Salad Days

Tuesday 28th August 2012

 

If I had any sense of pride I'd not be making this post. I'd be quietly not writing about salad crops this year.

 

As it is, I have had to wait till almost September to actually harvest a cucumber (though a very fine specimen it is) and my first two tomatoes, and there's not exactly a glut on the way. Like all failed gardeners, I do indeed intend to blame the weather.

 



The first cucumber of the year.

...and the first tomatoes, outside.

 

So here goes...my excuses!

Earlier in the year I had a very frustrating time with my tomato seedlings in particular, losing them to damping off. That put me at least a month back.

This was followed by months of dull, cool days so growth was sluggish (must try not to use that word, too many bad memories!) in the extreme. My little greenhouse became crammed with plants waiting to go outside, or into the polytunnel which sat in its packaging in the stables.

 

But I suspect there may be another reason for the staggering lack of progress made by my tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines, peppers and chillis.

For my little polycarbonate greenhouse was dismantled and brought with us from London. Now, when I originally put it together I remember a thin plastic film on the polycarbonate sheets declaring THIS SIDE OUT. Apart from that film, now peeled off, I can see no discernible way of figuring out which way round the sheets go, so it may well be that half the panes are actually deflecting the light and the heat!

 

Not to worry though. Gardening is a slow process of learning and improvement year on year, every year with its own unique and unpredictable challenges. Next year there'll be a polytunnel bursting to the brim with salad crops as well as all manner of other experiments going on.

And there's a new greenhouse waiting to go up too.

As for my little old greenhouse, it will find a use. Maybe a potting shed.

Things to do on a wet day

Thursday 19th July 2012

 Paperwork

Ironing 

 Cleaning

Catch up with the blog

Get wet

Plan for dry days

Cook, bake, preserve

Buy things on the internet

Write lists of things to do on wet days

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomato.
I have abandoned all hope of getting the polytunnel up in the near future.
This is a problem. For the greenhouse, until a couple of days ago, was full of tomatoes, aubergines, peppers, cucumbers and chillis. And all waiting to go into the polytunnel which is in 28 boxes in the stables!

I just love the idea of loads of colours, shapes and flavours of tomato and pepper, crops which we use day in day out and would use more of if we had them. Tomatoes, especially, are easy to store through the winter, made into sauces or passata.
After a shaky start with damping off and a second sowing, a few seeds of each variety has eventually yielded an awful lot of plants. But stuck in seed trays and not getting anywhere near enough light or heat in the greenhouse, all my indoor crops have been languishing.

Tomatoes and asparagus make
good companions

I reached this same stage last year, when I eventually planted most of the toms outside and crossed my fingers! It worked well and we had a good crop, even if we had to ripen quite a lot hung upside down indoors. Blight will be more of a threat this year, but nevertheless my straggly plants have again been put outside to cope. Already, after just a couple of days, they seem a little stronger, their roots free to spread and their leaves exposed to full light and a healthy breeze.

Tomatoes and gooseberries

like each other too.

I read that tomatoes do well planted with asparagus, in particular that the toms deter asparagus beetle. Somewhere else I read that tomatoes and gooseberries are good companions.

So that's where many of them have gone.

Hopefully when summer comes I'll be posting images of baskets full of ripe, multicoloured tomatoes.

Space in the greenhouse
I started this post with a list of things to do in the rain. I left out pottering in the polytunnel, but in its absence the greenhouse became a rather smaller alternative today. A mixture of peat-free growbags, pots and straw bales now house my crops which will hopefully start to grow now that they have space and light.

And with things a lot less cluttered I'll be able to track down the slugs which have totally decimated every single basil seedling as soon as it has germinated.

A compact space for my greenhouse crops.
But do they have time to set fruit and ripen
after a very slow start?

p.s. A Ray of Hope
When I vowed never again to moan about the rain, along came four months of rain. As I finish writing this post in which I abandon all hope of getting the polytunnel up, what should appear on the horizon but a five day forecast for high pressure, light winds and warm temperatures! When I was a child, whenever I asked "are we nearly there?" the destination was "always just around the next corner." I've learned to wait until I see before I believe.

Bee Action and Pig Pimping.

