Sowing, Hoeing, Mowing, Growing

I got the grass mowed this week for the first time this year. It's always a relief when the mower starts up. Until now the geese have been doing the job for me, but the warm weather and a bit of rainfall have spurred the grass into action.
On the whole grass is a pain. I have no want for a green carpet so welcome moles and weeds. But since I've got it I might as well make the most of it, turning it into meat and eggs via the sheep and poultry. And when there's so much that I have to mow it then it makes a good addition to the compost heaps or direct as a mulch, so it all ends up indirectly in my tummy!

I leave some of my grass to grow long. This irritates Sue but is a joy to me.













The thermometer in the polytunnel has soared this week, creeping up into the high 40s. The early sown turnips bolted but the mangetout is doing wonderfully. I have now planted all my tomatoes, peppers and butternut squash in there too. I am trying a variety of squash called Butterbush in the hope that it won't take over the whole polytunnel!


It has been perfect weather for hoeing. Within a couple of hours any weeds that have been chopped off at the base lie withered and dead. I'm gradually working my way round all the veg beds. The ones that have been previously mulched are much easier to do.

A forecast of frost for the next few mornings has been holding me back in the veg patch. As soon as this next cold spell passes the garden will fill with young bean plants, sweetcorn, squash and tomatoes which I have been raising for outdoors. Until then I am trying to hold them back in the polytunnel.

Self-seeded Poached egg plants,

wonderful for bees and a great

companion plant for broad beans.

The vegetable patch is starting to look gorgeous at the moment. I have left a lot of self-sown and naturalised plants to flower and the willow arches are coming on great. These seem to be a magnet for bee swarms and so it was that the third swarm of the year, almost definitely not from our hives, appeared on our last hot day. The swarm was huge.

And the reward for 

longest swarm

goes to...

Having already successfully housed two swarms and moved back up to 8 hives, any we collect from now will be given to fellow beekeepers. This swarm has gone off to Thorney, about ten miles down the road.

Our turkey hen who has been sat on eggs under a patch of borage and flowering rocket started clucking three days ago. I suspected that either chicks had been born or the eggs were pipping.
Sure enough, the next day a little head was poking out from under her feathers.

Our first view of our turkey hen's offspring

She sat tight for two days but was thinking of moving off the nest this morning. With the local crows loitering, we decided to catch her and any chicks and transfer them to a vacant poultry pen. There were just three chicks and three unhatched eggs. Sue retrieved the chicks while the hen slipped my grasp and proceeded to defend her family quite resolutely!
All are now settled into their new home.

Meanwhile, after three Silkie chickens only succeeded in constantly swapping the four ducks eggs they were sharing, we have put one of the Silkie hens on her own with four new eggs. Hopefully we'll have some success. Two of our Muscovy duck girls have now vanished. The optimistic side of me says that they may appear at some point with ducklings, but it is surprising that we have not seen them at all.

Finally there have been more night time capers. It seems tawny owls have moved into the neighbourhood. I regularly hear them when sat outside at night. This may be at the expense of our barn owls as I rarely see or hear them now.
A couple of nights ago as I sat outside under a wonderful full moon I could hear a female tawny nearby. I speculatively imitated a male hooting and within a minute the unmistakable silhouette of an owl flew up into one of the trees in the roadside paddock. Then it flew right over my head and into one of the large ash trees in the garden. It may have been one in the morning, but the full moon meant that it was easily visible against the moonlit sky as it passed over. Then another!
The pair started duetting really close by. Amazing stuff.

And final finally, a couple of lockdown images. One of my new lockdown hair and one my Google timeline for the month of April which tells its own story.

Willows, Meteors and Strange Lights in the Sky

I'd like to begin by apologising for the strange indent here on the left. Formatting in Blogger can be a nightmare, particularly placing pictures. When I move them, they often leave this odd little remnant which seems virtually impossible to delete!

As I write this we have finally had some April showers, just in time before May arrives. It has been the sunniest April on record. Whilst we all undoubtedly enjoy the sunshine and it has been a godsend in these difficult times, I don't regard this as a good sign in the long term. We seem these days to get extended periods of weather extremes. Don't forget that before the sunniest April on record we were bemoaning months of wet weather which went as far back as preventing the farmers getting in their winter wheat and left fields flooded over winter.

It's been a tricky time in the garden as it's been too dry to transplant seedlings.

Once the whole plot is covered in compost this will help, but I don't want to cover dry earth with compost mulch as it will just keep the moisture out.

