Gone to pot ..... Summer 2011

I used to have too many lettuces, which invariably bolted before they could all be eaten - let's face it there is a limited amount that one can eat before tiring of said salad ingredient. I now sow various green salad ingredients in an 18" or so square trough including 'cut and come again'. spring onions, rocket, lambs lettuce, coriander etc. Water them regularly and never allow to dry out. When about three inches or so high harvest as many, or as few, of the leaves you need for salad. It seems to keep going for about three complete chops and it does mean that there is a variety of flavours in the bowl. I tend to 'successional' sow so have a regular supply throughout the summer. In the autumn I sow winter salad in the same way and include things like Tat Choi and Upland Cress - the only problem with this is that winter tomatoes don't taste of anything so although you have the basic ingredients, tomatoes do not feature.

I recently read a novel way of controlling mealy bugs, aphids and red spider mite by squirting them with a jet of plain water or one part chilli peppers with four parts water - it is worth a try, but a word of caution - wash your hands thoroughly after use as chillies are a real irritant if you rub your eyes or anything else after application. And how about this for a novel way of protecting hostas and delphiniums from those "slimy" things - infuse artemisia absinthum in boiling water and spray around the base of the plants. But remember, this solution is very harmful to touch or drink, so use with care! Actually, I think it is probably better not to try these at home!

During the course of this year I must have counted at least thirty different types of weeds as I turned over the soil. This reminded me of another proverb "One year's seeding makes seven year's weeding." Help! Weeds have a phenomenal capacity for regeneration. One square foot of soil may contain more than 150,000 weed seeds! I have sharpened my hoe in anticipation.

However, weeds are useful indicators of the soil condition in the garden. A soil high in nitrogen will grow cleavers, red dead nettle and borage. When the soil is just right chickweed, groundsel and spurges abound. I am pleased to say I have had all these in abundance. Walnut seedlings have been springing up in the most unlikely places, with an abundance of horse chestnut seedlings too - rapidly dispatched!

Shakespeare must have known a thing or two about gardening and quoted King Richard II as saying "I will root away noisome weeds, which, without profit, suck the soil's fertility from wholesome flowers." They do have their uses though. Fat hen, dandelion, white mustard, salad burnet and chickweed (high in vitamin C) also make good salad ingredients. The River Café makes pasta using nettles; when young they can be steamed as a nutritious vegetable and make a passable nettle beer. Nettles also provide an early source of food for ladybirds when they wake from hibernation - love 'em or hate 'em they never quite disappear from the garden - well not mine anyway.

I have just found a long-forgotten book by Beverley Nichols called Down the Garden Path. He does not set out to write a gardening handbook per se, but writes about his adventures as an amateur gardener in his very first, own garden. I say own because do we ever own a garden, or are we enslaved by it? He has a charming turn of phrase, making me wish I had thought of it first.

My hoe is at hand, so before 'the whole land is full of weeds, her fairest flowers chok'd up' (Richard II again) I must strike - while the iron is hot, so to speak.

Floreat Hortus