Taking shelter in the polytunnel

Plan for the day was to peg down the groundcover sheets between the raspberry rows and to mulch the canes with compost. But the rain put an end to my plans. I don't mind getting wet, but I was slipping and sliding all over the place. Some jobs are easier achieved on dry days.

Instead I retreated to the polytunnel where the mangetout that Sue planted back in January were ready for planting into the beds. About 80% of the seeds had germinated, which is good considering they were planted midwinter.
Hardest part of this job is erecting the pea netting, always a tricky and frustrating operation. So instead I decided to use the plastic mesh which I use for tree protectors. It was far easier to manage and should give a good framework for the mangetout plants to cling on to as they climb.
Before this though I dug out trenches and buried some of the compost mix which kept me so busy yesterday. It should retain moisture at root level as well as providing nutrients.

By next month we shall be harvesting delicious mangetout from the polytunnel, enough to keep us going all year. In less than three months these plants will have been evicted from the polytunnel to make room for young sweetcorn and squash plants.

Turnips 'Snowball' and 'Purple Top Milan'

While I was in the tunnel I tended to my turnip seedlings. They have come through well so I gave them a first thinning today. The same cannot be said of my early carrot sowing. As with last year, the seedlings seem to appear and then disappear just as quickly. I have yet to work out the cause. It could be slugs, but the tunnel population is very low. I am wondering if it is just the cold night air. The next sowing is due about now, so we shall see how they do.

Mid afternoon there was a break in the rain, though the sun never broke through. Sue and I lured the three Shetland lambs into a pen to administer their wormer and check them over. This was quickly accomplished and then Sue led them back to their paddock, transporting some mangel wurzels and beet nuts with her. I'm not sure she even realised that some of her load was being pilfered along the way!

Does Sue even realise what's happening behind her?

Final job for the day was to take the dogs out along the river. Boris has developed a habit of refusing to go outside on rainy days, but the promise of some dyke action gets him lively. There is one part of the dyke with particularly orange mud in the bottom. Boris considers it a great colour enhancer for his magnificent apricot coat!

Almost a Valentine's Goose Egg

16th February 2017
A typical day on the smallholding, with all sorts going on. It is the variety of tasks every day that I love.
In no particular order:

Trip to Holbeach to stock up on nails, disinfectant, fencing staples and onion sets.
Carrots and turnips sown in polytunnel
Stables cleaned and disinfected
Blackberry posts erected
First goose egg.
Pyrethrum arrived.


A few words about some of these. First off, the first goose egg of the year! Just two days after Valentine's, the traditional start of laying. Sue snaffled it as goose eggs are her favourite. We'll take the eggs for quite some time before leaving the females to sit on a few eggs. After trying goose for the first time a few weeks ago, we'll definitely be aiming for a few young birds this year.
The carrots and turnips are the first seeds I have sown directly into the soil this year. I only grow very early turnips in the polytunnel as when it becomes a humid jungle later in the year the turnips are very quick to rot.
Meanwhile, the mangetout plants are shooting up and will be ready to go into the beds when they are 3" high.

The pyrethrum arriving is very exciting. Pyrethrum has always been a favourite of organic gardeners. As with any chemical it is still a last resort, always being better to encourage natural predators. But as I have said before, the polytunnel is hardly a natural environment. Pyrethrum has only just come back onto the market, having disappeared due to crazy and prohibitively expensive licensing rules clearly designed to favour the big multinational peddlers.
Although harmful to bees (it is after all an insecticide), if applied in the evening it does its job and won't hurt the bees in the morning.

I am trying a new way of erecting the blackberry posts. The problem is that when you strain the wires which will support the canes, they inevitably pull the posts inwards and the wires slacken off. This time I am using an idea from a very old book, nailing underground cross-braces onto the posts. They greatly increase the surface area which is pushing against the soil and should hopefully limit movement.

17th February 2017
I put up bird houses today. A colonial nest box which I hope the sparrows will find. It will probably be the house sparrows, but I am really hoping it is tree sparrows. Both these species are colonial nesters. I moved another old bird box which was incorrectly sited - facing south-east west, into the sun and the prevailing wind and rain.




