Strawberries, brassicas, bees wax and hedgehogs

Strawberries are delicious, but they are not as easy to grow as it might seem. The problem is that the strawberry bed loses productivity over the years.
So I have abandoned our old strawberry patch which really hasn't been very productive for a couple of years. But I cannot turn over a new area to strawberries every few years.

The old strawberry patch

Instead I have come up with a cunning plan. I purchased three dozen new plants of three varieties to spread the harvest period and have allocated them three beds in with the roots quarter of my rotation. Next year they will stay there and I will use the suckers to populate three more beds in next year's roots quarter. Then the same the next year. In the fourth year, the first beds will come out and as the strawberries rotate around the beds I will change which beds they occupy.
Incorporating the strawberries into the vegetable rotation is an idea I got from the legendary Lawrence D Hills, founder of the organic growing movement.
There is a big potential downside. I have also read warnings not to do this as strawberries are susceptible to verticillium wilt, a disease which also affects other crops, notably potatoes. But it is a risk I am going to take. The rewards outweigh the risk.
I purchased my strawberry bare root strawberry plants back in January. This is a bit late so they may not produce fruit this year but that doesn't matter too much as Wimbledon is cancelled anyhow! I potted them up for the roots to develop and waited for the worst of winter to pass.
Today they moved out into the big wide world. Hopefully they will like their new home.

The rest of the day was spent preparing veg beds. Under the no dig regime this should just be a matter of a quick hoe then piling compost on top of the beds. It should have been done back in the autumn or winter. However, I was pretty much incapacitated due to my back. Also I did not at the time have sufficient compost to achieve this, though cardboard could have been used to block the light.
And so the most neglected beds are now well on the way to reverting back to grassland! The transition to no dig is a gradual one anyway. Although in theory you can eradicate nasty perennial weeds over time by continual covering and pulling, I find that it is better in the first instance to dig out the really tenacious ones like couch grass, dock and creeping buttercup. This takes a lot of time and effort when the bed has been neglected.
I spent too much time on it in one day and my back suffered as a result. I find I need to do lots of different jobs and avoid too much of any one task in a day, especially if it involves bending down too much. I am not very bendy any more!

A quicker job was hoeing the beds with easier weeds, such as feverfew, dead nettle, groundsel and chickweed. With the soil surface dry and compost not yet applied, this was an easy job with the oscillating hoe.

Before my body gave up I covered the new beds with a thin layer of compost.

Next morning it was time to plant up some turnips and radish plants. I sowed these a while back in modules. The turnips are Snowball and Purple Top Milan. I also grow Golden Ball but this is an autumn turnip. The radishes are a right old mixture, including a new variety called Watermelon Radish. Unfortunately these need covering as a physical barrier against flea beetle and turnip root fly. I was already using the turnip netting to cover my new plantings of onions, calabrese and spinach.

Erecting netting takes time, mainly configuring the limited selection of poles to fit the new space each year. I was very happy with the system I came up with this year. The turnips have a higher mesh which will give them space to grow underneath and give me space to weed, thin and harvest from both sides.



Where the turnip mesh was has become my brassica cage for this year. This covers four beds. The main purpose is to protect against cabbage white butterflies, though I have invested in a biological solution this year so it doesn't need to be quite so watertight. It does however provide good protection against pigeon attack too.
I use soft butterfly netting. It is slightly more expensive but much tougher and less prone to ripping. It's quite an investment so needs to last from year to year.

Today I evicted the chickens and ducks from the veg patch too. Their services are useful for slug control but they also have a penchant for soft young spinach and brassica leaves!
I have put all the poultry together in the big pen. Fortunately there was no aggro. The four ducks set straight to work snuzzling through the grass and the six ex free-range hens stick together and are more than capable of looking after themselves.

Moving them out of the veg plot also means I can leave the polytunnel doors open now, as temperatures soar above 40 degrees whenever the sun comes out.



While I've been starting to fill the veg plot with crops, Sue has been using her time to sort out her bee frames. The bees are starting to produce honey now and we need more frames for them to store their honey in. The old frames are pretty gunky with honey and wax and propolis. Sue cut the old wax frames out and melted down the mixture in a special vessel to produce clean wax. The cloth that she strains the mixture through makes fantastic firelighters

Next the wooden frames needed cleaning. Sue boiled up a washing soda solution in her cauldron  and in went the frames. With all the gunk loosened she was able to scrape them clean.
I've made this job sound simple but with so many frames it kept Sue busy for a couple of days.
Now I just have to help her put the new wax foundation sheets into the frames. This is a job for evenings.




