Self Sufficient Frannie

December review of 2011

2012-01-02T13:57:00.001Z

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

2011-10-31T19:21:00.001Z

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

2011-10-25T09:16:00.003Z

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

2011-09-18T13:10:00.000Z

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

2011-09-03T09:23:00.003Z

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

2011-08-16T08:11:00.001Z

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

Mid-August

2011-08-15T10:45:00.002Z

We came back from a fortnight away to find that the garden had run riot! Mostly, alas, it was the weeds that were rioting.

So we've started weeding the flower beds and I have weeded the melon bed - thus liberating two very small melon plants that were in danger of being suffocated by bindweed and thistles. The runner beans are looking excellent, and the chard is magnificent. We also found two marrows which we have picked. We are now getting a fairly steady supply of luscious zucchini. We are also doing well for carrots, cabbage and (to my surprise) broccoli. The bramley apples are almost ready for picking. The plums are ready. And we are getting a steady crop of cherry tomatoes from the hanging baskets.

Things, alas, are not so happy up on the allotment. A helpful allotment neighbour had volunteered to water the greenhouses while we were away. Noticing that the potato plants were beginning to turn yellow he did not think: Oh - it's been very dry this year, they must want watering. No. He decided that they were struck with blight and has been busily digging them up. They are not blight struck (hasn't really been blight weather up until this weekend) and some of them hadn't been in all that long so weren't at all ready for digging. Still, at least he put the resultant potatoes in paper sacks for us to pick up when we got back. He gave the two rows of peas he felt obliged to pick (waste not, want not; they would have been a bit hard when we got back - never mind the winter stews I use the slightly older peas for) to people in hospital. It is, of course, good to be charitable. But he might have asked! The tomatoes in the greenhouses are doing well, however. A mixed bag of heritage seeds, so lots of different colours and shapes. And very tasty they are too. There are cucumbers very nearly ready for picking. So it's not all bad up on the allotment. The Under Gardener wasn't very happy when he first saw it - but his forgiveness has been bought with a lovely bunch of beetroot!!

We are eating lots of fresh fruit and vegetables now. It's rather nice to wander out in the mornings and evenings and decide what to have for breakfast, lunch and tea!

Up on the allotment:

Some allotmenteers are adding livestock. So far we have chickens, bees and goats

Cucumber so very nearly ready for picking

There are tomatoes of various hues in the greenhouses

Round, yellow ones are almost the dullest!!

We are looking forward to trying the nearly black ones

Potatoey destruction by our trying-to-be-helpful neighbour

A young, healthy currant bush

And a young, healthy gooseberry bush

July

2011-07-06T07:37:00.001Z

We were in the Chatsworth garden centre on Monday and saw that they had some bags of white onion and shallot sets reduced down to 50p a bag. It is a bit late for planting onions, really, but for such a small outlay it seemed worth having a go. The Under Gardener has planted them at the bottom of last year's cabbage bed.

The potatoes on the allotment seem to be being hit by some sort of ailment, so we are digging them up as they get struck. I think this means that we will be eating vast loads of very small new potatoes over the next few months but it doesn't look likely that there will be any to store for the winter. Colin is sure they are blight-struck. I am not so sure. It's not behaving like blight. I think the potatoes, which are notoriously thirsty plants, are not getting enough water. On the other hand, we are getting a good load of peas and broad beans to set by for the winter and, of course, to eat now. We've also been eating some rather nice broccoli from the plants that we were given from Colin on the allotment a while back. We stuck them in a spare bit of bed in the kitchen garden - and there they have been thriving. Broccoli, or calabrese always seems a slightly dull vegetable to me. I much prefer the sprouting stuff. But it has to be said that broccoli picked from the garden and immediately eaten is an entirely different beast from anything that you can buy in the shops!

We have raspberries a-plenty. And there looks as though there might be quite a nice crop of blueberries from our small and young blueberry plants. Must remember to give them another feed of azalea food. They seem to like that!

Gooseberries

2011-06-30T07:12:00.025Z

The Under Gardener has been harvesting the gooseberries. And then, topping and tailing them. The first lot he picked came in at around 4kg (after topping and tailing). The second (a more modest effort) came it at 1.3kg. I will be interested to see how much this lot weighs in at:

There will, however, be no cherries, other than the few we've eaten from the trees. The blackbirds have been in and scoffed the lot. Not the morellos, which are not yet close to ready. But all the sweet cherries ;-(

On the other hand, nothing, not even the snails, is eating the lettuces, radishes, carrots and chard. Nothing except us. And very delicious they are too. And the baby broad beans, not yet prolific, are delicious. They will become prolific, I hope. There are lots of pods filling up. The Under Gardener has also now harvested all the onions from the allotment. We've been putting them in the freezer. I suppose I ought to keep some of the red ones back for using fresh. The Under Gardener is rather partial to some chopped red onion in his summer salads!

Around the solstice

2011-06-27T08:57:00.001Z

The Under Gardener has planted three small cucumber plants in the bed which has the watermelon plants in it. And I have taken out one of the watermelon plants which was clearly not thriving, and have replaced it with a sweet melon seedling.

We are now eating carrot thinnings from the boxes we planted up first. We are also eating chard thinnings, lettuce thinnings and small broccoli heads and full sized radishes. The sweet cherries are now ripening fast (although there aren't very many of them, alas - all that blossom and then the fruit all blew off in the spring ;-( ). The raspberries have SUDDENLY begun to ripen. And the different coloured currants and the gooseberries are all ready for picking.

Sunday vegetables. Clicking on the picture should take you to the web album

We have had a first picking of peas from the allotment.

The flower garden continues to look lovely. Ramshackle, but lovely :-)

We could really do with some rain. It seems that parts of Sheffield had loads of rain on Saturday. Didn't get to us, though.

The chickens have now been with us for 12 months and seem to be thriving. One of them is off the lay and has been for ages - but she seems happy enough. The Under Gardener has been threatening her with the stock pot, but she doesn't seem to believe his threats! But in the 12 months we've had 1115 eggs at a grand total of 43p per egg. We're almost reaching the supermarket price per free range egg!!

Here is the kitchen garden plan as it stands today:

Sunday, mid-June

2011-06-19T21:00:00.001Z

Back in December, Stella and Tony gave me some purple podded pea seeds. We didn't plant them up on the allotment with the other, less classy peas, but down on the edge of the bed the beans have gone in. They've been growing quite sturdily, but not producing flowers. But this morning we went down - and the flowers have started :-)

Pretty, aren't they

The beans aren't doing too badly either

And the flowers are looking lovely

There are nearly, nearly peas to pick (maybe tomorrow). The lettuces and radishes are coming along. There are baby tomatoes on the hanging tomato baskets. And the squashes, zucchinis and pumpkins appear to be recovering from their post-planting out sulk. They are finally producing green leaves.

So far, so good. But we could do with some more rain

Early June

2011-06-08T08:00:00.000Z

At the weekend we took the cabbage and broccoli seedlings that were growing in seed trays and divided them up and potted them on into proper little flower pots. So far they seem to be doing ok. While I was at it, I did the same to the tiny seaside daisy seedlings in another seed tray, although I potted them on in tiny clumps. So far so good. Also, around 25 cauliflower seedlings have arrived in the post, from Thompson and Morgan. The under Gardener has potted them on as well. In addition, he has planted out the 15 brussels sprouts seedlings that arrived a few weeks ago. There are still 25 cabbage plants yet to come. I am not quite sure where we are going to put all these brassicas!!

Things are doing well up on the allotment. The onions are looking wonderful and the broad bean and pea plants are beginning to set pods. The fruit area is looking happy. All we really need now is some decent rain! The weather people, however, are forecasting the possibility of frosts later this week :-S It is, of course, not too late to start again should all the tender summer stuff be got by frost - but it is getting a bit late. And it would be horribly expensive at this late stage !!

And the flower garden continues to flourish.

The allotment on Sunday morning

All being well, this should be a good crop of onions

The potatoes are coming on but could do with some rain

The new Bramley apple tree, looking happy

Broad beans, Lindsey?

Looking up the allotment

The chooks being very curious about what we are doing in the greenhouse

Can I come? Can I? Can I? I wanna come too!!!

Looking towards the house from the patio

Chilli plant, strawberries, sage in pots and boxes

Poised ready for summer

2011-06-01T14:08:00.000Z

We've had a busy few days in the garden

The Builder has planted out his runner bean seedlings, and my bean seeds. And I have planted out 72 sweet corn, two yellow pumpkin, two blue pumpkin, four mixed zucchini and four watermelon seedlings, not to mention lots of salady stuff. The greenhouse is beginning to empty, although I do need to sort out the various cabbage seedlings in seed trays.

We have planted six tomato plants in one greenhouse on the allotment, and five in the other. We don't know yet what sort of tomatoes they will produce - they were from a packet of mixed heirloom seeds. We have also planted up 8 tumbling cherry tomato plants in hanging baskets and disported them around the garden. Plus we've planted hanging fuchsias in two more hanging baskets and put them outside the back door.

Monday brought us a day of lovely, steady rain which has made the garden much, much happier. Things are growing beautifully. The lack of rain has meant that we haven't done anywhere nearly as well for rhubarb as we usually do. And a lot of the fruit was set back quite badly by that late frost and the unseasonal high winds we had a week or so ago. So perhaps not quite as good a fruit yield this year as we had been hoping. But there are lots of gooseberries coming along, and the red currants are beginning to turn. Oh - and I've had some strawberries from the new strawberry plants. They are very, very, very sweet!!!!! (Might buy replacements next year and get less sweet ones!!)

The chickens have not laid as well during May as they had been previously. One of the brown ones went very broody and mopey. They have all been moulting. Even so, we had 77 eggs during May at a cost of 10p per egg, giving us a grand total in not quite a year of 1059 eggs at a cost (totalling everything we have spent, including the set up costs) of 44p per egg. The total cost per egg is coming down to a price that is ever so slightly less eye watering!!

And here is the plan of what is happening on the allotment and in the kitchen garden

Kitchen Garden

Allotment

Avoiding frosts

2011-05-25T09:56:00.000Z

I had been thinking of planting out some fo the seedlings last weekend. Monday was the day I had earmarked for it. But Monday dawned distinctly on the cool side. It was spectacularly windy. We had intermittent squalls of cold rain (but not really enough to be very useful). I cahnged my mind and decided to hold to the original plan of waiting until the long weekend.

Just as well, really. Last night they forecast the possibility of ground frosts!! I don't think they materialised in our garden, but it was definitely cold when I got up this morning. I don't think the squashes, pumpkins or sweet corn would have been very happy! Things that are tolerably hardy are still suffering from the effects of that last, late, hard frost that we had!

On the other hand, many things are more than happy. Here is the view from the kitchen on Sunday:

Mid-May

2011-05-17T17:17:00.001Z

The allotment as it stands today. We picked up a bag of Sante maincrop potatoes at the weekend at the Chatsworth Garden Centre for the princely sum of £2 for 45 or so seed potatoes. This was something of a bargain! We also picked up some lettuce seeds and some cucumber seeds. Not quite such a bargain - but the cucumber seeds were a much better deal than the £4 for 5 seed packet that I first chanced upon!

I have had my first strawberry from the new strawberry plants. There are more coming along.

We still have had no significant rain, although mercifully no more severe frosts either. But the vegetables and fruit trees are all rather thirsty. But it has also been very much cloudier, cooler and windier over the past couple of days with odd spots of rain.