Finally, an open-fronted teapot nestbox designed for birds such as robins, wrens and wagtails. I have tucked it against an ivy clad trunk near the house.
While all this was going on, unbeknown to me Sue was shooing a Sparrowhawk out of the hallway.

Next job was to finish off the blackberry posts using a system called Gripple to tension the nylon wires. It works by passing the nylon through a little gizmo which completely prevents it sliding back the other way. This is okay until you pull it a little too far onto the wire! Fortunately they provide a small wire tool just for this situation... until that gets stuck as well. Eventually I managed to extricate it with brute force and a screwdriver.
I took out my frustration on the edible hedgerow, applying the annual severe haircut. It seems drastic, but helps the hedge to bush up. Done at this time of year, it has minimal impact on the birds. This is a perilous job as the blackthorn has a habit of biting back.

Last job for the day was to rearrange the heras fencing to create an area for the turkeys to live in when they are allowed out. It needs to be netted, as otherwise the turkeys will just hop the fence and be wandering everywhere. Even with some of the restrictions lifted, this would still not be permitted.

18th February 2017
I spent some time in the dyke a the end of the land today. The reason being that, after 6 years, I spotted 3 drainage pipes leading into it from my land. I guess they must have become more exposed last time the drainage board cleared the dyke. There was quite a trickle of water coming from each pipe, but the entrances were clogged up. I cleared them, then spent some time playing with the water levels in the dyke!
I got a new species for the farm too, for there were two one inch long fish in the shallow water. I have no idea what type.

The Ixworth trio, who will lay the eggs which will become our meat chickens for the year, have settled well into the small stable. They are laying (well, the two hens at least) but today I erected a hay feeder in the corner in the hope that they start laying in there.

2017 starts tricky.

I always had a sense that 2017 could turn into a very challenging year, but I thought this would mostly be caused by politics.
Well, it hasn't started off too well and Sue and I have had a difficult few days on the smallholding. You've heard of warts'n'all. Well this is the warts part. I don't want to linger over it, but a couple of the smaller lambs have run into trouble and it has taken all our care to get them past the worst of it. Hopefully we've turned the corner now, but things are still fairly critical for one of them.

So instead, here's how 2016 went out.

Monday 26th December 2017
Mr Rotavator hits the road again
At the back end of last season I had to order a couple of new belts for the rotavator. It took ages to get hold of them and today I finally got round to fitting them. I am not a very technical person, but the operation seemed to go smoothly.
It has just about been dry enough lately for me to be able to turn some of the soil, though when you hit a sticky patch the rotavator tines become clogged up very quickly and the job becomes untenably slow. Early morning frost helps the situation, but it's cold on the hands.
I managed to work over the area where the mangels grew last year (or rather didn't grow, as something ate them before they ever got going!). I'm using the area as a nursery bed for cuttings and young plants this year.
The Cutting Edge
Winter is the time to take hardwood cuttings. This process is amazingly straightforward and with a little patience can yield hundreds of free plants. I started with the privet hedge, which has now been in  a couple of years and is actually starting to look something like a proper hedge. I snipped off about 500 (yes, 500!) of the strongest shoots and set about turning each of them into a young plant.
All you do is snip the very tip off, just above a leaf node, and then cut just below a node at the bottom, leaving a cutting about 6"-8" long. The lower leaves are stripped off. It's not complicated and takes literally a few seconds for each one.
I haven't gone into every detail, but there's not much more to it. There are more detailed instructions available all over the interweb.
You then just poke them in the ground. Not every one will survive and you have to wait a year before they have established into small plants. But like I said, with a little patience and a little spare space I should have enough plants to create quite a lot of hedging in a couple of years time.

I was pushing for time to get all the cuttings in before dark. Not only that, but the ground was already frosting back over, which made for numb fingers. So this was not a great time for a rare bird to turn up in Gloucestershire, especially one which I had never seen in the UK before. But that's what happened. Fortunately news came through just too late for me to contemplate jumping straight in the car and getting there before dark. Instead, I tried to get all the cuttings planted so they would be safely in the ground. I was beaten by darkness so wheeled the rest into the polytunnel, where their freshly cut ends would be protected from the frost but it is not too hot to dry them out.

