His and Her Sacks
I have grown potatoes for the last four or five years. Previously, in London, I grew them in sacks. Mr P and I usually had a battle about how many tubers to place in each sack. His preference was for as many as possible, mine for about three or four. The argument was never resolved. In our last year in London, we resorted to "his and hers" potato sacks. 

Last year, in 2012, I deliberately chose some unusual varieties - Sharpe's Express, Yukon Gold, and Red Fir. Of these, Red Fir probably had the most enjoyable texture and taste - waxy, and slightly sweet. But my harvest was disappointing, largely because they didn't get enough direct sunlight.


Frugal Buying
This year, I decided to strike a balance between planting some more traditional varieties and some less common ones. I bought a small bag of Shetland Blacks and Charlottes as my second earlies, then opted for a large bag of Picassos as my maincrop, since they were cheap. I planned to give most of them away to gardening friends.

Ten Rows of Tatties
Somehow, though, I never did give them away, and I ended up chitting the lot. Then, at planting time, I found myself thinking that I "shouldn't waste any," and planted them all. Ten rows of potatoes. 

A few months later, and my veg patch resembles a potato city. 

Although I much prefer rice to potatoes, I now find myself cooking potatoes with most meals. One or two end up in every soup and salad. I plan meals for visitors based on how many potatoes I can cook (and get rid of). I give them away as presents. I will probably be giving them as Christmas presents, or trading them on e-bay for dahlia tubers. Recently, when I started reading Sarah Raven's The Great Veg Plot, I realised I had already grasped the sense in her advice to grow only what you most enjoy eating.

Happy Possum
Mr P, though, is a happy possum. His grandfather grew potatoes on the family farm in Lancashire, and each family member has their own favourite way of preparing and eating potatoes. The topic inevitably comes up at Sunday lunch, when the family are tucking into roast potatoes. Roasters usually top the list, but dauphinois and mash are also firm favourites. 

Mr P's favourite way is a dish I taught him, and which he now cooks himself every so often, usually with a curry, or as a spicy accompaniment to roast meat - Potatoes with cumin. The recipe can be found in the Recipes section. 

Finally, feedback on this year's choice. The Shetland Blacks are a delightful colour - a strong, deep purple. I was childishly disappointed to discover that once boiled, their colour disappears into the water. They are a floury potato, so perhaps better for mashing. The Charlottes are yummy and good for boiling, mashing and roasting. The Picassos are also nice. 

Passionate about... courgettes!
This summer my gardening friend, Tamsyn, has been growing a wide variety of courgettes in her new greenhouse. Tamsyn has something of a passion for courgettes, so of course my expectations were high when I visited her recently!

She did not disappoint. There were patty pan courgettes, yellow bumpy courgettes, white courgettes, as well as the more familiar green and yellow ones. I was also amused to see that  she had some snaky monsters growing - Trombas, or curling courgettes.

Monster Trombone
Her Trombas were over 1.1m long. Tamsyn tells me they're yummy to eat, especially younger and smaller, when they are more delicate skinned and cook faster.  

A word of warning...
However,Trombas come with a "warning" on some websites, along the lines of, this courgette will take over the world. 

I once planted two seedlings of Squashkin, a cross between pumpkins and squash, in my London garden. They galloped around my perennial beds, smothering everything in their path. Eventually I declared war and ripped them out. The warnings about Trombas rather reminded me of that unfortunate battle. So, courgette lovers, exercise caution!

Top courgette varieties in Oxfordshire this season
Tamysn's top courgettes this season are:
- Tricolour F1 hybrid (her favouriteL small round balls, good for steaming, or if you grow them a little bigger, good for stuffing)
- Tromba 
- Defender (a regular green)
- F Atena (a regular yellow) and Rugosa (yellow, with bumpy skin, and a firmer texture)
- Patty Pan sunburst & custard white (easy to grow, tender and light when younger). 

Cheers, courgette lovers!

Deep disappointment. My bees are being overtaken by wasps. I inspected them a week ago and was alarmed by their low numbers and their overly placid behaviour. I concluded that during my summer break, they'd replaced the queen, and there had been a drop in numbers for that reason. But I was worried to see that they still hadn't begun working the super, and there were wasps entering the brood box. 

To survive the coming autumn and winter I needed to start feeding them. So a few days later, having made up a batch of sugar syrup (flavoured with lemon verbena!), I returned. Bad news. Dead wasps littered the crown board, but many more live wasps were in the brood box and entering the main entrance. 

I spoke to my beekeeper mentor, and he advised me to block the hive entrance completely, and leave them for 48 hours; after re-opening the entrance to a tiny bee-size gap, the bees would be more aggressive, and resume defending the entrance. 

I blocked up the entrance, but couldn't bear to leave them for more than 36 hours like this, so early this morning I unblocked the entrance, leaving a small gap, and inspected quickly. 

Bad news. The wasps had already managed to create a small entrance, and were entering the hive freely. Inside the brood box, the remaining bees are completely overwhelmed, living in the central brood frames, and are reacting sluggishly. 

I am really worried about them. If anyone has any suggestions, please contact me via my contact page. /contact.html

Time to prune the lavender
It's August, and most of my lavender has flowered, and is looking past its best. So I've trimmed it back neatly, and saved the cuttings. 

