In between Unst and Uist

Finally back from Unst, Shetland, two days after seeing the Green Warbler

I missed basket weaving at the weekend but

Sue made this lovely fish to hang over the veg patch pond.

You can see too the reflection of one of the

willow dragonflies she made.

17th May
Mangetout picked again. Growing it in the polytunnel has been brilliant. We get a basket full every other day. I've underplanted it with sweetcorn and squash now, so once those get bigger it'll be whipped out just in time to continue harvesting from the outdoor plants.

I separated the last two lambs from their mums this morning. Weaning the lambs is a big step for them but they all seem to be doing ok on their own, there's just quite a lot of loud bleating at the moment! The one looking up at the camera is Rameses. He's given up asking us for his bottle feed now.

Finally we have a third gosling. I don't get goose nest sitting strategy. Unlike other birds, they seem to lay in each others' nests, all sit on each others' eggs, sometimes two on one nest and the eggs seem to hatch one at a time and very unpredictably. I did find one egg rolled away from the nest which had a full grown chick inside. There always seems to be a major issue for goslings cracking their way out.

18th May
I don't often moan, but today was a really crappy day. Work things. Best forgotten about. Maybe if the government set an example and valued teachers (not to mention doctors, nurses...) then parents might too. At least I've got things like this to come home to.

and this...

19th May
Lawns mowed, flower mixes sown.
The hen we put on ten chicken eggs a while back has done a hopeless job of sitting. Today I found her with yolk on her feathers and when I looked in the broody coop there are now only five eggs! What's more, they seem to have rolled all over the place so I'll be surprised if we get any hatch at all.
We'll start collecting the Ixworth eggs and try out the new incubator we bought a while back. It's more intensive for us but should give a bit better result.
20th May
I really struggle to grow sunflowers. Occasionally they spring up randomly round the garden, which I like, but when I sow them straight in the ground they either don't germinate or get eaten before they get a chance to get going. So instead I plant them in modules and plant them out when they're about a foot tall. I planted some at the back end of last week in amongst the mangel wurzels, where I also planted my sweetcorn today. But something ate most of them! To be honest, I suspect the peacock, as I know last year I had to protect my sweetcorn plants from the girl.
Anyway, it's a slower process but I've put tree protectors round the sunflowers and then netted the whole bed until everything gets growing really well.

On a different note, I'm pretty sure we have Ash dieback on the farm. It'll hopefully take a long time to impact on the old trees but some of the young saplings have completely died. Others though, are shooting healthy branches from the base again, so we'll see what happens with that one. I'm currently planting lots of quick growing trees and shrubs such as elder and willow as well as allowing hawthorns to self seed.

21st May
Sue was busy with her bees most of the day. She had to check if the rape honey they've collected had begun to set, as if you leave it too long it turns concrete. In the afternoon she attended another of the West Norfolk group's excellent training courses.
I meantime had a big day in the veg garden, only interrupted several times by the odd one of Sue's angry bees. Mostly I just got pestered but I did endure one sting to the head. I knew this one was going to sting by the buzzing which was more than just inquisitive. Hopefully next month Sue will be able to change the queens and passify the buy little Amazonians!

Back to the veg. I sowed all my climbing beans in pots - Borlotti, Armstrong, Gigantes, Kentucky Wonder Wax, Cobra and Pea Bean. I prefer climbing beans as they use vertical space and give form to the garden. They are also easier to pick, don't hang on the ground getting dirty and chewed by slugs, and crop over a longer period. They also dry better at the end of the season.

My carrot bed had completely disappeared beneath emerging marigold seedlings! But once I did some careful hoeing, there was actually a visible line of carrots and one of spring onions. Carrots seem to be extremely unpredictable so ay crop will be deemed a success. I've got them growing in a fleece frame this year so hopefully I'll get to enjoy my crop rather than simple feeding carrot fly larvae. The unpredictability of carrots is summed up by the fact that the line of Atomic Red I planted outside seem to have failed yet in the polytunnel the same seeds have all come through. It can't be that conditions outside are terrible as the other variety has come well. I just don't understand it.
Anyway, I have optimistically sowed more line of carrots and more lettuces to keep the succession going.