The rest of the evening was spent trying to find out more details about the Blue Rock Thrush which had turned up in gardens in The Cotswolds.

Tuesday 27th December 2017
Blue Rock Thrush Day
At 7.30am it was just getting light as I stood at the end of a cul-de-sac peering through the gloom at a tall hedge and a shed roof. It wasn't long before a whisper went round that the bird was in the garden, though it wasn't visible to us. The local residents had been warned of a possible large turn out, but behaviour was very good. Nobody went where they shouldn't, everybody was quiet and everybody parked away from the site and walked in.
After about 15 minutes the Blue Rock Thrush hopped up and sat in the low branches of a tree, just about on view to everybody. In this light it didn't look much, but as the sun rose more and more details could be made out. The bird periodically flew back to the ground, where it was apparently being fed pork pies! By the time it was fully light, there were well in excess of 100 people admiring this bird. The last twitchable one was back in 2000.
By now the slightly bemused residents were out and about. They took the whole thing well and, rightly so, were quick to appear with collection buckets for a local charity.

ed: At the time of writing, they have raised well in excess of £1000!

As the morning sun started to defrost the roof tops, the Blue Rock Thrush headed for the chimney stacks, possibly more akin to its natural habitat (the clue's in the name, though I don't think the rocks have to be blue)

It was a fun morning, bumping into loads of friends, but details of an eatery in the village tempted us away for a hearty cooked breakfast before we headed back home along the frosty roads of south central England.

Neil had the bright idea of popping into Deeping Lakes Nature Reserve to look at the Long-eared Owls which roost on an island. Great idea Neil. The fens were foggy!





I was back on the farm just before dark.



Wednesday 28th December
Disappointment for the dogs
Boris and Arthur have learned to associate a car ride with a trip to the beach, but today they were in for a big let down as the final destination was the vets. The cats came too. Nothing bad, just routine check-ups and collection of flea and worm treatment - always important on a farm

I finished putting the cuttings in the ground. They survived well in the polytunnel and hadn't even wilted.

Lots of privet cuttings!

After an unseasonably warm Christmas, the weather has turned distinctly chilly. Sometimes this is wonderful, when it is clear and still and crisp. But December ended cold, wet, grey and foggy. No surprises really, but weather for huddling up indoors and making plans for the coming year.

I've started using a to do list on my phone to plan out the year. I get daily reminders so I don't forget stuff. The only problem is that if a job doesn't get done it then shows up every day until it's done!

When I was going through my gardening plans, I realised that I am already late for sowing the mangetout seeds which will give me an early spring crop in the polytunnel. But the polytunnel is currently occupied by three ducks, with nothing on the horizon to indicate the Prevention Order will be lifted. I'll have to move them to the stables soon to share with the chickens and turkeys, as I want to give the polytunnel a thorough clean and disinfection. The late sowing of the mangetout is not a problem. It was at this time of year that I sowed them for this year's early bumper crop.

Lady Penelope and chick have moved back onto the farm.

A foggy walk along the Main Drain

Saturday 31st December 2016
A Trip Down Nostalgia Street
What better way to end the year than a birding trip out on my old hunting ground, Dungeness in Kent. The reason for our visit was a small bird known as a Stonechat. More precisely, a Stejneger's Stonechat (I spelled it, you can decide how to pronounce it). This bird has proven to be something of an oddity as it doesn't look anything like what people expected it to, but DNA testing yielded an unexpected identification. Either a mistake has been made or we still have a lot to learn.

There was an icy chill in the air on the exposed shingle landscape that is Dungeness. The bird showed okay, though it rarely came close. It was there for it's 55th day (it disappeared before DNA results suggested its identity, only to be refound a few days ago) so there was never really too much stress about whether or not we would see it.
I enjoyed my trip out in Kent today, seeing a few old friends from the area. I used to travel down here regularly when I lived in London. It is one of my favourite places. There were some classier though not so rare birds on the nearby RSPB reserve. A fine drake Ring-necked Duck (an American species) was the first I had seen for a few years and a Long-eared Owl at its daytime roost was drawing a steady stream of admirers. It certainly showed better than the ones at Deeping Lakes a few days ago!
Apologies for the shocking quality of the photos!