I did manage to get some red cabbage seedlings in but they have required more aftercare than usual.

Instead, I have turned my attention to my various willow structures and coppice. Ideally this is a job for the winter, but I think there's enough time left in the year for them to regrow. They grow at an astonishing rate. The fedge I planted about three years ago around the back of the pond has about 12 foot of new growth. The poles I cut from this will make ideal material for constructing bean supports.









I select the poles I want to use and throw them in with the sheep who make short work of the leaves and side shoots and quickly begin stripping the bark which stops the willow regrowing when it is pushed into the ground.










Any excess willow gets shredded for the compost, although at the moment I am using it as a mulch for the raspberries.

I also pulled a whole load of old teasel stems from a wildlife patch. It stands majestic in the winter, a goldfinch restaurant, but is starting to look a bit messy now.
There was a surprisingly big pile when I had finished. We harvested some of the seed heads for a friend who does flower arranging and then the rest went through the shredder. It dispatches these in no time.






When I'm not at work, I always drift towards being a bit of a night owl. Nocmig (birdwatching in the dark!) has gone quiet so I have taken up astronomy - well, not exactly, it's as much as I can manage to find the North star. But Elon Musk's space junk, eventually to be thousands of satellites, for the moment at least provides the novel sight of strings of satellites passing overhead.
Combine this with the Lyrid meteor shower and you have instant and free entertainment to replace the soaps on TV.

One feature of April 2020's fine weather has been a remarkable series of night skies. Venus has shone brilliant and a crescent moon has made the stars shine even brighter.

In my time I have been fortunate enough to experience some amazing night skies on my travels to far flung and remote places. Most memorable was a night in the open in Egypt's White Desert during a particularly active Perseid meteor shower.

The Lyrid meteors weren't quite so spectacular, but still worth the effort as these experiences in life are few and far between. I got lucky and the first meteor I saw was incredible, a true fireball across the sky. 

There's been something else to look for in the night sky too. A few weeks back social media suddenly started mentioning strange strings of lights travelling across the sky. Fortunately this was not aliens taking advantage of humankind's current difficulties. They were instead trains of satellites launched by Elon Musk.

The geese doing a fairly rubbish impression of  the SpaceX satellite train

I don't particularly welcome this, as it seems like humankind has just found another place to litter and their use seems slightly sinister. There are going to be thousands of them orbiting our planet.

But for now they make quite a unique sight as strings of pearls travel across the sky. Fortunately their initial brightness is short-lived as they move into higher orbit and separate.

The most spectacular thing I saw was one of the SpaceX rockets passing over just 20 minutes after its launch from Cape Canaveral. Though I espouse a relatively simple life, you have to wonder.

Today's swarm of bees, in the same place as the last one

Back down to Earth now and May is upon us. The first day of May has given us another swarm of bees on the smallholding but more spectacular, maybe even than the stars, is the mayflower blossom.

Let's see what this coming month brings us. Right now it seems like absolutely anything could happen.

Life in the Polytunnel

Some things sit on my to do list until it's too late to do them. This I find is an excellent way of clearing the list!

Cleaning the polytunnel was one such job, but out of the blue last week I summoned up the enthusiasm to undertake the yearly task. Another week and it would be too late as there would be too many plants in there to get to the polythene walls.

The outside is quite easy, though reaching the top is a challenge. The inside is more tricky, particularly the roof as everything drips back down in your face. This is one reason to do this on a cooler day too so the drops are not boiling hot.

I use Citrox on the inside, a natural disinfectant which contains extracts of citrus fruit. It is antibacterial and antifungal.

The difference between cleaned and not cleaned.

The polytunnel is the ideal place to work when it's cold and raining. On the other hand it is not the ideal place to work when it is sunny, temperatures rapidly escalating to 40+ degrees.

It provides a unique climate.

Ideal for a dust bath but 

all poultry are now excluded

The challenges:

No rain, so watering must be done manually. Extreme temperatures, meaning that dehydration can be astonishingly quick in trays of seedlings. Low night temperatures. Limited ventilation.

The advantages:

Protection from winds. Protection from sparrows, pigeons etc. Warm soil. Excellent light levels compared even to a windowsill or conservatory.

The classic use for a polytunnel is to grow what I refer to as Mediterranean crops. Peppers, aubergines, melons and tomatoes do particularly well. In fact for some of these it is the only way to guarantee a ripe crop by the end of the season. These are high value crops which earn their allocated space.