The Builder has been doing a great job working on the veg beds and has now turned his attention to the shed at the bottom of the garden. He has been slowly but surely emptying it out, and moving all the junk up to the top of the driveway. This has attracted the attention of a couple of "rag and bone" men, or scrap merchants as they call themselves, who (with permission, of course) have been gleefully clearing away all the metal rubbish. Saves us hiring a skip!

The flower garden is still looking beautiful. The plants in the pond seem to have recovered from their ruthless uprooting, chopping and replanting and are beginning to grow again. The seedlings in the greenhouse are flourishing. The new asparagus plants and putting up more spears. We are eating the spears from the old plants. The allotment is almost entirely under cultivation now. All is good :-)

Frost

2011-05-10T10:50:00.001Z

We had a very sharp frost one evening last week. It has singed the grape vine, decimated the cherries on the morello cherry tree (but not, mostly, on the sweet cherry trees) and even singed the kiwi vine in the greenhouse - and we knew there was a frost coming and had closed the door! The strawberries also got a bit singed. The enthusiasts on the allotments, who had put some of their summer veg plants out have suffered for their prematurity :-S

Let this be a lesson to us all. May, no matter how beguiling, no matter how summery, is still only spring and it is TOO EARLY to plant things out. Not that I have done - but it was tempting!!

We have finally had some nice rain. But my stressed apple tree is still stressed. I don't know what's wrong with it, only that its leaves have gone all limp and sad. It'll have to take its chances. If it doesn't recover, a new one will replace it next spring!!

We have now reached the 1000 milestone of eggs laid since we got the chickens. Not bad considering they've only been with us for 11 months

Kitchen garden plan

2011-05-04T13:24:00.001Z

Mayday Bank Holiday

2011-05-03T11:17:00.001Z

The garden is suffering from the long lack of rain, but it is also looking very pretty this year, mostly down to the Under Gardener's vigorous weeding and digging. He has now also dug over all the beds in the kitchen garden, except the one with the cabbages in. Now he has turned his attention to that patch of wasteland behind the shed (up by the grape vine) and has created two new beds. One is dug and nearly ready for planting. The other is nearly dug. the path has been properly trodden down.

I have now potted on my tumbling and standard tomatoes and planted seeds of cabbage, chard, more sweet corn, and seaside daisy. Everything is doing really well. Even the pumpkin seeds, which I was beginning to think had upped and died on me, have now germinated. We are eating pickings of asparagus, and the new asparagus plants are beginning to show signs of life. Each row has two or three plants with spears in evidence.

My Hangingwater apple tree was beginning to look very stressed indeed. So we put the hose on it and left iot for a couple of hours. The tree looks less stressed now, but not entirely happy. But it is weeks and weeks and weeks since we've had any rain. We are putting the hose on the other trees now too. They are all covered in baby fruit. It would be a pity if lack of water were to get them!

One of the Lohman chickens has been very broody for the past couple of weeks. I think we might have dissuaded her now - she's coming out of the coop much more and is following the other chooks around more happily. We are getting an average of 3 eggs a day. In April we got 93 eggs at a cost of .007p per egg. In total since the chooks arrived at the end of June last year we've had 982 eggs at a cost of 46p per egg.

The biggest thing we've done recently is to clean out the fish pond. It's been looking very murky and horrid for a while now. The filter has broken. There was a crack in the wall at the back. We had thought of catching the fish and putting them in one of the water butts, but then we discovered that the square at the back of the pond is separated from the main part by a low wall. Usually there is enough water for the fish to swim over it, but the drop in water levels over the past few weeks meant we could empty the back part and clear it out and mend the wall, which the Under Gardener did few days ao, then bucket the water from the main pond onto the garden and transfer the fish into the newly filled square at the back. That took all morning on Monday but was a surprisingly fun activity. And the fish are really enjoying their newly de-mudded pond with nice clean water (although we mixed it with quite a bit of the original pond water so it didn't come as too much of a shock!). Now we just need a new filter.

Refilling the fish pond - under close supervision!

The days are being sunny and warm and dry. But it is only just May. The nights are cold. And frosty. All tender plants and seedlings remain in the greenhouse. We close the greenhouse at night. Must not let the weather lull us into a truly false sense of security!!

Allotment plan updated

2011-04-21T09:20:00.006Z

The garden on Sunday morning, quite early

2011-04-20T08:36:00.002Z

The Under Gardener is busy preparing the beds for planting

The blossom is excellent this year

The chooks enjoying the sunshine

We are hopeful of a good fruit harvest later in the year

Apple blossom not quite out

Tulips looking cheerful

From the bathroom window

Looking across the neighbours' gardens to Grassmoor

Looking across gardens and fields to Grassmoor

Some mid-April photos

2011-04-13T13:43:00.000Z

Flower bed, newly dug over. You can even see the flowers!

Our new hellebore

and the beautiful, frilly hellebore that Penny gave us a couple of years back

The twisted witch hazel is growing beautifully

This is the shrubbery, newly dug over and cleared by the Under Gardener

It now has a coenothus, a rosemary, some re-planted daisies and a rather sad, small hydrangea

This is a shrub that we summarily dug up and replanted after the snow. It seems to be thriving in its new bed

The dogwood is happy there too

We are now turning our attention to the patio

I've put some new strawberry plants in pots, and might put some more around the edge of the patio

The Under Gardener digging over the veg beds


ASPARAGUS!!

More asparagus

2011-04-12T18:46:00.000Z

The Under Gardener has been very busy this week. he has been a-dig, dig, digging in the lovely spring sunshine, both on the allotment and at home. He has dug over the shrubbery, thoroughly weeded it and prepared it for re-planting. We have now planted the coenothus and the rosemary, plus we have put in the poor hydrangea which has been struggling along, neglected and unwatered in a huge pot by the front door. The Under Gardener has also pretty much finished weeding the flower beds and is now preparing the vegetable beds for the late spring planting.

Today I planted in modular seed trays: pumpkins, watermelons, sweet melons, zucchini, and red peppers. I planted in flat seed trays white and purple sprouting broccoli and leeks. We have also prepped and planted the carrot boxes, with various hues of carrots. We seem to have no cucumber seeds!! We have decided to wait a bit and buy a couple of seedlings, for laziness' sake. I have still to plant all the various cabbages - only we have run out of potting mix. I also have my seaside daisy seeds to plant, plus extra plantings of beetroot. And there are, of course, the salad boxes to get up together.

But I'm fairly sure I have forgotten something!!!!

In the meantime, the cost per individual egg has now dropped below 50p for the first time (taking all the costs, including set up costs, into account). And the total number of eggs since the chooks started laying is now 930. Which is not bad, for four youngish chickens.

OHHHHHHHH. And the asparagus is coming up. There are five or six stalks nearly ready for picking. And we have been eating PSB this weekend too :-)

A burst of spring activity

2011-04-04T12:22:00.000Z

The Under Gardener has been very busy indeed this last week. The allotment is now all up together and ready for the coming season. He has dug over the "shrubbery" and pretty much dug everything out between the prickly berberis and the not quite so prickly holly. He's cut back everything that's left so we can see what we're doing. He's also made a start on digging over the flower beds. We are determined to get rid of all of those pesky wild strawberries if it kills us!!!

We were in Wilton over the weekend and called into the garden centre. We now have a new coenothus and a new rosemary to replace the ones that the snow took out. They will go in the space in the "shrubbery". We also have a lovely new hellebore to go in the flower bed, next to the existing one. There were two, but one seems to have vanished!

And the blossom is coming out. There is even some on the peach tree, although not yet on the apple or cherry trees. I am feeling good about the fruit for this coming year :-)

Leeks on the allotment

Fruit trees and bushes all settling in

This tree is not in our garden but in the field at the back. The fruit falls into the garden though

The Builder is still making use of the ongoing spring like weather

2011-03-24T12:48:00.000Z

and has been planting and weeding on the allotment. He's cleared out the rhubarb area and planted 4 x rows each of the 2kg bag of aquadulce claudia broad bean seed and the 2kg bag of ambassador pea seed that arrived on Tuesday afternoon. He's also planted the onion sets we found in a canvas bag in one of the drawers in the kitchen dresser. No idea what they are - time will no doubt reveal all!

The Undergardener being busy :-)

2011-03-22T12:21:00.000Z

Lots of things to plant. Best get on while the weather holds

Making steady progress.

Creating a blackcurrant "hedge". Still not raining

Black currant "hedge" in the ground and watered in

Likewise gooseberries and jostaberry

Bloke next door is a strong and silent garden worker. And it's still not raining

A good afternoon's work :-)

The Undergardener has been busy

2011-03-22T12:10:00.001Z

He has been occupying himself this last week with weeding the bed the blueberries are in. Well, when I say weeding - I think probably I really mean digging over again. He's also expanded it so there is room for the two new bushes we bought last weekend. They've now been planted with a liberal application of rhododendron feed. Blueberries and rhodies enjoy their soil on the acidic side and ours, fortunately, is not acidic. We feed the existing bushes with rhododendron feed in the spring and it seemed only reasonable to drop some into the planting hole of the new shrubs. He has also now pulled much of the couch grass out from under the gooseberry bushes. This meant that we have had to sacrifice the strawberries that were also under the gooseberries. But I have decided to buy a couple of ceramic strawberry planters to go on the patio and to restock, so that wasn't a major problem.

I have ordered ten purple and ten green asparagus crowns. They should arrive sometime between now and the end of May. While I was at it, I also ordered 2 kilos each of pea and broad bean seeds. They could arrive at any time!

Up on the allotment, The Undergardener planted out the new blackcurrant bushes and the red and green gooseberry bushes and the jostaberry. The red gooseberry doesn't have a particularly good root system, - we'll have to watch it and nurture it carefully.

We also went to the Dunstan Hall nursery and bought a new Morello cherry tree, thus using up the last of our Wedding garden money. It has, I think, been well spent :-) While we were out, we went to the Chatsworth garden centre. Didn't buy any plants, but did get some seeds (somehow we seem not to have any beetroot or melon seeds, though we do have an enormous quantity of sprouting broccoli seeds!!!) and some gardening gloves.

The weather has been glorious for the last week or so. Sunny and mild days. A couple of mild frosts at night but nothing too worrying. Must stay restrained though. It's only just spring and way too early to be planting out for most things. I have, though, planted tomato seeds in modular trays and put them with the lettuce seeds in the front door "porch" where they seem to be coming on OK. At least, they are starting to germinate.

Today, he has transplanted some extra raspberry canes which were trying to colonise some of the vegetable beds in the kitchen garden to the new raspberry bed on the allotment (thus giving us two raspberry beds, separated by quarter of a kilometre or so) and repaired the glass in the greenhouses which were damaged over the winter. We really are ready to roll for spring now :-)

Speaking of spring, the chickens, who have kept laying fairly well over the winter, are moving back towards a regular 4 eggs a day now that the days are getting longer. The weather has also noticeably warmed up. They are enjoying the warmer weather and the sunshine too, not to mention the more regular appearances of people to play with in the garden

Very Early Spring

2011-03-14T13:49:00.002Z

Not that it felt like it, as we drove through the drizzle and the wind and the clouds to the garden centre at Coal Aston. It was perishing cold as we were wandering around as well. But we had been given some garden centre vouchers when we got married and were getting a bit worried that the time on them might expire (wouldn't - apparently they last for 6 years) or that I might lose them (unlikely, but you never know). And it would be a pity to waste £120 worth of garden vouchers, especially since we want some fruit trees and bushes for the allotment. So we persevered through the weather and came home with: two more blueberry plants for the garden; three blackcurrant plants; one red and one green gooseberry plant; one jostaberry plant (just because we had never heard of them) and one bramley apple tree. There is room for perhaps two more trees in the middle of the fruit plot, and two more bushes to form a gateway. We are pondering what to get. Plus only have £20 of vouchers left so will also need to save up a bit of fruit money.

