Magic Cochin unplugged - days 2 & 3

I wasn't in Norfolk for a holiday, I was there for a three day printmaking workshop at the Broadland Arts Centre. The tutor was Richard Bawden, one of Britains most experienced printmakers and an undoubted expert in linocuts.


Richard brought along a portfolio of some of his recent work, this one of his cat and a pink amarylis is a tour de force!


I wanted to experiment with using more colour in my prints – I tend to play safe and use one or two colours. I used a watercolour sketch of purple podded peas and my Japanese fish brush rest as my inspiration for a series of multi-layered prints.


I was pleased with my pea pod design but the layers of colour need much more work. It has sparked off a whole series of ideas for vegetable and plants based designs which are a mix of stylised foliage and more formal images.

There was a great bunch of people on the course and we all worked incredibly hard to make the most of having Richard there to give us help, advice and encouragement. We felt so lucky that he still generously passes on his wealth of knowledge, and does so with such wit and charm. No wonder many students return year after year!

Magic Cochin unplugged – day 1

I've spent four days unplugged – sans internet, sans computer, sans everything teckie (and for most of the time sans a signal on my mobile phone!) I've been in North-east Norfolk, leaving the under-gardeners in charge of the garden and studio assistants in charge of Cliff.

And I left the rain behind too – in Norfolk it was still sunny! My first stop was the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia to see the Cloth and Culture NOW exhibition. The exhibits by 35 artists from six countries are extraordinary – knitting, felt making, patchwork, embroidery, tapestry – but executed in such exciting ways and using all sorts of materials.

My second stop was Blickling Hall – the stunning mansion once owned by the Boleyn family and by legend, the birth place of Anne Boleyn and the home of her headless ghost! As the weather was so glorious I spent the afternoon in the gardens where the wisteria was in exuberant bloom . . .


and the yew topiary, like giant green eggs in egg cups, shimmered in the hazy heat . . .


I sat and sketched in my favourite spot – the cool shade of the vast spreading plane tree, with its serpent-like limbs writhing out of a pool of bluebells and wild flowers.


My final stop was Bramble House B & B at Cats Common, Smallburgh in Broadland near Wroxham, where I had a comfy room with this beautiful view.

Growing 'The Three Sisters' - part 1

We grow squash, sweetcorn and climbing beans together in a circular bed. These three vegetables are The Three Sisters – the basic food crops grown by the native American tribes. Traditionally they are grown together – the squash leaves shade and protect the soil; the bean roots fix nitrogen in the soil; the corn stalks provide support for the climbing beans; and after harvest the corn cobs, squash and dried beans provide food for the winter months.

The sweetcorn that we grow isn't strong enough to support vigorous climbing beans, so a teepee of sticks is needed – but this ancient crop trio makes a dramatic display in our garden each year. And there's a bonus – we grow The Three Sisters on a mound of part rotted garden compost, after the crops are harvested (or the next spring) we dig out the contents of the mound and spread it onto the vegetable beds. The two year old compost, enriched with nitrogen from the beans, is dark and crumbly – perfect for conditioning the soil.

Here's part 1 of Magic Cochin's method of growing The Three Sisters . . .

i)
Create a pit (it doesn't have to be circular, but this does have
advantages later).
If you're starting from scratch this will be hard work but worth it! In
the second year this will mean digging out the beautiful well rotted
compost, and the sense of achievement will out-weigh the hard graft!


ii)
Fill the pit with the contents of your garden compost bin, including grass cuttings, hen muck, straw and wood shavings. Mix it well – hens are very good at this – do you know the Scottish reel 'Hens March on the Midden' ? I came across it when my hero was the fiddler Aly Bain (rather than Donny Osmond like my peers) – I never mastered the fiddle but could just about play it up to speed on the tin whistle. Here's another great fiddle player Dave Swarbrick playing Hens March on the Midden with Simon Nicol on Guitar – a wonderful musical description of the under-gardeners compost turning technique.
(It's best if you can listen to the music and watch the under-gardeners 'on the midden' at the same time!!!)




iii)
Pile up the contents of the pit to make a low mound and cover with a layer of soil. Place a glass cloche (or a plastic sheet) on the top to help to get the mound to heat up.

iv)
Meanwhile, plant seeds of squash, sweetcorn and climbing beans so they are ready to plant out, I usually aim to do this at the end of May.

Part 2 to follow soon . . .
Planting out The Three Sisters

Variations on a theme of crimson

A comment from Rebsie on the previous post has prompted me to record the colour variations among the Crimson Flowered Broad Beans. The first year I saved my own seed I made sure I only used the beans from the deepest crimson flowered plants, I noticed that the dried beans retained their green colour unlike other broad bean varieties I have grown which have buff/brown seed beans.

Last year there were a couple of white flowered plants among the 50 or so plants. Some of the beans I saved for seed were brown and may have come from these plants (I wasn't specific about which plants I collected seed from) and I decided to plant these beans as well as the small green seed beans. The 'rogue' seeds were probably planted together in the same block of cells – I should have marked which were which, but didn't!

This year I have about 60 plants of Crimson Flowered Broad Beans, most have deep crimson flowers with dark burgundy lower petals, as in the photo above. But there are variations among the plants at one end of the bean patch – which makes me think they are the plants from the 'rogue' seeds.

One plant has flowers which are almost pure white with a black blotch on the lower petal . . .


Four plants have white and black flowers with pink at the base . . .


One plant has beautiful two tone pink flowers with a burgundy blotch on the lower petal . . .


And two plants have these gorgeous flowers, pink with green veins above and a dark pink and black lower petal . . .


This year I've labelled the plants which don't have crimson flowers and will save seeds from the pink flowered plants separately. I am also growing another variety, Bunyards Exhibition (photo on previous post), so I wonder is this will cross with the Crimson Flowered beans?

Transformed!

This is what we've been waiting for . . . Sunshine!!!!!

It's amazing how England and the English are transformed by a few days of perfect blue skies and sunshine. Everyone's so much more relaxed, we smile, work doesn't seem a chore if we can feel the warmth of the sun when we go outside. We have impromptu picnics; congregate at the waters edge - river, lake and sea; and everyone's inner gardener wants to plant things in the soil!

I love hand weeding at any time of year (weird, I know!) but this week it's a real chance to get up close to the plants without getting wet knees and muddy fingers. In the vegetable garden the Broad Beans are in flower, with metalic grey-green leaves and stunning flowers preceding the pods they have it all. 'Bunyards Exhibition' is an old favourite – the dramatic white and black flowers have a heady scent.

The 'Crimson Flowered' Broad Beans are show-stoppers – the depth of colour of the flowers is gorgeous!


You know summer is one its way when the cricket season has started and the Strawberry plants are in flower. We have two varieties, this one is 'Gariguette', the flowers are held above the leaves on long stalks – and they smell of marzipan!

'Cambridge Favourite' is a lower growing plant with darker blue-green leaves. The unscented flowers are in dense clusters below the leaves.


Temperatures have soared this week, the greenhouse thermometer has peaked at 41˚C. The Tomato plants spend the day outside, but I put them back in the greenhouse at night, just in case temperatures drop.


When the weather's like this everyone thinks gardening is fun!