Arthur has been busy too. He is obsessed with hedgehogs
Arthur rarely barks unless someone passes the front gate. He doesn't bark if he is stuck in somewhere or if he needs to go out. But he does bark at hedgehogs. So a single bark heard outside was a sure sign that a hedgehog needed rescuing. Arthur has learned to pick hedgehogs up without getting a nose full of spines so I was not surprised to find this scene on the back lawn.
Unlike our labradoodle Boris, Arthur rarely plays with toys or chases a ball. But there is one exception. Notice anything about his favourite ball?

Easter Sunday Lockdown Blog Resurrection

Well how things have moved on since I returned from Thailand and had to go into self isolation for a few days as I brought a cough back with me. I've actually been in isolation again since then, but whether or not I've had the actual virus is unknown.

Coronavirus has turned the world upside down, but as smallholders we are in a pretty fortunate position compared to many others. We have plenty of outdoor space in which to spend our time and keep busy. In many respects things haven't changed too much for us, except we have a little more time to do what we enjoy doing. We are fairly self sufficient too, although this is traditionally the hungry gap.

One of our chooks struts past 

an early asparagus stem

Unlike much of the country, we have eggs coming out of our ears - hen eggs, duck eggs, turkey eggs, goose eggs. Rhubarb has been on tap for a while now and the first asparagus tips have rocketed from their winter hibernation (necessitating a quick emergency weeding session!)
We still have some vegetables which have stood over winter - plenty of parsnips and leeks though they are past their best.
We haven't yet learned how to grow loo roll!

There have been other benefits - a much quieter road and the cheapest heating oil we've ever seen. In fact coronavirus has given the earth a chance to breath and just maybe lockdown will give people a chance to reflect on their lives and habits. I will write another post about this soon.

The dogs on lockdown

But for now there is no excuse for not getting this blog back up and running again. In many ways the digital world has come to our rescue, so the resurrection of my blog can be my little contribution to that!

I won't try to cover everything we've been up to here since I've been back from Thailand, but lockdown has given us a good chance to keep on top of things without having to work 25/8.
For now, here's a few photos from the last couple of days

These two hives down in the orchard are very strong and active.

Sue has been busy with her bees. We are down to six very strong colonies and they are already making honey. Three colonies did not make it through the winter as numbers had dwindled too far or lost their laying queen. Six hives is more manageable for Sue, though swarm season will be upon us soon. Sue has already found a queen cell in one of the hives.

We have put all the hives up on hive stands which makes for working at a better height and easier lifting as beekeeping can be heavy work.

The fruit trees are coming into blossom now and with fine weather we should hopefully get a good fruit crop this year.

The paddocks have now dried out and the grass has started its spring growth. We are not lambing this year but it is now safe to move the rams back in with the ewes. They were super excited (!!!) to be reunited. Things have settled back down now and the three boys have stopped chasing the girls around.

With a little more time on our hands we have been having a good tidy up. I have adopted a strict no plastic policy, so every shred of plastic I find on the smallholding gets collected. We've gone round and picked up all the old bits of wood and half rotten pallets too and enjoyed a rare bonfire. This is a great chance to burn materials which can't be composted, such as the old raspberry canes which I pruned but prefer to burn to limit disease.

The bonfire kept me warm

on a chillier nicmig night.

This was the night of a Supermoon, 

a term which seems to be used

every time there is a full moon these days.

Although my twitching has been curtailed, like many other birders I have discovered a new form of my hobby. It's called nocmigging (nocturnal migration) and involves sitting out in the dark listening for bird calls. There is the option of simply placing a microphone outside and then reviewing the recording in the morning, but I prefer to hear the birds as they fly over. Conditions for this have been perfect. Nights have been warm and dry and the road and skies devoid of engine noise. It has meant many late nights, but late mornings don't really matter at the moment.

It has been fascinating doing this. Firstly I have added seven new species to the list. What flies over in the day is quite different, it seems, to what you see during the day. It has been good to hear owls on territory too. We now have tawnies firmly established alongside the little and barn owls.

As well as the birds, I hear dogs, cows, sheep and even a donkey.
And on the wildlife front there is the occasional rat, barking roe deer and one night I could hear fox cubs excitedly shrieking when they were brought food.
This is a little worrying as we have already lost one chicken which did not go to bed one night and our brown Muscovy girl has been missing for a week.
The turkeys are laying now and the girls do not go up on the fence every night either.

