Three Sisters

Monday 28th May 2012
A misty start to the day

 

A long, hot day today. So I pottered, taking the chance to do a little weeding here and there and peruse the garden. When we moved in we inherited a strawberry patch, which pretty much gets on with things by itself. Plenty of flowers this year, so I'm looking forward to a bumper crop of strawberries.

Cuckoo, CuckooA cuckoo hung around the farm all day, affording excellent views, first singing from one of the old ash trees, then perching on a fencepost alongside the orchard.I don't know whether it's the same cuckoo that visits every year. I heard the other day that the five satellite-tagged birds which survived the winter in Africa have not fared so well on their return journey, with three perishing before they could get back here to breed. Anyway, back to 'our' cuckoo. I wonder which species it parasitises. Every morning I am serenaded by a reed warbler by the pig pen and a sedge warbler in a bush across Don's field. I think they compete with each other for the title of most persistent songster. Of the two, I prefer the reed warbler's song. Not so scratchy. As for the cuckoo, apparently they're evolved to choose one particular species.

Thriving herbs

The herb garden is really thriving too. Plants I've struggled with in the past have developed into healthy, strong specimens. The patch next to the stables is very stony, the remnants of old buildings I think, and the herbs absolutely love the poor soil and good drainage. 

Thyme, Oregano, Mace, Angelica,
Mace, Rosemary, Sage and Mint.

A splash of chive flowers. I am growing more of these from seed to spread around the potager.

A towering angelica plant.
A biennial which self-seeds easily.

Destructive chickens

Meanwhile, the chickens have been busy demolishing the mulch of grass cuttings that I had so carefully placed around the young willow cuttings and the edible hedgerow. I think they can stay confined to their luxurious pen for a while now. Besides, they need to keep the grass down in there.

The Globe Artichoke bed.

The globe artichoke bed should be a lot more impressive in a month or so.

As the air cooled in the evening, I set myself to planting out the six globe artichoke seedlings which I have so lovingly raised in the greenhouse. They have been in the coldframe for a couple of weeks waiting for warm soil and gentle weather.

I've already planted a mixture of allium bulbs around the bed, and I will add chives when the seedlings come on. In the main part of the bed, as an understorey, I've sown Nigella (Love-In-A-Mist) Moody Blues, as well as four carefully placed giant sunflowers, a variety which towers and produces multiple blooms over a long period. The globe artichokes are protected in their milk carton greenhouses, but they'll need to be kept well watered, especially in this period of fierce sunshine.  

Three Sisters

The young sweetcorn plants had a brilliant germination rate this year and are now outgrowing their paper pots and modules. Sweetcorn is usually planted in blocks, as it is wind pollinated, usually 15 to 18 inches apart.

But this year I'm trying a different system, Three Sisters, which I've alluded to previously. It is certainly gardening chic, but has received mixed reviews. The central principle is one of three vegetables (corn, beans and squashes) sharing space and benefiting each other. But get it wrong and one gets outcompeted or the whole thing becomes a mess. So I searched widely on the internet and decided to follow this system...

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

My sweetcorn is a supersweet variety, Sweetcorn Lark, from vegetableseeds.net. Four plants in a tight square, with climbing Pea Bean (for dried beans) sown alongside. I collected seeds of this bean last year, so I've sown generously as germination was patchy last year. I can always thin out if I achieve surprising success.

In between these groups of plants, I've transplanted seedlings of a variety of squashes and courgettes, protected with SlugKill (clay granules, no nasty poisons) and milk carton cloches.

Potentially a very exciting bed, I'll let you know how things go.

World's Smallest Chicken Egg.

Saturday 21st April 2012
A deceptive start to a very wet day.

I have to admit it, today I was feeling particularly grumpy and tetchy all day. Most of the time we are living a fairly idyllic life here, but it is not all plain sailing. Occasionally stresses and strains still bear down, and today they seemed to outweigh the good. Even this swallow, perched on my pea frame made from red dogwood, could not cheer me up for long.
Normally when I feel like this I just take on some impossibly hard and endless job and immerse myself in it totally, but today the rain just kept coming and everything I did seemed to need doing twice.

 

Rain stopped play many times today. Even the chickens took refuge in the pig shelter.

But who laid this tiny egg?

Left to right: Chestnut, Elvis, Speckledy Hen, Lady Guinea, ???

I did manage to get the hole in the pig ark fixed up ready for Daisy and her litter to move into it. It's only rudimentary, but the pigs won't mind. It will be lovely to finally be able to give the piglets a taste of outdoor life.

And Sue borrowed Don's blowtorch to dust off and clean up the old bee hives, which we have taken to Long Sutton to be filled with bees so we can have another go at beekeeping, something we began in London, without a lot of success.

Then, just as I was ranting and raving about giving it all up and living like normal people do, something happened to cheer me up. A car pulled up on the road, reversed and pulled in. I let Sue deal with this enquiry, fully expecting it to be somebody else with the lovely, but unrealistic, idea of keeping a pig as a pet (we get fewer of these now that the pork signs are up too!) I took myself down in the rain to hammer some wood and generally take things out on the pig ark and fence. Well, I returned to be told by Sue that she had sold three pigs to some local smallholders. They will collect them in three weeks time, when they will have been weaned (the piglets, not the smallholders). I am sure it will be the first of many piglets they will raise, as it is all a rather special experience really, even if I occasionally forget.

The day ended with a crow clearly unhappy about the presence of something or other in the horse chestnut tree at our entrance. I expected to see an owl being harangued, but the crow emerged from the tangled branches in hot pursuit of a cuckoo, my first of the year. I saw the other day that each cuckoo specialises in which species it parasitises and lays eggs which carefully match those of the host. This cuckoo had better not be looking for sedge or reed warblers upon which to foist its offspring, as it's beat them back!