Spring

Tony asked me a little while ago whether I favour the meteorological start to spring (1st March) or the astronomical one (21st March, on the equinox).  I don't really have a preference, because I tend to listen to what Nature is saying - and Nature doesn't appear to consult a calendar. 

I think spring has probably sprung in our garden - although there is, of course, nothing to say that winter won't mount a vigorous counter attack between now and summer!

Small narcissus coming up in a tub by the back door

No flowers yet on the cyclamens - but it won't be long

Narcissus and fritillaries coming up along the back path

Crocuses and hellebores in flower

Crocuses amid the leaves from last autumn

The washing actually dried in the warm spring sunshine and gentle breeze

Snowdrops along the fence to the orchard

We've almost finished the Brussels sprouts ...

... but the purple sprouting broccoli is beginning to flower

Pretty hellebores

We have just about finished the peas from last summer, and I have just roasted and turned into sauce the last of the tomatoes.  We still have lots of onions, and a mountain of fruit in the freezers (mostly gooseberries and rhubarb). We finished the potatoes a couple of weeks ago - and have had to buy back up supplies from the dairy farm in Old Tupton. On the other hand, we have also bought the first of the seed potatoes and some more onion sets from the garden centre in Wilton. We should probably get more, but I'll get them from Thompson and Morgan I think.

And spring might well have sprung. The sun might well have some warmth in it. I might have set aside (for now) the winter woollies. But it is still ONLY FEBRUARY and much too early to start planting!!!  (Although - I am a bit tempted to try an early sowing of carrots in a box, and putting them in the greenhouse to see what happens)

December review of 2011

It's been a funny year in the garden and on the allotment.  Some things have done really well and others not at all well.

For example, the potatoes really suffered with the lack of rain in the summer.  They set lots of tubers but there wasn't enough water to fill them out, so we got lots of small potatoes. We are nearly out - which is most unusual for us. We usually get enough to keep us going through to March or so.  We are out of garlic. The garlic this year was awful - yet the onions did quite well. They also didn't get enough water to get really big, but we have loads of onions still in the freezer.  The runner beans suffered from us being away for a fortnight in August, during which time no one picked them so they set fruit and happily grew lots of beans.  Mostly, of course, you grow runner beans for the pods, which were too tough when we got back.  Still - the beans themselves are very tasty.

The sweet corn, peas and broad beans did very well. So did the asparagus if you count the plants that have been in for some time.  The crowns we planted in the spring appear to have completely vanished.  Not one has produced a spear!  The tomatoes in the greenhouse were amazing, the zucchinis not too bad, the pumpkins OK, but would clearly have benefited from more water and more heat.

If we think about the fruit we also had a very mixed year.  Somethings did really well (currants of all hues, gooseberries, plums, bramley apples) others not so well (raspberries, cherries, other apples) and there was no real accounting for why.

The weather was odd.  Cool and extremely dry in the summer. And now it's a mostly mild winter, although we have finally had some proper rain.  But the little cabbages, the winter broccoli and the brussels sprouts are clearly thoroughly enjoying the mild weather, and the sprouting broccoli plants are positively thriving.  The rainbow chard (silver beet) is still going strong.

And we are beginning to look towards the next growing season. The garlic and white onions are overwintering happily. The red onion set didn't ever come up. If they don't emerge in the spring then we will replace them.  But in any case we'll plant spring sets as well. You can't have too many onions in my view! And we must get some more asparagus crowns and hope that this time they do settle in and thrive.

Click on the photo to reach the winter solstice album

Autumn this year is very colourful

Even our garden has some beautiful colours




Looking from the bathroom over to the grapevine and beyond the kitchen garden to the farm

 




Looking over Steve and Debbie's garden as well as ours, from the bedroom. There are horses in the field

  




The fan of orange behind next door's shed is particularly striking this year

 



And our red, prickly bush is even redder than usual. The sparrows are really enjoying playing in it




Mid October and Autumn is in full swing in the garden

Pretty much ever since we moved into The Sidings, The Builder and I have found it quite frustrating that you walk straight from the back courtyard into the kitchen. It has always meant that you get very wet while struggling with packages and bags and things while trying to unlock the back door when it's raining. And it is impossible to keep the kitchen floor even approximating clean. For a long time we have been thinking about the ;possibility of putting a porch up to keep the area dry - and to give us a bit of extra storage space.  And now the project is getting very close to complete.

We (well, when I say "we" !!!) still need to glass in the windows and to paint the walls.  Then The Builder is going to re-concrete the floor and lay down lino. He also thinks he'll be able to put a light out there, which would be useful - it is very dark in the porch at night!

Marlo, in the meantime, is a bit puzzled about what we're up to, but is definitely enjoying having a nice dry area outside the kitchen door to lie about it!

The seaside daisies that we put in along the shrubbery have settled in very nicely and are communing happily with the digitalis plants that have come along uninvited. The hollyhocks are growing well. All I need to do now is sort out the wild strawberries and the buttercups which have colonised the path and are making a move into the shrubbery!  It's all looking very pretty though (if slightly unkempt)

I have to admit that I wasn't expecting to find rosebuds at this time of year!

