More lockdown pottering

I was out on the bench in the dark again when Arthur decided to jump up on me and cuddle in for warmth. It turns out he is surprisingly good at hearing night-time bird calls and was particularly keen on the moorhen which flew around our heads.

Today's pottering involved erecting supports for the mangetout seedlings which are going outside.  I can only grow peas really early in the season otherwise they get afflicted by pea moth. I grow very early mangetout in the polytunnel but by growing outside too I can extend the season.

There's a conveyor belt going on now. We have just entered April Week 3 on my spreadsheet which means a new group of seeds to sow. With space at a premium, some trays of seedlings need to move to the polytunnel to make way. In turn, there are seedlings in the polytunnel ready to go out into the soil. As usual I've not managed to quite keep up so I need to prepare beds for them to go into.

The polytunnel is open during the day now as the chickens and ducks can't go in and destroy everything. This keeps the heat down a little and makes it easier to work in there in the heat of the day. The fine weather continues. It came with coronavirus and has stayed ever since. To be honest, we could really do with a decent day of rain now.

I thought I'd show you a few details from the garden today, little things I notice as I go round. The first is an amazing fungus which appears somewhere most years. It is metallic silver. I know it as moon fungus, but its real name is False Puffball. It is a slime mould. After a few days the silvery coating disappears to reveal a chocolaty interior of spores.
I couldn't remember why on earth I call it moon fungus so I looked it up. The Spanish for this is caca di luna, or something like that, which means moonsh*t to put it bluntly! It's a much better name.




I am trying to increase the perennial herbs that I grow in the veg plot too. I love this time of year when all the perennial plants erupt from their dormancy with lush fresh growth.
These two are bronze fennel and lemon balm. When they flower they'll be smothered in insects.

And finally we have the bee-fly (not to be confused with Flybe!). These seem to be having a very good year this year. They appear like a bee at first, but they are a dumpier shape and have a super long proboscis sticking out the front for drinking nectar. They actually parasitise proper bees. They lay their eggs in their burrows and the bee-fly larvae feed on the bee larvae.

Talking of bees, I got my first sting of the year today. A couple of honey bees had already collided with me and got stuck in my hair this week, but I waited until they disentangled and flew away. But this one seemed more purposeful. It bumbled around in my hair near the neckline for a while before painfully inserting its sting into my head! It got me good and proper, but fortunately I did not react to this sting. It just hurt for a while.


We have settled into lockdown life now. Today Sue held her first ever online meeting with some of the other headteachers in the area. Obviously computers cannot replace face to face contact, but at the same time utilising the facility when schools reopen would save a lot of travel time , petrol and road congestion. One way I deal with the worry of coronavirus is by looking for the positives which could come out of the other end when  people are forced to rethink things in such a big way.

Final news from the smallholding. The geese have gone into proper broody mode. There are two nests in the stable which we rob every day if we can get to them. But often both are occupied and today two of the Embden geese were sharing one nest.

Insects galore

With the temperature nudging up very close to 100 a week or so back, insect life on the farm has been abundant. The leek heads and umbellifers (fennel, parsnips left to flower and lovage) are covered in bees, hoverflies, flies and other bugs.

At night-time, leave the windows open and a light on and the upstairs hall becomes a giant moth trap.

So I have started taking snaps of some of the insects that I notice. Identifying them takes quite a bit of time, especially as I often don't really know where to start. It's surprising how often a Google image search for something like 'spotty red beetle yellow antennae uk' comes up trumps!
But even better, a new button which recently appeared on Google Photos on my phone finds matching images on the internet. Over 50% of the time it has left me straight to an identification, and if not it often gets me looking at the right insect family.

I find insects absolutely amazing. They come in so many forms, with a multitude of appendages, fascinating life cycles, in all shapes and colours. If they were the size of humans they would put Doctor Who's range of alien baddies to shame.

Of course, I welcome (most) insects into the garden (althought the weevils which I found by the dozen inside my calabrese heads the other day were not quite so welcome.