So here is the plan for the allotment for this coming season:

We also have plans for the garden, but they haven't been finalised yet - except that we have more or less (but not entirely) decided to do the flower garden from scratch, obviously leaving in the bulbs and shrubs, and some of the established plants like the hellebores. I'll update a garden plan when we have finalised it.

I must say, though, that the winter wreaked rather more havoc than I had expected. Even the bay tree, in the greenhouse, has snuffed it :-(

But spring is definitely here. The soil is warming up, the sun has some warmth in it. And while it is too early to get over-excited - I have nonetheless planted some tomato seeds in modular seed boxes and put them in the recess by the front door. I shall do the same with some other seeds over the next few weeks and see how we get on. And shortly I shall order some new asparagus crowns and the pea and broad bean seeds

Mid-January

2011-01-18T08:00:00.002Z

The ice has finally melted on the fish pond, revealing 9 dead frogs which got caught in the ice, and one dead fish. We think that that is all of the frog family. But there are still around 30 to 40 fish swimming around so the fish population is not much depleted. We are hopeful that more frogs will colonise the pond in the spring. Still not sure what we're going to do about cleaning it out and repairing the crack at the back, though.

We have severely pruned the "weeping" apple tree in the orchard in the hope that the upward twigs we have left might encourage the tree to revert to a more standard form. We won't let it set fruit in the next couple of years to encourage this! The rest of our garden clear-up plans have been thwarted by a sudden mild but very damp and windy spell. Fingers crossed for next weekend!

Must give some attention fairly soon to our fruit plans for the allotment. We're off to Australia in just over three weeks and it may be getting a bit late by the time we get back! Although I suppose early spring is OK for planting fruit trees and shrubs.

The chickens continue to lay well. We have had no days with no eggs and are mostly getting 3 or even 4 a day, with the lowest being 2. We had 92 eggs in December, as against 120 in August. The cost per egg as at yesterday was 65p. So not exactly cheap, but plentiful and delicious.

And so begins 2011

2011-01-01T14:59:00.000Z

First the good news. I think the fish are not frozen solid. We went out earlier to find that the ice is slowly melting and there were fish gulping for air around the edges of the pond. And I've just been out to look, and most of them have moved away from the edges. Dead fish generally do not swim around!

There are gadzillions of sparrows in the garden, a whole flock of long tailed tits, goldfinches, a robin, some blue tits and great tits, an occasional visit from a bullfinch and a bird about the size of a sparrow but slightly longer and not as rotund, and paler underneath that I don't recognise but which I think *might* be a linnet. They are enjoying the bird food we put out.

This was an upstanding ceanothus at the beginning of December

And this was an upstanding rosemary bush

It was part of a whole hedge of rosemary bushes ;-(

The twisted witch hazel is still upstanding

as is the dogwood

But these cabbages don't look very well

and the chard is very dead

With luck, these will recover

The chooks are happy though

More winter

2010-12-31T14:40:00.003Z

The poor garden has definitely been beaten up by all that snow.

Shrubs and small trees are squashed, knocked over, flattened.

The pond we think was frozen almost down to the bottom and the fish all seem to be encased in solid ice. I assume they are frozen too. This is a bit sad, but I suppose it means we'll finally be able to empty the pond, fix it and start again.

The cabbages are all battered and looking very sad. The carrots have emerged unscathed - we had some with our dinner last night. The chard are very, very dead.

The chickens are much happier now that the snow has gone, but their garden is extremely muddy. I think this worries me much more than it worries them!!

We haven't made it to the allotment yet. After the snow there was ice. After the ice there was fog. And now it's raining. Maybe tomorrow

Winter

2010-12-06T11:05:00.000Z

We ended November with about 4 inches of snow in the garden. The chickens were definitely not happy about this! They flatly refused to come out of their run and churtled at us disgruntledly as though somehow this were our fault! The carrots were buried under a mound of snow. I managed to get some sprouts from one of the sprout plants but the chard was pretty much buried.

We have begun December with almost two foot of snow in the garden! The Under-Gardener has had to dig out the chicken coop, and excavate a bit of ground around the coop for them to forage in. The sprout plants have disappeared. So too has the fish pond. The birds are making merry with the bird food we put out but are much happier now that the Under-Gardener has dug down almost to grass level in the snow on the little lawn so they're no longer in danger of sinking in. Which one of the chickens did when it tried to fly down the garden, following the Under-Gardener and sank into 24 inches of snow. The under-Gardener, when he had stopped laughing, said all he could see was a little head poking out over the top of the snow! He had to go down and rescue her.

When I went down to feed them yesterday morning, the bolt into the orchard was frozen shut, the door into their run was frozen shut and their water was frozen. This morning I went prepared with a jug of warm water. It was minus 18d down in the garden!!!

Mid-November

2010-11-19T07:48:00.001Z

We've had our first pickings from the sprouts!!! They are small but very tasty. And we're still eating the chard. We're pulling up the plants in the bed that also contained the runner beans. The later plantings are sat in a bed with some cabbages. We'll get onto them when we've finished the first planting. There are carrots that are big enough to eat now. So we're doing well for fresh autumn veg, plus we've still got lots from the spring and summer in the freezer. Now we need to get in and sort out the empty beds - weed and manure them so they can sleep productively over the winter.

The chickens remain hale and happy. The cost per egg has dropped now below 90p! And egg production is holding up quite well. Many days we are still getting 4, although there are more days now when we only get two. The egg bowl is still full though and we are eating lots and lots of eggs.

The weather has warmed up a bit this week - we've had wet, mild weather with a lot of wind. The leaves are nearly off the apple and pear trees so soon it will be time to prune them. And we're still hoping to plant up a supplementary fruit garden on the allotment. I've also decided to dedicate a bed in the veg garden to autumn fruiting raspberries and another one to "perennial" broccoli. We've also decided to put in an extra asparagus bed. We might need to consider buying the field behind us!!

Speaking of fields, Farmer Jayne and Farmer David had decided to give up their sausage, burger,bacon, ham and prepared food business. This came as something of a blow - not because I buy many sausages or bacon from them but because I assumed it meant that they would also be closing their butchery - and I buy virtually all of my pork, lamb and hogget from them. Fortunately, they will keep the butchery open for the time being while they see if they can encourage other food enterprises to use it. I hope this succeeds. I can live without sausages and burgers, but their pork and lamb are delicious!!

The Builder has been occupying himself this week, in between rain bursts and gales, in digging up the garden bed by the back door. We've never really used it for much and it doesn't get much sun. And we've a plan to put a lean to up to keep some of the mud out of the kitchen and to provide a bit of space to keep the shoes and freezers in. So now it's all dug up and the flagstones have been pushed down and are lying in an orderly manner where there used to be soil. And now there are wooden poles up ready to become the frame for the lean to :-)

We must, must, must do something with the flower beds and the "shrubbery". Really - we must!! And I need to sort the greenhouse out quite soon. I think the sage and bay tree would be quite pleased to move into their winter quarters

More frost

2010-10-31T09:44:00.001Z

We've had two or three really hard frosts this last week, which have really done for the squashes, cucumbers and melons. The Under-Gardener has pulled them up.

On the other hand, we actually have sprouts on our sprout plants which are nearly big enough to eat!! We've never had proper sprouts on our sprout plants before, just tiny, poor, pathetic excuses for sprouts. We've eaten the sprout tops but not actually the sprouts. Mind you, the plants have been in for nearly 18 months. And the sprouts aren't yet quite big enough to eat. But they're coming along.

The chard is magnificent. And the carrots in their boxes are coming along well. We've started thinning them out.

Otherwise, there isn't much to report. Winter is hoving into view. We should be prepping the gardens and the allotment for winter - but we aren't! (too cold, is my excuse - snuggled up inside drinking cocoa is what I'm doing)

Frost

2010-10-19T19:11:00.000Z

We had our first proper frost of this autumn last week. This is a bit of a pity, because the courgettes, squashes and cucumbers were just coming into their own - a bit on the late side, I grant you. But it was also a bit early for such a hard frost. The plants are not looking at all happy now! The sprouts and other brassicas, on the other hand, are thriving. The frosty weather has been followed by warm, sunny days, so they are very happy.

The Under-Gardener has now brought in all the beans, including my beans for drying, and all the tomatoes. I *think* the tomatoes might have been hit by a late blight. They're in bags with bananas and should be ripening - instead most of them are turning black at the ends and then rotting. Oh well. We'll try again next year.

The apple trees are now fully harvested (and we have also acquired apples from Richard). The eating apples were delicious; lovely and pink inside and juicy and crisp. The apples on the allotment tree were a bit scabby, but peeled up nicely and have made wonderful cakes, puddings and stewed apple. Richard's apples are also going into puddings and cakes - and into the freezer.

We got back on Saturday afternoon and found one of the black chickens wandering around in the vegetable patch!!! We think she must have flown up onto the roof of the coop and then discovered that she could fly over the fence and out into freedom. Although she didn't seem to appreciate the freedom - she was wandering around by the fence when I found her, and made no complaint when I picked her up and put her back in the orchard. But the Under-Gardener has decided to put up some extra wire along the top of the fence, the better to contain them. We are not worried about them running away as such - but they are better protected from opportunistic foxes if they are in the orchard

The Under-Gardener has dug over the bit of ground by the kitchen wall. Eventually it will be going, to make way for the new porch. It's a bit early yet to cut back the garden around the fish pond. But we are definitely planning to make a start on sorting out the flower garden in the autumn and early winter. I want to get it all dug over, the shrubs and perennials (and bulbs) saved, then everything ready for a proper replanting next spring.

We also seem to have acquired a cat who is after the birds. The Under-Gardener thought he saw Marlo with a dove the other morning. Marlo - who was in the kitchen with me at the time - was a bit surprised to be yelled at from outside. The dove managed to escape. But I keep finding feathers lying around. There is another black cat that I occasionally see in the garden. I assume it's that cat that's after the birds. Not absolutely sure what I can do about it though

Onions

2010-10-04T18:30:00.033Z

The Under-Gardener has been working hard on the allotment and in the vegetable garden. He now has two plots of onions and garlic planted on the allotment and has been weeding and manuring ready for spring. We are also now pretty much ready for planting the new fruit trees and bushes in the winter, on the middle bit of ground on the allotment.

We have harvested the last of the peas - except for the very late sawing we put in. They are growing quiet nicely, but the weather is turning colder and I don't think we'll get a harvest from them. Next year I think we'll just keep planting through to mid-August. On the other hand, the leeks are going great guns and the brussells sprouts that The Under-Gardener shoved in a corner are producing small sprouts! He has also now dug up all the potatoes and sorted through them. We have all four drawers down in the cellar full, and four hessian sacks full up in the cupboard on the landing.

The cabbages and sprouts and other brassicas in the kitchen garden are also doing well. They are beginning to recover from the recent caterpillar attack. The chard is amazing. And we have now pretty much had the last of the runner beans. Not a huge harvest this year, but not bad.

And finally, the courgettes and cucumbers and squashes are beginning to fruit in abundance. We are harvesting them small, to encourage further fruits

And the grapes, though small, and mostly pip, are sweet and tasty. Well, the black ones are. The green ones aren't ready. The chickens love them!!

