After an unseasonably warm end to Autumn and start to winter, the cold has now hit us. A week of freezing temperatures has left the pond frozen solid. Dave the Doodle has been enjoying his new skating arena. The moors above us have enjoyed bright blue skies, and beautiful frosty scenes.
The success of our flowers this year got us thinking about extending the growing period. The flowers were really popular – they just made people smile, especially us! An evening of indulgence with some nice wine and bulb catalogues, got the three of us, pretty excited. We ordered plenty of daffodils and tulips, and decided to plant them in one of our no dig beds in the veg patch. We cleared it of weeds and set about planting in lines, to maximise space.
Daffodils: Cheerfulness, Thali, Tahiti, White Lion and Winston Churchill
Tulips: Belle Époque, Ronaldo, Jimmy, plus orange, pink, red and purple blends.
Hers’s looking forward to Easter time next year.
We’ve been busy harvesting our pumpkins. We loved the Crown Prince and Marina di Chioggia varieties last year, so we have grown them again. In addition, this lovely Porcelain Princess….
We are getting ready to ‘winter proof’ the plot. Despite the very dry summer, we still expect the field to get wet and a bit boggy underfoot in the next few months. Thanks to a contribution from the Swinden Quarry Natural Environment Fund, we have been able to dig, line and fill a number of paths in the main plot – extending right the way down to the bottom of the field.
August 2022
July and August have been the most productive months on the cut flower plot so far. Annuals such as Cornflowers, Scabious and Amaranthus have finally enjoyed the warm weather. Sunflowers and Dahlias started half way through August and will hopefully be still going strong into September. My periennal Achillea and Astrantia are some of my favourites. I hope they will be back bigger and better next year (if they survive the winter wet!)
I loved helping some of my floristry friends in Skipton prepare wedding flowers at the end of July. The brief was homegrown blooms so I took along a few buckets from the plot and garden. It was lovely seeing some of my flowers end up in bouquets, buttonholes and table decorations for the big day!
We were thrilled to see some new residents arrive at the plot….. two hives of honey bees. Monty and Karen are well know around the area. They are the ’Bee Keepers of Embsay’. I don’t think there’s anything they don’t know about looking after bees. Anyway, it was with much excitement that we all watched them drive the bees down, in their car!!!!!!!! Apparently, this is perfectly safe. They were hopeful that the bees would enjoy their new home as we are just within flying distance of the heather on the moors.
A few weeks later and Monty and Karen were really happy with the progress being made. They were able to separate the queen bee and get the workers, working.
Just yesterday, we learned that the bees were thriving and producing honey already. I’ve seen them enjoying the borage in the veg patch and we were given some honeycomb to taste.
What a lovely day we had out on our stall at the village fete. We thoroughly enjoyed meeting lots of interesting and interested local people. Val’s flowers bloomed on display and a bumper fruit and veg box was raffled off. The main difficulty for our winner was how to carry it home!
My name is Katherine and I live in Embsay with my husband and three children. In recent years I have become an increasingly keen gardener. I’ve always loved flowers and often brought them into the house or gifted them to friends.
This year, I decided to set myself a new challenge. Over the past six months, I have completed a Level 2 City and Guilds Floristry Award at Craven College. I also wanted to combine my love of gardening and floristry by growing my own cut flowers in a sustainable way. I feel very lucky to be able to grow on a small slice of land at Holme Grown Eastby. I’m keen on planting as many perennials as possible and plugging the gaps with annuals. This is my first year with a cut flower plot and I’ll try to share honest updates of the highs and lows along the way.
June update:
Although my perennials are still getting established in their first year, many are also busy flowering. The Geums; Mai Tai and Scarlet Tempest are particularly floriferous at the moment. Lines of Feverfew, Oxeye daisy and Shasta daisy are all about to burst into flower. My Purple Sensation Alliums have just gone over but I planted Alchemilla mollis alongside them to hide the tatty allium foliage as it dies back. I can’t wait for the Allium Sphaerocephalon drumsticks to have their turn soon.
Some annuals are doing well and I picked some fragrant Apricot Stocks for a recent bouquet. To be honest the slugs have devoured many of my precious annuals grown from seed; cornflowers, snapdragons and umbellifers have all succumbed. I’ve tried wool pellets, layers of grit and beer traps; it’s a steep learning curve in the battle against the slugs! I’ve been planting out my dahlias this week. By waiting until now they will hopefully be big enough to tolerate some slug damage. Time will tell!
