Front of House

While we were waiting for something other than weeds to appear our back garden, my green fingers got a bit itchy - even more so when I realised that the front of the house gets all the herb-friendly warm afternoon sun so desperately missing from the garden.

This provoked a trip to Shannon's, and the purchase of two troughs to go under our kitchen windows. In these troughs, we planted:

a) the herbs we were missing from our old place; Tarragon, Dill, and Chives, plus some Sage

b) Pak Choi, Chard and Sorrell

And when Spouse's parents asked what I wanted for my birthday, I thought about my wish-list of plants, and asked for a baby lemon tree, not really expecting to get one. Spouse's parents kindly provided not only this, but also, since it turned out to be slightly more "baby" than any of us expected, an olive tree to be its friend. And matching pots for them.

We'd already got a pot for the lemon tree before it was delivered, knowing that it would have to go in special citrus compost and be brought inside in the winter. Because the lemon tree is so tiny, our pot is way too big - but one day, it won't be. So rather than face the prospect of having to transplant the tree in a few year's time, I put it (in the citrus compost) in a flower pot inside the large one, then filled in the edges with standard compost and planted beetroot and spinach beet there. In Spouse's parents pots, we put the olive tree (much slower-growing) and a rosemary bush.

I wasn't sure how well any of it would work, and it was a bit hit-and-miss.

We had fresh pak choi leaves for our miso soup after about a month, and by treating the plants as cut-and-come-again, this continued until they bolted after a couple more months. The sorrell got crowded out. The chard didn't do all that brilliantly either - it got attacked by hoppers and never really recovered. The spinach beet, on the other hand worked fantastically. The stuff seems to be utterly indestructible. You can cut it right back, and it just keeps coming. And it really doesn't bolt. The beetroots were also great for leaves, eventually developing the roots. These were a bit small, as they didn't have a lot of room to spread out. We harvested them anyway, and they were quite tasty. They are the ones in the picture at the top, incidentally. The only real problem I had with either of those two was with nasty little flies eating holes in the leaves. Pyrethrum spray sorted that out, but I'm not really happy about insectides on food plants, so I'll have to research an alternative for next year.

The sage sort of took over the trough it was in, so the dill got crowded out and I had to put it out of it's misery. I'm now raising some from seed in a pot in the kitchen instead. The tarragon held it's own though. I remembered that it dies off in the cold, so I've now brought it inside for the winter.

The rosemary started off in the back garden, because Spouse didn't want it nicked. Now he has more confidence that it won't happen, I've moved it to the front so that the sun will give it a stronger flavour. I thought that the change of position might stop the local squirrels burrowing into it's compost - but if anything, they seem even more determined to plant conkers in it. Some squirrel netting will hopefully put a stop that.