Speaking of the chickens, they have been doing very well. We are mostly getting four eggs a day and the birds seem happy and settled. We did have a short time when one of the black ones was a little unhappy and was laying soft shelled eggs. But we bought some grit and add that to their food once or twice a week, and that seems to have fixed that. The chickens are now all happy and laying nicely formed eggs.

So far - so good!

The makings of Sunday lunch

A thriving grape vine

and lots of grape bunches

Early autumn

2010-09-08T07:29:00.002Z

You can definitely feel now that it's autumn. It was very misty in the valley when I got up this morning and it's damp and cool when you go outside first thing. And it's dark now when the radio comes on at half past five - though more or less light when I get up at six.

We have pruned the cherry and plum trees. A little late, I know but not too late - they didn't "bleed" when we did it. They're a better shape now - and it's easier to get about the orchard now that the chicken fence is up. The Under-Gardener has staked up the apple and pear trees. They were mostly listing in quite an alarming manner!! I'll prune the apple trees after the leaves have fallen. One of them - the one we brought from the Hangingwater allotment has turned into a weeping apple tree. It's not supposed to be. It may be because of the weight of the fruit. I thought I'd prune it hard to upward facing growth, and then not let it have apples next year. The other eating apple has done really well this year. Lots of shiny red fruit which is a beautiful pink on the inside. Alas - the tree has lost its label and we never noted what variety it is. It's a red and pink apple!!

We are getting a few courgettes and cucumbers - more cucumbers now that we have discovered that the slugs have been eating the baby fruit! We are also getting squash from the allotment greenhouse. And lots of cherry tomatoes and a few large tomatoes. If the weather stays warm during the day, we should get loads more. And that late sowing of peas on the allotment has come up. Fingers crossed for good weather for the next few weeks - or at least no frosts! We are getting a few pickings off the previous lots of peas. They are sweet and tasty.

We still need to sort out the front "porch" and the flower garden. And we must, must do something about the muddy, muddy pond. The Under-Gardener is talking of getting rid of it, but I reckon cleaning it out and patching it up might do the trick. The question is - what do we do with all the goldfish while we're doing that?

Late August

2010-08-31T08:42:00.039Z

I'm not absolutely sure that that pumpkin is a pumpkin. We picked it on Sunday (and VERY heavy it was too). I knew that the skin hadn't hardened enough for storage but we hadn't intended to store it anyway. I am also aware that not all pumpkins are orange - and I had bought a pumpkin seedling with a picture of a blue-green fruit. But when I got it inside and began to cut it up - it looked more squash like to me. And it's roasting well and making nice soup. But I have a suspicion it is probably a marrow gone demented. I'm not really sure what it is. It's a cucurbit of some sort!!!!!!! A lesson to me that I really ought to grow my veg from seed. Garden centres are a bit inclined, sometimes, not to be quite as accurate as you might wish with their labelling.

The other plants are doing quite well. The weather has changed this last week to a more autumnal feel. But at the same time, the days are warmer than they were for most of August and there is a lot more sunshine. So finally things are starting to flourish. We are getting zucchinis of various sorts and the cucumbers are starting to come along nicely. We are getting squashes from the plant in the allotment greenhouse, although not yet from the plant in the garden, happy though it seems. But if the weather holds and we don't get any early frosts - there is still time. We are getting lots of tomatoes, lots of chard, a reasonable number of runner beans, and are about to pull the last cabbage from those poor plants that we put out last year and which got battered nearly to death by all that snow over the winter. They took a long time to recover, but have been well-worth waiting for.

The Builder has now dug the allotment bed which has had a mountain of manure on it for the last year. And he has been weeding everywhere.

There are SIX plums on the plum tree. We thought there was only one. They are very nearly ready to eat. So too are the apples. There are quite a lot of apples this year - although I am planning to prune the trees quite hard this year so we may not get many next year. And I must, must, must prune the cherry trees. It's nearly too late for this year.

By way of an experiment, we have just sown a packet of early peas behind the leeks. The Organic Gardening website says that if the weather holds fair to the end of autumn, there might be a final picking. But I must remember next year just to keep sowing into August. I stopped this year for some reason

The chooks seem to be quite happy. We get four eggs on most days. One of the black hens (Schnitzel, I think) tried hard to go broody yesterday, but I think we have dissuaded her. Ruthlessly picking her up and moving ehr out of the nest box while offering tasty tidbits seems to have convinced her of the error of her ways.

More photos here

Mid-August

2010-08-17T12:04:00.000Z

The Under-Gardener (or in this case, more properly, the sous-chef!) has now peeled all the onions and I have sorted them and prepped them for the freezer. He has also now dug all the potatoes except for the fancy blue and black ones which are still flowering. We have done spectacularly well for potatoes this year. The four drawers in the cellar are full and we now also have four hessian sacks full in the upstairs cupboard on the landing (the only place we could think of which is dark, cool and not damp!). There are three or so buckets of spoiled or wormy or very small potatoes. We are processing those for the freezer or for the chooks.

The sweetcorn on the allotment has had a very hard year. It germinated very slowly and very, very patchily. Some of it is just starting to germinate now! The leeks behind them, however, seem to be entirely happy and are growing slowly but cheerily.

We have LOTS of tomatoes coming along in the greenhouse. I was looking at them yesterday and wondering what I could do with a greenhouse full of green tomatoes. Then rememebred that it is only mid-August and they have lots and lots of time to turn red!! We also have some very tiny capsicums nearly ready to eat. And that strange cucurbit is a patty pan squash. We found two huge (well, comparatively speaking) squashes hidden behind the leaves. Much, much bigger than you're supposed to harvest them.

The late peas also seem happy. The allotment is doing well this year.

And so is the kitchen garden. You can almost watch that pumpkin growing - although there has only been one that has successfully set. Still, that one should be more than enough. The cucumber is nearly big enough to eat and there are lots more coming along behind it. The zucchinis had *finally* started to fruit, although the watermeklon plants have yet to achieve a single flower. The runner beans are growing. The drying beans look amazing and the chard is delicious.

Now we really must turn our attention to the flower beds and the front porch. And we need to sort out the patio. I seem to have guests expected for lunch this coming Sunday.

We sat out on the patio last evening for a couple of hours, in the evening sunshine. It was all very lovely

You'll find the most recent photos here - although not the chard and the drying beans which I forgot about

We were busy in the garden this weekend

2010-08-02T14:47:00.000Z

We had quite a pleasant weekend, weather-wise. Just one very heavy shower that seemed to centre over Tupton. It didn't reach up into Grassmoor, which is under a mile away and which was bone dry when we passed through shortly after the shower! I realise that it's been drizzling on and off for the past fortnight or so - but we still haven't had a great deal of rain. The ground is still quite dry and the water butts are not as full as we might have expected them to be.

We have weeded the beds with the cucurbits. The pumpkin has a small pumpkin growing, and there are a few more female flowers. There are also a good number of bees, butterflies and hoverflies so I am hopeful the fruits will be pollinated. There are a few minute cucumbers on the cucumber plant - although the first one got eaten away by something. I have put a couple of bamboo canes around it and am encouraging it to climb up some string. I've also done this to the squash in the other corner. Although it doesn't seem to be flowering at all! We've mulched the bed with lawn clippings.

We ran out of lawn clippings and dipped into the chooks' straw. Then we remembered the mound of grass clippings from last year, tucked in the corner of the orchard but buried under all the weeds, rubbish, nettles and wotnots that grow over there. This year the hens have been keeping it down and we can actually reach the mound. The Under-Gardener went with the wheelbarrow to get some. And we found that under the surface we have lots of lovely humus, which we will put on top of the compost heap in due course.

Chooky Sunday Smorgasbord

In the meantime, the chickens thought we had opened up a smorgasbord just for them and had a wonderful afternoon scratching about where the grass mound had been, plucking out grubs and caterpillars and slugs and insects and baby bees and all sorts of things. The Under Gardener also gave them some of the now ripening ears of corn and wheat that have been growing uninvited in the flower beds. They thought they were wonderful too. They did not get their usual early evening Blue Bowl of Supper Snacks yesterday afternoon!!!!!

We had an early picking of (small!) runner beans. The chard is beginning to grow well. And the cabbages and other brassicas that we planted where the peas and broad beans had been are starting to settle in nicely. The grapevine is going great guns

I really think we might even get some Brussels sprouts from the plants that have been in since last autumn, probably in time for Christmas!!!

I have cleared around the red rose by the pond. We can now see it - and I have dead-headed it (at long last!). I was quite startled to find an ENORMOUS caterpillar while I was in there. For a brief moment I thought it was a lizard!


I believe it is the caterpillar of the Elephant Hawk moth.

Up on the allotment, the potatoes are going great guns and the tomatoes and pepper plant in the greenhouse are doing really well. On the other hand, the onions did not enjoy the very dry spring and early summer and have not flourished. The under Gardener has been pulling them and putting them into sacks. But I think it will be better if we prep them and put them in the freezer. They don't look to me as though they will keep over the winter. Oh - and that cucurbit that appeared uninvited by the pepper plant looks very much as though it might be a patty pan squash. It only has one fruit on so far and is growing extremely vigorously. I am hopeful that we might get a few more fruits.

We are preparing the middle bit of the allotment to be divided off from all the vegetable plots. Then we will plant fruit trees and bushes in the larger sub-division and use the smaller sub-division as a utility area and put a little shed there, and a proper compost heap. At the moment the remains of the dung heap are there. The bed where the dung heap was is going to be dug over, probably in the autumn.

We've sorted out the salad boxes, de-slugged and snailed them, planted up new ones and moved them all to the house side of the driveway.

Now we just need to sort out the front porch-without-a-roof and the flower garden and we'll be getting somewhere!

The Builder has been a-buildering

2010-07-20T19:56:00.001Z

We've had the chickens out wandering around loose in the garden since the weekend, but only when there is someone at home and preferably out in the garden. We've had the back gate shut and put the recycling boxes in front of it to stop inquisitive chickens squeezing through the holes in the ironwork, but there's nothing to stop visitors or delivery people pushing the boxes aside and then not putting them back again and we don't want the chicken ambling off into the big, wide, cruel world.

So when there hasn't been anyone around to act as a casual supervisor, they've been contained in their run, which is a reasonable size for four chickens but doesn't offer anything like the excitements to be found in the garden. So we've bought fence posts and mesh and all sorts of stuff and The Builder has been putting up a fence down the side of the orchard. He has worked like a thing possessed in the hope that he would get it finished by the time we head off for a long weekend in Edinburgh.

And he has. The chooks now have a super-di-doopery run which covers the whole of the orchard. We'll still let them out into the rest of the garden when we are about - once I work out how to deflect their attention from my rainbow chard/silverbeet which they discovered yesterday. It's as fox proof as we can get it, reasonably visitor-proof and full of interesting things for the chooks to investigate. Parsley is now engaged in working out how to escape Beyond the Fence!!

If you should happen to need an 8 foot fence post, may I suggest that you go to Arnold Lavers to acquire it and definitely not to B&Q? We bought 12 posts from Lavers at £4.75 each. The Builder decided that we needed another one and dropped in to B&Q to pick one up, simply because he happened to be passing. He dropped out again very quickly when he saw the £10+ price tag for one post!!!

We now have three chickens laying (Coriander has yet to oblige). And I am happy to report that the cost per egg has now dropped below the £10 mark!!!!!!! But the total outgoings does include all the set up costs, including the price of the chooks themselves. Once everything is set up properly the outgoings should become quite minimal.