The weevil that munched my calabrese!(left)

A freshly opened globe artichoke flower with honey bees burrowing down to get at the pollen.

But at the end of the day there are two approaches to take with bugs. Either aim to wipe them all out, goodies and baddies, as industrial scale farmers mostly do, or let nature help with growing. Ground beetles, ladybirds, lacewings and hoverflies in particular are predators which help control other insects, and slugs in the case of beetles. Yes, there may be the occasional population explosion of some insect which all but ruins a crop, but it's never a total disaster and nature rebalances itself in the end. Of course I give a helping hand by growing plants and flowers specifically to attract or repel certain insects. I use physical barriers (netting) too where this is unavoidable, and I give my plants a healthy and organic soil to grow in so they can withstand attack.

Anyway, onto the good bit, the photos. It's not all about what helps the veg to grow. It's about creating a wonderful space in which to work and occasionally stop to admire the hive of activity going on about you.

So most days now I try to meet and snap a new insect. Here are just a few of them. I won't go all Latin on you with the names. Better to just admire them in blissful ignorance, though I do like to put a name to them if I can and do a little research on their habits.

Moths in many forms flumble (flutter and stumble) into the upstairs hallway.

Top left - One of many hoverfly species - this was a giant. 

Meanwhile a bumblebee visits one of my sunflowers

Comma is one of my favourite butterflies, though the sight of
ragwort in full flower and covered in Ringlets stopped me in my tracks

Marmalade Hoverflies and a  

Swollen-thighed Beetle (aka Thick-legged Flower Beetle or False Oil Beetle)

I initially thought this was a spider until I realised I was looking

at it the wrong way round and it was a fly.

But the way it moved was clearly aimed at deception.

Yellow Dung Fly                                       Noon Fly

A harvest of lemongrass and a family of deer

Wednesday 9th January 2019

I finally got round to harvesting some lemongrass today.
One of the more unusual crops I have grown and this year was very much an experiment.

You can buy stalks from the shop and root them in water to grow on, but this year I sowed seeds instead, not expecting too much. But by the autumn I had seven very sizeable clumps of lemongrass several feet tall.

I am not quite sure what to do about winter though. The lemongrass is in the polytunnel. Three plants are in the soil and four in pots. I know that lemongrass is not frost hardy and the pots which were nearest the doors have begun to die back.

I am not sure if this is just an annual die back and if new shoots will come back in the spring.

So somewhat belatedly I cut a big handful of stalks today while they were still healthy and green.

This will be plenty of lemongrass to last through the winter and spring. If the existing plants don't come back, I have plenty of seedl eft over to raise some more plants. If that does happen, I'll bring one or two pots inside next winter.

In the afternoon I took the dogs on a very long walk. There is a sizeable field of rough ground which has not had a crop for a few years. It is possible that it cannot be ploughed for archaeological reasons, for the whole area used to be a fleet and a centre of Roman saltworks. It may just be that the farmer is using it for game cover for the many local shooters to come along and blast a few freshly released gamebirds.
Whatever the reason, this are holds quite a large flock of linnets, a sadly unusual sight in the countryside these days. I extended the usual route to skirt round this field and to take in a new stretch of river. As well as the linnets there were buntings and several snipe. If only more land were like this rather than the intensively exploited surrounding farmland.

Until recently this owl box was nestled in a clump of bushes. Unfortunately this was far too messy for the farmer's liking and probably competed with a fraction of a percentage of his field. The owls seem to have abandoned the box now and they have sadly become quite a rare sight on late afternoon walks.

Bird of the day was, however, not a bird but the family of roe deer which appear irregularly in the fields around the farm. Last week we watched them swim across a river. They have been in the area since we moved in and numbers have fluctuate between four and seven.

Anyway, I think I have found where they live most of the time, for as a reached the edge of the rough land there they were. They looked up but allowed remarkable close approach, close enough for me to get some sort of photo with my phone before they went leaping off across the fields.