Over a few evenings, while watching TV, I removed all the flowers from the cuttings. It was a repetitive but relaxing task. The flower heads went into a large baking tray, and sat for a few days, drying out, in a warm light room. 

Sachets
After I'd dried them, I parcelled them up into sachets, and popped them into my drawers. You don't need very many plants: I collected enough lavender to make nine sachets from three or four mature shrubs.

Rabbit repellant
The cuttings went into a bucket. I covered them with water and left them for about 5 days. Then I removed them, and sprayed the lavender water all over my red berberris hedge. 

Yes, lavender makes your pillow cases smell nice, repels moths from wool, and smells lovely in the bath. But it also appears to repel rabbits, and I have a real rabbit problem at Neats Home Garden. They eat anything - even spiky, prickly berberis and holly - and menace my veg patch. So I took some advice from a no-chemicals gardening friend, and sprayed on my highly scented concoction. So far, so good: the bunnies have stopped nibbling the berberis, at least.  

Other plants to use
If you don't have lots of leftover lavender, I have also had success when using cuttings from other strongly scented plants, like sage, curry plant, and verbena. Happy repelling!

Muddy Foodprints
The driveway into Neats Home was laid a while ago. When we moved in, it was as much soil as gravel, well sown with weeds. That first winter, when it rained, the builders trekked mud into the house. The same thing happened the following year. One day I had enough, and asked Mr. P for "emergency help." 

That weekend, we stripped off the old surface, laid down weed-suppressant membrane, and paid the local gravel merchant to dump several tonnes of gravel onto the drive. The mud disappeared overnight. Order was restored. All was well again. 

Gardening Madness
But around the same time, I decided to create a small garden bed next to the drive. Why I decided this, I cannot recall - in retrospect it was a little mad, since I was already clearing overgrown beds, and the area that I had to dig up was hard-packed sand and bedrock - incredibly hard and dry. But the site was south-facing, sunny, and the main view from the kitchen. So, after a fair amount of hard labour, I managed to create a rough bed, and began to stock it with plants. 

Thrifty Gardening
I didn't buy new plants - I just lifted and split plants from elsewhere in the garden, and planted these. A neighbour kindly gave me some of his sedums, and recently I added some herbs that I've scrounged from other parts of the garden - purple sage, pink pompons of chives, yellow marjoram, spiky tarragon, and creeping yellow-leaved thyme. I scattered poppy seeds I'd collected, and next month, in September, I'll plant some pink wallflowers that I've grown from seed, as well as plenty of pink tulips.

Silver and Green
The colour scheme is silver and green, with splashes of pink and purple I'm looking forward to it maturing next year, and being able to pop out from the kitchen to gather herbs. 

Last winter we paid our local farmer to dump a load of horse manure, and it's been sitting around, heating up nicely, since then. Today I was busy digging up manure. I had nearly filled my wheelbarrow for the third time when I glimpsed a pile of oval eggs in the manure pile. 

I was pretty sure they were snake eggs, because I've seen grass snakes on a number of occasions in our garden, and a few months earlier, my dog had disturbed a large grass snake sunning herself under a piece of old carpet, not far from the manure pile. 

To be certain, I removed one of the eggs and took it to the potting shed, where I dissected it, and saw that it contained a tiny snake.

A call to the RSPCA proved fruitless (recorded message, abrupt disconnection). My second call, to a friendly lady at the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust (www.arc-trust.org) was more helpful. Following her advice, I carefully removed the eggs to the Wild Garden. I laid them near the pond, on a bed of manure, and covered them with more manure, so that they would stay warm.  The eggs should hatch in late September - early October. I'll update you when I know more!

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When I first started weeding the formal garden, I noticed that there was one plant that seemed to grow through everything. The plant was marjoram. It grew into the box balls, through the blue xxx, and mingled with geraniums, hostas, and day lillies. To my mind, it was a bit of a pest. Where I thought it had overstretched its reach, I ruthlessly "weeded" it out, only to find it re-sprouting from the compost heap. 

A few years on, and my opinion has changed. What happened? Well, firstly, I began to cook with marjoram. It's a popular herb in the US, where I lived for several years (and where it's usually called oregano). But since moving to the UK I'd rarely used it in cooking. I found the dried herb bitter, and tended to use fresh parsley, thyme, and basil instead.

Fresh marjoram, though, is quite different from the dried stuff. It's aromatic rather than bitter. I 
now cook with it frequently, using it to season vegetables and meat, and really like it.

The second reason I came to like marjoram was for its colour. Our garden still lacks colour in July and August, but marjoram, with its waving purple flowers, adds attractive colour just when the garden most lacks it. Yellow marjoram, a shorter, creeping form of the herb, adds a fantastic burst of sherbet to the front of the borders. In August I lifted, split, and potted on lots of yellow marjoram, so that I can extend its presence along several of the borders next spring. 

Finally, I noticed that pollinating insects, especially native honeybees and white butterflies, adore marjoram. I cannot wander past the herb without noticing a dozen bees sipping busily, and half a dozen butterflies fluttering about. For this reason only, I plan to plant more marjoram!

But do remember... it is as tough as old boots, and does rather like to stretch its reach.