Broad Beans Sleeping In A Blankety Bed...

August has been busy and at the same time not busy. Busy because there's been harvesting and weeding and mowing to be done, plus I've been trying to catch up on a few jobs like creosoting and mending chicken houses. Not busy because it's the holidays and I don't have to work every spare minute just to keep on top of things. It's been dry so the weeds and grass have slowed their growth. At the same time, some of the warm weather vegetable crops like the beans and squashes have really started to thrive. I've had the onions out drying too.

7th August 2016
Mowing today. It's so much easier if I can keep on top of it, but it still takes a good couple of hours.
Before I could mow I had to collect up the potatoes which had been laid out on the surface to dry before storage.

I was in a good mood today for Sue was due back from a little break in Italy. Apparently if she hadn't been there just at the right time this tower would have toppled over.

8th August 2016

Harvest.
Broad beans- time for all the broad beans to come out. The harvest is good but the plants are looking a real mess now.
I've grown them from saved beans for a couple of years now, Bunyard's Exhibition originally from a mixed pack of beans from Poundland! They've now given me three years of good harvests, so not bad value really. This year we got 6 large freezer bags full, once podded.
Unfortunately you used to get 30 beans for your £1 (plus some less useful dwarf and climbing beans and some peas). Now you only get 10.
Anyway, it's time for some new seed stock now, so I may change variety.
Climbing French beans
They've been a bit slow to get going this year, but we finally took a first small harvest of climbing French beans. The tastiest beans are the Cobras, but the seedlings were deformed this year and I almost abandoned them. In the end, I just threw the healthiest few plants into the ground and stuck a cane next to them. They are doing fine now and we'll probably get a decent harvest. Next year I'll invest in some new seed though.
I do like a waxy yellow French bean too and hunted high and low for a climbing variety. I eventually came across Kentucky Yellow Wax. Again, it's not been the most vigorous of plants but it has just started to crop. Hopefully the plants will thicken up and we'll get a bumper harvest by the end of the year.
Courgettes
The courgette crop used to be an officially classified threat to the human race! But last year I was struck by mosaic virus and courgettes are proving a real struggle to grow now. One of the forgotten principles of organic growing is to find the right variety for your conditions. Although more expensive, Courgette Defender has survived where others have failed and is now starting to give us a crop.
Sweetcorn Minipop
Sweetcorn Minipop, despite being grown just for its baby cobs, is a handsome and vigorous plant. Today we took the first harvest from the outdoor plants. 78 baby corn cobs. This variety has grown just as well outside as in the polytunnel, so next year I'll use the tunnel space for something else, probably more standard sweetcorn, which has been a little disappointing this year. I'm sure the cool weather hasn't helped, but even in the polytunnel the crop has been slim, though the cobs which have been produced are plump and delicious. Next year I'll have a change of variety though.

Pea trial not good
I find growing peas hardly worthwhile. Lots of effort protecting the crop and constructing a climbing frame for at best modest harvests. Add to that the destruction caused by pea moth larvae and I abandoned all peas apart from mangetout for a few years.
But this year I decided to grow an old traditional climbing pea in the hope that it would crop over a longer period. I purchased a pack of Champion Of England from RealSeeds.co.uk. They weren't cheap but would hopefully be worth the expense and I could save the seed from year to year. I sowed it at the back end of April to avoid the attentions of the Pea Moth.
So far so good. The plants germinated fairly well and started producing some very tasty peas. Up till this week I'd taken a few handfuls. It is important to keep harvesting peas so they keep producing, so today I expected to take my first significant harvest. How wrong I was! The plants had gone over already. All I could do was to leave the few pods there were to collect the seeds and have another go next year. What a disappointment.

9th August 2016

Our new neighbours had their hay baled today. It's good to see the hay not going to waste. They have a couple of rescue Dartmoor ponies which have not moved in yet. It will be nice to have some animals in the field.

Hay cut...

and baled.

As the baler chomped up and down the field, I chomped my way through the task of podding all the broad beans we harvested yesterday. If I see another broad bean!









