Weeds

An exert from Mr Middleton’s book ‘Your Garden In War-time’:

May

Now for a few jobs in the garden. May is an interesting and pleasant month but it is also a busy one, and among other evil things which come to enjoy its sunny days are the weeds. Weeds of every description, great and small, tough and tender; it’s marvellous where they all come from. Up to this year l’ve been fairy free of creeping convolvulus, or bellbine (bindweed), but now it has got into the gooseberry patch. If you want to punish anyone for being naughty, just give him an hour or two pulling bellbine out of gooseberry bushes, it should prove to be very effective.This is the time of the year to tackle weeds with a will, or rather with a hoe. Keep the Dutch hoe busy among the crops and never allow a weed to flower in the garden if you can help it. If you do, it means seeds and another crop of weeds. But unless the weather is very dry, the Dutch hoe is not very effective unless you follow it with the rake and take the weeds away. Just pushing them about with the hoe from one place to another and leaving them there, merely transplants them and they thrive on it.

He goes on to tell us that weeds growing on paths should be treated with Sodium Chlorate killing anything it touches but warns it is ‘rather combustable, so handle it carefully and avoid friction, or it may go off with a fizz‘!

I am sure l have still seen it for sale but from September 2009 Sodium Chlorate was takken off the EU approved pesticides list but maybe they have taken the ‘fizz’ out of it! Mal from Malsallotment asked me how l keep my paths clear round the veg plot. Well, l do it exactly the same way as Mr Middleton suggests. It is quite therapeutic. Much better than spraying with a fizz bang weedkiller although l do use RoundUp on the main drive,

Now we have had all of this rain it seems you only have to turn your back for two minutes and there are more weeds to pull. I might try making a salad out of a few and eat them just out of spite!

How do you keep your weeds down and does anybody have any recipes using weeds in salads?!

 

Reminders for May

Another exert from ‘Mr Middleton Talks About Gardening’:

Reminders for May.

Here we are in May at last, and very pleasant it is. I don’t think l have ever seen the countryside looking so pretty- and its going to look even prettier still during the next week or two. While l was sitting here waiting for the red light to twinkle, l was trying to recollect a poem l used to know about the month of May, but my head is so full of cats and pepper that l think l have quite forgotten everything else, and l can’t recall it. But the gist of it was that though you may travel east and west through palm-covered isles ‘neath tropic skies, and all the rest of it, you will never find a sweeter sight than an English garden in May. And l dare say a good many of you will agree with that sentiment. Where else could you find, say, lilies of the valley and bluebells and apple blossom, flowering crabs and the golden chains of laburnum, and lilac in such perfection and profusion as we find in an English cottage garden this month?

Does anyone recognise the poem he is trying to remember? I’ve tried Goggling the words and the nearest l can get is something from Rudyard Kipling. I’ll keep trying. Oh, to be in Britain back then…

We had 25c here in the week. Spring had sprung off and summer was here! It was like July but very short lived, so having had summer we are head long into Autumn with grey skies and temperatures around 12c. And still no rain! I am hoping for a deluge tomorrow as the ground really needs a soaking.

I picked my first sweet pea this evening. It smelt beautiful and can’t wait for more. We are eating the first of the radish and salad. So nice to go into the garden and start picking fresh salad leaves.

It is International Dawn Chorus Day tomorrow so l will be setting my alarm clock to go off earlier than normal for a Sunday and take myself off through the woods and down to the river and listen to Nature’s Chorus. Hope you all have a great Bank Holiday.