While I had the hoe out I uncovered the turnip and kohl rabi bed. It is apparent that all the seedling have been munched by flea beetles. The two plants which had got past them I decided to hoe up so I could start over. Maybe sowing later will have better luck, but just in case I'm sowing I modules tto so I can transplant when the plants are large enough to outgrow the chewing little insects.
I've also interplanted the rows with tagetes seedlings (French marigolds) as this has worked in the past. These pretty flowers smell strongly and are avoided by most creepy crawlies. Unfortunately they are tender, so I raise trays of them in the polytunnel to plant out about now when we should be frost free. This does mean that they can't protect early sowings though.

And lastly, I've taken my first harvest of new potatoes from the polytunnel. Here is the product of just one plant in the basket I made last week. They're not as small as they look - it's a big basket!

We literally stopped using the stored potatoes last week - they have started to soften and to sprout a lot. This means that our potatoes now last us right through the year.

Coming next: Going Completely Cuckoo on North Uist

Barcelona Beans

Barcelona have Messi, Neymar and Suarez up front. A ridiculous embarrassment of riches.

I have a similar embarrassment of riches. I have Borlotti, Rocquencourt and Cobra, plus Tendergreens, Canada Wonders, Pea Beans and Blue Lake - an embarrassment of beans.
They all grow well (as long as I am patient and leave sowing them until uncomfortably late in the spring). They all crop well. They all taste delicious.

I also grow runner beans, two types. I feel I should grow runner beans. Every veg patch has runner beans. I can't be a proper gardener if I don't grow runner beans. If you know your football, runner beans are my Fred. In the team, but nobody quite knows why.
To be honest if you put a runner bean and a French bean next to each other, I'd go for the French every time. And there's no risk of ending up with a mouthful of stringiness (even 'stringless' runners end up stringy if you neglect picking them, which I inevitably do when all those crisp, fresh French beans are growing right next door.)

I do like the flowers, though, as do the bees. So the runners survive in the plan, but just for drying and using through the winter.



The French beans
You'll have to excuse the long grass - the mower's broken... again.

The French beans fall into two categories. Borlottis, Pea Beans and Canada Wonder are all grown just for drying, for the beans inside the pods.

The rest are grown for the pods, to be eaten fresh or sliced and frozen for later.
Cobra beans are climbers, which crop early and heavily, but which are gone all too soon. Blue Lake are similar. There's nothing between them really, but I suspect that if I measured the yield carefully the Cobras would just edge it. Besides, they have wonderful black beans inside. The Blue Lake have white beans.
Then there are the Rocquencourts. Dwarf yellow beans which snap crisply and have a wonderful waxy texture. Even with a failure first time round (too cold, too dry, didn't make it past the slugs and rabbits), the second attempt which I netted has yielded several bags of beans for the freezer.
So that just leaves the Dwarf Tendergreens. These came in a mixed packet from Poundland or some such shop, so I wasn't expecting too much. In fact, I forgot about them until yesterday when I noticed bunches of beans hiding below the leaves. So I picked a few to try and they were disappointingly good, even the ones which had grown a little long and fat. I say 'disappointingly' as this leaves me with my Barcelona bean situation. A ubiquity of quality.

Then there are the broad beans and, just for the extravagance, the Yardlong beans in the polytunnel.

So, here's my team. The final eleven.

Borlotti Bean 'Lingua de Fuoco'

French Bean 'Canada Wonder' (kidney beans)

Pea Bean

Runner Bean Armstrong (red)

Runner Bean 'White Lady'

Climbing French Bean 'Cobra'

Climbing French Bean 'Blue Lake'

Dwarf French Bean 'Tendergreen'

Dwarf French Bean 'Rocquencourt'

Broad Bean 'Bunyard's Exhibition'

Yardlong Bean

 

Just don't make me choose one to leave on the bench.

Bean Trials - Findings start Coming In

Borlottis

Two years ago I grew as many different potato varieties as I could with the aim of settling on a few varieties which would serve me well.

This year it was the turn of the beans, runners, dwarfs, dried, French, inside, outside...

The beans broadly fall into two categories, those where the whole pod is eaten and those grown purely for the actual beans inside.

