Pat Duke: With our special climate you need to plan ahead

In the Garden
There isn’t a gardener alive who can comfortably say their garden is finished. Part of the allure of gardening is straddling the swirling changes where one set of conditions discreetly mushrooms into another.
Our unique climate with its shifting seasons and warm jet stream is perfect for growing a wide spectrum of species from grapes or even tea to wild meadows that need virtually no attention at all.
It’s with this in mind that we need to be always thinking a few months ahead, as well as making time to take pleasure in what we have right now.
Fresh from clearing dead foliage and planting late flowering annuals in the newly exposed and highly visible gaps, it’s now time that bare earth is the enemy and ground covering plants are volunteering for service.
Geraniums, periwinkles and ‘Hebe pagei’ are all trusted favourites. Not only do they replace the dreaded weeds, but they also help to retain moisture, so less weeding and watering is required. If you’re parsimonious with time management, this equation means more time drinking tea and sat in the sunshine under a straw hat, admiring what you’ve created.
Galdioli are often thought of as planting in April and forgetting about until they poke up long since you’ve forgotten about them. In fact, they can be planted into July as corms, just as you would with Spring bulbs.
It’s possible to succession sow gladioli corms to have a constant show of frilly colour but that might be something for next year now. Drop the hard wrinkled corms into a hole six inches deep. I’ve grown these at home and on the heavy clay soil on the allotment and clay soil needs sharp sand adding to the hole or they rot away.
Surprisingly, they are not all the type Morrissey used to throw around and some are more refined and have sharp, clearly defined blooms, as opposed to looking like scrambled egg on a stem. Acidanthera murilae is one such variety that looks more like a sublime lily. They can also come in deep, more fashionable colours like ‘Gladiolus espresso’, which is, surprise, surprise, a dark brown almost crimson flower.
On the Plot
Ingenious vegetable gardeners don’t have too much bare earth either, utilising every centimetre for produce. A great use for gaps is sowing winter veg as catch crops between recently planted leeks, cauliflowers or brussels beds.
You can now sow directly cabbage, winter lettuce and winter spinach. Savoy cabbages varieties such as ‘Best of All’, ‘Ice Queen’ and ‘Savoy King’ can be sown where they are to stay until harvesting. The same can be done with ‘Tom Thumb’ lettuce varieties or ‘Artic King’.
Winter spinach sown now in the same way will be ready by late October and will keep coming if you sow them every three weeks or so. Try sowing ‘Giant Winter’ or ‘Tyee’, which are cold tolerant and can give you a bitter hit in salad or be heated in an instant. Succession sowing until the end of August will probably see you through the winter and meet all your body’s iron requirements at the same time.
Given the school holidays are within touching distance, it’s an idea to clear a small patch and encourage younger gardeners to grow something in six weeks. Great ideas for this are radishes, snow peas, cress, chives, potatoes, beans, marigolds, cornflowers and even cosmos.
A bonus if you have a patch of bare earth you need to fill and get someone to enthusiastically look after it for you. A bee friendly mix might also show significant growth and can be picked and brought home at half-term if the weather is favourable. That’s the kind of thing that buys memories for children, as opposed to the unthinkable task of staring into a screen for six weeks.