New Herb Bed

One of the things I enjoyed the most this last winter was not having to work in the garden! No brambles or elm suckers to cut back, trees needing branches cutting off, fruit trees needing pruning, not to mention the stream at the old place that would get covered in vegetation (mostly brambles) which needed hacking back every year. Oh the joy of the low maintenance garden here! 

However, now summer is here I do miss all my old flowers (except the work!), which of course attracted butterflies, bees etc. So I had a few plans for this garden which I decided that creating over a couple of years would be doable without being too much hard work all at once. For this year I wanted a herb bed, and close to the kitchen. Next year will be a ‘Nectar Bar’ in the front garden around our bench which has a fab view of the valley. I’d love to erect an arch over the bench for shade, and for climbing plants. That will be a bit more work but we’ll worry about that next year!

When I finally managed to buy pots of herbs after the main lockdown lifted, I marked out where I wanted the bed to be, and my lovely husband set to work deturfing. He knew he would be doing the hard work! Unfortunately, the soil turned out to be rock hard so he couldn’t use a spade for this, so had to attack it with a mattock. When the turf was finally off, we discovered the soil was so hard that you couldn’t even get a digging fork in. It had been dry for a few weeks so I suggested getting the hose on it, but to save us the job, luckily it rained, which softened the soil enough and K was able to dig it over and get a couple of sacks of bought compost dug in. However, the soil here is thick, sticky clay - yuck! So much for a fine tilth, that’s just impossible as the lumps of clayey soil on the surface dry out really hard. Even digging holes with a trowel to plant my herbs was tough...... and I did something I’ve never had to do ever before - I put gravel at the bottom of each planting hole! I know some aromatics would not be happy sitting in soggy clay soil over winter, and would need help with drainage.

Our covered terrace outside the kitchen

In the meantime, whilst this was all going on, I sowed some seed - flat and curly parsley, normal and lemon basil (not tried that one before), plus some coriander and dill to use until I get a chance to sow some direct in the soil. I also managed to find not only Thai basil seed, but actual plants in one of the garden centres! I absolutely love this herb and it makes a Thai style stir fry really amazing. Thai basil has an aniseed flavour, if you are not familiar with it, and is not the same as Holy basil, which I tried to grow once but failed. It didn’t seem to have a nice flavour anyway.

Thai Basil

Greek Basil - this has tiny leaves and a far superior flavour to regular basil

I mentioned on my last post that I had been doing a bit of crafting - amongst other things I have done some stencilling for the first time. I've made some of my plant pots a bit more interesting with stencils that I bought off Amazon. It wasn't easy to do as the chalk paint leaked a bit under the stencil in places so I had to scrape some off, particularly on the pots with fine writing. I don't care too much, nobody is going to be looking close up except me!

Of course I had to have a dragonfly! It says La Libellule on the other side,
which is the French for dragonfly.

.... and butterflies!

The bed is now finished and I’ll be planting out the parsley soon and I've just sown some coriander and dill seed direct - for the moment there is loads of space between the plants. The rosemary is so small, I have a laugh remembering my old one which was enormous and I’d prune about a wheelbarrow full off it every three or four years! 😄 

Finished, for now, herb bed.

On the far left are chives and garlic chives, which are in the shade in this image.

I must also mention that over the last month we have been eating our own cherries; we have two trees which are different varieties, and they’ve been pruned so that most of the fruit is pickable without even needing a stepladder. We’ve had kilos and I’ve made several desserts with cherries. Next year I’ll make cherry jam especially for Keith as it’s his favourite jam. One of the trees has deep red sweet cherries, and the other the fruit is orange before turning red and is slightly tarter (but still sweet). I’m dead chuffed that we have these trees, though in the last week they have suddenly become covered in rust so the leaves are turning a horrible orangey brown colour. K has sprayed with a fungicide so I hope it won’t get any worse. Just when I had been admiring how healthy our fruit trees look compared to our old place!! We also have three plum trees, but not a huge harvest this year - one tree has no fruit at all, one has quite a lot of very small plums and the third has a nice bunch of green plums on one branch, which I think is going to be a golden greengage (I found a label in the garage), and it is going be fun finding out what they all turn out to be soon.

We also have a few veggies in pots - three tomatoes, two aubergines and one Cayenne chilli plant! It's quite exciting again after a number of years of not growing veggies. We knew we wouldn't be going anywhere this year so not really a problem with the extra watering - I potted up tons of geraniums/verbenas in pots too, although dotted around the pool and the front of the house they look rather sparse! It's more than enough when it comes to watering every day when it is hot though. 

I should have taken a more recent pic with the aubergines and chilli and other tomatoes in it!

I have made a new ‘page’ for butterflies where I am listing both butterflies seen in our garden, and the ones I’ve seen on walks in the local area and various outings further afield. I’ve also updated the bird page with our new garden bird list - up to 30 so far, with several species I wasn’t expecting to see, such as Zitting Cisticola! The bird song here is quite different from at the last house!

I’m sure you are all enjoying being able to get out and about more now, so enjoy the summery weather when we have it. xx  

(As usual I am behind with blogging - these photos were taken through the month of June, so the herbs and tomatoes etc are far more advanced now.)