After the Rural Society Antique and Garden sale at the farm last week , I foolishly scheduled a date for the arrival of two hives of bees I had to pick up and install this week. I have had a hive of bees for years, but due to either the weather or management neglect, I lost my colony this past winter so I decided to start over with brand new hives. I got on the Brushy Mountain Bee website and ordered two of the smaller, eight frame English style hives. (You may recognize it from the Williams Sonoma Agrarian line which is like porn for English country lovers….but much more affordable!) I painted mine white and I think I am going to add a finial and a wood rosette at the peak.
Brushy Mountain Bee Supply English garden hive
This is as close as I could get to my inspiration hives on the roof of the Fortnum and Mason food emporium in London. They harvest their own honey on the roof and sell it downstairs in the store and online.
The Fortnum and Mason Bee "Cathedrals"
There is a great video of the Fortnum and Mason honeybee operation posted below.
Maybe because it’s spring, maybe because it’s Easter…or maybe it’s just a perfect spring, Good Friday…..but it certainly made me want to bring a little bit of the garden in the house this evening.
Korean Spice Viburnum in a vintage zinc bucket...now on my dining room table
All my great heirloom Daffodil varieties are in their glory
This is the time of year when I start to run out of room in the greenhouse….still too early to take out the tender potted plants and my seedlings take over the rest. I am already harvesting early lettuce and arugula that I planted in my “lettuce table” that I fashioned from a wire frame lined with window screen resting on folding sawhorses. Fill with a great soil mix and you are ready to plant!
Buttercrunch lettuce thriving in the lettuce table
Lettuce Table ready for seed
2X4 boxes with a hardware cloth bottom and lined with window screen
I have found this to be a great way to raise early salad greens..it would even work outside so you could have a salad table right outside your back door or even on a small balcony. So tonight I will have Buttercrunch, Speckles Lettuce, Romaine and Arugula for my first garden salad of the season! I also spotted another great idea from Rural Society friends, Kara and Darci, from Mcmaster and Storm. An old pallet with a bottom can make instant rows for salad or other veggie crops….the possibilities are endless when gardeners are involved!
The April issue of World of Interiors features of all things, a dovecote designer. Gerry Peacheyengineers traditional dovecotes using local materials like oak timber, infilled with wattle and daub. His own dovecote in Somerset, England is a architectural work of art. Pigeons and doves have been kept for centuries as an important meat staple especially in many rural areas of Europe. Peachey keeps a heirloom breed of pigeon known for its meat productivity.
I don’t eat my pigeons but I do have my own dovecote in the kitchen garden….a bit more modest than Mr. Peachey’s, but mine was built by my husband from a antique dovecote found on the Dee Puddy Garden and Interiors website.
Monty Don is pretty much a rock star in the British gardening world….as he is the television host of the widely popular BBC Gardener’s World and writes extensively for newspapers and magazines. I only wish we could get Gardeners World broadcast here. Don has traveled and reported on gardens all over the world, but his favorite place is his own garden, Long Meadow, that he and his wife Sara have created together over the past twenty years. The garden was their own personal effort and at times on a very limited budget. I have loved every gardening book he has ever written, and this video of him talking about his new book and his garden, made me push the order button Anyone who has a country garden will love reading Monty Don.
I ordered the book from amazon.co.uk. I have found the books from across the pond sometimes arrive faster than the domestic orders!
It seems like a life time since the staff from Country Living Magazine was here to shoot photographs of the farm. It is hard to believe it takes almost a year from start to publication. We are so excited to finally see the finished product. The experience was great and the Country Living crew was wonderful and to put rumors to rest….what you see is what you get. All the photos featured my own relics. Other than what I have changed since they were here (which I have to admit is quite a bit) the magazine shows the farm as it really is!
Part of my herb garden featuring my mint collection
I have never wanted to be in a magazine, because I did things to make myself happy, not necessarily to be in style or to be recognized. Since starting the Rural Society Sales, I felt that the publicity would bring new faces to the farm and in turn be good for all my dealer friends who participate in the sale. This is a real farm and I am glad that so many others get a chance to enjoy it, even if it is only through the photographs in Country Living. It all started with my friend Lisa Maughmer, owner of Urban Farmhouse taking a picture during a party of a soapstone sink I purchased from her (a picture of which is in the magazine) and posting it on her blog. Country Living editor, Natalie Warady, saw it, contacted her and everything snowballed from there.
The sitting area where we eat outside most of the summer
Lili Diallo was our stylist for the shoot and she has written a book, Details, that features her interior design work, much of which you might recognize from her time at Domino magazine.