Early mangetout just about to come into flower.

Turnips and early potatoes.

But the space is not required by these crops year round. In early spring there is time to grow some early crops which wouldn't be possible outside for another couple of months. I squeeze in a crop of early potatoes, mangetout, turnips and carrots. All of these are harvested before the Mediterranean crops can go into the ground. Once things heat up the polytunnel becomes too hot for these cool weather crops. This year some of my turnips are already bolting (producing flowers in response to hot conditions, which often makes root crops tough and woody).

Polytunnel Plan, rotation year 6.

This plan is flexible. I don't grow all of these plants every year. 

Another really positive advantage of the polytunnel is as a place for raising seedlings. As I've alluded to seedlings growing in relatively small soil volumes such as seed trays or modules can easily die if the soil dries out. But this challenge is more than outweighed by the warm temperatures and in particular the light levels. I find that all but the most tender of seedlings can cope with dips in night time temperatures. If necessary they get the added protection of a cloche or fleece.

Raising seedlings in the polytunnel.

Some of these are ready to go outside just as soon as we get some rain.

One final use of the polytunnel is to hold young plants overwinter which have been started in the autumn. When light and temperature levels lift in early spring, these plants have a huge head start.

With the polytunnel all cleaned I decided to plant my tomato plants. The literature says to only plant tomatoes in the soil when the first flowers have appeared. I don't really know why you need to wait, so this year I have taken the risk and planted them before that time. Sometimes you just need to get things done when you can.

I grow many varieties of tomato of many shapes, sizes and colours. Last year's experiment of growing them up strings worked well. I actually use baling twine which is never in short supply on a smallholding and has a multitude of uses. I loop one end under the plant plugs and tie the other to the polytunnel frame. The tomatoes are planted quite deeply, up to their first true leaves, as they are capable of putting out extra roots from the buried stem.

I always grow too many from seed, just in case they fail, which they rarely do! And I always struggle not to plant too many. Any spares get given away to encourage others to grow their own food.

I can fit a couple of dozen plants down one side of the tunnel (actually half of one side). This year I have carrots down the other side as they grow brilliantly in the tunnel and are protected from carrot fly. I decided to double the tomato capacity by overplanting these with tomato plants. Hopefully they will grow together on different levels.

An April Swarm

I generally try to keep my blog posts in order, often lagging a few days behind what is happening on the smallholding.
But today's main event warrants jumping the queue.

We had our first bee swarm of the year!

There is an old saying:

A swarm in May is worth a load of hay
A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon
A swarm in July is worth not a fly

It doesn't mention a swarm in April.
I am not definite of the comparative worth of the items in this saying, but the general idea is that the earlier the swarm, the more chance it has of building into a strong colony and producing honey before the autumn. So I guess a swarm in April is a good thing, though it did come from one of the hives which we filled with one of last year's 23 swarms! So maybe some of our bees are a bit 'swarmy'.

I was busy harvesting coppice willows when Sue came running past. "I've found a swarm", she panted as she ran past toward the bee equipment shed.

Fortunately Sue has had me putting new wax in frames the last couple of days. I wasn't quite expecting the brood frames to be put to use quite so quickly. Sue had only been inspecting her bees this morning. Of the two hives which survived the winter in the orchard (out of four, all from last year's collected swarms), both had queen cells at Sue's last inspection and both lacked eggs or brood (larvae) this morning, so something was obviously going on.

The swarm captured and being emptied out in front of the hive

Last year got us into a good routine for catching bee swarms. Sue collected all the parts to assemble a new hive, plus a sturdy box in which to catch the swarm. She bought up a white sheet too.
This would be placed on the ramp up to the hive entrance for the bees to march up.

I grabbed a handful of lemon balm, for its scent acts as a bait and helps persuade the swarm to move into the hive permanently.
I didn't don a bee suit, for swarms are relatively gentle, although being shook off a tree when you are clustered around your queen and then emptied out in a heap in front of a hive are probably not most conducive to keeping calm. But swarming bees have filled up on honey and unlikely to sting.
I remain wary though and retreat if any bees show too much interest.

I love to watch the bees marching up into their new home, but these didn't play ball. 

They thought about it a couple of times, but in the end Sue decided

to go for the more direct method of shaking them into the open hive.

Hopefully they will decide they like it and won't be gone in the morning.

The hives in their orchard setting.

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.