And so with trepidation into 2017. Who knows what it will bring.

The summer time of my life

20th July 2016
50! How did that happen? I am 50 years old!
I used to say I still felt 20 in my mind and about 70 in my body but I think that's changed a little now. I think I think a little more old these days, so maybe 30 in my mind, though some would say more like 6! And that's partially true too, which is why I am such a brilliant teacher. I am also starting to benefit from the confidence of age.
As for the 70 in body, to be fair there are days when I feel I can do anything and days when every single inch of my body seems to ache and groan.
I have done a lot in my 50 years on this planet (not that I spent any time before that on another planet, though again some would disagree). I don't intend to do quite so much in the next 50 years, but I do intend to savour and enjoy most of it.
I don't really do birthdays, or any celebrations for that matter, but especially not birthdays. My preference would have been that it pass by largely unnoticed. I got as close to this as was probably possible and celebrated with a quiet meal out with Sue in the evening. I splashed out and went for almost the most expensive thing on the menu but there was no way I was paying an extra £2 for a sauce to go with my fillet steak! That would be too wild a celebration!

There was a better reason for celebration today, for I finished work at midday and I'm not due back in till 1st September.

21st July 2016
Back to normal today.
One of the young chicks in the broody box was clearly not well today. I tried gently holding its beak to the water trough, I placed it under the electric hen to warm up, but as usual when a bird is ill it did not respond. After a couple of hours I decided to end it quickly. Better for the chick and better to remove it from the others too. Five years ago I would have struggled to do this and put it off, but I have hardened up now. I still quietly say sorry and I still have a sad feeling in my heart. Compassion sometimes means being decisive.

The turkey family picking through the cut grass

With the protracted spell of summer proper, I took advantage and started mowing the lawns. They've got out of control again and the mower needs a new blade so it was slow work. I just mowed paths through the sward to allow the air in and the grass to dry a little.

This year's lambs in the foreground

Next job on such a fine day was another chemical attack on those nasty nettles and thistles. I've left a few patches for the wildlife, but any others that spring up need to be dealt with harshly, particularly since I seem to have become very reactive to nettle stings, an almost daily occurrence which needs nipping in the bud. I resprayed the electric fence line too. This tactic seems to be working well. I'd rather not use any spray but needs must. Physically controlling the weeds and the growth under the fence are not possible on this scale. I use minimum sprays and just about everything else I do on the smallholding is pretty much for the benefit of wildlife.

That's shallot of shallots!
Last year's stored onions have come to an end now and this year's are not quite ready. It's not looking like a great crop coming so thank goodness for the shallots, which were ready to harvest today after a few sunny days to dry them out.

Lady Penelope, Single Parent
There was still time to lop some of the trees along the boundary. The branches go to the sheep who love stripping off the leaves and the bark. Nothing goes to waste here. It was while I was doing this that I spotted Lady Penelope Peacock and she was accompanied by a single poult, now large enough to be showing a clear crest. I had not seen her for a couple of weeks and was fearing for her.

The days are long now so I can get stacks done when I'm off work. But darkness still comes in the end and todays dusk brought with it a calling Little Owl in the old ash trees and a calling Barn Owl, a nice combo.

22nd July 2016
Chicken in a basket box
Every day now I move the Ixworth chicks outside into a large dog cage on the lawn and every night they go back into the garage under the heat lamp. The accommodation en route is cosy!

Bad service
I finally managed to get through to someone to order a spare rotavator belt and mower blade. It's taken three phone calls and two ignored emails to finally get someone who didn't pass the problem on to an empty phone extension. It took 18 minutes on the phone and I'm not confident I've moved much further forwards despite the promises. It's a shame as Abbey Garden Sales have provided me with good service in the past but I am now starting to see the reasons for other people's bad reviews.

Harvest news
The first tomatoes are ready in the polytunnel and they are looking good! These are Black Cherry, Gardener's Delight, Golden Sunrise and Honybee.

