Week 4 of 2025
Monday 20 - Sunday 26 January
Wheel & Cross - Summer
Wheel & Cross had some downtime in the first two weeks of January, re-starting with January’s Almanac and two articles related to Invasion Day (‘Australia Day’) and Midsummer.
Garden Update
Following a busy end to the year and Christmas season, January has been relatively slow and productive. In week 1, we finally removed the shipping container that had been defacing the front yard for two years. This allowed me to plant the first trees and an evergreen backbone for our birch forest garden, two ‘Leighton Green’ (Cupressus leylandii) conifers and a Thuja smaragd. The front gets blasted by the afternoon sun as it faces directly west and while the Leighton Greens will provide greenery and privacy in the south-west, the birch trees will provide much-needed shade in summer and allow the light through in the winter.
Sadly, the ground is compacted, mixed clay and shale so my boys needed a crowbar and a fair bit of ‘elbow grease’ to dig the holes, but the Leighton Greens are super hardy so I’m confident they’ll do well. I’m more concerned about the birch trees but I will start preparing the ground for them soon, to plant bare roots in winter. A few days later I decided to move most of my bearded iris from the back to the front garden. It looks like they might have survived the uprooting, thank goodness! I also lifted all my flower bulbs as I plan on growing them in flower beds next season.
I’ve been wanting to grow tomatoes and cucumbers up a trellis so we constructed one from stakes and dog mesh. I’m trialling terra cotta pot ollas with plastic saucer hats as the veggie bed dries out quickly. While most of the seedlings I planted from the greenhouse seedlings failed (many had been knocked over and scattered in one storm and then burnt crispy by the summer sun), two calendula are growing well in the veggie bed, one of the pumpkins is looking healthy under the self-seeded tomatoes and the sunflowers are growing. The sage (Salvia officinalis) is flowering profusely as are the chives.
Two weeks of hot and dry weather desiccated the grass and we quickly rigged up a shade cloth to protect newly transplanted cherry tomatoes. By week 3, some fairly intense weather with hot and humid days culminated in localised storms and rain, which softened the ground and greened the landscape once more. According to the BOM, we are expected to have higher-than-average rainfall this season, for which I am grateful.
I have been trying to figure out a productive (flowers and/or berries) feature tree that might be suitable for the front garden, as I’d like to include berries and flowers to encourage sharing with the neighbours. In a nicely synchronous moment, I had just purchased and read the latest book by Robin Wall-Kimmerer, author of my favourite book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Her newest book, The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance, inspired me to try growing the Serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis) and I had two delivered from Yamina Rare Plants Nursery. One was planted in the back, next to my oaks, maples and hazel grove. The second one was planted at the front, next to the driveway. I hope it survives the brutal environment I selected, which has seen it battered by wild winds and hail and drenched in the hot afternoon sun.
We rigged up a shade cloth and I also planted seeds in the veggie patch hoping to make up for the hothouse losses:
Parsley ‘Curly' Moss’ (Petroselinum crispum)
Parsley ‘Italian Flat-leafed’ (Petroselinum crispum)
Cucumber ‘Lebanese’ (Cucumis sativus)
Tomato ‘Roma VF’ (Solanum lycopersicum)
Dwarf Beans Snap Bean’ (Phaseolus vulgaris)
In the Garden This Week
I have never grown Dahlias until this year and I find that I love them more and more. Not knowing how to care for them initially, they were left to grow on their own until I staked them last week. Crooked stems haven’t stopped them from flowering and their colour is stunning. I will be including them in next season’s cut flower beds, and I’ve already started one of the two rows.
In the veggie bed, the Cherry tomatoes are looking healthy and are already producing baby tomatoes. The dwarf beans sprouted strongly and quickly but I fear the layer of ‘Who Flung Dung’ super mulch might have been too thick for the more delicate seedlings. So, I planted nursery seedlings but was thrilled to find one tiny Roma tomato and one Lebanese cucumber seedling, which I left uncovered:
Cucumber ‘Mini Snack’ (Cucumis sativus)
Basil ‘Sweet’ (Ocimum basilicum)
Parsley ‘Curly' Moss’ (Petroselinum crispum)
Parsley ‘Italian Flat-leafed’ (Petroselinum crispum)
Nasturtium ‘Mixed’ (Tropaeolum x majus)
Marigold ‘French Mix’ (Tagetes patula)
The wild-sown Cherry tomatoes are already producing a good number of tomatoes, though they are still green. I will need to train them up soon, their bottom leaves are yellowing and they’re already in a tangle. Two of the pumpkins don’t look great but the third is green and has flower buds. I really want them to grow so I can harvest carving pumpkins for Samhain. The sunflowers are growing and flowering but they look stunted, crossing my fingers that they start growing well soon.
I also managed to weed under the oak trees and in the back half of the Canadian forest garden and I planted flowers and a groundcover to cheer up the space:
Nemesia ‘Aromatic Rose Pink’ (Nemesia aromatica)
Snapdragon ‘Pink’ and ‘White’ (Antirrhinum majus)
Dichondra ‘Kidney Creeper’ (Dichondra repens)
I planted an Echinacea Sombrero ‘Blanco’ (Echinacea purpurea), Angelica (Angelica archangelica) and a couple of Marigold (Tagetes patula) under the cherry tree in the orchard. It was also nice to see my Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium) is flowering and one Tansy (Tanacetum vulgaris) is looking healthy under the ‘Granny Smith’ apple tree.
On the weekend I finally got around to digging out the blueberries that were overgrown by my weeping Cercis canadensis. I planted them at the back of my ‘Canadian Forest’, weeded a circle of grass around them, sprinkled some acidic fertiliser, a good drink of Seasol and a thick layer of ‘Who Flung Dung’ mulch. They look great and I hope my efforts are enough for them to recover from their ordeal. I also grabbed a couple of Blackcurrant bushes (Ribes nigrum) and planted them in my Hazel grove. The next job will be to weed the Hazel grove but I think that’s plenty done for the week!
Great Content
I am a complete newby at growing cut flowers so I’ve decided to learn all about it on YouTube. Here are a couple of the best videos: