Spring has sprung

We have been experiencing phenomenal weather over the past few weeks, with temperatures reaching mid summer levels and very little rainfall.

Due to real life and jobs etc getting in the way progress in the walled garden has been quite slow.

The salvaged greenhouse is now glazed and in production.

The Rhubarb beds are looking splendid and promise a huge crop this year. The walled trained Cherries flowered reasonably well and although we are still in the process of training a basic form work they may form some fruit.

The ancient Cooking Apple looks good this year and is packed with blossom. We do not know what variety it is but the tree is approximately 150 years old. It produces some of the very best tasting and textured apples and it would be good to establish what it is, maybe the research establishment at Brogdale could help to make an identification.

The fruit is now forming on the fanned Gooseberries and providing the wood pigeons don't have an early morning raid again should provide a worthwhile crop. The Garlic has grown really well this year and we are looking at harvesting by the end of May. The Potatoes are just showing their tops and now need earthing up. We also have some interesting things in flower at the moment, the Dodecatheons are looking quite good and the new Quince tree is flowering really well.

Big sowing and planting week

The past week has seen the opportunity to get some extensive sowing and planting completed. In open ground

• First early potato - Witchill


• Second early - Home Guard


• Spring onions


• Lettuce - Webbs Wonderful


• Early Carrot - Touchon (not a heritage variety but free seed, so why not)


• Broad Bean - Mr Townends

Under Glass

• Cauliflower - All Year Round


• Sutherland Kale


• Sprout - Evesham Special


• Sweetcorn - Candy Sweet


• Perenial sprouting brocoli


• Leeks - Blue de Solaise


• Cucumber - Crystal Lemon


• Tomato - Piglet Willies French Black


• Tomato - Yellow Stuffer


• Tomato Yellow Pear


• Self Blanching Celery

Sowings will continue this week. Hopefully we will have more success than last year with all the rabbit damage to last years crops.

The real gardeners diary

1st March 1884

Weather dry and fine all week. Bright and mild several days, but colder the last few days. Very cold early ????? with frost at night, very sharpp frost last night. Bright and drying today, planted several roses and sown more peas.

8th March 1884

Very cold ????? but hazy and fine since, cold nights and rather cold days but bright and cheerful.
Got more pants for ????? into span house. Potted more ferns on, sown celery, petunias and tomatoes. Have planted polyanthus and primroses and dug up parma violets.

Signs of spring

We now have hellibores in flower which along with the snowdrops brighten up the really wet and dull days we have experienced recently.
The rhubarb beds that were planted last spring are now bursting into life and should provide a decent crop in the summer.

A pergola is now under construction along the path from the house to the central path junction. This will be used to grow old English climbing roses which are in keeping with the gardens period and will be a great feature when they have matured.

More from the real gardeners diary

February 16 1884

Weather changeable, a deal of heavy hailstorms at the begining of the week, finer and drier since. Cold drying winds today. Potted off ? ? ? ? ? ?. Put in mint cuttings. Panted a few things in ground, put in cuttings of privet, sowed peas in border behind shed.

February 23rd 1884

Weather changeable, showery cold rain but fine for the time of year. Planted a few Rhodo's. Replanted a few shrubs, put in cuttings of privet, potted off ? ? ? ? ? put in more cuttings and sown tomatoes.

Sunday February 6th 2011

The weather today was positively springlike and very warm for the time of year providing the opportunity to progress with some work of a horticultural nature on the plot.

We have finally extended the rows of trained gooseberries. The original row was planted last winter and proved to be a highly successful way of growing them, producing some very large fruit and it has the advantage of keeping the plants themselves tidy and manageable.

We hope to create a new row of trained soft fruit on the opposite side of the path but as you can see from the photo below a lot of clearance needs to take place before planting can commence.

The first snowdrops of the season are now in full flower which is a welcome sight after such a bad winter.

The real gardeners diary

The following extracts are taken from an old diary kept by a gardener who was in service. The diary covers the period from 1884 to 1889. We hope to publish weekly extracts from this diary to give an insight into the activities of the period and as notes have been made concerning the weather it is interesting to make comparisons with the prevailing weather conditions we experience today. The handwriting is very difficult to read therefore some of the extracts may be incomplete and seem grammatically odd.