To chit or not to chit…..that is the question. Growing potatoes may be considered a bit old fashioned or pointless in this age of Walmart and grocery super centers. But if you want anything other than the standard Russet or Yukon Gold, you have to grow your own or pay a premium at a specialty grocery. I love the gourmet fingerling potatoes including the Rose Finn Apple, French and La Ratte. Once you look at a catalog like the Maine Potato Lady, you find out how truly potato deprived we really are. Now is the time to order a few pounds and begin the chitting process, so they have a head start before planting in the kitchen garden. I place my seed potatoes in plastic egg cartons on a cool window sill in my enclosed porch. Once the sprouts appear and the weather cooperates, they are ready for planting. Some experts feel that the chitting process is a unnecessary step, but I find that a faster sprouting plant does not get lost in the garden, making early weeding much easier and of course faster gratification is always important.
Chitted potatoes ready for the garden
Some of the great fingerling potatoes available
Most home vegetable gardeners don’t have the room that I have for a full kitchen garden, so potatoes are usually omitted from most gardener’s list. But potatoes don’t have to be grown in the plot, they can be grown in barrels and other containers to save valuable room in the garden. Even with the size of my garden, I am considering alternatives in order to save space for other vegetables. I love these willow and bamboo towers that I found photos of online. They are practical and look good. You could use willow or bamboo screen rolls to construct these and have an instant potato garden. Willow screen is available online from the Plow and Hearth catalog in different heights, and I know some garden centers also have it available. Whiskey barrels and garbage are also great alternatives. There is one website that claims you can grow 100 pounds of potatoes in one barrel. So whether you choose to chit or not…grow a few potatoes please.
Everyone seems to think Dahlias are something only grown by collectors or grandmothers. Maybe it is because they are not hardy and have to be dug up every fall or like roses, that they take a special green thumb to have success. But I have found that my cutting garden and my borders are not complete without them. They provide an endless supply of blooms sometimes well into the end of October, and tubers can be purchased for a minimal investment at any garden center or home improvement store. I pot mine up in March and April and put them in my greenhouse., keeping them pinched back, and by May I have big, healthy plants to put out in the garden. This year I ordered some new tubers from one of my favorite catalogs, Swan Island Dahlias, to add to my collection that I dug last fall. These selections have been rated as some of the best for cut flowers by the catalog. I am also trying a few varieties recommended by British cutting garden specialist, Sara Raven. Don’t be afraid of staking or the fall digging…just enjoy the abundance of blooms when the rest of the garden begins to start fading!
Sweet Peas are a must have for my cutting garden and are some of the first seeds I sow in my greenhouse in spring. The hard part is editing down the list of favorites. Due to a lack of horticultural self control in the past, I have sometimes sown more Sweet Peas than I could ever use. Tempted by the varieties of colors, scents, clever names and sentimental descriptions, it is hard to limit yourself to just a few. So this year I tried to limit it to a few of my all time favorites.
Black Knight
Beaujolais
White Supreme
Lord Nelson
I also sow a mix from Botanical Interests called Moroccan Spice which is a mixture of all the old fashioned, deep jewel tones. My secret weapon for success are root trainer pots that I order from England, they can be ordered online from Thompson & Morgan. Sweet Peas have long roots and hate being crowded in a standard pot. In a pinch, homemade root trainers can be fashioned from paper towel tubes or newspaper. My other trick is soaking the seeds overnight to soften the hard outer seed shell. I picked up my Sweet Pea growing technique from the writings of the late British gardener, Rosemary Verey. Verey stressed starting your plants early and keeping them pinched back, so you have a healthy, multi stem plant to put out in the garden. I plant mine against a fence and on willow teepees in my kitchen garden, and I always have handfuls of cut blooms for the house. When you smell that fresh cut bouquet on your bedside table in May, as you drift off into spring slumber, you will be glad you made the effort to grow your own!
Root trainer cell packs promote the root growth needed for successful Sweet Peas
I might make this a regular feature of the blog…some of the realties and occasional untidiness of country life. It never fails. The car is warming up, I am dressed to meet someone in town, it’s muddy and cold, I am already late, and as I walk out the door, all the sheep and the llama are out and headed toward the road. In all fairness, the farm is on a gravel rural road, but it only takes one vehicle and one beast to lead to disaster and possibly an insurance claim. It seems no matter how secure you make your fence, they always find the one gate that is slightly ajar or the one high wire that they can escape under. So off I go, chasing sheep (and llama) with mud accumulating on my shoes and a manured sheep rump brushing against my clean trousers. I was thinking about fences as I was rounding up the flock thinking ….I wish I had a HA HA!
Ha Ha walls were popular in the 17th and 18th century and were suppose to separate the estate and gardens from the livestock in the pasture. They served as a protective barrier while giving the estate an unobstructed view of the surrounding landscape and animals, without the up close and personal experience like the one I had this morning. Ha Ha walls were essentially large ditches with a stone or earth wall to keep the livestock in their proper place. As long as there is the hope of grain or greener grass, my sheep will always find any escape possible whenever the opportunity presents itself ….even if there was a Ha Ha, I think the Ha Ha would always be on me!
Ha Ha Wall at Stowe Park in England
View over the Ha Ha wall at Hidcote Manor
The view over a Ha Ha...makes the landscape seamless
