I haven’t updated in a long time and where better to begin a new post, than the garden?

Not a lot has changed. We’ve filled up our ‘Kitchen Garden’ area now and I’ve make a little sign too (I will go into more detail in another post) and added a couple more decorative plants too.

The rhubarb planted earlier in the year has now reached a sort of monstrous climax in its growing. I can’t wait to pick it, but I have to, because we need to leave it alone for at least a year to let the crown establish, or two years if we can control ourselves. Hopefully, then the rhubarb will last a long time and be really productive.

It’s not just the rhubarb, the whole kitchen garden has started to grow wildly out of control. The dill and fennel are just being ridiculous and all of the mint is greedily occupying any space it can find.  The rosemary has started to surpass the rather slow growing bay tree and the lemon verbena is just starting to show off. All the while the sage has died under the suffocating presence of the nasturtium and the rambunctious pineapple sage which we planted more recently has flourished.

I find this often happens to me. I get seeds or small plants and micromanage their first few months and once they start to establish I tend to leave them alone, then one day I’ll walk out of my door into a jungle.

Well, apart from my deceased sage plant, the only thing that isn’t having a good time is the thyme. It’s been a bit slow in growing and now it’s got hardly any light, not dead though, so that’s a plus.

We’ve planted some thorn-less blackberry plants and three new kinds of strawberries between the rhubarb and the herbs, and they’re all doing quite well.

I also have two rather nice pineberry plants out the back. Frustratingly I thought they’d died when I was growing them from seed, so I just tipped out the plant onto a patch that had been dug up and saved the pot. However a couple weeks later I noticed new growth on the plant and decided to put some compost around the roots. It’s done exceedingly well and I’ve had quite a few (albeit very teeny) pineberries, and they’re very tasty. I’ve been waiting for it to send out little creepers like the rest of my strawberries so I could pot it and move it into the kitchen garden. Alas, it has decided not to send any out. I’ll just have to order some seeds again in the new year.

The weather has been a bit challenging for the other plants in my garden. The delphiniums were just snapped in half with the strong winds earlier in the year. The broken bits made it into a jug and lived for about a week in the house, which was nice. They grew back again, and I cut them back once they died and they came back again but haven’t really flowed as nicely.

The lupins have had an aphid problem this year (as did the nasturtium ). They put on a spectacular show at the beginning of the year though.  I have also added some ‘Totally Tangerine’ geums which set off the purple plants nicely, as well as a couple of violent magenta thistles which the bees love. Another new addition is the buddleja in ‘black knight’ in the front garden.  We’re hoping it’s going to grow well behind a wall and to block out the neighbours a little bit as well as attract a lot of butterflies.

Last weekend, we were excited to discover that a tree that overhangs into our garden is, in fact, Elder. I have to admit that I’ve never paid much attention to the creamy umbels before nor the black berries on it. Paul happened to notice them as we were cutting the grass recently and got just a little bit excited and marched outside with a couple of our plant books and a camera, and I picked off a leaf and used my ‘British Trees’ app to identify it.

Paul in particular is now excited thinking about all the things we could make: Elder-flower cordial,  elderberry and apple pie and the list goes on…

We both really enjoy foraging, or maybe the thought of foraging? As we very rarely do it, although we do have some literature on the subject.

We recently (in July) had a week long stay in Cornwall on holiday and a couple of weeks before we went, we saw The Lost Gardens of Heligan were hosting a foraging event ‘Wild Food Wild Walk; with Emma Gunn’ (from Never Mind the Burdocks) . The event was £20 each but also included entrance to the gardens which is ordinarily £14.50 each anyway. We booked it in advance, afraid that it would be overrun with people trying to go last minute, but we were in for a treat.

We got there on the day only to discover it was just Paul and I on the tour with Emma.  It was a fantastic day, the tour lasted around 2 hours and at the end Emma brought out some food she’d made from foraged plants. There was gluten free Hogweed seed, cherry and almond cake, garlic mustard pesto and  pickled unripe Ramson seed pods as well as a honeysuckle cordial, all of it was delicious but in particular the wild garlic seed pods and the cordial. Unfortunately we were so preoccupied with stuffing our faces with cake, we didn’t get a picture.

We also made sure to buy both of her books in the Heligan gift shop before we left and eagerly await the next.

Some of things we ate include: Unripened Hazelnuts (which I actually prefer over ripe ones); Bamboo shoots; Day Lilies; Nettles; Hogweed seed; Navelwort; Primrose leaf; Garlic Mustard; Comfrey; Nectar of Fuchsias; Mallow flower; and Sorrel leaves. There were many other too but I can’t remember the names of a lot of them off the top of my head.

I’n the future I think we both want to have the confidence to experiment a little with foraged foods (whether from the garden or further afield). In particular, Paul is eager to learn to make different cordials – so that’s always a good place to start.