Saturday 28th April 2012


Bee Background
Bee-keeping is a fascinating hobby, but not a cheap one to start up. After you've bought a hive, there's the bee suits, the smoker, the hive tools, the honey extractors, a few things I've probably forgotten, and then ... then you find out it's always a good idea to have a spare hive too!
So you've been on a course, spent some time with some bee-keepers, and forked out a fortune. All you need to do now is get hold of some bees. Easier said than done.

Everyone's aware that honey bees are having a hard time at the moment, which means they are quite difficult to get hold of. The ideal is to get hold of a swarm, but everybody is after free bees and plenty of people are higher in the pecking order for receipt of such goodies.

So you have to buy some. They're very cheap to buy, just one or two pence... each. Problem is, that adds up to a small fortune when you consider you need them in their thousands.  A full brood box consists of eleven frames and lots and lots of bees.              

A full brood box complete with 11 frames.
We were lucky to be able to buy an established colony
with a proven queen. 



The normal way to buy them is to get a five-frame nucleus, which consists of a young queen and a core of bees. These are united to form a young colony which need to build up quickly in preparation for their first winter. We bought our first nucleus when we lived in London, joining the trend of urban beekeeping. However, due to a shortage of queens, we didn't get them till mid summer. Everything seemed to be going fine (judging by our very limited experience) until early the next year.

One spring morning we noticed an unusual buzz of activity around the hive entrance, with bees fighting and many emerging from the hive laden with honey.

Our bees were being robbed! Despite our best efforts, within a day the hive was empty, pillaged, all its occupants murdered or expelled.
Obviously they'd not had time to get strong enough the previous summer. We had fed them and the queen had survived the winter, but this one we just had to put down to experience.

When we had purchased the bees, we felt a huge sense of responsibility to them and we had let them down big time. Knowing that we would be moving at some point, we decided to hang up our bee suits for a while.

Planning for our new hive

We left replacing the bees until we knew we could give a new colony everything they needed. Primarily, I was worried that fields of wheat and sugar beet might not provide enough food throughout the year for them. This worry was soon allayed when our old pasture flourished into a clover filled meadow last summer. It was a bee bonanza.

My next worry was that bees appreciate a bit of shelter, but still need to face the sun so that the hive can warm up, especially early morning. Our site was so exposed that finding a suitable site would not be easy. The orchard would be ideal, in about ten years time!

The only decent shelter is afforded by the house, but we wouldn't want them living quite so close to us. The stable wall would give a good backdrop and the bees would fly straight out over the herb bed, but the prevailing winds put paid to that idea.

Eventually I used a line of transplanted laurels to afford shelter from the wind, tucking the hive in behind them but still exposing it to the morning sun.

So we dug out the old hives, scorched every surface with a blowtorch, and followed up the ad in the local paper. We were delighted to be able to get a two year old queen and a full colony, and at a sensible price too.





Sticks and leaves across the entrance
make sure the bees don't just fly off
before realising they're in a different place!



First Contact

We were up early to sort out the bees before they got active. We didn't yet know how they'd take to us. We dusted off and lit the smoker, though  a stiff north-easterly made sure it hardly touched the bees. At least the weather meant our feisty little friends were in a most subdued mood.

We prised off the lid, brushed the bees out of the way, and placed the queen excluder over the brood box. This is a plastic sheet which allows all the bees except the queen to pass through. This ensures that the stores of honey stored in the frames above the brood box do not become contaminated with eggs and larvae. Onto this went  the super, a box of wooden frames with a wax sheet of tessellated hexagons enclosed, ready for the bees to build their comb and store their honey, ready for us to steal!

Finally, another super into which we placed an inverted bucket of sugar syrup to welcome Swallow Farm's newest inhabitants.

We then left the bees to settle in, although they were in no hurry to explore given the continued cold weather and strong, icy winds.

Pig Pimping

Gerald is a good natured Gloucester Old Spot boar. He doesn't belong to us, but spends a lot of time here. He has given Daisy two litters so far, and in between fathered a couple of other litters. But the farmer who kindly lets us borrow him is never in a hurry to have him back! Food costs have to be considered and it is amazing how often that farmer's phone gets lost or is out of order! I don't mind too much, as it's not all about money, and I get lots of other favours from the farmer too.