I was up on the allotment on Monday evening to water the greenhouse. We have a lovely crop of tomatoes coming and even a few small peppers (assuming the ants don't chew their way around the stalk so the peppers fall off. Again!). We also have a cucurbit of some sort growing uninvited next to the pepper plant. We have no idea what it is (other than being a cucurbit!). But it is starting to set fruit so all may shortly be revealed :-)

The onions are not happy. Not happy at all. I think they are all going to have to go into the freezer this year and there certainly won't be enough to last the winter. On the other hand, the potatoes and peas seem to be quite happy. We aren't digging the potatoes yet but I might have a look next week and see what's what.

The Under-Gardener has now stripped most of the peas and broad beans in the garden and we are starting to plant brassicas where they were. There are runner beans starting to appear and the chard (where the chickens have not stripped it) is getting close to ready. And we have had some lovely little cabbages. We are positively over-run with raspberries. The chickens don't seem to like raspberries, which is a bit odd because they are quite willing to go to war for the gooseberries that got left on the bushes when The Under-Gardener picked them all a week or so back.

The freezer is beginning to fill up!

It's raining!!

2010-07-12T20:06:00.000Z

Nice, gentle, sustained rain. You can hear the garden purring!!!!!!! And the weather pundits say that we may get more rain through the course of the week.

Excellent :-)

Fortunately, it held off until after the weekend. The Under-gardener has now rescued most of the paths in the flower garden - which were over-grown with wild strawberries, weeds and flowers. There's just one more path to excavate, although that is mostly covered with exuberant lavender and rosemary bushes. I really must trim them back, once they've finished flowering. There's also quite a handsome crop of wheat and oats, which we were going to pull up. Then it occurred to us that they're getting very close to ripe, and the chooks might rather enjoy them in a few weeks time. We'll pull them up then!

We have an abundant harvest of gooseberries, not a bad crop of morello cherries, about 10 sweet cherries and a small box of blackcurrants. The apples appear to have stopped dropping for the moment. Even so, there's only one bramley.

The Under-gardener has been bemoaning the fact that we never get any pears and that the apple crops are a bit hit and miss. Then I read somewhere that, given even a modicum of luck, an apple or pear tree can live for upward of 250 years. In which case, our 5 year old trees are mere babies and shouldn't be expected to fruit abundantly just yet. You need patience to be a hard fruit grower, it seems (that's a grower of hard fruits, not a grower with chain mail and knuckle dusters!!).

Our peas and broad beans are delicious. And doing very well.

Now we just need a drop more rain. And a fence around the orchard so the chooks can range free unsupervised. Although we must remember to go and sit with them still in the evenings. We want them to stay friendly. Kiev was sat on my knee the other evening :-)

(We can't let them amble about in an unfettered sort of a way. It wouldn't take long for the fox to have them. Or they would quite quickly find a way to escape - and vanish. Wouldn't take them long to find the gate out onto the road!!)

July update

2010-07-05T09:20:00.031Z

It has been very, very dry so far this summer and the garden and the allotment are suffering a bit, despite The Under-gardener doing his best with the watering bucket. The potatoes and onions on the allotment are really struggling, and virtually none of the sweet corn germinated. The July apple drop has been more than usual. Lots of tiny apples lying around on the ground.

The salad boxes which I've put in the driveway are doing rather well, though. Of course, they're much easier to keep watered. But we've got three boxes of various salad leaves, one of parsley, one of pea shoots and another with tiny beetroot in them. Our lunchtime salads are quite delicious. I've stopped growing mustard and cress and broccoli shoots in the window for the time being.

The flower garden remains horribly over grown ;-(

Those of you who have known me for a very long time may remember that when we lived in Beaufort I came home from a church fete one year with a goat kid. I named her Aphrodite - but found that every time I opened my mouth to talk to her, I actually called her Ariadne. In the end, I decided that the goat really wanted to be called Ariadne and gave in. Ariadne she was. The same happened with the chicken formerly known as Marjoram. Every time I went to speak about her or to talk to her - out came Coriander. I gave in quite quickly this time. I obviously had her name wrong. Coriander it is. So we have Parsley, the brown chicken with the white coloured bum; Coriander, the brown chicken with the brown bum, Schnitzel the black chicken with the lower beak longer than the upper, and Kiev, the black chook with the two beaks evenly lengthed. They've settled in quite well and now let me pick them up (Parsley doesn't yet) and stroke them. And Schnitzel and Kiev are laying. We mostly get two eggs a day.

The Under-gardener has done an amazing job up on the allotment. He's been digging and digging and digging. The whole of the bottom bit, which was ploughed in the spring, has now been dug over by hand. It's ready now for fruit trees and bushes to be planted in the designated "fruit" area in the autumn.

Chooks. And Fruit

2010-06-23T07:50:00.000Z

The chickens have arrived!

We drove up to somewhere in the countryside, outside of Barnsley last evening and collected them. Two Lohmans and two Black Rocks. They seemed quite happy when we let them out into their run when we got back. The cat was less happy. He hasn't seen chickens before as far as I am aware, wasn't sure entirely what they were and wasn't hugely delighted to find them in his back garden!

We'll keep them confined to the run until they've got used to us, then let them out when there's someone around to keep and eye on them. They are so far showing no huge interest in the outside world (other than wondering what the noise is when the passenger trains hurtle past on the railway line!).

I was going to call the Lohmans Sage and Onion (so encouraging them to lay eggs in order to avert being filled with the aforementioned sage and onion!!) but then I realised that this might well cause confusion should we happen to be referring to my niece who is also called Sage (There was a notable time when Roger at work dolefully announced the death of George and was a bit surprised by the reaction of the people around him. We thought he meant our colleague George who happened to be off sick at the time. In fact, he meant his son's hamster!!!!!) So I have abandoned that idea and called them Marjoram and Parsley.

The Black Rocks are called Kiev and Schnitzel :-)

You may remember that I said that the fruit trees weren't doing very well this year. It's true. They're not. But here are some sights to make us happy.

And I noticed yesterday evening that the strawberries are nearly ready to pick. No chickens out loose until after the strawberry season is over!

Solstice report

2010-06-21T11:57:00.000Z

We are not going to do very well for fruit this year, I fear. We had lots of blossom, but the high winds earlier in June have blown off all the baby fruits. I think we will do all right for apples and maybe the morello cherries, but there's not much left on the other trees. A small number of sweet cherries, one plum that I can see, no pears or peaches. And not many black currants for some reason, although the red and white currants are looking quite well-endowed. And we should be fine for raspberries and even gooseberries. The blueberry plants got busried under a wilderness of grass. I've cut the grass back and we dug some rhododendron feed in around them - blueberries like quite acidic soil. So no fruit this year, but I am hopeful of next (assuming I remember to feed them again in the autumn and spring.

We were beginning to despair of the cabbages and cauliflowers. They were doing absolutely nothing at all. The cabbages showed a slight tendency to heart, but nothing very exciting. So we began eating them anyway. The leaves were nice and tasty, just not very prolific. But now - the cauliflowers are finally flowering and we are getting very tasty small caulis from them. And the cabbages are finally, finally hearting properly. They're still on the small side but I don't think they're going to get much bigger. Well, they're definitely not going to get much bigger because we're eating them!!!!

We are doing extremely well for carrots.

And I have taken to growing the saladings in the wooden boxes The Builder made for me a couple of years back. They're in the driveway along the house wall and the wall dividing us from next door. We've also inherited the wooden boxes The Builder made for Barb. She has no further use for them. I am using them to grow pea shoots and pak choi and basil and lettuces. I've got tumbling tomatoes in the hanging baskets by the back door. It's so much easier to keep them watered and safe from slugs and snails in the boxes. And so much easier to harvest them in the mornings when I'm doing the lunches.

Kudos to Tozer seeds, by the way. I ordered 500g of pea seeds at lunch time on Friday. They arrived in the Saturday morning post. And were accompanied by a complimentary packet of purple basil seeds. I was deeply impressed. The Builder is going to plant the peas up on the allotment this afternoon. I shall press him to make me another wooden box to plant the basil seeds in!!

You remember the poor orange tree, frozen to death in the greenhouse over the winter? I went to pull it up this weekend so I could prepare the ground for a replacement. Seems it's not dead after all. It's shooting again from just above the graft. A dilemma. Will be years before it grows properly again. But it seems a bit harsh to rip out a plant that is doing its damnedest to survive!

I have a problem taking the solstice photos this year. We've replaced the window with one that doesn't open outwards! I am going to have to be more inventive when I get home this evening

June

2010-06-10T11:42:00.000Z

We are not having much luck with the cucumbers!

The first plant simply turned up its toes and died on us. We couldn't see what was wrong - until I pulled it up to replace it. It had no root system at all!!

The second and third plants were doing quite nicely. Until we had an extremely windy afternoon and evening and one of the plants got snapped right off. So now we have one cucumber plant, one pumpkin and one butternut squash in the first bed. I also have some watermelon, zucchini and more squash seedlings in the greenhouse.

Although - it has been getting quite hot in the greenhouse and we can't keep the seedling watered. So I've moved them up into the propagating tents. The plastic has weathered on them so they are sheltered from the wind on the sides, but the tops are now open to the elements. But they seem to be doing all right. I must getting around to potting them on, though.

The flower garden is very pretty at the moment, but it is in a sad state of disarray. It desperately, desperately needs weeding, and all the paths have disappeared. I just don't seem to have the time or the inclination to do anything about it. The orchard and vegetable gardens are looking ok, though, although the raspberry, gooseberry and currant beds could do with weeding too.

In the meantime, the Under-gardener has been industriously digging on the allotment. He's doing a fine job indeed.

You will find pictures here

Mid-May

2010-05-17T13:22:00.001Z

We've cleared out the fish pond of most of the water mint and water forget me nots - which were threatening to take over the entire pond, leaving no room at all for fish or frogs or anything else. We now have a rather pretty clump of plants in one corner, many traumatised fish and extremely murky water. Really must work out how you clear out a fish pond when there are more than 25 fish in it!

I've started trimming around the fruit trees, where the grass is a couple of feet high. Looks much better where I've trimmed.

We are getting ready to dig up the brassicas, so we can plant melons and pumpkins and courgettes - I've just planted more courgette seeds, and so far we have one watermelon plant and one squash plant coming on, but I planted new seeds last weekend.

The weather is warming up and it is VERY tempting to start planting things out. But it's still too early. We had a few quite hard frosts last week and it would be sad if all the plants were to die!

But so far, so good. Making steady progress. And The Under Gardener continues to dig :-)

The allotment 17th May 2010

2010-05-17T13:16:00.000Z

Early May

2010-05-12T09:56:00.002Z

We got back from Australia to find that things were not entirely happy in the greenhouse in the garden. Our house sitters had been watering, but many of the tiny seedlings had been eaten by slugs and snails. So I have started again. I have now sown: tumbling tomatoes and cherry tomatoes; cabbages of various sorts; those bright green broccoli plants x two trays; purple and white sprouting broccoli; rainbow chard (or silverbeet depending on whether you are in England or Australia); more pumpkins and watermelons; runner beans; more carrot seeds in the carrot boxes to plug the gaps; peppers (capsicums). Plus we have bought two tomato seedlings, one pumpkin and one squash.

It is TOO EARLY to plant anything out. We got back to a couple of light frosts which burned the emerging potato seedlings on the allotment. The Under Gardener has earthed them up vigorously. One of the other allotment holders had planted his runner beans seedlings outside. They're dead now!

