in past winters I have always fleeced. Early on its life, I had it damaged by frost several times, each time having to prune it back so it could re-shoot; I never actually lost it but it curtailed its size. After several warm winters, it is now a large shrub, and this winter for the first time I decided to let it take its chance as it is really too big to easily wrap up! So of course it proves to be a harder winter than some, but so far it is ok.... It's on the edge of the Roman garden and when I take visitors round, I show them how its leaves smell sweet like bubble gum.

Our vegetable garden and cut flowers are grown by biodynamic methods, about which I have written before, and I recently came across a new blog which is written by the author of one of the books that we follow, In Tune with the Moon. You can find it at http://intunewithmoon.findhornpress.com/ (there's a link also on the right hand page of this blog) so it will be interesting to see how their garden fares over a season of growing.

Biodynamic compost at Brantwood

Last Thursday we were in the Lake District at Brantwood, Ruskin's house on a hillside by Coniston Water, a garden that we love and have visited many times. Sally Beamish is the Head Gardener at Brantwood and they have just held the 2nd Northern Biodynamic Spring Conference there. As well as trialling biodynamic methods at the garden, the Conferance enabled Brantwood to become a conduit for linking hill shepherds, gardeners, farmers and anyone interested in biodynamic culture. Sally is following the 2008 Northern Hemisphere Astro Calendar of Brian Keats and Stefan Mager - we hadnt come across this one, using the Thun's calendar ourselves (see my other posts) but it did seem to have a nice clarity in its layout, a more pictorial approach.

The photo above is of Sally's compost heap which is in the pretty orchard below the house. It was more than twice as high when made and has sunk to this level, topped by sheep's wool and incorporating biodynamic preparations. Around the orchard are examples of the six major plants used in some of the preparations - yarrow, chamomile, nettle, dandelion, valerian and oak bark. We havent so far experimented with these preparations at Chesters Walled Garden but think we will in future to see how they work. Sally is doing an agricultural trial at Brantwood with chromatography soil testing to measure the effects from biodynamic preparations against untreated turf.

This picture is of the woven lattice fence in the herb garden at Brantwood, beautifully made of thin layers of locally harvested wood.

Biodynamic gardening at Chesters

There has been a bit of a gap since my last blog because so little had changed in the garden - the cold weather has kept the plants in near suspended animation - but finally with the warmth of the last few days, things are moving. The Apeldoorn tulips, which have been in tight bud for three weeks, are gratefully opening and there is growth everywhere.

David has been sowing seeds for, according to the biodynamic calendar, today has been a leaf day. He follows the Biodynamic Sowing and Planting Calendar 2008 of Maria and Matthias Thun and enjoys the discipline and rhythmn that it gives. The seeds he has been sowing are herbs grown for their leaves rather than flowers (a flower day would be better for calendulas, for example) so he has been filling plug trays with little groups of seed of basil, purple basil, parsley, salad burnet, bronze fennel and dill. A recent book that I got is called In Tune with the Moon 2008 published by the Findhorn Press and also has a day to day moon planting calendar but adds all sorts of other interesting areas - the best time for dentistry, hair cutting, bee keeping, aspects of animal husbandry, beer making and many other areas of life. Fascinating.

The greenhouse is crammed with young plants for sale full of vitality and the wonderfully scented herbs on the back wall are now bouncing back. Lemon verbena, balm of gilead, pineapple sage, passion flower etc. were all cut right back for the winter. There are delicate yellow flowers on the Rosa banksiae lutea, a plant that we could not grow outside, but which flourishes in the unheated greenhouse.

Lovely Easter weather...

What an Easter weekend! There were forecasts of heavy snow in the North of England although the most we ever had at Chesters were flurries of snow showers, large soft feathery flakes that swept over the garden from time to time. Actually, Sunday was really quite a nice day though cold but this picture was taken today, Easter Monday, and shows the espalier apples through a veil of snow.
Working through the snow showers, we got quite a bit of garden work done - last Friday night's Gardeners' World had an interview with Fergus Garrett who has the garden team at Great Dixter steadily working through the rain regardless, with waterproofs and hats on, clearing the March leaves from under hedges and topiary. A little bit of strange weather doesn't stop us gardeners!

The pair of long tailed tits are still busy on the nut feeder, the female blackbird still following me closely round the garden. She is so tame that she came into the shop on Saturday and had to be lured out with some breadcrumbs (I told her they were particularly good being from biodynamically grown wheat from Gilchesters Organics but I think she liked them anyway). But visitors were probably amused to see me running round the garden, chasing the male pheasants out, because they are less wanted as they will scratch in the pots for sale. They stop doing it once there are lots of people about so .... roll on Spring!

Moon gardening at Chesters

For my latest article in The Northumbrian magazine which is out this week, I have written about biodynamic gardening, a holistic system that we have used in Chesters Walled Garden's vegetable growing beds for the last two years. For organic gardeners, ‘moon gardening’ can be a natural development and I am noticing more and more references to it in magazines and papers - in The Independent last Saturday there was a piece about vineyards in the south of France producing red wines by this method. For the past two years, my husband, David, has grown all our vegetables this way, using as his guide The Biodynamic Sowing and Planting Calendar by Maria and Matthias Thun. This yearly publication shows the optimum times for the whole seasonal gardening cycle, from sowing to harvesting, as well as pruning, maintenance and beekeeping. He finds that the discipline of sowing times is a real help to getting things done, a daily reminder of seeds to sow, plants to harvest or even the best time to cut the lawn with a view to less regrowth!

Last year a well known National Trust garden, Nymans in Sussex, used biodynamic growing for their extensive bedding. Thinking about the moon, I have added this beautiful image of the moon rising above the Chesters Walled Garden by Hexham artist, Brian Waters and it shows our espalier apple trees and the greenhouse. The Northumbrian has just celebrate its 100th isssue and 20 years of the magazine - www.thenorthumbrian.co.uk.