Anyway, while discussing Gerald with a fellow smallholder recently, he was keen that Gerald pay a visit to see his two sows. I OKed it with the farmer, and arrangements were made for him to be moved at the weekend. Gerald would certainly not be complaining, as it was now quite a while since he had a lady friend.

So it was that, shortly after we'd finished dealing with the bees, Dave arrived and Gerald obligingly followed his food bucket out of the stables and up into the trailer. He'll enjoy his new surroundings and company, and should be back in about six weeks to keep Daisy company once again. Meanwhile, we've done someone a big favour and we're not having to feed a spare mouth. He's only just down the road, so we can visit him if we miss him.

The Nursery Area

Today's weather went from bad to worse to worser. I had the bright idea of using some old ground cover material and some old wooden decking to give my nursery area a refurbishment. Fed up with thistles and nettles popping up to bite me in every nook and cranny, even inside the greenhouse, I decided to starve them of light and at the same time give myself a proper surface to walk on and to rest plant trays on. Of course, this meant moving everything first, and as the weather worsened I eventually just accepted that I would be soaked from head to toe. (This often seems to happen in reverse, with the water permeating through my shoes and socks and up my trouser legs.)

No more spikes and stings.
A few pig food bags were used to
fill the gaps when I ran out of the proper stuff.



Access to the back of the bee hive is essential.
The straw bales are to stop the hive being
blown about, and to give it some insulation too.

A reclaimed perspex sheet supported by
straw bales provides an excellent
hardening off area for young plants.





By late afternoon it was necessary to take refuge in the house, as a storm raged outside.

Welcome To The World!

A Celebration of Spring Growth

Today, two of our dark brown eggs hatched - French Copper Black Marans. After our dismal attempts at hatching eggs, and with 2 of these already being smashed courtesy of Royal Mail, we were just about ready to give up on these eggs and the whole idea of trusting our postal system with delivering fragile eggs.

Your old home is needed. Out you go!

2 Crested Cream Legbars and 2 Cornish Dark Indian Game chicks take on the outside world. It didn't take long to start squabbling over a worm!

Meanwhile, in the veg garden, fending for themselves...


Glad I held off with the potatoes, or I'd have been busy heaping soil
on new sprouts to protect them from the frost.

 

Parsnips pushing through



Turnips should give a quick crop







Broad beans always seem to take an eternity to come up



 

Up come the peas

And the first asparagus - two different types. I won't harvest much this year, but from next year I can take as much as I like till about June.

The natives are well advanced now.

I love Red Dead-Nettle,
but not as much as the bees.

 

And in the orchard the young plums are in full blossom.

 

While, in the protection of the greenhouse...

These young lavenders are doing brilliantly.
Reckon I should get well over 100 plants
for the price of a packet of seeds.

Young poached-egg plants,
excellent for bees and hoverflies.
They will go under the fruit trees where the hoverfly larvae will munch any nasty aphids.

and how many Gypsophila plants will I have?

All my pepper seedlings are looking very healthy this year.

Back in the herb bed the Angelica is going mad - now in its second year it will flower and produce thousands of seeds.

And, judging by this sequence of events,  young guinea is definitely a female

Bring on frost-free nights, then things really start moving!

Winter, Spring or Summer? ...No, It's April.



Monday 16th April 2012
An icy start to the day - ice inside the greenhouse could spell trouble

 A gardener faces difficult decisions at this time of year. Plants have to get growing so they have time to produce a crop, yet start them off too early, or put them out too early and you can be set back a month.


Prompted by the possibility of a house full of nasty fumes on Saturday (see Nasty Bugs post) I decided to give my tomato and pepper seedlings a taste of fresh air. I seem to have avoided the mistakes which led to the total loss of my first batch of seeds, and have learned not to kill them with kindness! More precisely, that their need for plenty of light cannot be made up for with plenty of water.


So out they went. The chill breeze would make them sway, but this would harden them up a little anyway. However, there is hardening up and there is hardening up!! For, while I was out watching the Black-winged Stilt yesterday, April's typical mix of weather delivered us a pelting of hailstones. Those poor seedlings!