It was a momentous day for the youngest batch of Ixworth chicks as they came outside for the first time. They'll go back into their cage with the electric broody overnight, but with the weather warm they hardly ever seek out the warmth it provides now.

The older chicks chilling out

Let there be light
For the past three months we've had no lights in the kitchen! Every time we turn them on they trip the switch. We have a good electrician, but he often needs several phone calls before pinning him down. So somehow we've just kept putting it off. We did call him a week ago, but our call has not been returned. We've finally trained ourselves not to switch on the light.
Anyway this morning we had a builder round to give us a quote for some other work. He gave us the number of a different electrician. At 5 this afternoon I came in from the garden to discover a very tall young man fixing the kitchen lights. He wasn't even stood on a chair. Even I can't reach the kitchen ceiling without climbing up on something.
We now have kitchen lights and it is amazing! The place is so bright. But we still hesitate before hitting the switch. We also now have a new electrician who has the decency to return our phone calls and doesn't make endless promises. 

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.

Easy Peasy

It's 2nd Januarty and I've sown some seeds! Mangetout. To grow in the polytunnel.

Really I should have planted them at the back end of Autumn, but using the polytunnel to hold plants in stasis over the winter is something I'm only just beginning to experiment with. Mind you, with the weather we've been having I don't think there will be an issue.
The idea is to have some delicious fresh mangetout peas available early in the year, way before anything's cropping from outside.

Me and mangetout have history and it's one that gets steadily worse. I grow mangetout for a couple of reasons. Although in my experience peas always give a disappointing and brief yield for the space they take up, mangetout are high value and can justify the space, time and effort they are given. They also don't succumb to the dreaded pea moth, that tiny caterpillar which gets inside the pods and prevents you eating any raw pods, unless you like a little extra protein! For this reason, maincrop and Sugarsnap peas have had a rest from my plot for three years to break the life cycle. I'll try again this year, but I'm planting later to try to avoid the moth's emergence period.

So, back to the mangetout. I had a brilliant harvest the first time I grew them. It was that really, really wet year and I think they enjoyed the moisture. Beginner's luck.
Then three years ago I decided to grow the purple ones. They looked fantastic on the plot, but the yield was slightly lower and I have to say they tasted a little more cabbage than peas should.
Two years ago I had a disaster. They all got eaten. And the second sowing too.
Last year, they all came up but it was very dry at the crucial time. We hardly got any pods. On top of this, I think I missed a few pods which meant that they stopped producing too. They seemed to swell everso quickly, almost as if they were bolting.
The result was about three meals worth from 100+ seeds!

Therefore this year I have a different strategy. I am growing some traditional green ones early in the polytunnel. I have gone for Oregon Sugar Pod which is supposedly pretty hardy. Today I sowed them four to a pot, which I have covered with bubble wrap to encourage them to germinate. I don't sow direct as there are too many voles and field mice to devour them. When they're big enough, they'll go in the bed allocated for sweetcorn and squash. Hopefully they'll be out again before the corn and squash even get planted. In the polytunnel I have easier access to water too and can tend them more easily. Plus I have two little helpers who are always keen to help me, especially with digging!

Arthur and Boris, specially bred as gardening dogs.

I will try growing some outside again this year. I'm going for a golden one so I can see the pods easily to keep up with picking. I'll keep them well watered too and hope for the best.
I'll report back at harvest time.

A bit pea'd off

A family of tasty peas.
But it's not always peas and harmony inside the pods.

I always um and er over whether or not to grow peas.

Bulk standard peas are lovely raw, straight from the pod, and I like the idea of making pea pod soup. But they take up quite a bit of space and need frequent sowings as the harvest is quite short lived. They always seem to make the messiest bed too.

I would never bother to grow them for cooked peas. Birdseye do a great job of picking, podding and freezing within the hour. (Although goodness knows what chemicals are sprayed on them while they grow)

But therein lies the current problem, for my peas are afflicted by pea moth. They were last year too, but it seems worse this year.

