Sea pink.

Plant of the week: sea pink | Life and style | The Guardian
What is it?
A rugged coastal plant won't balk at poor soil, exposed sites or a good lashing from the wind.
Its neat carpet of evergreen leaves is topped with lollipops of candy-pink flowers from May to September.
Sea pink (also known as thrift or Armeria maritima) makes perfect ground cover for gravel gardens, border edging or planting in a trough: I'm getting some to put on my green roof.
Expect a height and spread of around 30cm x 30cm.

Plant it with?
Thrift will rub along nicely with other drought-tolerant toughies, such as blue fescue grass (Festuca glauca), dusty miller (Lychnis coronaria), and wormwood (artemisia).

And where?
If you have a coastal garden and struggle to grow much, this British native is a banker.
It will not, however, enjoy life on poorly drained soils or shady spots.

Any drawbacks?
As Derek Jarman, in whose Dungeness garden thrift thrived, pointed out, "It's going to leap about."
In other words, if this plant likes your garden, it will spread and spread.
If it fails to spread, divide plants in autumn or early spring to make more.

What else does it do?
Bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects will be drawn to its nectar.

Herb Garden.

Welcome to My Herb Garden

Here are the contents of the raised beds (pictured above, in clockwise movement):
#1 Bok Choy, a stir-fry indispensable; Lemon Verbena, a must for white wine; and Lovage, a celery-flavored perennial.
#2 Flat-leaf parsley for flavor and garnish; lavender ‘Munstead’ for icing cupcakes; common sage, which I fry as an appetizer, and cilantro for salsa verde.
#3 Green leaf lettuce, purple sage for who-knows-what; French tarragon for sauteed mushrooms and herbal mayonnaise; pelargonium ‘True Rose’ for vodka drinks, and rosemary for shirred eggs.
#4 Red oak-leaf lettuce; oregano and thyme for pizza and pasta sauces; winter savory for winter stews.

Weeds in Paths? Use Vinegar, Not Roundup

Weeds in Paths? Use Vinegar, Not Roundup

How to Grow Fennel.

How to Grow Fennel: 8 Steps (with Pictures) - wikiHow

There are two sorts of fennel: one is classed as a herb, shoots up to about five feet and produces the leaves and seeds that are often used in fish recipes.
Its proper name is Foeniculum vulgare.
The fennel Foeniculum dulce (Florence fennel), which, if you get the growing conditions right, swells at the base to produce a vegetable with a strong aniseed flavour, wonderful braised in a gratin with tomato and cheese.
`Cantino' is good. So is `Zefa Fino' which is much better in cool climates than an authentic Italian strain such as `Di Firenze'.
Because Florence fennel is also sensitive to day length, the best time to sow is in mid June for an autumn crop.
RHS recommended varieties ‘Perfection’, ‘Cantino’ and ‘Amigo’ are bolt resistant.
Late variety ‘fennel of Parma’ by seedsofitaly.co.uk can be sown in late July/August to be harvested early winter.
Alpine fennel ‘fenchel’ also available.
Early sowings (April-May) are more likely to bolt.
If you sow in mid June, you should be able to harvest bulbs by mid October.
The best soil is light, sandy and well drained, but the bulbs must never be allowed to dry out. Put them top of the list if water is short.

Tips
- Consider an exclusive patch for your fennel as it is known to impede the growth of other plants.
- Fennel plants can be started from cuttings. Once a plant matures, the roots can be snipped and replanted.
- Be sure not to start your plants where any coriander, caraway or wormwood is growing as these will impede the fennel's growth.
- Fennel can be an integral part of an expectant or nursing mother's diet, as nutrients that are exclusive to this plant aid in milk production.
- Plant your fennel during the fall in warm climates, and during the spring in cooler places.
- Verify that your soil's pH level is between 6.0 and 7.0 as fennel grows best in less acidic soil.
- Fennel can grow up to five feet tall, which leaves the thin stems susceptible to breakage. Stake your fennel to support it against the wind.
- To thresh the seeds, slap the stalk against a hard surface.
- Creating your own compost will maintain the organic integrity of your plants, and is a wonderful way to benefit the environment.
- Mix any additives into the soil in advance, making certain that it has time to neutralize before planting season.

