A Winter Readying

I’ve been writing about plants in my physic garden as well as the wider garden and grounds here but I’ve realised that each plant has its own set of requirements for each season. And each season is different. 

There’s so much to learn. 

At the moment, I’m learning about the pruning needs of each tree and bush, for autumn, while recognising what I can realistically manage this season as the garden had been left untended for so long before I arrived.

I’m also preparing the plants for winter. It might be a harsh one. 

I haven’t written about St John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum) yet. I bought it for the physic garden for making tea and blends but I haven’t really learned about how to care for it until now because it has become a pressing need. 

The plant is in a pot, which will benefit from a heat emitting wall from the house. I’m going to put it as near to the Rayburn as I can, on an exterior wall by the back door. 

I need to stand the pot on pot feet, or with my style of make do and mend, flat rocks or tiles, to allow for drainage before it sits in freezing slush. 

The pot needs wrapping with hessian or bubble wrap. I have plenty of bubble wrap from packaging. I try to save it for repackaging, to save it from being a single use plastic.

Pots would allow for the plant and root to freeze solid without these protections. 

For the veggies, I have been trying to grow hardy, frost tolerant roots and perennial veg (which sometimes need a little fleece through frost - so I keep an eye on the weather).

I usually leave my herbs alone because they will either come back in the spring or I will re sow them. 

My porch is so hot in the summer, that I slightly optimistically bought a jackfruit to grow and three citrus trees. The first frost this week had me questioning my choices. I scurried around researching solar heaters. I will let you know how I get on. I don’t realistically think I’m going to tuck the plants in with a hot water bottle or bring them in every single night through winter. I’d quite like it to be warm enough for humans out there, too ! 

For the most part, I’ve been tending existing fruit plants and trees and only adding very hardy plants which enjoy the Scottish climate, like the medlar tree, which needs a good frost. 

And I quickly realised that planting and sowing too many veggies makes the summer and early autumn too challenging to keep up with alongside the volume of fruit already here. I also like to use the rose hips and hawthorn berries (and maybe the rowan berries if I can catch them before the birds) for ketchups and syrup. 

Throughout spring and summer, I’ve been picking and drying young blackcurrant, raspberry and mint leaves for teas quite regularly, along with yarrow and feverfew flowers. This task naturally follows into autumn, when the leaves and flowers need to be processed and packed up into jars.

Saving seeds, this autumn, too, from spring onions, beans, peas, leeks, calendula. These are the easy ones. I might not be here long enough for the second year harvesting of carrot seeds!

Chutneys, pickles and sauces are well underway, even into the latter part of October.

The house renovation has also been pressing. The heating had to go in before winter, the house has to be comfortable for people. I’m sure that many gardening writers talk about imagining what their garden could become. I’ve had no time for dreaming here. The house needed to be wind and watertight, heated and functional before I could think much about the garden. And for the first year I wanted to discover what was here. 

And my ageing knees and hips need some consideration, these days.

I kept the garden going. I grew some veggies. I kept everything alive. I used and preserved and froze all of the produce and gave enormous amounts away. It doesn’t feel like enough but with the house renovation, I think I did okay and I discovered a great deal about how to low-effort garden out of need. 

The joy of seeing the last weekly grass cut of the season, although the ride on mower has been immense fun!

There’s a need to be mindful of the sheer scale of tasks. Which is perhaps, a metaphor for life and pacing oneself. At least, from time to time.