I am always amazed at how fast this time of the year goes by.  The first three months of every year seem to pass in a flash.  November and December are the low months of the year for me.  They drag on and only end with Christmas, which has tendency to be more expectation than celebration.  But when the decorations come down and the days are noticeably longer, then the race is on and suddenly it is March or April and there are far too many things to do in the garden.

I already have more ground prepared and ready for vegetables than ever before which is very exciting.  It means that if I buy seed potatoes today, and onion sets there will be somewhere to plant them.  Not quite yet, but not long.

I am a professional gardener as well as a gardener gardener.  I have a gardening business with one of my sons, Tom, and other family members work with us sometimes.  We look after about ten gardens around the year, some very large some very small.  Yesterday was my first day back at work after visiting my Dad.  We were in Sally’s garden.  It is about three acres large, tucked under the Downs near Midhurst.  Very beautiful.  I spent much of the day pruning apple trees.  I was mainly working on the Bramley, the best cooking apple I think.  It has been particularly unfruitful for a few years, but last year it was hugely productive.  I had finally discovered that it is a triploid in its pollination habits.  This means it needs two different pollinators.  There were three apple trees in Sallys garden, all planted before my time, but one of them died.  I think this simple lack of a second pollinator must have been the problem although I did not expect it to be solved so quickly.  I planted a new tree, Winter Gem, last winter, and it only produced a few flowers and half a dozen apples.  However these flowers must have been enough because there were masses of apples on the Bramley tree.  I had thought that the dearth of fruit in previous years might have had something to do with my pruning, but now I know it was not I snipped away with confidence yesterday.  I have now created an open shape to the tree, a wine glass shape, and it is open enough for a blackbird to fly through unhindered, this being the ultimate test of a well pruned apple tree.

I will come back to my plant list another day.  The next part will be herbaceous plants and there are too many to list today.  I will mention one, Inula helenium, elecampane.  It grows to the right of the front door as viewed from the road.  It is a huge plant in the summer, and much more will be said about it later in the year.  At the moment it is just sticks, the cut down ends of last years leaves and flower stalks.  There is one shoot, dark red, breaking the surface of the ground, scaled with potential.