Dill is one of the few plants to grow with Fennel.
Why fennel is the gardener's friend - Telegraph By Francine Raymond.
As a vegetable, Florence fennel is more than versatile:
- braise or steam it then serve with fish or pork;
- deep fry it in light tempura batter;
- try it sliced with a mandolin with shaved Parmesan, or chopped as a crudité to dip in hummus.

My favourite dish is fennel bulbs caramelised in butter and sugar, then covered with goats’ cheese, scattered with roast fennel seeds and grilled.

Fennel loses its flavour soon after it has been cut. Revive it, packed in ice with a brief sojourn in the fridge.

I love pickled fennel, sliced finely then brined and steeped in cider vinegar with a little honey and fennel seeds.
Take two cups of fennel, combine with three teaspoons of salt in a bowl of iced water and leave to pickle for at least two hours.
Combine three-quarters of a cup of vinegar with half a cup of water, two tablespoons of honey and spices and bring to the boil.
Drain the fennel, rinse in water, pack in sterilised jars and cover with the cooled liquor.
Make sure your vegetables are completely immersed in the vinegar solution at all times.
Allow 2.5cm headroom above the vegetables, don’t be tempted to squash them down, and use vinegar-proof lids.
Leave to macerate for a month in a cool place, and keep in the fridge once opened.

As a herb, use stems and fronds to flavour any pork or fish dish.
Bake pieces of meat or fish in foil in the oven packed with fennel ferns, and barbecue fish on a bed of stems for a really intense flavour.
Use the seeds to make your own ras el hanout spice mix with garden lavender, bay leaves, fennel and cumin seeds, rose petals, nutmeg, cloves and peppercorns, roast then grind, to steep in oil, and then dip in chunks of crusty bread.
Mix the roasted seeds with black, pink and white peppercorns and salt to make a delicious crust on baked salmon, or combine with chilli in dark chocolate.
Umbelliferae are decorative garden plants, both Foeniculum vulgare and its bronze relation will seed and squeeze in readily all over the border, without elbowing out their companions.
Decorative cousins, the noble but inedible Ferula communis and tingitana ‘Cedric Morris’ are available from Great Dixter.
Even the wildlife love fennel, especially the foliage beloved by swallowtail caterpillars (and slugs) and the flowers adored by hoverflies and all sorts of beneficial insects.

Slug resistant plants.

Gardening in Mannheim, Germany: One year of slug experience - what works, and what doesn't, at least in my garden (including lists of slug resistant plants)
Herbs
chives
garlic chives
lavender
lemon balm

lovage
oregano

rosemary

St.-Johns-wort
thyme
valerian

Vegetables
cucumbers
garlic
lamb's lettuce
leaf lettuce
leeks
onions
rocket
tomatoes
zucchini - I raised the plants from seeds indoors until they were quite large.

List of companion plants.

List of companion plants - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

'Sleepless slugs' on rise.

'Sleepless slugs' on rise, say experts - BBC News
"Take action now. What better way to spend a bank holiday weekend than going on a slug hunt."

While many slugs help condition soil by breaking it down and eat decaying plants - and even, in some cases, each other - others feed on fresh leaves and are regarded by gardeners as pests.
Gardeners can help prevent slugs from eating their plants by:
- Removing cover for slugs such as leaves and bricks
- Breaking up soil into smaller chunks so that it dries quicker
- Putting copper tape around plants
- Creating a rough area near their plants with crushed glass or sand
- Putting plants by ponds so water-dwelling predators of slugs, such as frogs and newts, can keep their population down
- Placing plants that repel slugs - such as those from the geranium family - next to those that attract them, including hostas
- Nematode worms - which kill slugs by feeding off them parasitically - can be bought online introduced to soil where slug numbers are high
- BugLife said slug pellets and other chemicals should be avoided because they could be poisonous to other animals, such as birds, cats and dogs
- If you do use slug or snail pellets, the Royal Horticultural Society recommends iron phosphate pellets because they are less toxic

Placing plants that repel slugs - such as:
Bergenia (elephant's ears)
Aquilegia species
Euphorbia species
Digitalis purpurea (foxglove)
Alchmilla mollis (lady's mantle)
Agapanthus
Fuchsia
Geranium species
Astrantia major
Dicentra spectabilis (bleeding heart)

There’s still time to sow veg.

French,
borlotto and shelling beans,
beetroot,
carrots,
mini cauliflowers,
broccoli raab,
spigariello (a marvellous sprouting broccoli type, from Franchi Seeds),
kales,
salads and
the outdoor sowings of marrows,
pumpkins,
courgettes and
cucumbers can now be sown direct.

