Spring is with us without a doubt and we were excited to hear that we may get some rain: we have not seen a sign of it in our corner of France in many, many weeks and the ground is dry. This certainly makes weeding easy and I have been taking the opportunity to spring-clean the garden for the growing season. New leaves and flower buds begin to show in the gardens and countryside as they come back to life and wildlife is responding – the garden is full of birdsong.
I have been up in the loft sowing seeds. So far these include the hardy Banana Ensete glaucum, which I hope to be able to grow and overwinter outside as a couple of others do in the village. Thompson and Morgan’s Flower Of The Year, Sweet Pea Ballerina Blue is finally in the propagator, having soaked the seed over night before sowing in individual pots. We like sweet peas but have yet to grow a really good crop – perhaps this year will be different.
For the kitchen I have planted cherry tomatoes and peppers; Suncherry is described as best in a greenhouse but will have to deal with a warm corner of the garden. We love cherry tomatoes, harvesting and eating them every day in the summer, with wine vinegar, salt and olive oil. I have the bush variety Sungold, to sow from seed, but also coming from Holland as grafted plants. I am looking forward to testing them to see the difference in performance. We have bought several hot pepper varieties, having discovered them a few years ago; I am not a lover of hot food but as with so many home grown vegetables and fruit, they are so much better than the shop-bought varieties. Inferno F1 is sown and two others await.
We are growing several Echinacea varieties in the garden now, so I thought it might be interesting to grow some from seed. We are trying T&M’s Magic Box this year and will see how we get on. A number of Garden Design Academy courses cover the growing of plants from seed but we are currently reorganising the menus to make it easier to find them all from the 70+ now on offer. New sections will include Home Gardening, Parks and Recreation courses and General Horticulture.
A change of subject: during our morning walks with the dog we stop to chat with many people we meet along the way: in the street, on their doorsteps and in their gardens. During one such encounter we were invited in to look at the plot of a man pruning his fruit. It turns out he is an internationally famous botanical artist and grows nearly 700 pear varieties (along with a couple of hundreds apples, a dozen cherries……the list goes on). His pear collection is the largest in private hands and people come from around the world to see them. Central France continues to delight and surprise!
A Gardener in France 