We are planning a fruit area on the allotment up near the greenhouses. I am hopeful that the weather will be ok this coming weekend for me to make a start on it. In the meantime, The Under Gardener is continuing to dig potato beds (we have some micro potatoes more or less ready to go in, and have bought some maincrop seed potatoes from the garden centre - seriously reduced; apparently they think it is getting late for planting potatoes!

We have had our very first ever crop of asparagus from our asparagus bed. A whole three spears. There are three or four more on the way. I think it will be a long time before we are self-sufficient in asparagus!!! The ones we planted in the autumn two years ago have never produced anything. The Under Gardener dug them up last week and found they had rotted in the middle. We shall have to start again with that end of the bed.

The brassicas we planted last season really did not enjoy being buried in the snow not once, not twice, not even three times but FOUR last winter. They haven't hearted/flowered/produced and are going to seed. The one exception is the sprouting broccoli which has done very well but which is now finished. It needed picking rather more often than it has been over the past 6 or 7 weeks for it to keep producing.

We are also planning a rescue of the flower beds which have been taken over by wild strawberries and dandelions. When there is time!!

Ooooooo - and we've ordered our chicken coop. We're expecting it in about three or four weeks :-) The Builder is going to make a run for the chickens, and clear out the nettly wasteland at the bottom of the garden, then we'll be ready to fly. Or not. Don't actually want the chooks to fly away

We have just used the last of last season's apples from the freezer, and the first of this year's rhubarb crop.

April

2010-04-09T14:57:00.001Z

The Under Gardener has planted another bed of onions on the allotment and two beds of potatoes. He's also planted out some Brussels sprout plants that Colin gave him. He intends to continue the digging when he gets back in May. I think the weeds are beginning to fight back!

I intend to plant up two more beds of peas and broad beans in the kitchen garden before we go tomorrow. I meant to buy more seeds but haven't. There will probably be time to get more pea seeds, but maybe not broad beans. Oh well. Next year!

The Under Gardener has also decided that it will be easier to dig over the flower beds when we get back rather than trying to weed them. Those pesky alpine strawberries seem to have taken over the entire garden!! We also need to sort out the shrubby border. And most definitely the soft fruit beds. Something for us to look forward to on our return :-)

Everything that the pigeons might have a fancy for has now been netted. Now we just have to hope that the slugs don't find our tasty delicacies before we return to engage in combat.

I am not entirely convinced that April is a good time to go away for three weeks. And I seem to recall having said this before. We ought to plan our long haul trips for January or February (although Japan may not be entirely enticing in the middle of winter!!)

Fingers crossed for three weeks of gentle rains, gentle breezes and warm but not hot sunshine in Tupton

First harvest for 2010

2010-03-30T06:41:00.000Z

And very tasty it was too :-)

The allotment

2010-03-27T07:25:00.000Z

A little while back, the Under Gardener was up on the allotment where there was also a man with a small plough. Not very much money changed hands, and the Under Gardener had arranged for the man to brush-cut, plough and rotavate the bottom half of the allotment. We've only ever cultivated one bed at the bottom, right down the back near the jungle. The rest has been untouched for years.

A few days later, the man returned, and within the space of an hour or so, the bottom part of the allotment looked like a well-tended small field. Even the jungle had been chopped down - though not cultivated. A project for another year, I think.

So now the Under Gardener is digging and manuring, and creating proper garden beds ready for planting later in the spring. The visit to Australia in April will be lots of fun - but I do now understand Margaret and Jack's agitation that they should return to the UK form their December/January visits to Melbourne in time to get the seeds planted! But I think I might set some seeds going before we leave and hope that the cat sitters remember to water them.

In the meantime, the Under Gardener has planted a bed full of onions and shallots. I think we might get more onion sets and plant up a second bed. The beds on the allotment are considerably bigger than the ones in the kitchen garden - but you can't have too many onions. We have already run out of last season's. I wonder if it would be excessive to buy a third freezer just for onions?

Beginning the 2010 planting

2010-03-15T12:58:00.001Z

2010 is underway

2010-03-15T07:40:00.000Z

I emerged this weekend, blinking, into the sunlit blandishments of the promise that spring might finally be on its way. The crocuses are just coming up. The primroses are just starting to flower. The honeysuckle has leaves sprouting. And after the longest, coldest, snowiest winter for over 30 years, the ice and snow appear to have been banished. Although not yet the frost!

It wasn't a good winter not to insulate the greenhouse with bubblewrap! The Builder was on his way down to do it in October when I made the comment that it was perhaps still a bit warm and that it might be better to wait a couple of weeks. Hmmmm. Bad plan! The temperature plummeted, the frost had its merry way, followed not long after by snow. It was months before we really had a chance to get back down to the greenhouse at the back of the garden. I still haven't made it to the allotment! The allotment greenhouses aren't such a concern - there was nothing in them that was overwintering. There was quite a bit overwintering in the garden greenhouse. Not all of it looks particularly well! The garden money we got for our wedding may have to go towards some replacement plants.

Some of the garden money has now gone on a new garden clock, a replacement blackcurrant bush (for one that for reasons best known to itself turned up its toes last summer), a new hellebore (I buy one or two each year to put in the bed with the twisted witch hazel) and some seed compost.

The Builder (who, I suppose, should now be redesignated as The Under-Gardener) has been digging up on the allotment and there are beds almost ready to receive the onions. Shortly there will be beds ready for the potatoes. And I am hopeful that we might get some fruit trees to put on the middle bit by the greenhouses - although we may wait for that until May when we return from our travels.

In the meantime, in the kitchen garden the sprouting broccoli is just starting to show some sprouting bits. The cabbages are beginning to heart. The sprouts and caulis disapproved very strongly of being covered in snow for all those weeks and have given up. And the pigeons are making merry with one bed of cabbages and broccoli.

I have put 500g each of early onward pea and aquadulce claudia broad bean seeds in the two beds by the greenhouse. I've sown some sweet pea, radish, cucumber and coriander seeds. We've filled a box with potting mix and planted carrot seeds.

There are two boxes of baby carrots growing in the greenhouse. Once the weather warms up a bit more, we might move them outside.

The new carrot box we filled with compost we attempted to grow Christmas potatoes in last autumn. the potatoes failed dismally. Only one tuber produced haulms, and that was killed by the hard frosts we had in November. There were no potatoes in evidence when we had a dig around in the potato bins in December. You can imagine our surprise, then , when we found these in the bottom of the bins when we were emptying them out!!

The blog re-started

2009-10-23T08:31:00.000Z

Goodness but it's been a funny year. Our attention has not been directed as thoroughly to the gardens and the allotment as it usually is. We've been busy this year with other things.

And the weather was a bit funny. A warm spring and early summer, followed by three weeks of cool, wet weather in July, followed by an unusually dry August, September and October - around us at least. Other people are complaining of a wet summer, but we certainly didn't have one after the end of July.

However, despite a benign inattention, the broad beans, peas and runner beans have been a roaring success. The onions have been wonderful. We had an amazing crop of potatoes - which we dug up earlier than usual because there was blight threatening. But we got them before the blight did. We grew carrots in boxes up on one of the picnic tables, to avoid the attentions of the carrot fly. They were delicious. And our salad leaves were lovely, until we went away in August and they died of dehydration. I did put more seeds in, but a bit late.

The sweet corn also went in late, and is now oh-so, oh-so nearly to pick. We've been lucky so far that there has only been one frost, and that a very mild one. If our luck holds another week or two, we should get quite a bit of corn as well. If it doesn't, we'll harvest anyway and I'll make broth with the immature fruits.

We did fairly well with the winter beans. I now have a jar full of dried mixed beans, including tiny soya beans from the one plant which eventually grew.

But quite what happened to the curcurbits is a mystery. We got one cucumber, two small squash, one pumpkin, no courgettes from mean and spindly plants which were simply never happy. The Builder thinks it was because we hadn't manured the plot they were in. I'm not so sure. A lack of food wouldn't mean that the plants simply didn't grow at all. And I did feed them. I gave them lots of seaweed meal. Other people also report a lack of success with courgettes and pumpkins this year, just not quite so specatcular a lack! Must just have been one of those years.

We did extremely well for fruit, apart from cherries, which were OK but not as prolific as last year. But the gooseberries more than made up for it.

Earlier in the year we were at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, where I observed their 6 year rotation cycle with interest. I've been investigating it since and it looks quite useful. The only problem is that we grow almost three times as many legumes as anything else so I couldn't quite see how I could work it. So I thought I might try two three year cycles, rotating the cycles as well as the beds, if you see what I mean.

So it would go like this

We've made a start. The Builder has manured where the courgettes etc are to go. And he is intending to start digging the potato beds on the allotment and manure those as he goes so they are ready for potatoes in May. The winter brassicas have gone in where the potatoes were this year, leaving one bed fallow, which he has covered with garden compost.

I don't know that this scheme will exactly fit what we actually grow and the quantities we grow them in. But we'll give it a go and see what happens.

Winter brassicas (so far not eaten by catterpillars, beacuse The Builder removes them on a daily basis!!):

September report

2009-09-13T13:27:00.000Z

2009-07-16T09:39:00.001Z

End of June report

2009-06-30T10:49:00.001Z

We've been up to the allotment and planted four rows of Canoe peas. There are enough left for another four rows, though they will have to go on the edge of the sweet corn bed.

The sweet corn is poking through.

My one soya plant, the two cape gooseberries, two pepper and 6 tomato plants are all doing well in the greenhouse.

There are nearly, nearly, nearly peas ready to eat.

The kidney beans and sweet potatoes were all looking a bit despondent. It has been beautifully hot and dry lately - but perhaps a bit too hot and dry for quite young plants. We bucketed loads of water on them and fed them some seaweed meal.

Back in the kitchen garden, I've planted seeds of a variety of different brassicas and some (late!) cornflowers. The raspberries and strawberries are ripening with enthusiasm. I'm not unhappy at all about having a raspberry glut. But I'm not sure quite what to do with a huge strawberry glut. They don't freeze well and I dopn't much care for strawberry flavoured things (though I like strawberries themselves). The Builder can't eat them and there are only so many strawberries one person can eat in a day! We are also munching on carrots from the first carrot box which I rather oversowed. I have undersowed the second one and they are coming along nicely. The beetroot (also in a box this year) is also coming along well. We have started pulling the autumn sown onions. The potatoes are coming on splendidly.

It might have been a good year for raspberries and strawberries but it hasn't been a particularly good one for cherries. Lots of cherries set, but they have nearly all fallen off or shrivelled. The few that we have had are lovely. Perhaps there will be more next year. The apple trees all still have quite a bit of fruit on them.

The Builder has pulled nearly all of the wheat and oats from the flower bed. But it is all still very dishevelled. I am hoping for some fine weather this weekend to get in and start clearing it up. It has to be said, though, that the flowers are all looking very cheerful and very colourful.

We harvested the red currants last week and got 500g. Not bad for two small bushes. I made 1.5 jars of jelly with them. Not sure what I'm going to do with the white currants though!

2009-06-15T08:08:00.003Z

We had quite a productive weekend, garden-wise. The Builder went up to the allotment on Saturday and slashed down the above-waist high grass, nettles, docks and other stuff. We can see where we're going now!

He has also finished digging over the bed at the very bottom of the allotment. I have planted 8 rows of sweet corn seeds down there. I also planted another 4 rows of Hurst Greenshaft peas. There's room for four more rows of peas on that bed - but I have 500g of pea seeds left. I think I may need to plant the rest of them in what's left of the sweet corn bed. The sweet potato slips are in the bean bed. Everything is looking quite cheery except for one of the melon plants which is struggling a bit.