Between June and August, peak time late June to mid-July, a small nondescript moth emerges from the soil, where it has spent the winter as a larva before pupating. The pesky thing then searches for the nearest pea plants (sweet peas included, though these grow terribly on my exposed land) and lays its eggs on the leaves. These hatch into tiny caterpillars which head straight for the young pea pods and drill their way in to gain access to your lovely peas.



A tiny caterpillar, maybe a millimetre long,
begins its youth of destruction

So, you enter your veg garden with the idea of  picking some gorgeous, fresh peas and it's a lottery. If you pick the wrong ticket you open up the pod to find peas surrounded with a strange brown substance. This is caterpillar poo! The posh word is frass.

Oh frass!

Look a little harder and you'll find the caterpillars crawling around inside the pod or more likely burrowing into a pea.

Extra protein crawling around inside the pod.

Now, this is not great. It means you have to inspect each pea as you shell them, unless you relish the idea of a mouthful of caterpillar s**t and caterpillar! But it gets worse.

For my favourite peas are the Sugar Snaps. You know, the peas which grow fat and sweet and juicy, the ones you pick straight from the plant and pop in your mouth, pod and all, and crunch. For these get pea moth caterpillars in them too, the prospect of which rather destroys the whole experience.

The one saving grace for the pea family is that mangetout does not seem to be affected, though I'm not convinced that if you let them swell up there wouldn't be a little critter burrowing away inside.


Is this tiny hole where the caterpillar
went in or came out?
Or is it something else?



To finish the story of the Pea Moth, when it's finished spoiling your crop, the caterpillar drills back out of the pod and drops to the ground to spend the winter in the soil, ready to repeat the whole process next year.

Without the use of chemicals, an understanding of this life cycle is important to trying to control the pest. Crop rotation is said to help, but I do that. I'm sure the emerging flying moths are capable of flying to the next veg bed without too much difficulty.

Another strategy is to cover the peas with fleece as soon as the flowers start to form. Peas are self-fertile so it won't matter that insects can't reach the flowers. You'll still get peas.
But I really don't like veg beds covered in fleece. Besides, the winds here usually make short work of my attempts at protecting crops.

I think that for me the best line of attack will be to rotavate the soil in winter and let the chickens and ducks at it. That's if it's not too waterlogged, too dry or too frozen.



Of course, the other way to manage this problem is not to grow peas for a couple of years and so completely break the life cycle. That's a strong possibility.

Or maybe I could get away with just growing mangetout.

The last possibility, if you're reading this thinking that you really can't do without growing peas, is to sow quick growing cultivars either early in the season (March time) or late (August) to avoid the flight period of the moths.

So, come next spring I'll have decisions to make. I suspect I'll decide to just grow mangetout for a couple of years. I'll turn the soil a few times in the winter so the chickens can get at the grubs too.

And in three years time I'll be looking forward to my next crop of Sugar Snap peas.

Harvest is upon us

OK, we've already had the rhubarb and the asparagus. And most welcome they were too.

But for the last couple of weeks harvest has been well under way. In fact, some crops have come and gone already and the freezers are starting to groan.

It all started with the soft fruits. Punnet upon punnet of strawberries, enough to share a few with the guineafowl. It's been a good year for them.

Strawberries in preparation for freezing.

They lose their texture when frozen, but still make excellent jams and sauces.

The gooseberries weren't far behind. The Red Hinnomakis were the first to ripen and the most prolific. This variety is incredibly sweet. Close your eyes and you could be eating a grape.

Meanwhile some of the veg were responding to the warm weather. Turnips swelled nicely, both outside and in the polytunnel. The courgette plant in the polytunnel - I never meant to grow one in there, the labels must have got mixed up - started throwing out its offerings, closely followed by one of the more advanced plants outside. A night of heavy rain magically transformed skinny green fingers into fat, foot long giants.

Elsewhere in the polytunnel, hidden amongst the jungle of leaves, I came upon a wealth of French beans. I am growing the climbing variety Cobra in there and it is yielding a huge quantity of beans. Unlike some others which I've grown previously, Cobra's beans don't seem to get tough and stringy if you miss them by a couple of days.