Growing our own food has continued apace too. This is a very busy time of year raising young plants from seed. There is a conveyor belt of seeds and they are now beginning to go in the ground.

I never thought I'd say this, but we could actually do with some rain!

Sue, Boris and the chickens getting involved.

Here we planted calabrese and rat-tailed radish (grown for edible seed pods).

We left the poached egg plants and red dead-nettles in situ,

but took out more persistent weeds like couch grass, docks and creeping buttercup.

Trays of summer salad ready to be planted out.

A Swarm in May is worth a load of hay. But 19 swarms...!!!!!

Be sure to watch this amazzzing video of bees marching into their new hive. I can't believed I kept the phone so steady, especially with bees crashing into the screen!

This is the longest I've ever been without posting on my blog. There's nothing going on, it's just a reflection of just how incredibly busy we have been on the smallholding.

With the help of some volunteers the veg plot has been transformed. The poultry and sheep have not caused too many concerns, though an overnight rat attack on the ducklings was unpleasant to deal with.

But really it has been all about the bees. 19 swarms in 19 days!

We started May with 6 hives, though one contained only the remnants of a queenless colony. The first swarm occurred on 8th May and came from hive number 5. At this stage a swarm was still quite a novelty for us as we would only expect to come across one or two in a year. In fact Sue had never actually seen the bees swarm before this year, as they had an uncanny habit of avoiding weekends and usually waiting until she was away on headteachers conference.

An early swarm... little did we know what was to come

Since then all hell has let loose. We have had swarms from our hives, swarms coming in from elsewhere and even our bees pouring out of the hive to investigate other swarms, only to return to their own hive.

The bees have been pretty grouchy too. Working in the veg garden after about 11am has been a risky business. So much so that the decision has been taken to move the apiary down into the orchard. Hopefully most of the swarming is now over. Our bees certainly seem a lot more settled and kamikaze bees diving straight into your hair has become less than a daily event.


The overall result is that we now have NINE busy hives, including a new apiary down in the orchard.
I have been busy building new frames, brood boxes, rooves etc but we still had to give away three swarms as we ran out of spare hives to home them.

Most amazing has been our adoption of the marching in method of rehoming a swarm. For those who aren't familiar with bee-keeping, here's a quick description of the whole swarming and collection process:

Photos appear completely haphazardly due to Blogger making it virtually impossible to drop them where you want!

Swarming is a natural process which occurs when a colony of bees reaches capacity in its current home. It is their way of spreading and colonising. Before the swarm event, the bees start turning normal brood cells into queen cells, which appear completely different to the others. From these cells will hatch virgin queens, one of whom is destined to stay in the hive and begin a whole new generation of bees. On the day of swarming, usually a warm, sultry day, the old queen and about half the hive leave. They have filled up on honey before their departure. You can hear them inside the hive before they go. They then swirl around outside the hive and spread out over the garden. Eventually they start to congregate in one area, where the queen has settled, and after about twenty minutes they will have clustered into a protective ball around the queen. This is usually not too far from the hive they left.

At this point they are quite peaceful. I have walked right past them without even noticing them.

Sometimes they will remain in this cluster for up to a couple of days - one of my swarms got drenched overnight but was still able to be collected the next evening. On other occasions they quickly depart and head over the fields, gone forever. For they have sent out scouts to find a new home. This is a good time to observe their waggle dancing, as bees return to the swarm and communicate with the others in this amazing way, spinning, turning and shaking their bums!

This year has been a phenomenal year for swarms. It is still early in the season but the bee-keeping companies are working from 6am and have long back orders on hive parts. Goodness knows what is going on.
I do not see how all these swarms can be finding homes in a landscape devoid of natural cavities which would be suitable.

So you have a swarm settle in you garden. Typically they will be in a hedge or hanging from a branch. There are two ways to collect them. Ideally you can just snip the branch and the whole lot drop into a box. If you get the queen, they will stay in there and any that took to the air will find her too.
It's not always this easy though. Sometimes you have to give the branch a quick and violent shake so that the swarm falls into your box. This usually results in slightly more disturbance. Occasionally the queen remains on the branch and the whole lot return to her!

Once you've got the swarm in a box - nothing fancy, just a strong cardboard box is sufficient, you need to transfer them into a hive, assuming you have a spare one ready, and persuade them to stay in the nice new home you have created for them.
We always rub lemon balm leaves all over the frames inside the hive. Lemon balm is also known as bee balm and seems to be irresistible to our little friends. Before we did this, we would usually find our swarms departed the next morning.