First, let's get the dwarf beans out of the way. They were a complete failure this year, with virtually no germination. I guess the late winter meant the soil was not warm enough. Everybody round here had the same problem. The climbing beans on the other hand did well. Don't ask me to explain that one!

Runners
I have abandoned heritage varieties this year and have prioritised stringlessness. This is because I detest finding a mouthful of stringy bean pod in my mouth. It's like eating bony fish.
I have grown a red variety, Armstrong, and it has done well. Even when I forget to harvest it for a while, the ones which have grown a bit too big still snap cleanly. Then there's a variety with white flowers and white beans - the name totally escapes me right now. This I am growing for the beans inside, which I hope to be able to use as dried butter beans. It's pretty much stringless as well, so would have been a good back up variety if needed. For some reason, white varieties always seem less vigorous than red ones and take longer to get going.

French (Green) Beans
I've grown a past favourite, Blue Lake, outside and it has again performed very well. It is a crisp, clean flavoured bean which is responsible for me discovering that there are some green foods I actually like! I've also grown Cobra this year, some in the polytunnel and some outside.Both have done well. Given how precious space is in the polytunnel, I may just grow enough in there next year to last until the outdoor crop comes good.

Yard Long beans

A bit of a novelty one this. It failed outside, even when started off in modules in the polytunnel, but the tropical conditions under cover have suited it much better. You don't need many beans to make a meal and it's cropped very well over quite a long period. Not quite as delicate a taste as the French Beans, but it has earned a place in next year's plan. I have lots of very long pods full of next year's seed just hanging until they fully dry.

So we're pretty much sorted for next year on the green bean front.

But I've also been trying a few varieties for drying, a great source of protein for winter stews. The plants in the polytunnel have gone over now and many of the pods are dry enough to pod out.
It's not that long ago that the luxurious profusion on the bean plants was threatening to overwhelm the whole polytunnel. However, I've a feeling that this may have been somewhat at the expense of the bean harvest. I've also got a feeling that the earlier beans to set weren't pollinated very well. The insects took a while to discover the tropical environment of the polytunnel earlier in the year and the older pods seem to have very few properly developed beans inside.

Today's exploratory harvest was, I have to admit, slightly disappointing, but on the whole I have a lot more beans than I started with and I have a much better idea of what I want to grow for next year, and more importantly where I want to grow it.

Pea Beans
An old favourite this one. It performs pretty well outside and I actually planted some late to replace a couple of failed crops. Inside the polytunnel it romped away, winning the race to the top and thriving under the warm conditions. It wasn't long before I was regularly having to pull leaves from the plants to allow some air ventilation.






But, now that most of the leaves have fallen, the final yield is sparse. I reckon I'll struggle to fill a jar. So although it'll be on next year's list of plants to definitely grow, it probably won't be getting a place in the polytunnel again. There is plenty of space outside to grow as much as I want, so half of this year's harvest may be saved for next year's seed.

Black-eye Beans

I absolutely love eating these beans, so when a few were included in a cheap pack of 'exotic' bean seeds, it gave me the idea to try growing the beans I had in store in the kitchen. Last year I just sowed them straight into the cold, wet ground and they happily rotted away!

Not one to give up, this year I took more care of them and raised them alongside other beans in modules under cover. Germination and initial growth was strong. I wasn't sure whether they would be dwarves or climbers, and they ended up somewhere in between, starting off slowly but then climbing up the sunflower stems in the polytunnel.

Again, though, the total yield looks like it will be fairly low. Each pod has done well, with up to 13 beans in each pod, but the number of pods is fairly low. However, I intend to try some black-eye beans fresh in tomorrow's dinner and if I like them they may just earn a little place under cover next year. I'm hoping, though, that they will thrive outside. As with the pea beans, it may be that less leaves equals more beans. Or are they too exotic?

Black-eye Beans growing next to Pea Beans

A pod full of black-eye beans

Fresh black-eye beans

Over in the corner of the polytunnel, the climbing Borlotti pods provided a vivid splash of colour through the summer. But now the pods are fading. These beans appear to have been the most prolific of the beans I have grown for drying, as well as looking very dapper.
I podded a few of them today to discover the most subtly beautiful beans inside.






Borlottis



So Borlottis haved earned themselves an increase in space next year, as long as they taste nice. There are some growing outside too, a less tall variety, so it will be interesting to assess how they do.