February 2nd 1884

Weather fine at the beginning of the week but stormy and unsettled afterwards. Replanting, digging and clearing ground. Putting in cuttings of ????? and potted fernes (fern)

February 9th 1884

Very dry but dull, a little sun on Monday but not all day. Pot up more cuttings and potted off ????. Re potted Smilax and thing?????? Cineraria's coming into bloom, deutzia, hyacinths and tulips. (presumably under glass)

The Head Gardeners Diary

We have added a new page called the Head Gardeners Diary. This page will contain tips and a jobs for the month article. Please use the link on the left hand side of the page or alternatively click below.

http://ashfurlongwalledkitchengarden.blogspot.com/p/head-gardners-diary.html

long time no post

It's been a long time since we last posted. Time just seems to gallop on. Further clearing work has happened on one of the vegatable quarters but the main focus has been on this years christmas tree sales therefore little progress has been made in the walled garden.

It has been frozen solid and under several inches of snow for over a month now but we are hoping to make more progress in the new year.

Every year we sell top quality fresh christmas trees, holly wreaths and natural decorations. This particular job is all time consuming throughout November and December.

The weather this month has made all work including christmas sales very difficult has we have been rcording tempratures as low as minus 13 degrees C.

We now have some new additions to the menagerie in the form of tropical fish. We now have a selection of moonlight, kissing and pearl gouramis. platy's and neon tetras a schoal of zebra danio's a rather large angel fish and the stars of the show, three catfish. with all of the hundreds of TV channels available with nothing to watch the fish are far more facinating and entertaining.

Succesful crops

Broad Beans

The broad beans are now cropping heavily despite their late sowing.

Climbing Peas

We are now seeing the fruits of a struggle against pigeon and rabbit damage and are now getting a reasonable result from the pea crop.

The new rhubarb beds

The new rhubarb beds planted at the end of April are growing fantastically well. No doubt due to a more than liberal dressing of manure.

The Melon House

The photo's show cucumbers, melons and Achocha growing away happily. the melons are approaching the pollination stage.

Kale and Broccoli

Although it tried to run to seed earlier in the season the Black Kale is now almost ready for harvest and the White sprouting broccoli is growing away well.

The replacement for the old greenhouse

The strange construction in the last post, incidentally named the "bus shelter" has now been replaced with a small aluminium greenhouse, salvaged from a property that we own. Although not of a suitable design at least it will be useful as a propagating house and it is better than the greenhouse being scrapped.

The photo's show the frame constructed and ready for glazing.

The work continues

The following piccies are of a old greenhouse construction, cobbled together a few years ago from some of the parts from one of the original Victorian glasshouses that were on site.

As you can see it had deteriorated into a dangerous mess.

The demolition took quite some time as the glass in the panels is at least a quarter of an inch thick and care was taken to keep as many of the frames as intact as possible to use as templates for any future restoration.

Another one of the menagerie guarding the wheelbarrow.

History of the gardens

we have been requested to publish a post about the history of our gardens. The available info is a bit sketchy so here goes:-

Ashfurlong Hall started life as a medieval / Tudor farm, it was developed into a typical classical regency country residence in 1804 for Thomas Vaughton, High Sheriff of Warwickshire
who had six daughters all born in Sutton Coldfield between 1801 and 1817.

The house has had many owners and occupiers including in 1841 Henry Grimes a Warden of the town 1838-40, in the 1850s Joseph Webster of Penns Mill also Warden, and Thomas Colmore a Birmingham solicitor, also a Warden 1864-66. When Colmore died in 1870 the estate included some 118 acres.
The property was briefly used by a school associated with Trinity College but by 1891 had reverted to residential status when Arthur T Beck was in residence.

A later occupant of Ashfurlong Hall was Colonel J H Wilkinson. He was a wealthy philanthropist who established a Hospital in the town and bought Barr Beacon at the western end of Sutton Chase as a perpetual public memorial for the soldiers of the Staffordshire and Warwickshire regiments who had been killed in World War 1. The dome on Barr Beacon was erected in Wilkinson's memory in 1933.

The latest occupant's prior to its recent sale when the estate was split were EH Moore and his wife he was High Sheriff of the West Midlands county and grandson of ES Moore who established the famous HP sauce company.

The history of the gardens is even more obscure although there is plenty of archaeological evidence and memories dating from the 1960's. The walls surrounding the garden appear to date from the 18th century period although there are what are obviously later Victorian additions. There was an extensive Victorian range of glass houses on the outside of the walls with heating powered by the ubiquitous Robin Hood solid fuel boilers. in addition outside the walls there was a frame yard opposite the glass houses. A summer house and what was presumably the show house was located against the west facing wall. Sadly most of these buildings had reached the state of no return by the 1970's and were demolished. We do have an intriguing building that is not large enough for a potting shed that has a chimney built into the outer wall and we have always wondered what its purpose would have been.

Following world war 2 the gardens became a private nursery and no longer serviced the estate, over recent years the gardens have decayed somewhat and hopefully our project will do the previous gardeners justice.