The Builder has made a start on digging the next bed. But it is heavy going and he had to stop because his back was beginning to complain. So we went home and he started clearing out the bed which has cabbages in it. His back really objected to that. He had to stop altogether and sit in the sunshine and drink medicinal beer.

I have made a start clearing the wheat and barley and stuff out of the flower bed, and began cutting back the intractable grass which is covering the strawberries. There is a great deal more clearing to be done, though. I figure half an hour each evening (when it is not raining) should do it.

The red currants are oh-so, oh-so nearly ready. A pot or two of red currant jelly is in the offing.

And we discovered that there is an elder tree at the bottom of our allotment. With loads and loads of flowers. The Builder harvested about half of them - which are now in a plastic box with all the stuff necessary to turn them into a sparkling elderflower drink for next summer. The other half we'll leave for making elderberry cordial later - or maybe even elderberry wine. So no need to sneak down the lane to the sewage farm at the crack of dawn and nick their elderflowers!

Since it wasn't raining on Tuesday evening

2009-06-10T07:42:00.004Z

... we went up to the allotment. I planted some extra tomato seedlings and two tiny capsicum seedlings in the greenhouse. The direct sown tomato plants are doing quite well. Also, the cape gooseberries in the other greenhouse are ticking along nicely and ONE soya seed has come up!

I very thickly sowed two rows of soya seeds, which had been soaking in a beer glass for two days, down from where the kidney beans are. This is their absolutely last chance before I reluctantly give up on soya beans!

In the meantime, The Builder was constructing a trellis for me, made from bamboo canes, on the next bed down. Along this trellis I have planted two cucumber plants (one with a tiny cucumber already forming!), five pumpkin plants, two melon plants and one zucchini plant. If the rest of the zucchini seeds and the watermelon seeds come to anything, I shall plant them on the alternate posts, which have been left empty. This will make for a very crowded cucurbit bed, but I'm sure they'll sort it out.

And I think I have worked out why our brassicas haven't been doing very well for the last couple of years. I was watching a DVD on growing vegetables from Heligan. The gardener there (surrounded, it must be said, by MAGNIFICENT cabbages and kale and broccoli and sprouts) was saying that they should be grown in small pots, then planted as you were lifting the potatoes later in the summer, into ground which has been trodden down hard (I knew about the hard ground bit) because the potatoes have used most of the nitrogen which had been fixed by the legumes previously, leaving just enough to keep the brassicas growing. Too much nitrogen and fertiliser - and you get blowsy, leafy, useless plants which don't flower, fruit or heart. And where have I been planted my brassicas? Between the rows of peas and beans to keep the pigeons off them. It has worked from the point of view of keeping the pigeons off - but has most certainly led to blowsy, leafy, useless plants which haven't flowered, fruited or hearted! I can do brassicas in pots until the potato beds are ready!! I shall get to it this weekend.

We had our first serve of potatoes from the garden yesterday. They were some of the Salad Blue potatoes we planted in the potato bins. They are almost black - and an iridescent, speckly purple inside. I'm not sure quite how to cook them, though. They are a floury potato which I suspect will disintegrate when boiled (although they are apparently extremely good mashed - not sure how you get them to get soft enough to mash!) I roasted them and they were extremely delicious. Although they did go a little way to support Paul's largely discredited theory that humans find it instinctively difficult to eat "blue" food. They did look a little as though they had gone off or were poisonous

Here are my bean plants. And the Under-gardener:

Early June

2009-06-09T08:54:00.002Z

We have had some lovely, lovely weather lately although it was also extremely dry. I was beginning to despair of the broad beans ever germinating! Then the weather changed late last week and it turned cold and wet and windy.

Naturally - it did this two or three days after I had planted the kidney, zebra and rattlesnake beans out on the allotment! We didn't have a frost but it was a near run thing. Fortunately, they seem to have survived unscathed. But I put back my plans to plant out the cucurbits. Alas - they are still in the propagating tent. It's been too wet and cold to plant them out. But they're going to have to go in soon. They're beginning to look a bit cramped in the tent. Only one of the courgettes has really flourished. So I've planted one each of the six varieties I have seeds for. This is rather more courgette plants than I really need. But we can have lots of very tiny courgettes - if they all survive. I've also planted some watermelon seeds. Two of them have germinated. I've never grown watermelons before!

The garden is looking still quite dishevelled. It's been a good growing year so all the weeds and seeds from the bird table are doing just as well as the plants. I really must get out and clear it all up. I have flower plants to plant out! Mind you - the wildflowers along the brick path are looking extraordinarily cheerful.

Last year I bought at vast expense some sweet potato slips, only half of which survived and none of which did well. This year I planted a tuber I bought at the supermarket in a pot. Eventually it pushed up leaf stems. Last weekend I pulled some of the stems and found they had nice, well-established root systems (unlike last year's slips). I put half in pots with potting compost and half in a jar of water. They all look remarkably happy. I shall plant them all out on the allotment this weekend and see how they fare. I am hopeful that this year, if we have even a half decent autumn - we might get some sweet potatoes. But even if we don't, the expenditure of one out of a packet of tubers is hardly going to break the bank!

The Builder has planted out his runner beans. They look happy too. I think everything is very pleased to see some rain

26th May

2009-05-26T08:41:00.000Z

We have not been making a whole lot of progress with the garden or allotment lately. The potatoes are all coming up - although I didn't plant them deeply enough and they keep literally coming up and have to be replanted!

On Saturday we went up to the allotment and planted out a whole bed of broad beans (for it is getting a bit late for Broad beans) and half a bed of peas. I have lots more peas to plant.

The tomatoes I broadcast sowed in the greenhouse have, to my surprise, germinated. There are a couple of gaps, but I've got some seeds underway in the greenhouse back at the house.

The soya beans are flatly refusing to germinate. So while we were in Salisbury I called at the Wilton Garden Centre and bought a new packet. I also bought two Cape Gooseberry seedlings for the greenhouse that doesn't have tomatoes in it!

Otherwise - everything is looking somewhat overgrown. We must find time to get out and sort things out!

Oh - and my sweet potato root now has lots of shoots on it

2009-04-27T08:30:00.002Z

We had a very productive weekend in the garden and on the allotment.

I've sown another four rows each of broad beans and peas on the allotment and planted 30 brassica seedlings that I bought in the Chesterfield market between the broad bean rows. The original sowings of peas and beans are now up and growing nicely. The ones from just before Easter are now coming through.There are another two beds ready for planting but more digging needs to be done! One of the allotmenteers is proposing to put a beehive up there. That will be extremely useful.

I planted the potatoes in the kitchen garden. I put 5 potatoes in each row and lightly pressed them in, then hilled them up. It's raining today. I have an uneasy feeling the hills may wash back down into the valleys and I might need to go out and put them in a bit deeper! I have 20 seed potatoes left and nowhere to put them!

We are eating lettuce thinnings in our lunches.

And I've planted out the sweet peas. They looked as though they were getting impatient to be put out. But focus - the mornings have been frosty. Don't go mad and put out the kidney beans!!

I did have a nice plan of which potatoes were to go where, but I've lost it. So, for my information, here's what eventually went where:

Bed 1	Bed 2	Bed 3	Bed 4
Juliette	Lady Balfour	Shetland Black	Kestrel
Juliette	Lady Balfour	Shetland Black	Kestrel
Juliette	Orla	Royal Kidney	Dunbar Rover
Juliette	Orla	Royal Kidney	Dunbar Rover
Lady Christl	Charlotte	Royal Kidney	Skerry Blue
Lady Christl	Charlotte	Royal Kidney	Skerry Blue
Mr Little’s Yetholm Gypsy	Mr Little’s Yetholm Gypsy	Highland Burgundy Red	Highland Burgundy Red

And in the trapezoid bed along the fence:

Belle de Fontenay Sante Pink Fir Cara
Belle de Fontenay Sante Pink Fir Cara
Belle de Fontenay
Belle de Fontenay

Oh - and exciting news: the asparagus is back! All ten of the spring planted plants have re-emerged. So far there's no sign of the autumn planted ones but no doubt they'll be along in time. We can't eat them this year though. Nothing until next year, and even then only a light picking

Mid-April

2009-04-21T08:42:00.002Z

The first sowings of broad beans and peas are now up. This coming weekend I intend to put in a third sowing. The Builder has been digging up the next two beds ready for ongoing sowing. I've bought extra supplies of seed so there should be plenty.

The various bean seeds have now germinated, except for the soya beans which have done nothing. I'll have another go, and then buy a new packet. I don't think soya seeds last long! I've potted on 17 beans plants. They've moved from the greenhouse to the propagating tent. And I am not going to put them on the allotment until the second May bank holiday weekend, at the very earliest (and it won't be that weekend anyway; we're away - and anyway - there isn't a bed dug for them yet!!). The lettuce seedlings are now at a point where I can start thinning them and eat the thinnings. I'm not sure they're ever going to get big enough to heart though. We may just eat the thinnings!!! Also, I've put into seed trays: Roma and cherry tomatoes and capsicums; courgettes, ghostrider pumpkins, jack be little pumpkins and sunflowers; celery; romanesco seeds. The last lot of romanesco all germinated beautifully, started to grow and then all abruptly died. Don't know why. The radish seedlings appear to be doing a similar thing!

The tulips are starting to flower. The fruit trees are in blossom, so are all the shrubs and canes. The grape vines are in bud but not yet in flower or leaf. And the kiwifruit is back in leaf - it tried about a month ago then was hit by a hard frost, even though it is in the greenhouse!

And the days are starting to be warm and sunny. The nights remain cold and occasionally frosty.

So far - so good!

2009-04-07T08:00:00.000Z

We have been intermittently busy over the past couple of weeks. The Builder has dug over the beds in the kitchen garden ready for the potatoes and has manured them. I'll start putting the potatoes in when we come back after our Easter holiday. Then, if it should be frosty, we are around to rescue them! I have also put into seed trays in the greenhouse the rest of last years magic bean mix, plus a tray of soya beans, and some rattlesnake beans and kidney beans (these last are duplicated in the magic bean mix, but I am hoping to do better with the winter beans this year - memo to self: DON'T PUT THEM OUT UNTIL WELL INTO MAY!!!!!!!!!!!). I've also put in a second lot of salad blue potatoes into a stray plastic rubbish bin, a supermarket bought sweet potato into a pot in the hope it will produce leaf stalks I can take cuttings from, and some radishes into a salad box. The carrots and lettuces are coming along nicely. The Veronica seedlings all died for some reason. I'll start again when we get back. Oh - and I bought a couple of cucumber seedlings. One got broken on the way back from the garden centre :-( but the other is doing ok. I might buy another couple while we are in Cornwall. And I need some melon and watermelon seeds. Or seedlings! Fortunately, we are planning to visit one or two gardens while we are gone.

The Builder has also put together a second propagating tent for me so the established seedlings can be moved as needs be. I fear the greenhouse is going to run out of space in its role as a potting shed!!

We are slowly digging on, up on the allotment. I've got four rows each in of Imperial Longpod broad beans and Early Onward peas and will put four more in this week before we head off. I decided last weekend that I probably didn't have enough peas and beans for all the space I'd allocated for peas and broad beans, so sent for another 500g of each - late planting ones so we should have fresh peas and broad beans for ages - and plenty for the freezer. The Builder has brushcuttered the wilderness in the middle of the allotment so we can see what we are doing. We are planning six beds down the bottom, with a small orchard up near the greenhouses. What extra fruit trees shall we put in? I am *considering* hedging the orchard bit with hazel trees. I am given to understand they can be coppiced into a hedge. If you know what you are doing. Which I don't - though The Builder may. But I'm sure we can make it up if necessary!!