The Borlottis and Pea Beans are producing pods too, but these will be saved for the beans rather than eating the pods.

And the potatoes have finally swelled. We've made a small dent in the Earlies, Arran Pilot and Red Duke of York, as well as starting on the Charlottes.  

I pick a little from each crop and suddenly
we have enough to more than fill our plates

Peas are ready too now. I have grown Sugar Snaps, Mangetout and normal peas. Unfortunately I seem to have a problem with the Pea Moth in my garden, which means that each pea in each pod has to be checked for the tiny caterpillars which burrow into individual peas. A complete pain, and it means that the Sugar Snaps, whose pods I would usually eat whole and raw, have become a bit useless. Still, the Mangetout are still OK as long as I catch them before the peas swell.



You can't get this freshness and crispness in the shops.



The broad beans have done exceptionally well this year. I wasn't intending on freezing any, but we've hardly even made a dent in the harvest and I don't want the beans inside to get too big and leathery.

 

But I've saved the best till last. For on the way to the chickens I get to pluck fresh raspberries every day. The varieties have got a bit mixed up now, but the tastiest are definitely the smallest ones, the most difficult to pick and definitely not the ones you would ever find in a shop. Imagine a ruby with exquisite taste. No. Imagine hundreds of rubies, then more and more every day, for the raspberries have been very fruitful this year.

Not every crop has fared so well this year. It's been a very poor year for dwarf beans and, as I've mentioned, the Sugar Snaps will be going to the chickens. But it looks as if we'll have plenty enough to keep us extravagantly supplied in delicious fresh food. And when that runs out there'll be a freezer full of produce and a pantry full of jams and preserves. If my planning goes right, there should still be some more hardy veg coming through the winter and there'll be a store of root crops in the ground or packed in boxes in a cool, dark place. Oh, and there'll be mountains of pumpkins too.

The greatest delight about all this is that we've put all our efforts into it and now we are reaping the rewards. And what a reward! For what you can buy in the shops just falls flat on its face, both for choice and most especially for freshness. The crunch of a carrot pulled straight from the ground, the juiciness of a strawberry ripened by the sun while still on the plant, the bite of a gooseberry teased from the prickly branch, the freshness of a peapod plucked straight from the plant, the earthiness of a potato fresh from the soil.  

All these things make our harvest special.

Thinking forward to next year.

Swallows gathering ready to leave

This year has been a challenging one but still I have learned a lot and things have moved forwards here on the smallholding.
But as September is upon us, I start to cast my mind to next year. Which varieties have earned their place in next year's plan? What should I change? What has worked well?

Saturday 1st September 2012
An autumn sunrise!

Of course, next year may well be completely different. But here are my initial thoughts.

Potatoes - They liked the water this year, but the swollen lenticels made them a difficult prospect to sell. Then The Blight hit. I tried over a dozen varieties, which has given us way too many spuds given that I can't really sell many. And that's a lot of digging to plant them in ridges, earth them up and then dig them out at the end. So next year I'll be more selective. I've not even investigated how some of the types have fared or harvested, but my initial thoughts are:
Earlies and Second Earlies
Bonnies - a definite - large, smooth, abundant, good-looking. Quite large losses to blight, but next year I'll be more ready to deal with it!
Red Duke of York and Salad Blue - The Yorks are a mealy potato, great for chips and roasting. Didn't enjoy the wet soil though. Salad Blues did well, but more of a novelty crop. They give a nice, sweet mashed potato, but the purple flesh turns a little greyish.
I'll probably choose one of these varieties each year. Both hit heavily by blight.
Dunluce / Arran Pilot - Two good early potatoes. Dunluce grow big quickly but Arran Pilot didn't reach full size before the tops were bitten. Probably grow one of these in future, along with Charlotte. All affected by swollen lenticels, not great on a new potato.
Swift - I won't bother with this one again. Maybe it just didn't like conditions this year, but poor yield, never really got going.
Edgecote Purple - An attractive, purple potato (clue's in the name) which has cropped fairly well. Not too many tubers got by blight. Shame I had to take off the foliage so early. The spuds which reached full size were amazing. A definite for next year.

