Before and After: The Story of My Emerging Potager

Since we moved into the house three years ago and surveyed our weed-filled plot (below), I've had it in mind that I want to turn the garden into an 'informal potager' – or cottage garden – where vegetables and flowers are mixed together in the same beds to create a riotous display of colours and shapes, with bees humming and butterflies fluttering in and out amongst the blooms.


This year more than ever before– to the untrained eye at least – the garden is beginning to resemble what I saw in my mind but – as is inevitable when growing anything, regardless of horticultural philosophy or style – there have been some failures alongside the successes.


Amongst the failures are the broad beans, which though they began normally enough (as you can see in the photo) – and in previous years have been a resilient staple crop – this year fell prey to some mysterious disease which caused many of the pods to wither almost as soon as they began to form, the stems to bend over and the leaves to become brown and shrivelled. We've harvested a few beans but probably only a fifth of what we normally would have.


The other major concern – and who knows, perhaps not unrelated – is the plum tree. This tree is probably around a hundred years old. We used to have two but the younger one succumbed in the first year to another mysterious disease that attacked members of the prunus family in the area where we live, causing them to leach sap and dry up. We managed to save the other one by digging a trench round it and filling it with soaked cardboard, balled up newspaper and manure and then planting garlic and peas around it. Even so, it was still clearly not a very happy plum and despite a gardener friend's warning that it was too old to prosper, last year we gave it a severe prune and a good feed and were rewarded in early spring this year with the sight of its branches dripping in blossom.


Unfortunately, although there are now lots of small plums, the leaves have curled and shrivelled and the poor dear is looking very sickly once again.

Another normally dependable staple – the hollyhocks – which were growing up very nicely and just about to flower have, this very day, been devastated by severe winds which have caused them to bend in half. What the result of this will be I don't know but since its still a waning moon, if they look very sad, I'll prune them down to below the bend and see if they sprout up again.

Having depressed myself – and you fellow green-fingers – by talking about these failures, its time to cheer us all up again by showing you some of the marvels that have occurred.


Due to the intense rain this year, just about everything has doubled in size - particularly the mulberry, the snapdragons (which I wasn't even sure would over-winter, given we had a bit of snow), this purple shrub that I don't even know the name of but that was given to us by a fellow greenie (you know who you are!) and my other half has now divided into two plants and the little lemon and orange trees which after years of languishing (in another garden before here) are finally beginning to get up and at it!


The wild rocket, as usual, has gone mad and providing great ground cover and the mint is, predictably taking over everything and I've had to start pulling it up but we're really enjoying our regular cups of 'hierba buena' and are able to give it away as gifts as well. Apart from the fact that it smells divine when you walk amongst it.


Its been our policy so far to let anything run riot that will until we need the space because our experience of gardening in Spain so far has taught us that evaporation of water is generally the greatest enemy so we want as much ground-cover as possible. Its probably a dangerous policy to follow as I know that plants such as mint and wild rocket are impossible to stop I still prefer it to bare ground or rampant grasses and weeds which is what we had before and are gradually taming into submission. In other words, I'd rather have a weed I can eat or drink than one that just irritates me! The calendulas have also finally taken hold and are spreading themselves – with a little help from me – around the garden.


The other successes so far are the seed potatoes that another greenie friend gave (thank heavens for friends!). Previously we've only ever used ones that we bought to eat and have sprouted in our kitchen drawer and the difference is very noticeable.


As you can see, I've begun my experiment with growing tomatoes upside down in buckets. I read about it somewhere and this year seemed the perfect year to try it – partly because we are getting short on space and want to try and make more use of vertical space to compensate, and partly because last year the tomatoes were hit by a disease that hit all the tomatoes in the region and so we didn't want to plant them in the same place again and in a garden our size that doesn't leave so much choice!


I've also done my first, properly laid out companion bed – made a lot easier by purchasing the plantlets rather than growing them from seed: The lettuces are interspersed with Italian green peppers which grow very tall and bushy and will shade the lettuces from the fierce summer sun. They are surrounded by onions which I hope will provide a living fence to keep the cat – and her neighbour friends – off the bed (a perennial problem, temporarily solved, as you can see by the strategic placement of some very prickly rose prunings).


We've also reclaimed the old water deposit for a rain collection point and we've got a new 'lean to' – which my other half and his brother built from left over materials from the bits of the house we had to rebuild. One of the side benefits of this, apart from the cat having an extra snooze spot is that we have somewhere dry to stand and watch the rain or to take cover from the baking summer sun as well as a much needed place to store all the usual garden paraphernalia.



With the idea of writing this blogpost, I went and took a new photo of the garden from more or less the same vantage point as the original, what a difference!