There were more raspberries to be had today too. It really is a good crop this year. Delving a little deeper in the polytunnel, I came across a couple of yellow courgettes I'd missed. Here they are dwarfing the first cucumber of the year!



Some crops are already over though. Sue went out to do one final pick of the yellow mangetout plants but they were going over so the geese got a few. We've got  loads in the freezer already along with the green ones from the tunnel. Fortunately I managed to stop Sue in time to leave a few plants still standing. These are a heritage variety and I want to save the seed.

You know those jobs you keep putting off because you just know something's going to go wrong and you wish you'd never started? Well today I plugged the ride-on mower into the charger. If the battery charges up then I've just got to persuade it to start for the first time this year and to keep going. Reliability has never been my Mountfield mower's strongest point. If it had a name it would be called Flimsy!

And finally my nature note for today.
There have been strange calls coming from the ash trees for the last couple of days. In the past these calls have had me stumped, but now I recognise them as the calls of young Green Woodpeckers. Today I was lucky enough to see one of them perched out in the open on a branch next to its parent. They have timed it incredibly well, for today was also the day the ants came out. Every year they find their way into the house and swarm all over the windows. The delights of countryside living.

23rd July 2016
Harvest speeds up
Minipops
Some of the sweetcorn in the polytunnel is going absolutely bananas. In fact it actually resembles a banana plantation in there. The outdoor crop isn't far behind either.
Surprisingly the biggest plants belong to the variety Minipop. This is a corn grown for its baby cobs. You don't get a huge harvest but it adds variety and is a high value crop.
It is ready to pick as soon as the tassles appear. No need to wait for them to be pollinated. In the polytunnel I am also growing normal sweetcorn, so I actually removed the male flowers from the top of the minipop plants today so they wouldn't cross-pollinate the other variety. Hopefully this won't stem the flow of min cobs.
A word of caution here. Parts of the plant would appear to be razor sharp! A couple of slashes across my fingers are testament to this.



Anyway, after much dehusking (great material for the compost heap) I ended up with 26 baby corns to go in the freezer. There are a lot more to come too.
Gooseberry gazumped!
I moved on to harvesting the last of the gooseberries ... except they were all gone! Something had got to them first. Oh well. Not to worry. Next year I'll pick them all when they are harder and sharper. That's the best quality about gooseberries anyway.
Champion.
I moved on again, this time to the peas. I've not grown conventional peas for a few years now because of the pea moth which has a nasty habit of depositing maggots inside the pods. But this year I am trialling an old-fashioned tall pea, Champion of England. I sowed it late, at the end of April, in an attempt to avoid the period when the moth lays its eggs. Today the first plump pods were ready for picking. As ever with fresh peas they tasted amazing, little globes of summer sweetness. As this is a climbing variety they should crop over a longer period which means I can graze them rather than harvesting the whole lot at once.

Saving the Tomatoes
Another of the outdoor crops is under serious threat though. For it was only a matter of time before the potato blight spread to the tomatoes. A couple of the leaves were showing the first signs of attack today. It was time for another major prune of the toms anyway, so I removed all of the lower leaves and any sideshoots. I weeded thoroughly around the plants and tied them to their supports. The whole idea is to reduce the amount of foliage through which the blight spores can attack the plant while at the same time maximising air flow around the plants. I then mixed up a bicarbonate spray and thoroughly soaked every plant. I will repeat this once weekly for a while and with a bit of luck I might just save my outdoor tomato crop.
Outdoor tomatoes are always a huge risk and more often than not they fail. It doesn't matter too much as there are plenty coming from the greenhouse, but a bumper crop once in a while is good for stocking up the freezers with tomato sauce.

With daylight still left I started painting the garage, beginning with a first applicaton of creosote to the wood. Proper creosote is wonderful. I love the smell. It is not as nasty as people make out. In fact, one of the main reasons it's use was severely limited by the EU was to do with a very low cancer risk under specific circumstances. I get the feeling this is more about protecting large corporations rather than for any environmental reasons.

Today's nature notes
The swallow's nest in the chicken feed shed is wonderful, for it is at head level. I can raise the phone above my head and get a great view of the inside. It has been empy for a while now, but today I noticed two eggs inside. It seems they are going for another brood. Wonderful news! I counted another four active nests inside the stables today too.