A Loveliness of Ladybirds

Saturday 5th January 2019
A while ago I wrote that I try to notice something nature-related, however small, every day on the smallholding. But today it was Sue with the sharp eyes.
She noticed this conglomeration of ladybirds huddled together in the crook of a sheep hurdle.
Rather delightfully, the collective noun for a group of ladybirds is a loveliness. How lovely!
I feel a bit guilty as they may well have been displaced by my path clearing yesterday. But I can't leave everything untouched all year and at least if I do disturb them there are plenty of alternative places for insects to hide away for the winter.
These ladybirds are most welcome on the smallholding as it is their larvae which will be munching away on aphids next summer. A Seven-spot ladybird can eat about 5000 aphids in its life.

My day was spent at the bottom of the land knocking in a line of fence posts. I drive them in by hand using a very heavy and chunky metal tool known for some obscure reason as a post basher. It is hard work, so in between posts I removed some of the tree guards from the saplings. They should be old enough to withstand any nibbling now and I think they are better off with air flowing around their trunks.

The day flew by and before I knew it Sue and I were heading south deep into The Fens where we were due our annual meal out with the Grow Your Own group. Amazingly I founded this group five years ago and it is still going strong with many of its original members. A lovely evening was had by all. It is funny going out with fellow smallholders. Nobody orders chicken, duck, turkey or lamb as we have freezers full of the stuff. Instead the game pie was very popular, as was the fisherman's pie.
We did a gardening version of Secret Santa too. The presents were awarded at random and I got The Grumpy Gardener's Book. For some reason everybody thought this most appropriate.

Sunday 6th January 2019
I did unphotogenic jobs today. Drilling holes in wood in preparation for making some willow bird feeders. I put willow rods in soak too. They will just need a day to mellow and I can start making the feeders tomorrow night.
After this I started on the decking by the back pond. I broke the back of it and another day's work should have it almost finished. Pictures when it's done.

While I was busy with these tasks, Sue was cleaning out the chickens and then surprised me by clearing all the dead vegetation from the small wildlife pond in the middle of the veg patch. She uncovered some very nice fungi and a delicate mouse's nest.

After dark saw Sue preparing two dozen pheasants which we were kindly given by a friend. It's better than them going to waste and we do appreciate getting them.

ed. How could I forget? Our first duck egg from the new ducks. It's been well overdue and I was beginning to wonder what was going on. It may have something to do with the fact that we had a (very) late start today so the ducks were shut in their stable for longer than usual. But ducks normally lay early in the morning  so I would be surprised if they have been laying outside unbeknown to us.

Halcyon Days

27th August 2018

Don't spend ages looking for a kingfisher 

- it's not there any more!

I out this dead willow branch by the wildlife pond 

with kingfisher in mind. It worked.

My second new bird species for the farm this year.
After our holiday house sitter saw one perched on a log at the back of our new pond I was green with envy,

Today was a day of harvesting in the veg patch. I had already seen a small group of house martins pass through, a very occasional sight on our farm, but as I was turning the compost heap late afternoon I heard a strange call, clear, loud and harsh. Whatever it was, the local finches and tits were not happy, buzzing and churring, generally scolding angrily. Then it hit me. Surely that was a kingfisher calling repeatedly. And another calling back!
I strained my eyes to catch a glimpse but it didn't take long, for there bang in the middle of the garden right in the open was perched a blue and orange jewel. It was perched right at the top of a dead twisty willow I had planted just for this purpose when I installed the small wildlife pond in the centre of the veg patch. I love it when a plan comes together.
The second bird was somewhere over towards the bean poles but I didn't get time to locate it before both birds took off and whizzed low across the garden, over the hedge and out of sight.

And that was that. The story of how I clocked my 110th bird species for the farm.

The Little Things I Notice

Friday 27th April 2018
The week didn't hold much excitement apart from this amazing rainbow which appeared over the fields while I was driving back from work. I could only quickly snap it as I pulled up in the oncoming lane and the picture doesn't really do it justice.