Maincrops
I've not harvested many of these yet. Last year the Desirees and Pink Fir Apples did brilliantly, but that was a dry year so I'm expecting the opposite this year. However, there'll always be a place for both of these in my potato patch. The Setantas cropped well. Although the tops were decimated by blight like all the others, I seem to have a good crop of healthy, red tubers under the soil. I've not tried them enough ways to comment on taste yet.
Sarpo Mira - strange to see one variety almost totally unaffected by blight. Top growth is still green, even now. This is a big advantage, though I have been told that the taste is a bit bland. I'll let you know.
I'm really hoping the Orlas do well, as they're sold as the organic gardener's spud. Top rotted away with blight, so we'll see what lies under the soil.

Peas
Well, we've all learned that peas love loads of water. What a great year for them! I used to think they weren't worth growing, and they're probably not if you're going to put them in the freezer. But as a fresh crop they take some beating, even if they don't stay on the fork, especially raw which is how I prefer them. I must say, I find it hard to tell between different varieties. They're all lovely! The traditional Kelvedon Wonder did well this year and they're going cheap in the shops at the momnent. I could save my own seed, but if it's economical I like to change it every now and again.
The Sugar Snaps were lovely too, so fresh and crunchy, but I'll make more effort to get a successional crop next year. As for the mangetouts - well, the purple-podded look nice and crop well, but for me they're a bit too cabbagey. Next year I'll be trying a more traditional green mangetout.

Beans
What a disastrous year! Virtually none made it past the slugs, which is such a shame. I grow French Bean Blue Lake for fresh pods and Canadian Wonder for kidney beans to dry. I tried the latter as fresh pods last year but couldn't bear the stringiness. The Borlottis joined both these varieties in totally failing this year.
On the plus side, the pack of "exotic beans" which I got from the 99p shop (or was it Poundland?) gave me a pretty good crop of purple pods (Purple Teepee) and the yellow pods (Monte d'Or) tasted beautiful. I'll be interested to see how the black-eyed beans do.They are healthy at the moment. I'll be buying a few of these packs next year, though it's a bit of a pain having to sort out the seeds from the mixed pack.

Runner Beans
Again, these struggled to get past the slugs. The Painted Ladies are a heritage variety which I've chosen on account of their red and white flowers. They are vigorous and crop well, but I've decided to go for a stringless variety next year. I don't like a mouth full of razorlike stringy green stuff and, even if I try to pick them young, I reckon that a customer finding themselves chewing on one of these would not come back.
The Czars, which I grow for their white flowers and white beans, are much less vigorous but, when I do eat them as pods, less prone to be stringy unless they are obviously too big. So they get another chance next year.

Three Sisters
Well, it only ended up as Two Sisters but I've been pretty impressed. The Sweetcorn (Lark) has flourished, it's wispy heads towering above the carpet of courgettes, squashes and pumpkins. Aside from the courgette mountain problem, this system may get even more space next year. I'll add more different winter squashes, as they look great and store well.

The cucurbits which I grew in tyres have done very well too, so I'll continue with this next year.

Leeks and Celery
The leeks and celery seem to be growing very well indeed in each other's company. We've started taking some of the young celery already and I look forward to the leeks later in the year.