- How to grow perfect courgettes and squash | Alys Fowler | Life and style | The Guardian
This weekend is the perfect time to sow them if you haven’t already.
Cucurbits, whether that’s cucumbers or courgettes, squash or pumpkins, resent cold, wet weather and are easy targets for slugs.
If you have plants on the windowsill that can’t hold themselves upright, start again.
Floppy seedlings will be slug fodder and nothing more.

Plants sown in the next two weeks will catch up quickly with earlier sowings and crop just a beat behind.
Because the harvest season is short, make a further sowing at the end of the month to create a little succession.

It can be pricey to buy five or six different varieties: ask around and see if you can swap seeds.
Facebook often turns up someone who’s germinated the entire packet and is overrun.

Courgette plants love to eat and drink, so start feeding from midsummer onwards, particularly if growing them in pots.
It also worth mulching around plants to keep weeds down and water locked into the soil – grass clippings work well.

There are many varieties to chose from: round, long, bent, pattypan, pale green, sunshine yellow and stripy.
‘Midnight’ and ‘Patio Star’ are both compact bush plants, ideal for containers and tiny gardens.

Courgette ‘Tromboncino d’Albenga’ likes to climb and has attractive fruits; it’s great for arbours and trellis.
‘Eight Ball’ is a wonderful one for stuffing.
‘Nero di Milano’ makes a good, open bush plant and has early, dark green fruit.
‘Rugosa’ (from Seeds of Italy) and ‘Summer Crookneck’ (from The Real Seed Catalogue) are summer squash (essentially, they mature to have a harder skin), but, picked early, the wonderful, knobbly fruit have a great flavour and can be eaten like courgettes.

Caraway.

The young spring shoots of Caraway are ready for harvesting in early spring (late April/early May).
They have a mild parsley-like taste not at all like the seeds.

Alys Fowler: Caraway, plus harvesting rocket seed | Life and style | The Guardian
"I declare caraway the new parsnip.
Actually it's the old parsnip because the roots were eaten in Roman times, but as few have done this since, I think it deserves a raise.
It's found in the same family as parsnips and carrots, apiaceae (the umbel family), and behaves in much the same manner.
It's a biennial and spends its first year as a low-growing rosette of fern-like leaves; in the second year it shoots up to flower.
It grows to 45-60cm high.

A little like cow parsley but prettier and less brutish, the flowers are white, tinged pink.
It's easy to work into a border; I have mine growing among Astrantia major 'Roma' and Centaurea montana.
When all three are in flower, it gives a lovely appearance of meadow.

You could just grow it for the seeds, which is what I've been doing.
You get a huge supply – two plants keeps me in caraway seeds for a year.
But it has other edible parts, which I found out about in Norway, where it grows wild, dancing along the shoreline of fjords and racing into the mountains.
In poor soils along the shores, it's a small thing with seeds that taste so powerfully of that soapy, clean flavour, they are almost too much.
On the fertile edges of meadows, it develops a milder flavour and has bigger roots.

You can eat the leaves, too.
They are used in spring salads and soups, imparting a slightly bitter but pleasant flavour, but I don't think they've got a pinch on the roots.
These are sweet like a parsnip, but offer something different.
Their one fault is that these roots are much smaller than parsnip.
They should be eaten towards the end of their first year, in autumn.
Once they've flowered, the root becomes woody, although still edible.
The seeds are collected in the second year.

Home-grown seed has a powerful taste, so use sparingly.
I like to dry and then toast the seed for using in sauerkraut or baking.
Harvest seed just before it goes nut brown, and let it continue to dry indoors.
Collect the seed heads in a paper bag and hang them upside down.
After a week or two, and with a little vigorous shaking, the seeds will fall off.
They need to be perfectly dry before storing in an airtight container.

Save some seed for sowing again.
Like all umbels, the seeds germinate best if fresh, so sow from late summer to early autumn.
It's best to sow in the soil as it doesn't like to be disturbed, but if you don't have space now, sow in 9cm pots or toilet roll tubes (ideal as you can plant the whole thing out).
If allowed, caraway will happily self-seed.
A happy place for it is in full sun in well-drained, fairly fertile soil – especially important if you want to grow for roots."

How to Grow Curry Plant.

The Herb Gardener: How to Grow Curry Plant