I try to notice something new on the smallholding every day. It may be a new sapling I'd not noticed before, a plant coming into flower, a hedgehog dropping, anything really. I don't know what it will be till I see it.

This week's notable things have included:

Newts in the pond

There are pond skaters, diving beetles, whirligigs and water boatmen too. I've not even put any plants in yet or finished the edging.

A pair of mallards appeared early one morning too. Apologies for picture quality, but it was taken through the window to avoid flushing the birds.

Mushrooms growing in the orchard

Snails

Ashy Mining Bees - a lovely little grey and white bee which I observed nuzzling into the soil deep down in the grass. Not rare, but the first time I've seen one and identified it.

A new meadow

Sunday 22nd April 2018

So the heatwave is officially over!
I missed my opportunity to catch up with everything due to other commitments.
With heavy rain forecast for later on today, I did manage to get out early and do some more planting before the soil becomes unworkable again.
The first of the outdoor carrots are sown. Hopefully the soil will be warm enough that they get a good start. And I've put a row of spring onions in too, though it won't be spring by the time they are ready.
I am more organised with my brassica seedlings now too. I raise them in modules but always used to leave it too long before moving them on into the open soil. But I now plan into my rotation to have a nursery bed where they can grow on before going to their final positions. The bed will never be full and will be empty once all the seedlings have gone through, so I will use it as a spare growing area if I need it, otherwise I will plant it up with green manure plants.

Many of the seedlings in the polytunnel are big enough to survive outside now. In fact, the hardier ones would prefer it outside and are safer out there where there is less risk of the modules drying out. The only risk is that they become waterlogged if there is lots of rain, so I have to remember to periodically empty the trays they sit in. There are still a few weeks until we are safe from overnight frosts, but there is none in the immediate forecast so these plants will have plenty of time to harden off in my old open-toped greenhouse which acts perfectly as a giant cold frame.

Monday 23rd April 2018

With the forecast rain holding off for now, I went back over the meadow area with the rotavator.
I plan to have a permanent bee and butterfly meadow area in an area where I used to sow annual seed every year. This worked until the borage and nettles started coming through too strongly year on year.
The first rotavation was about a month ago and turned most of the weeds under, but I wanted to create what is called a stale seed bed. After turning the soil, a carpet of seedlings appears. So you wait for this to happen and them lightly work the surface to kill them off. Now your area is ready for sowing.


I purchased a 20% wildflower mix from Boston Seeds. The rest is a mixture of meadow grasses. Most of the wildflowers won't show in the first year, so I spent a little extra for  a mix with cornfield annuals added to give colour in the first year.
This is part of my new wildlife area, which includes the bug hotel, the wildlife pond which I have now reclaimed from the ducks, a couple of willow coppice areas and a managed nettle bed.

The Hub - A Duck-Free Wildlife Pond

Saturday 14th April 2018
A dry day and blue skies!
Today's job was to build a hazel and willow barricade around the small wildlife pond which forms the hub of The Wheel, my veg plot design. This preformed plastic pond has followed Sue and I from our first house in London where it was the centrepiece of our 16 foot square garden. Our current plot is over 800 times that size!

I want to move the ducks into the veg plot to hoover up the slugs which live under the grass overhangs where the beds are edged. But they will trash the pond. Instead, I am building a new pond for them, more of a duck lido in fact.

So I set about cutting the stakes for my duck barrier, using hazel I had harvested. I then weaved in the willows, using basic weaving techniques.

I have to say I am very pleased with the end result.

And the ducks are so impressed with their new lido that they have not even noticed the other pond. That one can be kept a secret between me and the wild birds and the frogs and toads.

When she started sitting we had frosts and drought

Tuesday 23rd May
I decided to kick the black and white Muscovy duck off her eggs today. She had been devotedly sat for six weeks. Muscovy incubation is a drawn out job at 35 days, but I figured that nothing was going to happen now. When I cracked open the eggs, they were in various stages of development, so at least our male is not firing blanks. I think the problem was that some of the eggs were pretty dirty and duck eggs are porous.