I've saved the very worst till last. Not beans, but peas, I decided to plant a batch of chick peas from the store cupboard to keep the black-eye beans company. They germinated very well and I was pleased with their initial growth. But after a while it became apparent that each plant seemed to have, on average, about one pod on it! Not only that, but each pod seemed to have one chickpea inside! This seems to be a crop which, at least in a British polytunnel, would require quite some acreage to fill a tin.
But it gets worse. For today I realised that most of those precious pods had either dried up and withered to nothing or else just totally disappeared.

 A rare chickpea pod 

I guess then that if we want to continue to enjoy eating chickpeas, hummus and tahini, then we'll just have to buy them from the supermarket. Some crops just weren't designed to grow in this country, which probably explains why you don't see fields full of chickpeas.

My total chickpea harvest!!!!
Sue and I will have half each.

Yardlong Beans

Yardlong Bean - does what it says on the packet.

I'm experimenting with climbing beans this year.

I've chosen several varieties to grow, inside and out. Through the year I'll be noting their germination rate, yield, health and most importantly their taste.

First up is Blue Lake, a bean which I've grown successfully outside before and which I know has a very clean taste and is stringless.
Main challenger to the Blue Lake is Cobra, which is currently cropping very well in the polytunnel and is very tasty too. I have a few on the go outside for comparison. Needless to say, those in the polytunnel are way ahead, but the outside plants may give me a longer season.

I'm also growing a couple of beans not for the whole pods but for the beans inside. Borlotti beans and Pea Beans. Again, I've grown these before, with mixed success. So I have them on the go both outside and in the polytunnel. Those in the polytunnel are already producing some nice fat pods.

But oddest of the lot are the Yardlong Beans which I've decided to give a go. They were slower to get going than the other beans and those planted outside could not cope with our climate and just slowly faded away.

The polytunnel plants kept going, though the leaf growth was never so lush as on the other beans (not necessarily a bad thing, as it lets the air flow around more). I didn't think much was happening until one day, right out of nowhere, I suddenly realised that there were a few ridiculously long beans hanging down. I almost missed them, mistaking them for the stems of the plant!

Since then they've been cropping well. You don't need many of these to fill a freezer bag. 

Other names for yardlong bean are asparagus beans (not to be confused with asparagus peas), Chinese long beans, boro, long-podded cowpea, chori and snake bean.
But yardlong bean does just fine for me.

I have read that if they actually reach a yard long, they will be too tough to eat. Ours, however, don't thicken up until they're at least a couple of feet long and it doesn't seem to affect the taste.

But I'm not one to grow a crop just for the gimmick. So at some point there will be a proper sit down taste test. I'll be looking for flavour and texture, fresh and frozen. Then I'll know which varieties I'll be selecting for next year.

All things being equal though, of course I'll go for the gimmicky one!

A quick update on everything on the smallholding

Pigs

The pigs are all healthy and eating us out of house and home as usual. They have put on a sudden spurt of growth which prompted me to pay a visit to the butcher last week! Two will be going on a little journey at the beginning of the summer holiday. One will be spared for a while, to go off for bacon in the winter, and Daisy's future is still a matter of discussion between Sue and I.

Two of their sisters who I sold have already gone, but ours grow more slowly as they spend all their time chasing each other.

Guineas

At the last count, there were 65 guineafowl eggs hidden in the grass. But still every evening eleven birds roost on the fence so none is sitting ... yet.

The guineafowl have, however, discovered the strawberries. Not just ours, but Don's too. They have always been allowed to wander free and have never previously caused too much damage. For now, the strawberries will be netted and we will monitor the situation.

Chickens

The chickens all seem happy at the moment. We are getting about a dozen eggs a day. A few have shown signs of broodiness but have given up when we keep taking their eggs. Elvis, who we want to go broody, has most unusually shown little inclination to sit. Shame, as we were rather hoping to hatch out some blue eggs.

Geese

The geese have finally given up on their efforts to hatch an egg. Maybe next year they'll have more success. So for now they are back out in the paddock to keep the grass down. They have quickly settled into their new routine and every evening wait at the gate to waddle in line into the stable for the night. One goes on the right of the divider, the rest go on the left.

