Helen's Garden Renovation Project

My freezer is full of Discovery apples and the raspberries my parents kindly brought when they came to visit last weekend. I looked up on the Internet when the apples on my Charles Ross tree should be ripe, and all sources said September or October. Despite the obvious enormousness* of the apples so far, I had hoped that Charles would be able to hold off until perhaps the first week in September, but no – when I went into the garden this morning I found two of his apples lying on the ground. So I took a large bowl and picked all the others that were easy to twist off.

My point is that if only Charles had had an internet connection, he would have known not to produce any fruit until next week at the earliest, which would have given me a bit longer to eat some of the things in the freezer. But I have enough room to freeze what I have so far, and most of the apples look as if they are in good condition, so should keep for a few weeks while I work my way through all the yummy puddings. I also need it to stop raining for a bit so I can do some digging and create the need for some extra calories.

*Enormousness is the correct word. Not enormity. Although the freezer space is a problem, the tree is a nice tree and has not behaved atrociously.

Today I brought in some additional labour to help prepare for the big planting project in the autumn.

The job was to move the marjoram from under the apple tree to another part of the garden. The reason is that I want to preserve the marjoram, because it is good ground cover, is unfussy about where it is put, smells gorgeous and is beloved by bees. I do not yet know where its eventual destination will be, but there is a patch behind the bay tree where it can quietly flourish, out of the way of the operations that will take place as soon as the apple tree has gone to sleep for the winter.

As there was a lot of marjoram under the apple tree, there was no way we were going to move it all. You can see from the picture below that there was still a lot left after we had decided we had done enough digging. You can also see how prolific the apple tree is – for its size, those are amazingly big and plentiful apples.

Mum and I trimmed the marjoram right back – sorry bees – and dug it up in several spadefuls, while Dad dug some holes in its new home, correctly watering the holes before planting. There should still be enough summer left for the marjoram to establish itself behind the bay tree. It won’t mind being in the shade.

Next, I will dig up the rest of the marjoram and the other plants under the apple trees, and compost them, but there is no hurry to do this. Just as well, because I think I am going to be very busy preparing and freezing all those apples in a few weeks’ time.

The wisteria is once again becoming wisterical.

So I pruned it.

I know what the books say about pruning wisteria – you have to do it twice a year, in July/August and January, and you have to cut x amount off each soft traily bit leaving y leaves still on there, and then it flowers. These instructions are clearly written by people without burglar alarm boxes and drainpipes. The only pruning instruction that my wisteria understands is, “Cut off as much as you can without falling off the ladder”. I am still waiting for the part of the process where it flowers.

A kind friend said that in the recent Willowherb Elimination Stakes he was rooting for the willowherb, describing it as “attractive and the way the seeds unpeel is nice (and it is, of course, free and very low maintenance)”. Low maintenance is a good way of describing a plant that needs no encouragement. Maybe next year the willowherb and I will have come to an arrangement where we can live together in harmony.

Another kind friend warned me that I had a demon in the Temporary Pond. I had noticed it had been getting somewhat overgrown, but I am used to having to pull out great handfuls of the pondweed from time to time.

She identified my demon as Crassula helmskii, aka New Zealand Pygmyweed. The RHS and other highly respected organisations have terrible things to say about it, mainly because it is an invasive non-native species. I have no idea whether this is the pondweed I originally bought in 1996 or whether it hitched a lift into my pond and took over from what I intended to have. However, in a small pond it requires little maintenance – just five minutes a month in the peak growing season to rip out a few handfuls and compost them after leaving them by the side of the pond for a few days for things to crawl out. And it IS a good oxygenator, and the pond has always been very healthy with the weed in it.

So I am not going to attempt to eradicate the demon, but I may consider using a different type of pondweed if I ever get the two official ponds up and running.

I have been engaged in the pleasurable but demanding task of eating all the Discovery apples before they go off – they do not store well. I don’t know what they are like when cooked, but it seems a waste to cook them when they taste so divine raw. After I’ve finished with them, I have Charles Ross to contend with. It is a shame that both my apple trees have chosen odd years to bear their maximum fruit load, but perhaps when I move them, one of them will be upset enough to start producing in even years.

And finally… I notice that WordPress is now inserting pictures where I want them, instead of automatically putting them at the beginning of the article and expecting me to cut and paste them. I do not know whether this is because I have a new version of WordPress or because I sacked Internet Explorer 9 (it’s unbelievably slow and crashes even more often than Internet Explorer 8, which is saying something) and installed Google Chrome.