Stretching her legs for the first time in seven weeks

Meanwhile, the white Muscovy duck is sat tight in a different house. Hopefully she will be more successful. Ducklings are cute to have around and grow quickly into very tasty meals!
In previous years we have hatched ducklings under our trusty broody hen, Elvis, but this year she is showing no signs of wanting to sit, even when we shut her in a house with a clutch of eggs. Maybe she is too old to be dealing with a clutch of young birds now.

I gave the sheep some new grass today. This is just a simple operation of moving the electric fence posts back a little to allow access to the lush grass on the other side. In fact, there were treats all round for the sheep today as I cleared out some of last year's overwintered Swiss Chard plants to make room for this year's tomatoes.
















Wednesday 24th May
Temperatures are soaring. After a worryingly dry beginning to the year, recent weather has been just about perfect for growing with temperatures high but with significant showers every few days to keep the seedlings happy and the grass growing (and the weeds). Temperature in the polytunnel are regularly breaking 100 degrees, so watering and any significant tasks in there have to be done early morning or evening.
Most of the plants are in the polytunnel beds now and the melons, cucumbers, tomato and okra are thriving. In the next few days I'll dig the last of the new potatoes and turnips and
evict the mangetout, which is just on its way out. Waiting to jump in their graves are the peppers, chillis and aubergines.
There should be sweetcorn too, but I'm having to start a new batch after a very disappointing germination - I'll be changing supplier next year.

With the risk of frost over now and the soil warm. the next week will see me busily planting all of the tender plants into outdoor beds. They have been out in the cold frame to harden off. I have bean poles to erect and arches to build to grow my tall peas up as well as more mangetout. The few sweetcorn seedlings which did germinate will be going outside too and the outdoor tomatoes will appreciate some room to spread their roots.
There's Minipop sweetcorn too, which can be grown near the supersweet varieties since it is harvested before pollination. Fortunately 100% of these germinated, so it's nothing I'm doing wrong.

Saturday 27th May
The first day of half term. Hurray!
I took one last mangetout harvest from the poly before evicting it and planting the bed with young butternut squash plants. It won't be long before these are doing their best to take over the whole polytunnel but I will show no mercy in keeping them cut back.



A few weeks back I planted mustard green manure into the bean and pea beds. One moment the beds were spattered with small seedlings but before I knew it they were full of lush green growth. This is my first proper attempt at growing green manure. I chose carefully a crop which I would be easy to work into the soil. I also needed something which could grow quickly and be ready to rotavated before the main crop needed to be planted.
So today I let Mr Rotavator loose. He made light work of cutting swathes through the crop and turning it into the soil.


My work was cut short today though as Sue took the year's first honey off the giant colony of bees. They weren't happy about it and vented their anger on me. At the fourth time of being aggressively buzzed by a bee, I gave up and headed inside.
Sue has been waiting for the honey to be capped sufficiently to collect. She got about 30lb from the one hive which is great. Unfortunately the second hive continues to struggle. Sue has tried twice to add frames from the successful hive. If the weak one has gone queenless then the bees should have used the new brood to make a new queen, but they have failed to do so. The other explanation is that there is a queen in there somewhere but she has gone off lay. To be on the safe side, Sue has decided to split the strong hive into two. Swarm season is upon us and we could easily end up with two weakened hives.

With the warm weather we have been leaving the windows open at night which tonight resulted in numerous moths coming into the house. I am starting to get interested in moths and it is only a matter of time before I take the plunge and purchase a moth trap. But for now I am happy to photograph whatever comes into the house and then struggle to identify it. It is strange to be a total beginner.

Anyway, here's what I captured, along with tentative identifications - I love moth names, they are so eccentric.

Pale Prominent

Silver-ground Carpet

Bright-line Brown-eye

Yellow-nosed Bell

White Ermine