The poor girls who spent so long sitting on the nest are slowly getting back into condition.

Ducks Still waddling.

Sheep 

The sheep have settled in to living in their new home, up in the pasture, where they are beginning to make an impact on the grass. The one who had the limp is now completely better and they are all growing fast. I accidentally left the electric fence off last night and one got out, but it didn't go far. They are happy where they are as long as they have fresh grass.

Bees
Who knows! They are now closed down for a few weeks. All we can see is this unusual cluster at the bottom of the hive. We think they're clustering around newly built queen cells. With luck both hives will successfully manage to make a queen which mates successfully. We'll know if they have been successful if there are eggs when we next open them.

Owls
The owls continue to delight us, more and more during the day. I saw a young one being fed the other day. Once in a while I hear the swallows causing a commotion and look up to see a dumpy Little Owl being pursued by a line of graceful but angry swallows.
Not such good news with the Barn Owls. There seem to be very, very few about. It seems that their boxes have been taken over by Jackdaws.
Trees
A couple of weeks ago I spent some time assessing the young woodland trees. If you remember, this job was interrupted by the arrival of a Pacific Swift in Suffolk. Most are doing well, though we suffered a few losses. By next year they should be looking more like small trees than weedy saplings.
The Ash saplings all seem to be doing well. Time will tell whether the threat from Ash dieback is as serious as it seemed last year.

 

Orchard

The orchard trees, all planted two winters ago, are beginning to flourish. We should get a more significant amount of fruit this year. However, pollination was patchy, especially of the cherries and plums. Goodness knows where our bees were going to get their food, but they studiously ignored all of my and Don's offerings.

Soft Fruit

All the soft fruit is developing nicely. It looks like being a bumper year for gooseberries. I really look forward to this annual treat. The other fruit that should be ready early is the strawberries, but I seem to have very little ripe fruit this year. Neighbours and friends are already harvesting.

However, as alluded to above, I think I've discovered the reason.

Those pesky guineafowl seem to have found the fruit before me. The netting will have to come out.

Vegetables



Runners struggling to get going



Beans n Peas : Every year is different in the world of vegetable growing. Last year beans and peas, if the young shoots got past the slugs, did well. This year, nobody's beans are coming up fast. The weather has been too cool and they could do with a bit more (warm) rain.

The broad beans, though, have loved the cool weather.

 

Roots : Parsnips are flourishing again. Carrots are patchy again, but much better than last year. The experiment to sow carrots into a bed of mixed annual flowers has backfired somewhat as the weeds grew first. This happened with the other beds which I reserved just for the flowers. It's impossible to get in there with the rotavator or even the hoe. Still, a few weeks of selective weeding may just reveal some pleasant hidden treasures.  

Spuds : I'm a bit worried about the spuds. The tops are looking good, but it's been a bit dry at the crucial time when the tubers should be forming. I dug up one of my Earlies a couple of weeks ago and there were no tubers at all! Those I grew in bags had a disappointing yield too. I'll have to make changes for next year.

However, I'm still pretty confident that the outdoor crops will come good. I probably just need to be patient. They did go in a little later than I hoped and I did not get to chit them properly as the house was in such a mess with the building works. 

Brassicas : This year I've actually got round to transplanting the young brassicas into the veg beds outside and they've even got protection. They'd better work, or I'll be giving up on them.

 

As you can see, I've even gone to the effort of making collars for them out of old carpet underlay. This, in theory, should stop them being devastated by cabbage root fly.

House

Work on the house is almost finished. We're still waiting for the scaffolding to come down and there's a couple of jobs for the plumber to finish off (it's only been six months since he first came!) All we need to do now is decorate every room. That'll be in our spare time then!



Three Sisters resurrected

Last year I attempted to cultivate The Three Sisters.

That's the system where you grow sweetcorn in small clumps, interspersed with squashes and pumpkins. Then you add the third "sister" - climbing beans, whose sole purpose is to feed the slugs and divert them away from the other crops... or so it seemed.

Well, that was last year.
As it was, the sweetcorn, squashes, courgettes and pumpkins did very well given copious amounts of rain.

This year is a very different year. So last week the three sisters were resurrected.