Anyway, the strong and the lucky survived, which fortunately was most of them. Faced with the prospect of transporting all the trays and pots back inside for the night, I decided to take the plunge and move them to the greenhouse...

... where a growing queue of baby plants await their chance to go outside or to go into the bigger greenhouse and polytunnel (both still yet to be built!)

But that can't happen until this stops happening...

The nettles and thyme can withstand the icy night air, but for others there's a few more weeks to wait yet.

2012 - A Resolution is a Resolution.



I intend to see every sunrise this year.



Sunrises and the weather.

Well, sunrise is easy to capture at the moment although under normal circumstances I might have laid in bed an extra hour or so on a couple of days. Then that's the whole point of this resolution. I want to live more closely to nature's patterns. If that means going to bed early to wake up early, then so be it.

Forgive my attempts at sunrise pics. I'm sure I'll have learned a bit by number 366!

In fact, a few times this week I've been laying awake listening to the howling and roaring of the wind. We've escaped lightly compared to some, but a steady 60km wind overnight in The Fens is still quite awe inspiring.

On the smallholding

A continuation of December's unseasonably warm and dry weather made for excellent digging. The brassica beds are almost ready for manuring and we even had time to create some border beds and plant some cheap bulbs - in theory it's too late to plant them, but we'll see. The bed was a delight to dig as it followed a mole run - these rarely seen creatures are the bane of the obsessive green lawn brigade, but I love them. If they get somewhere I don't want them, I'm assured a few elder twigs inserted into their run will gently move them elsewhere.

I got the shallots in too - good healthy bulbs saved from last year's crop. Some garlic has been saved as well, bulbs I uncovered beginning to shoot up as I was digging. Hopefully some netting will keep the chickens off them for a while. The girls (and boy) still have free roam over the whole garden - they are doing a sterling job scrattling around devouring all those nasty insects lurking in the soil. Not a good time to be a worm (not that they're bad atall), though there are plenty of them. It won't be long until the chooks get banished from the veg garden though. Most of them have come through moult and have beautiful plumage now, but their wings will need clipping soon as at least 4 of them have realised they can fly out of their luxurious compound.

Other jobs this week have revolved around trying to anticipate the gales. Last week the water butt was found detached from the wall and spread in pieces over the drive and the chimney lost another lump of render. This week it was the turn of the greenhouse to lose another couple of panels. I've now tightened every bolt, sealed all vulnerable joins with super strong gaffer tape, and was spurred into action to move some laurels to act as a wind break. It was also a reminder to clear the greenhouse out in preparation for a good clean in preparation for early sowings. The straw bales which worked so well for growing tomatoes last year were harbouring one of the many short-tailed field voles which Gerry is obsessed with catching. There seem to be plenty of them about.

Harvesting continues. I've never grown leeks before and, although they went in late, I have a reasonable crop. So when I retrieved some yellow label lamb chops from the freezer (hoping to produce our own this year to save on mowing the paddock) the trusty old Good Housekeeping Cookery Book offered me the delicacy of Lamb Chops with Leeks and Lentils. There is still nothing better than pulling your own produce from the ground and eating it that same day - it is hard to believe the intensity and subtlety of the flavours which are completely lost in shop bought veg. Anyway, if you have that recipe, try it. It was scrummy.

Birds

It's been a quiet time for birds a the moment, although the weather has not been conducive to seeing them. A huge female sparrowhawk has appeared on the scene this week, causing consternation at the feeders. The finch flocks seem to have dispersed back into the fields, although chaffinches and goldfinches are always around in good numbers. The swan flock at Coy Bridge is still in the region of 30 Mutes, but the 62 Whoopers that joined them a month or so ago have all moved on. Maybe they'll come back later in the winter. Likewise, no show from the hen harriers yet this year. Maybe it was the exceptional cold last year which drove them inland from the coastal marshes. Meadow Pipit numbers always swell at this time of year.The regular five birds seem to attract in other parties. One day there were 22 in the flock. A couple of flyover rooks this week are surprisingly quite an unusual sight.

Other stuff

A knock at the door on Wednesday informed me that one of the cows from the Settlement Field was again on the road. It was funny to watch the lorries poodling along following a rather bemused and stubborn Freesian cow.