Over the Garden Wall
Bryony Lewis

What a wonderful few days we have just had. Here in Cornwall in a sheltered spot in my garden it reached an incredible 61 degrees fahrenheit. 61 degrees in early February no less! Little wonder the crocuses, daffodils and native primroses are in full flower and the bluebells are already pushing their way through the soil. There are even a few roses and lavender flowers on bushes that have somehow managed to keep flowering right through the winter.
However the snails have also woken up early and are already posing a threat to the last remaining cabbages and brussel sprouts. There are tell tale trails everywhere. This year I am trying a very old method of getting rid of them… a friend swears by scattering bran around her garden which the slugs and snails tuck into with abandon. She says the bran absorbs all the moisture from the pests from the inside, as it were, and that they perish as a result. It still sounds cruel, I know, but when you are seriously trying to be self-sufficient and organic and rely on what you grow you cannot afford to see your crops decimated by these creatures.
At least they won’t harm the birds or the frogs who may eat them unlike the ones which have been killed with those horrible blue pellets. And bran is really inexpensive when you buy it loose and unadulterated from health shops.
Talking of frogs, in my neighbour’s garden pond the frog spawn is already abundant and everywhere I look seems to have taken on all the characteristics of a clement April. It is making me uneasy and I don’t think I am the only one. All the new growth could well be lost if the weather returns to what it would ordinarily be like at this time of year. Is it worth pressing ahead with sowing seeds or chitting the potatoes or should we wait a few more weeks just in case? I remember there being thick snowdrifts here one Easter weekend in April and when I lived “up country” before moving to London it wasn’t at all unusual to get harsh frosts as late as the first week of May. Indeed there are lots of inland frost pockets all over the south west which require a different approach altogether.
Ne’er cast a clout ‘til May is out remains the rule of the day in many northern towns but is that realistic these days for those of us with gardens close to the coast on high ground that enjoys long hours of sunshine and a drying breeze? Do we really need to wait until April and May to plant our pea and bean seed in a sheltered spot or in the shed or greenhouse? Will we soon be seeing the major gardening books and seed packet instructions newly revised to include advice for the much warmer climate we are getting? It seems to me that we need to modify some of our thinking and adapt our timings to a more Mediterranean schedule but therein lies the rub – what if we plough ahead, so to speak, only to see everything and all our hard work destroyed by sharp frost.
Rather than take the risk or worry this year I, like many gardening friends, have been making the most of the bright warm days by getting on with the preparations for our vegetable beds, building some new raised beds, cutting back overgrown ivy and brambles, and generally tidying up… Cold frames have been knocked together from old windows and a few redundant floorboards and all the pots, seed trays and plant markers have been given a good scrub to ensure they are thoroughly clean. I have also contrived a few rhubarb forcers from old buckets and will soon be eating the first of the season’s crop. Sadly I have had to dig out and burn some of the older blackcurrant bushes I inherited with this garden as they cropped very poorly last year, had some kind of leaf disease which I couldn’t identify, and had virtually no new growth on them at all. They were virtually all dead wood and were likely at least twenty years old so perhaps they simply died of old age. I have tried taking cuttings from some of the healthier bushes but don’t know yet how successful they’ll be though the gooseberry cuttings I took last spring are already well rooted and pushing out new shoots. I was told that these sort of cuttings will never fruit but it is worth a try as I have quite a bit of spare space to put to use.
One final passing thought, we volunteered ourselves for a local beach cleaning day last week and left with a haul of driftwood and sacks of seaweed. The driftwood is beautifully weathered and will be used to make a garden seat whilst the seaweed has gone straight onto the compost heap where it should rot down really quickly. We really enjoyed doing our bit and getting to know more people and have out ourselves down for the next weekend clean up, mind you it may well not be as sunny and bright next time as it was last Sunday but hugely worthwhile nonetheless.
Time now after a hard day in the garden to put my feet up and dip into the growing collection of old gardening books I have been buying from charity shops, boot fairs and church sales. Bliss.