Root crops
The Parsnips (Tender & True) have, I think, done brilliantly. Another crop which likes plenty of water early on I guess. I'm confidently expecting to have to bring in a digger to get the whole roots out. I don't know whether interplanting with garlic has helped, but since they've done so well I'll repeat this next year. In stark contrast, none of my Hamburg Parsley came up from two sowings. Such a shame as I really like it. I'll try again next year, but if it fails again...
Carrots of all varieties have had a catastrophic year. I've always been able to rely on these doing well before. I'm sure they'll do well again next year and I'll still grow lots of different colours and shapes.
The Scorzonera, which did so well last year, also failed to materialise. We really like the taste but the long, black roots are extremely fiddly to peel. In contrast, its sister crop, the Salsify, has done brilliantly, as has the Celeriac next to it. Both crops need longer to harvest, but I'm full of expectation. I'll leave some Salsify to flower, since it's a lovely plant all round.
Beetroots have done OK this year, though germination was poor and the slugs got all of those which were planted later. But I do love the taste. I think three types is enough, a red one (may try one of the longer tubers next year), stripy Chioggia and a golden one for sure.

Brassicas
As usual, everything else has got on top of me and the poor brassicas have dropped off the bottom of the list. Next year! The turnips did well early on!



So, that's the beginnings of my plans for next year. No doubt over the winter months I'll be absorbed in planning everything in much more detail. There's the flowers and herbs too, and of course I have a polytunnel for next year which will give a whole new range of opportunites and challenges.

Roll on 2013!

Lugubrious Legumes

Some of the Painted Lady runners
are just starting to produce beans.

Friday 3rd August 2012
These clouds eventually brought some torrential afternoon showers

I'm just glad I'm not a bean.
Even the runners have struggled this year. The Painted Ladies, normally so vigorous, have struggled to get going, but finally some have got past the slugs and managed to gather enough light and heat to reach the top of their wigwam. I've clipped off the tops to encourage them to bush up and I've even harvested five runner beans.
I selected Painted Lady for its dual coloured flowers and its vigorous growth, but I have to say it seems to go stringy very quickly. There's nothing worse than a mouthful of stringiness - the bean equivalent of fish bones! From now on there'll be daily checks to make sure I catch the beans at optimal size.

I also grow Czar, a runner with white flowers and white 'butter' beans, which I plan to harvest and dry for the winter. It's not so vigorous though, and has struggled to get going this year.

Which varieties I grow is always open to review. In fact, this year's crop has been grown from beans collected last year and I'm not sure they haven't crossed. It'll be a lot clearer when I can harvest some Czars. I have noticed that one of the Painted Ladies has all red flowers.



If the runners are looking a bit sad, my other climbing beans are looking woeful. My third attempt at Borlottis will be lucky to yield one or two plants - all the others have been systematically nibbled into oblivion. I'm just hoping for enough to get some seed for next year. The same with French Bean 'Blue Lake'. This is a real shame, since in a good year it yields wonderfully tender and stringless beans.

Purple Teepees, I presume.

The packet of 'exotic beans' which I purchased are beginning to fare a little better. I'm not entirely sure which are which, as the five types came mixed in one packet. I separated them out based on colour, but the Purple Teepees have not come from the beans I thought they would!


Anyway, they are beginning to bush up and flower. The first tiny pods are appearing.
You may remember that I experimented with sprouting a few shop bought black-eyed beans and throwing them in the ground. Well, it didn't work. Probably not a good year to try, and a rather haphazard way of doing it. I will give it another go next year, but with a little more care and attention. They may even get a place in the polytunnel.

Much better this year to be a pea.

They have loved the wet conditions and seem unaffected by the slugs. The standard peas have done well, although the pea moths have found some of them. I've grown four different types and it will be a learning experience to compare them for yield and taste.



Purple-podded peas still cropping well.

The purple-podded mangetout is cropping well now. I agree with others' comments that these have a less delicate taste than standard green mangetout. We still eat some either raw or lightly steamed, but have found that we need to pick them very early before they begin to swell at all. No worry if we miss them though, since the peas they produce rival any others we've grown for taste. They are a very attractive additon to the veg patch, especially now that the sweet pea I sowed in with them has come into flower and the Cosmos Sensation are flowering at their base.
But I do think that for next year I'll look into a more tender green variety too.