Dark Daggers
Down in the chicken pen I found a small group of rather splendid caterpillars on a plum tree today. I took photos and then scoured the internet to identify them. I eventually identified them as belonging to the Dark Dagger moth. It has a great name but is actually very drab, unlike its glamorous larvae.

Post-Brexit Growth

Post-Brexit and we are experiencing rapid growth - the chicks, the ducklings, the sweetcorn, the grass, the tomatoes, the swallow babies - all are growing at an amazing rate.

1st July
Where is the summer?
Last year 1st July saw record temperatures in the mid 30s. What a contrast today!

There has been a honey bee starvation warning issued as they've not been able to get out and forage. In the polytunnel, the courgette plants are failing to produce viable fruits as they are not getting pollinated. Instead the developing fruits just rot off. I may have to start hand pollinating.

On the plus side, the peas and potatoes are enjoying the rain. Swings and roundabouts.

2nd July

Dramatic skies today

Pottering
A day of clearing, weeding, transplanting and general pottering, aka gentle general maintenance.
The polytunnel is rapidly turning into a jungle. It's amazing how even a little summer heat gets the plants growing so fast. Air flow becomes very important, so lower leaves are regularly removed along with anything wilting or yellowing.

Tomatoes are remarkably resilient. Apart from the Romas, which are a bush-type, all the others need the side shoots pinching out on a regular basis so that all the plant's efforts can go into producing trusses of fruit from the main stem. Once the tomatoes start developing on a truss, I like to remove the leaves lower down. This allows the light in to ripen the tomatoes as well as letting air flow through the tunnel at ground level.


Underneath the tomatoes I am growing basil. They make good companions growing together and good companions in the kitchen. Today I took the first basil harvest, cutting the tops off the plants so they bush up.

3rd July
Nasty but necessary
I've been waiting for a dry, calm day to do the spraying. In an ideal world I'd be able to rely on physical methods to remove weeds, but this is impossible sometimes. Today I was using two chemicals. Glyphosate (aka Roudup) kills everything and is what I have to use on the driveway to prevent it turning into a lawn. I have also used this around the perimeter of the electric fence to keep the grass from growing up through the fence. The other chemical I use is Grazon. This is a selective weedkiller which is hugely effective against nettles, docks and thistles which are my main problems. All of these plants are good to have for wildlife, but it is not possible to maintain small patches of them and let them flower without them spreading uncontrollably. The only way I can do this is by minimal use of spray when I have to.
Besides this, I may have become hyper allergic to nettles. A couple of harmless stings on my ankles recently have turned very nasty and necessitated a visit to the pharmacy.

Today's other major job was to convert the electric fence in the top paddock from battery to mains. It needs to be strong enough and reliable enough to train new sheep and lambs for when they go down to the bottom. Also I have learned this year that it can be dangerous for the sheep if they are able to ignore it and become entangled.
Everything was going very well until I turned it on and it tripped the RCD in the garage! After lots of testing and elimination, I established that it seems to be the earth cable causing the problem. I've got a feeling that I just need to move the earth stake further away from the building, but I've left it for the moment. It's not an urgent job and I want to come to it at the beginning of a day, just in case it needs more time to sort out.

Honey bees struggling
Sue was on the last session of her intermediate beekeeping course today. She returned with tales of everybody having troubles with the rainy weather we've had. Sue has two hives without queens, the one that swarmed and the one with the swarm she collected. Most of the other beekeepers had experienced problems with swarms and lost queens too.
For the moment Sue has united these two colonies.

Strawberry harvest
My new strawberry beds are starting to produce. It doesn't look like a great year, with late ripening and at least half the fruits rotting off before ripening. Still there were plenty of fruits to be picked. Sue has performed her magic and turned them into strawberry & honey icecream, strawberry & banana fruit leather, strawberry and honey fruit leather and dried strawberries. The first of the raspberries were ready too. Dried raspberries are like tiny packages of flavour explosion.