The sweetcorn is growing well now.
Time to sow the French beans.

I doubt the original growers of Three Sisters
surrounded their crops with electric fence
to protect it against rabbits.

Young sweetcorn plants, back on 27th May


The sweetcorn has been planted for well over a fortnight now. It always takes a knock back when it first goes into the ground outside and the weakest specimens don't make it.
After a tricky germination, where several complete trays just rotted away as they failed to spring into life in the cool conditions, I didn't really have any to spare. As it is a high proportion of plants have made it through and have begun to grow more strongly.

Various types of courgette, squash and pumpkin have now been transplanted out between them.

I decided to invest time erecting the electric rabbit fence around my lovingly nurtured plants. There is nothing as soul-destroying as the disappointment of finding your freshly planted crops nibbled or, worse still, uprooted and laying wilted on the surface of the soil.

And so to the third sister. While the cucurbits spread and shade the surface of the soil, the beans climb up the sweetcorn stalks, in the process capturing nitrogen and enriching the soil for next year.
I had some beans already sown, but they are about three times as tall as the corn and reaching rapidly for the skies. So I decided instead to sow fresh beans at the bases of the sweetcorn. I have plumped for French bean Blue Lake, a stringless variety which has performed well in our soil in the past.

And in honour of the Native American origins of the Three Sisters planting system, I have planted some wigwams of runner beans alongside!

But in all seriousness there are some very valid reasons for growing these crops in combination. Get the timing right and the plants aid each others' growth. They provide a good nutritional balance too.
There's some good information on this website:

http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/3sisters.html

One very useful hint I picked up from this site, so indirectly from the Native American Indians, is to use nature to time sowing and planting.
For early spring in the books is different across the whole country and from year to year. If you sowed seeds strictly by date this year, as I found out to my cost with the sweetcorn, they just sat in the cold conditions not realising it was time to sprout into life.
But if you sowed when, for instance, the cow parsley came into flower or the sowthistles started to grow, then nature would be your calendar...

Not that nature always gets it right.

Beans, beans, beans.

Against all tradition, the bank holiday weekend we've just had gave us some most glorious weather.

So it was time for a drastic haircut.



a haircut for the orchard grass



a haircut for the hay meadow
(thanks Don)

and my twice yearly haircut.

I paid for it with burnt ears, a rather raw neck and sore temples. For, as I took advantage of the sunshine and put in a very long weekend outside, areas of skin long-covered by my rather wild hair were exposed to ultraviolet rays for the first time in a long while.

In the veg patch, this weekend was all about the beans. They have been growing happily in the protective environment of the polytunnel but, now that all danger of frost has passed (I sincerely hope), they will grow into stronger plants in the soil outside.

During last week the Runner Beans went in. I have changed varieties this year. As with all my beans, I have prioritised stringlessness. Much as I like to grow heritage varieties, I find a stringy bean somewhat akin to a fish full of bones. So, for the runners, I have plumped for two varieties. Armstrong, a red flowered cultivar, and White Lady, surprisingly a white-flowered type, but more significantly white beans for drying.

I ran out of time to dig trenches for the beans, which should be
filled with compost, newspaper and all manner of rotting
material.
So instead, I transplanted each young plant onto a bed
of comfrey leaves, which should provide plenty
of goodness as they rot down.

Some French Beans have gone into the ground in the polytunnel too.

Yardlong (though the beans are best harvested before they reach this length), Cobra, Pea Beans (again for dried beans) and climbing Borlottis.

The spares have gone outside to brave the British weather. But my main French bean variety outside is Blue Lake, with its small, white haricot beans. I grew a few two years ago and the beans were beautifully crisp with not a hint of string.

We also planted some purple climbing beans, Blauhilde. These have gone in as seeds, rather than plants raised in the polytunnel.

Likewise, three types of dwarf beans: Canada Wonder, which can be stringy but should yield a good harvest of kidney beans for drying; Tendergreen; and Helda, which I snapped up ridiculously cheap at the end of last year.

All my beans will grow accompanied by climbing nasturtiums and sweet peas, to make them more attractive both to the human eye and to pollinating insects.

There's also an experiment going on with more exotic beans, nabbed from the kitchen store cupboard. More on this later.