To transfer the bees from your cardboard box to the hive there are two methods. You can tip them in the top and shut the lid. This is obviously quite disturbing for them and results in clouds of angry bees. It does usually work though.



But the second method is the one we have adopted this year. You construct a ramp in front of the hive you want them to move into. For some reason it is better if it is white, or we lay light fabric over the top. You then tip the bees onto this ramp and hope. What follows is astonishing.

The bees start marching up the ramp into the hive of their own accord. Some stand outside the hive, anchor themselves to the ground and fan the pheromones from the queen toward the swarm so they know which way to go.
Within half an hour most of the procession of bees is inside the hive. By the evening all of the stragglers are in.
We have now done this five times. There were a couple of glitches. One time the queen obviously stayed lodged in the corner of the box so they all marched the wrong way! I just shook them out again and it worked at the second time of asking.
Another time everything went smoothly until, a couple of hours later, I found the whole swarm back where I had collected them and the hive completely empty. It is just possible I had missed the queen when I collected them, or for some reason they didn't like the hive I had provided. I just rubbed more lemon balm inside the hive and collected the swarm again. I cut the remaining twigs to make sure there was nothing, queen or pheromones, to attract them back again. Four days later they are still in the hive.

During all of this, I have only picked up three stings. Two harmless on the head, but one full-on sting on the hand which swelled instantly and by the next day had my whole hand and lower arm double its normal size. Uncomfortable but nothing to worry about. It was my own fault. I decided to wear thinner gloves than normal whilst collecting a swarm in order to be able to use my phone to record the event. Not a wise move!

And now we head into June.
A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon.

Looking further forward
A swarm in July is worth not a fly!

River Cottage has come to the Lincolnshire Fens

Sunday 27th May 2018

With Sue's rapidly expanding apiary, I spent some of the morning knocking up some new brood frames and a new brood box. Meanwhile Sue was inspecting her bees.
While I was in a DIY sort of mood and with Sue annoying the bees (actually they seem very calm and peaceful this year) I spent some time in the garage cleaning and sharpening my tools.

Bee city

I got to work hoeing some of the veg beds. What a difference a sharp hoe makes.
But it wasn't long before bees took over my day again, for a giant swarm appeared on one of the willow arches. I've already posted about this so won't go into too much detail. But I can't resist posting the picture up again.

Today's outdoor work was intermittent, for I was having a bit of a lazy day. You can't work solidly every day. At my age the body needs a rest every now and then, even if the mind doesn't want it to!
Fortunately one of our Freeview channels was showing old episodes of River Cottage all day long.
I had seen most of these before, but before I was a smallholder, and it is only watching them again that I quite realise how much they affected my life. The first time round, Hugh F-W planted a dream in my head.
The second time around was more of a nostalgic experience. We've done that... and that... we tried that... that happened to us too.
Very notable is that the rules have changed. No kitchen scraps for the chooks and pigs any more. No burying fallen stock. No blood back from the abattoir for black pudding. Apart from these details though, it was inspiring to watch all the shows again. I wonder what seeds have been inadvertently planted in my mind this time.



With the new bees in the brood box (the new one which I constructed this morning), I spent a very pleasant hour weeding the strawberries with Sue. They are looking good this year and fingers crossed there is no sign of a return of the Strawberry Seed Beetle, a plague of which devastated our crop this year.
There was still plenty of the day left, enough time to mow and edge the paths in the veg plot (overgrown edges are where the slugs like to hide) and ridge up the potatoes.
Sue made another batch of asparagus soup which smells absolutely delicious. We have a few weeks of asparagus left now before we let the plants grow and gather the sun's energy to store in the crowns ready for next year. The spears are coming thick and fast and are hard to keep up with.
At the moment every meal is accompanied by fresh asparagus, new potatoes and mangetout. The potatoes will continue for a long, long while with different varieties coming along nicely, but the asparagus and mangetout will soon be replaced by broad beans, the next vegetable to come into crop.

I leave you with a few images from the smallholding today.

The yellow flowers of Scorzonera in its second year.

Behind, the beautiful blue flowers of its cousin, Salsify

 

Left: Honesty which I have left.to flower and go to seed.
Right: The lambs enjoying a few freshly cut willow branches.

A Wasp Fly I found while planting bee seedlings.

A Scorpion Fly which got stuck in the polytunnel for a while.