We are beginning to clear up the flower beds and have started planting some more spring flowering bulbs.  I have put fritillaries along the side of the top flower bed, and also along the path in the bottom flower bed. I've also started clearing up alongside the fence and am putting bulbs in there as well.  In total I have 100 fritillaries, 40 dwarf narcissus and 15 tulips. We're going to put the tulips and some of the narcissus in the herb bed up by the pond

The grape vines have really run amok this year!  The Builder is considering extending the trellis so it covers over the patio, then we will train the grape vine over the top to provide a bit of a weather break. We'll also put two new grapevines in on the other side so they can meet in the middle. It will be a living gazebo :-)

We have had a plentiful harvest of small but very sweet grapes this year. And they may be small - but they're bigger than last year's crop

We have just started pulling up the zucchini plants, which did remarkably well this year. We have also pulled all the sweet corn, which also did very well. The carrot boxes are down to their last few carrots. But we still have lots and lots of chard/silverbeet and the cabbages and caulis are also now providing small but tasty additions to the veg plates

Schnitzel, Parsley and coriander coming to see what I'm doing

The chickens have definitely been off the lay lately. Coriander has been off the lay for months - ever since she went broody late in the spring.  But now only Parsley is laying regularly.  Kiev is definitely moulting and therefore isn't laying. Schnitzel is (I think) laying every three or four days.  There was one day last week when we had no eggs at all, for the first time in 18 months. And also for the first time in 18 months, on Saturday I actually had to buy some eggs!! Fortunately, the local dairy farm where we buy our milk and cream also sells fresh eggs - obviously not as nice as our eggs, but better than those on offer in the supermarkets

Marlo watching the hens watching me

It looks as though we  might actually get some sprouts this year. They're only small, but bigger than last year's were. And last year the sprout plants got covered in half a metre of snow and more or less froze to death. I am hopeful that this year there will be less snow!

Looking back up towards the house

 

 The cherry tomatoes in the greenhouse in the garden are still producing quite well. Things are winding down up on the allotment, although the heritage tomato plants continue to produce delicious fruits. But we've had our last cucumber and The Under Gardener is beginning to think about putting the allotment to bed for the winter. And we are beginning to think about the potatoes and other plants for next spring.

And he has planted the garlic and the over-wintering onions up in the garden.  Time to start the garden maps for 2012 :-)

Harvest time

Look at the amazing pumpkin. And the basket of colourful vegetables

A trug load of beens

The pumpkin, as you see, weighed in at 4.3kg

Ruby chard

A mountain of Bramley Apples

The view from the bedroom this morning

You can see the "lid" The builder has put over the back door - though it's not finished yet

Late summer

Click on the photo to get to the late summer photo album

It has been a funny summer this year.  We've had fairly cool temperatures in August and quite a lot of cloud - but almost no rain.  The fruit trees have been quite stressed. And I had expected the vegetable crops to under perform. But in fact, we seem to be doing really quite well with most things.

The tomatoes and cucumbers in the greenhouse are producing like crazy. I have so many it's almost impossible to keep up with them.  At least I can freeze the tomatoes for use in winter stews. But there's almost nothing you can do with excess cucumbers except eat them faster. Still, we're just about managing.  The potatoes could have done with more rain than they got this year (although at least they haven't been struck by blight, although the helpful allotment neighbour is still telling everyone to dig their crops before the blight affects the tubers!!) and I am fairly sure we would have got more peas and broad beans had they been favoured with a bit more water.  On the other hand, the freezer is almost full of peas and broad beans so we maybe didn't actually need any more.  There are still a few potatoes and peas waiting for attention up on the plot.  But it is more or less done for this season (barring the greenhouses) and nearly ready to be put to bed until next spring.

Meanwhile, back in the garden, everything is going great guns.  We have loads of magnificent rainbow chard, the zucchini are running amok, we have oodles of beans (although the runner beans didn't do all that well this year, but that is mainly because we weren't here to pick them early in August and they stopped setting flowers), the carrots are amazing (The Under Gardener has been feeding them with tomato food), there are pumpkins growing and corn cobs growing and also cheerfully coloured tiny cauliflowers growing. Always supposing we don't get covered under 2 or 3 feet of snow this winter, we should be chomping on our own veg well into next year.

The only things that aren't producing abundantly in the garden at the moment are the chickens who are only laying one or two eggs a day. This is enough for us, mostly. But it's nice to have extra to give away or to use in custards, ice creams and other eggy delights. Still, no doubt they'll pick up in due course.  Or - I do have quite a large stock pot. And new chickens aren't ll that expensive :-D

Oh - and we are feasting well on Bramley apples from our tree in the orchard and on blackberries which are overhanging our fence. There's an apple and blackberry crumble in the oven as we speak :-)

Plums

When I first got my allotment in Hangingwater, Tabitha, Austin and Freyja and their friends Alex, Julia and Kal all clubbed together for my birthday and Christmas and bought me an apple tree, a morello cherry tree and a Victoria plum tree. The apple and cherry trees did all right for fruit. The Victoria plum, alas, never fruited. Every year it would produce blossom, but a bit too early - and the mid-spring winds would blow it off.

When The Under Gardener and I moved to Tupton we dug up the apple tree and the cherry tree but the plum tree had grown too big to move so we left it and bought a replacement.

Each year it has produced blossom early. And every year the mid-spring winds have blown it off.

So it was a pleasant surprise last year when we found a very small number of plums hiding amongst the leaves. Gave us hope for a plummy future.

This year the tree produced blossom early, and the winds and frosts got rid of most of it.  So it was a GREAT surprise to find that there were several plums hidden among the leaves - and a whole abundant harvest lurking on one branch!!

We picked them yesterday. And brought in a little over 4kg of plums. And that doesn't include the ones the wasps got to before us!!

They're all in bags in the freezer now, waiting for pies and cakes and things