The Rogue Asparagus

Earlier this year, in a fit of uneducated and ill advised enthusiasm,  I planted 6 asparagus roots. Cue at this point, months of deluge during which the shady corner of the garden where I had put them turned into a mini pond. I had completely given up on them, assuming that they'd rotted in the ground and that part of the garden had been re-purposed from veg to general planting.

Amongst this planting I had spotted a sort of wispy, ferny growth which I hadn't really investigated and had left there simply because it looked quite pretty. I had vaguely thought that it might be something to do with the potted fennel plant that was sited nearby as they had the same sort of fine, feathery foliage. (accidental alliteration anyone?).

Imagine my surprise when watching last nights Gardeners' World to see Monty talking about cutting back and mulching this self same plant, and identifying it as asparagus! Yet another example of the truly incredible resilience of plants, and their amazing will to stay alive. Fingers crossed that it will survive and, in a couple years, possibly even supply us with some of my favourite veg.

Garden Log - September? October?

Another thoroughly tardy post. I do actually have an excuse this time however! A few (to me) exciting things were taking place mid-September that I wanted finished before I started taking photos and writing my gardeny drivel.

The Peat-Free Diet, by Emma Cooper - A Review

I have been somewhat lax in my blogging duties in the last few weeks. My apologies to Emma for being being a casualty of this and the length of time that it's taken for me to get this post finished. Thanks for giving me the book to review!

Peat free gardening is not a new topic of discussion. It is something that gardeners have been made aware of for several decades now. Some choose to ignore it, possibly pleading ignorance, others will give it their best efforts, and then at the other end of the scale are those who approach the subject with an almost maniacal zeal.
Whilst I applaud the standards of the latter group I'm afraid I probably fall into the middle one. I buy peat free compost, but this is something I have only recently started to make an effort with. I don't however have the time or the money to start demanding that all plants I buy be grown in a completely peat free environment. As far as I'm aware, my local nurseries and garden centres don't do this (I assume it would be advertised as a selling point if they did) and I do feel that supporting those local businesses is important. One of the main issues I've run into when starting to look at peat-free gardening is that a lot of the available compost is total crap. There seems to be a wide range of woody rubbish that's riddled with lumps of plastic, and in one case pieces of glass. Not pleasing. Many gardeners are unlikely to be totally converted until the alternatives are as good as their peat based counterparts. I have started making my own compost, but as I've been on with this gardening lark for less than a year I don't have any ready for use yet.