HIGHER MORWELL GARDEN DIARY
30th May 2018
A month of good weather, visits to shows and gardens, and a lot of new work in the garden meaning little time to keep the diary up to date. The growing area is finally getting much-needed fence protection. Rabbits had dug up one of the potatoes so a temporary fence has been put around all five growing beds allowing the beans and peas to be planted outside the polytunnel. Everything seems to have been slow to get growing this year after the cold spring, even the grass.
After many years of growing runner beans up a cane “wigwam”, finding it blows over, and you miss beans when picking them amongst the crowd at the top, I’ve created this south-facing frame pinned into the ground. Will it be better? The redundant box hedge from the gunpowder store bed has a new home as an edging for the bed below the polytunnel. It is suffering box rust but thankfully no sign of blight.
Our composters have arrived and were built on the same day! All the wood planks are easily removable and as the bay fills up we add planks until it is full, then move on to the next one. We’ve started from the right as the left one will have to have the side removed to replace the collapsing fence. Now that will be a big job…
A local company built and installed the gates for us. They are called “Morwell” gates and appealed to us, especially as they look as if they will keep the rabbits out! Since this picture on the 17th May I’ve put fence posts in from the top gate to the double gates in readiness for mesh rabbit netting. Underneath the gates themselves I plan to put pavers to deter any ideas of digging under them. The double gates are needed to allow the mower to drive through and cut the grass - we don’t plan any more vegetable plots but there will be a large fruit cage running up the area with grass either side.
We visited the RHS Malvern Spring Show in mid-May and amongst our purchases was this colourful hedging plant with the un-catchy name of leptospermum. It is evergreen, and has developed many more flowers since this picture on the 17th May. We think it will make a good low hedge to fit between the fruit trees and the planned garden pagoda so we are looking for another dozen exactly the same colour.