4th July
Could it be that summer has at last arrived? I think that may be a little over-optimistic. In fact, I'm not sure that summers will ever again be what we imagine them to be. Were they ever?
Anyway, I made the most of it to mow the lawns. A hobby swooped low through the veg plot today. It is making daily appearances at the moment. The adult swallows usually see it coming way before I do. In fact it is their alarm calls which prompt me to look up.
The swallow chicks in the chicken shed are growing at an amazing pace now. It won't be long before I find the nest empty.



What Have I Raised?
Elvis's ten ducklings are also growing at an amazing rate. They suddenly have feathers instead of down and look like proper ducks. They still stick with Elvis mostly, but are becoming more independent. It won't be long before Elvis moves away from them. If I know her, she'll soon be broody again!
I won't be giving the ducks names as they are destined for the table later this year.

High Rise Chicks
Also growing up fast are the Ixworth chicks which are now two weeks old. I redesigned their broody box today, as they were constantly kicking their bedding into the drinker and kicking their feed everywhere. My solution is to make their accommodation two storey, as they are now capable of finding their way up the stairs to their food and drink or even hopping straight up there.



5th July
Garlic
The garlic has grown incredibly quickly this year. It has obviously enjoyed the wet conditions since I planted the cloves back in January. I sowed parsnips in between the rows. The two seem to do very well together and look after each other. By the time the parsnips are becoming robust plants, the garlic is starting to die back. Every year it gets rust, but this doesn't seem to affect it at all. I had been waiting for some sunny weather as it needs to dry, particularly the bases of the stems where rot is most likely to set in.
The bulbs had split and swollen very nicely. I didn't remember planting quite so many cloves, but 133 bulbs should be enough to last another year.

Garlic bulbs set to dry.

Yellow Mangetout
I've tried a new variety of Mangetout this year, a yellow one to make it easier to pick. It has grown well, though I'm not sure it tastes quite so sweet as the green one I grew in the polytunnel. It's a close thing though and the pink and purple flowers and yellow pods may keep this on the list for next year.
It is cropping very well too.




Final job of the day was to dig some potatoes for dinner. The Dunluces have completely died down and this was the first time I was harvesting them. I got a really good amount from just one plant and they certainly are tasty.

6th July
Today I did none of the jobs on my list! Instead...
Beetroot bounty
I harvested a whole load of beetroots. I grow purple ones (Boltardy), Golden ones and stripy ones (Chioggia). Quite notable the outdoor ones had caught up with the early ones I planted in the polytunnel and done at least as well. Maybe next year I'll save the polytunnel space for something else.
Later on Sue roasted the beets ready to be peeled and vacuum packed.


Continuing the theme of doing jobs not on the list, I decided to plant the last thirty willow whips which had been sitting in the water butt developing roots. I'll be very surprised if they all take, but hopefully some will.

Captain Peacock lives on
It was while I was doing this job that I heard Lady Peacock calling. I'd not heard her for a while so went to investigate. She was strutting around in the middle of the road, but them I spotted the reason why as two chicks ran across the road behind her.


7th July
A complete non starter of a day
A but of a disastrous day really. I got in my car to go to work and it absolutely refused to start. It had no life in it whatsoever. So I had to stay in and wait for someone to come and help me start it, then get it to a garage without turning the engine back off. Turns out it was the starter motor. This is the second time this has happened. The car is seven years old and I have calculated it is costing me almost £2 per week just for the starter motor. Not very impressive Ford.

But the day was to get worse. For late afternoon my arms started itching and were covered in rather ugly and angry blisters. It looked a little like shingles, but not quite. The doctor didn't think it was either. So all I can think is that I have become very allergic to nettles as I really can't think of anything else that could have caused it. I am always getting stung by nettles so it is hard to remember if the blisters matched where I had been stung.
I guess we'll find out more next time I get stung. For the moment though I'm on anti-histamines which make me incredibly tired and antibiotics.

8th July
The only good thing if it had been shingles would have been being signed off from work for a couple of weeks, which would have taken me nicely up to the summer holidays!
As it was, I was back at work today. In the evening I had to take Boris, dressed in his bow tie, on school dog duties, meet and greet at the Year 6 prom. We didn't have that in my day. Mind you, it wasn't called Year 6 either, it was fourth year juniors.