#vegetable plot

Winter solstice 2021; here I am proud to present my first ever crop of parsnips:

They got a pond made out of duckweed and some moss patches to cross the pond.

They also have the option to cross the pond with this little chestnut shell 🌰 and stick and some cupules to protect themselves against the sun.

Then there is a chestnut pit and a bridge to travel across.

In the background you can see the woods and here you can see all of it in one picture.

Finnja tried out the boat although she had to do it a bit differently due to her posture.

Muna (Moona) preferred the moss patches.

Freyja explored the woods as did Ruby and Rollo.

Johanna had some fun with the chestnut pit.

While Ruth was just happy to be involved.

True Blue Flowers at the allotment /part 1

You know I love blue flowers, but you might have not noticed how uncommon ‘true blue’ flowers actually are in nature. In the animal world, the presence of this colour is often just an optical effect caused by how light is absorbed and refracts in particular structures. In plants, however, different shades of real blue are the result of chemical changes that alter the red and purple anthocyanin pigments present in a large variety of species.

This is not a common process and it has proven to be particularly challenging to replicate artificially. If you like technical details, here you can read about how the first -passably- blue Chrysanthemum was created.   

Some plant families though, seem to have mastered this prodigious alchemical feat and produced a good variety of sky-coloured species, which have been further diversified artificially in as many cultivars. Probably the most prominent of these families, the Boraginaceae has gifted us with some of the most common blue wildlfowers you could encounter in temperate areas, and plenty of garden ornamental plants. 

In the photos above you can see members of this family currently blooming at my veg plot and, if you look closely, you can see how the flower buds on all these plants look pink, but the pigments start changing as they open to reveal different shades of true blue:     

- Borago officinalis, borage: annual herbaceous   

- Lithodora diffusa ‘Blue Star’ & ‘Heavenly Blue’: evergreen subshrubs

- Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’, Siberian bugloss: deciduous herbaceous perennial

- Myosotis scorpioides, water forget-me-not: herbaceous perennial

- Myosotis arvensis, field forget-me-not: herbaceous annual or short-lived         perennial

I was down at the allotment for 9am this morning and it felt good to get an early start on all the clearing up. I got so much done below is a list for anyone who is interested.

- weeded four beds next to my greenhouse

- moved two small compost heaps into my new long bed

- layered and topped up my compost bins, adding shredded paper, grass cuttings and all the old cuttings and remnants of the plants I grew this year

- started some nettle fertiliser

- collected my first batch of leaves that will break down to leaf mould

- added the left over chicken pellets to one of my raised beds and dig it in

- added torn egg boxes and newspaper to my extra long bed and topped it up with well rotted manure all ready for next spring

- added a layer of newspaper to all other raised beds ready for a layer of manure (when I get the next batch)

Raised beds in the Kitchen Garden at Harlow Carr, Harrogate, England