Contending with the purple-podded peas for prettiness is the asparagus pea bed, which I have bordered with alyssum, along with the odd marigold. Not to everyone's taste, if anyone tells you this tastes like asparagus or peas, or a cross, they have probably not actually tasted it. In oriental cookery it's known as the winged pea/bean, named after the square, winged pods. These need to be picked very young and lightly cooked. If you don't get it right, they taste woody. A quick surf of the internet reveals plenty of people bemoaning the cardboard razorblades they have grown! I don't eat many of mine, but I do find the taste quite good - I would say a little nutty. In oriental cookery it is used more as a green ingredient in other dishes rather than on its own. I could see this working.


Asparagus Pea flowers

Asparagus pea has not really been selectively bred so does not come up to the yield and tenderness of other legumes, but if you have space it is certainly worth a try. I find it easy to grow, and this year's crop came from last year's collected seeds. Germination was excellent. It is an attractive, low-growing plant and the bees love it.




Finally, can you guess what this is?       ...
Last year's celery!
I had the bright idea of leaving it to collect the seed, but now find that celery seed has very few culinary uses. Anyway, I'll give it a go. I do like the proliferation of delicate flowers too.

Devil's Coach Horse

Devil's Coach Horse Beetle

There's nothing better to capture the imagination of a young boy than a name like Devil's Coach Horse Beetle and that's what happened to me many years ago. Although not rare, I think I've only seen a couple in my life. That is until this year, when I've been encountering about one a day.

What an amazing beetle it is with its long, thin body, large jaws (adults) and scorpion-like defence posture. I did get to see this action the other day when I disturbed one in the strawberry patch. Apparently they are capable of emitting a foul smell from special glands too.

The DCHB is a predator, eating just about anything that moves, and according to at least one website this includes slugs. Finally! I have an ally in my battle.

But it would need a small army of DCHBs to impact on the slug population at the present. As we enter our fourth wet month, those slimy little critters are having a field day. Sue read the other day that there are two and a half times the usual number of slugs this year. I think the whole nation's population must have decamped to my veg patches!

Monday 9th July 2012
A most featureless sky.

Tuesday 10th July
What's there to say?

Sorry to go on about them, but yesterday morning I actually got quite depressed when my tired body dragged itself up to find the most featureless sky imagineable. I took a snap, let the chickens out and headed back for bed. That wasn't the depressing bit. That was just a disappointing sunrise and a tired body. No. The depressing bit was the hordes of slugs devouring my squashes (the hairier varieties seem most resistant) and, worse still, the lovingly nurtured bean plants which I had transplanted just the previous evening to replace those which I'd lost.

Instead of back to bed, it was two hours of slug destruction and the same again this morning to get back on top of the problem.

Pragmatic organic??
I seriously felt like abandoning my principles and driving straight to the shop to invest in bucket loads of slug pellets (despite my previous utterances on this subject). I have resisted for now, but I have always said that I would be pragmatic organic. By this I mean I will garden according to organic principles except in exceptional circumstances where whole crops are faced with destruction.

Nature's balance has clearly been thrown out of kilter and my efforts to fit in with it have been seriously derailed. For now at least I have held back on such a big decision.
But it clearly won't be a bumper crop of beans this year, any variety. I'll be happy if we get a few to eat and enough to save for next year's seed. Considering how many I've planted this year, that's some scaling back of my expectations!

To take my mind off my gardening woes, I returned to the house and spent the whole day cleaning. Although not my natural inclination, we had a builder coming round late afternoon and I knew that Sue would want to present a visitor with a house that was spick-and-span. When I took breaks, it was to check on the chickens or transport carts of manure down to the muck heaps. What a glamorous life I lead!
Typically it stayed dry all day. The forecast for tomorrow...


Peas and Harmony
Not all is negative. It's been a great year so far for peas and potatoes. As I dug Charlottes from the ground for dinner last evening, a strange call overhead was an unexpected barn owl quite high up. Then, as I plucked cascading pea pods and purple mangetout, fourteen lapwings passed by. It's been a bad year for breeding birds and these could well have given up and be thinking about where to spend winter!

The spuds and the peas, by the way, tasted wonderful. The sugar snaps were like small packages of perfect freshness and sweetness.