I've weeded most of the flower garden. I need to finish the bit where the very first compost heap was, which is now covered in creeping buttercup. But that can probably wait for a week or three. I do need to get the flower seeds under way. I can see a very busy weekend planting seeds when we get back!!

Working plan (allotment) - assuming we get time to dig the new plots

2009-03-19T20:35:00.003Z

Now - where to plant the beetroot? And the shallots? And I wonder what I have forgotten to include ...

March still

2009-03-19T18:34:00.002Z

I've been down in the greenhouse today. Marlo came too. He thought it was wonderful - all warm and toasty, and with the bubble wrap (which is around the inside of the greenhouse to keep the frost out) tucked down into a corner so I could get in and out. Excellent kitty sleeping space!

The lettuce and romanesco seeds are all germinated now. The carrots have not, yet (a bit hasty, I guess) and the seed potatoes aren't up yet. But I'm sure they'll be along soon. I've also sown into plug modules 45 "Magic Bean" seeds (a random mix of kidney, flageolet, borlotti, Cherokee and Yin Yang), 5 baby bush beans, 25 soya beans and 10 each extra of the borlotti (in a packet labelled Rattlesnake beans!) and Yin Yang. I am not, you understand, expecting them ALL to germinate, although I suppose it won't matter if they do. Once they're big enough, I'll move them into proper plant pots and they can stay in the greenhouse until late May, early June. I realise I've been repeating the mantra: Don't be hasty - put nothing out till May. But The Builder reminds me that it was in the middle of May last year that we got over excited and put the beans outside (still in pots) and caused them extreme damage from which they never properly recovered when there was a late, hard frost. June it is. I'm hoping by then they'll be tall enough and strong enough not to be bothered by slugs or caterpillars and that they'll be flowering and beaning happily in their pots so they don't notice the transfer process. Ever Optimistic Frannie!!

I have planted the new dogwood shrub where the yellow rose bush used to be and trimmed back the privet shrubs. I am now ready to tackle the section of the shrubbery where the compost heap used to be and which is now completely over run by creeping buttercup. This may be something of a challenge!

And - I've been to the allotment. I've dug just under half of the first broad bean bed. I had to stop at that point for my back was registering a certain level of outrage at being put to work after most of an autumn and a winter of indolence. I shall have another bash on Saturday morning.

I need to devise a plan of where everything is going on the allotment this year. Give us all something to work towards!

Mid-March

2009-03-17T11:31:00.000Z

It is entirely true that I think herons are lovely birds. Elegant and imperious, and so graceful when in flight.

This does not, however, mean that I think our fish pond should be treated as a heron’s deli-bar, or even as a Little Chef for fish eaters who are passing overhead – not even one that has been made over by Heston.

So it is not clear quite who was more dismayed when The Builder went downstairs at about 7:30 on Sunday morning to make our morning cup of tea –and espied a heron stood at the side of the pond, having shucked up the netting intended to prevent it doing this, with its head in the water fossicking for a fishy breakfast! Certainly the heron was dismayed, as it flapped hastily away. The Builder was more stunned, I think. And the fishies have still not recovered from the shock!

At first it looked as though the heron had munched its way through the better part of our goldfish collection. But slowly, and hesitantly, more fish have reappeared. Last night I counted 30. I suspect it might have got one or two of the smaller dozier ones, but certainly not many.

We have planted some heritage carrot seeds (white, yellow, orange and purple) in one of the deep, wooden boxes on Saturday. The box is in the greenhouse in the garden. We also planted the spring onion sets in the garden. I’ve also put some potting mix into my “plug” tray to warm up so I can sow the kidney/soya/French beans this coming weekend. There are lots of things we can start sowing now in the greenhouse

Need to be VERY careful, though, not to get carried away and to start putting things out too early. Remember the fate of last year’s bean plants, from which they never really recovered.

It’s ONLY MARCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We’ve weeded all the flower beds now and have made a start on the little strips along the fence. About to start tidying the patio.

We need to start clearing the beds on the allotment ASAP – it’s not too early to get the broad bean and early pea seeds in.

And at lunchtime I am going to the trashier shops in town to see if I can get some very cheap whirly flowers or wind thingies to deter herons from munching the fish!

2009-03-08T11:39:00.007Z

We've been fairly busy in the garden this weekend. We've had a couple of nice sunny mornings, followed (yesterday) by dark clouds and strong winds in the afternoon, with positively gale force winds overnight. This morning we also had a beautiful sunny few hours. It's raining now, though.

The Builder has dug over the prickly corner by the pond and shifted the yellow rose bush. And I've pruned back the red thorny push and pushed the super prickly, dog rose back in amongst the branches of the thorn bush and along the fence. Must put some more trellis along the fence for the rose to snake along. I've also weeded down along the "shrubbery" along the fence. Alas - my curry bush has fallen apart. I've dug the roots out and bought a new one. It's only about 10 cm high!!! I think I might put it in a patio pot for the summer and plant it in the shrubbery come the autumn. That way it might stand a chance of not being over run by daisies, valerian, foxgloves and other vigorous cottage plants while it's still a baby.

I've made a start on the second triangular flower bed, but was forced to stop by the arrival of icy rain this morning. I still need to finish the shrubbery - but the rest of that needs digging over rather than just weeding. Perhaps next weekend.

The Builder has dug over the bed where the onions are to go. There's already garlic in there, but there were also cabbages (now eaten) and cauliflowers, which got frost mangled. He's also started preparing a new "permanent" runner bean bed. There's the beginnings of a compost trench. He's put the compost heap we've been using to bed now, hoping it will be nicely fermented and ready for use in the autumn. We really must dig up last year's compost in the old bed, up at the end of the shrubbery. Quite apart from the fact that we could use the compost (when we've got rid of the creeping buttercups), I'd like to restore it to shrubbery magnificence!!

There are seven sweet peas looking healthy and happy in the greenhouse. I'll plant them out along the fence when we come back from holiday after Easter. The orange tree has easily survived the winter. And the kiwi fruit is now in bud.

I have also planted a salad box with Giardina lettuce (has red, frilly outer leaves, and a hearted centre when mature) which is in the greenhouse. There is also now a tray of Romanesco calabrese seeds, also in the greenhouse. And I've planted 4 of the 10 Salad Blue potatoes in the potato bin in the hope that we might get some early salad potatoes. I've got the seed potatoes in my wardrobe in the spare room. The heating is not on in the spare room. It's quite chilly in there. The seed potatoes are sprouting anyway! I might need to plant them earlier than I had intended to - and just keep covering them with soil as the leaves come up - until May when hard frosts become less likely.

I had intended to start planting more seeds in pots/trays in the greenhouse. The threat of snowy showers this afternoon put me off. But next weekend I think I will do. It's not absolutely likely to snow in the greenhouse!

PS We went to the Chatsworth Garden Centre after lunch and dodged snow, hail and a spectacular rain storm to buy a dogwood to put where the yellow rose bush was (for winter interest and it won't matter if we can't reach it during the summer), and a beautiful, burgundy hellebore to put next to the one Penny and Steve gave us last spring. They're quite expensive if you buy properly established ones, but I figure if we buy a couple a year we'll end up with a pretty little winter edging along the path. Eventually!

First of March

2009-03-03T10:16:00.006Z

The snowdrops are flowering

The crocuses are peeping through

The hellebores are still flowering happily (this is a lacy one that Penny and Steve gave me last spring)

And the froggies are back and have been busy

It was the first of March, according to some the first day of spring, and we actually managed to get into the garden for a few hours in the afternoon.

The Builder has cleared loads of blanket weed, rampant oxygenating plants, water mint and water forget me nots out of the pond. We had to time this quite carefully (having failed to do it in the early autumn!). We needed not to disturb the fish while they were hiding at the bottom away from the snow and ice, but to get in before we were over run with frog spawn. The frogs came back to the pond and pretty much beat us to it - but The Builder thought that if he was careful he could clear some of the vegetation away without disturbing the frog spawn. And he has. The fish have now spread out around the pond again, rather than having to congregate in the very tiny bit of clear water that hadn't been over run by plants! The frogs have enjoyed it too - they were bouncing around on top of the remaining weed and chasing each other around the now cleared water and puffing up their throats and croaking. I don't think they were just intent on producing zillions of tadpoles. They looked to me as though they were playing as well!

Alas - the pond pump did not survive the winter. We have had to go out and buy a new one. Mind you, we've been saying since we moved in that it would need replacing. It's never had much strength. So it hasn't done too badly to say we picked up the keys three years ago at the end of April! The new one is fantastic. It has a proper umbrella shape when the fountain comes on! The frogs enjoyed that too.

In the meantime, I have cleared out the first flower bed. Mostly of stray weeds and alpine strawberries. Had anyone told me how tenacious alpine strawberry plants are I would never, ever, EVER have planted them!! I am hoping to get the next bed done this coming weekend, and perhaps the "prickly corner" where I want to transfer my yellow, scented rose bush from the back of he pond (where it looks lovely - but you can't get anywhere near it once the ferns come back to full strength, so no chance of dead heading - or even picking the beautiful flowers).

I am also planning to set some seeds for black/purple/scarlet sunflowers, hollyhocks, cornflowers and foxgloves ready for planting out in May. And we must crack on with prepping the veg beds. I have onions which are very ready to go out, it won't be long before the potatoes can go in (though I think I might wait till we come back from Cornwall after Easter) and we cold certainly get a sowing or two of broad beans in. Must get up to the allotment. Beans and peas, going up there this year.

Must organise a garden and allotment plan!

In the meantime, we have reverted to winter conditions. It's chilly outside, pouring with rain and the wind is positively howling! It's a long time since we've had any proper rain

Spring must be on the way

2009-02-19T09:11:00.005Z

Two bags of onion sets arrived last week.

And today two boxes of seed potatoes arrived. I ordered three "collections" from Thompson and Morgan - a salad collection, a conservation collection and an allotment collection. Six varieties in each collection, ten tubers of each variety. I'm going to have to sort them out. I have no idea now which are the earlies and maincrops, though I do know which are the salad potatoes!

And the snowdrops down the back are nearly flowering.

The garden has emerged from the snow.

There is a distinct promise of spring in the air.

But let us not be too hasty. It's still only February. It is way, way, way too early to start planting. Might be time to get digging, though!

2009-02-07T09:04:00.003Z

The cabbages and broccoli are covered over by snow! And the greenhouse is frozen. Gearing myself up to go down and inspect it!

February 2009

2009-02-01T11:35:00.008Z

I went down to the back of the garden today and found that the snowdrops are about 3cm up. A sign that spring is on its way :-) Mind you, with the arrival of February, the temperature has plummeted again and we are promised snow for this week. Although, they're revised the forecast from heavy snow and total misery to light snow and moderate misery. We shall see!

We ran out of broad beans in November and only have one bag of peas left in the freezer. In fact, apart from the peas, some zucchini and a bo full of pumpkin that I had forgotten about, we don't have much left in the way of veg. Still a bit of fruit, though. But I discovered a wholesale sed supplier who sells in small quantities and so have bought 1kg each of broad bean and pea seeds. It's considerably cheaper than buying them in packets! I also bought 250 sweet corn seed. This is rather more than I need! Sweet corn seeds anyone?

The cauliflowers have not done well. They got hit by the hard frosts we had in december and went manky. The ittle savoys, however, have been wonderful. The red cabbage is looking healthy but not hearting for some reason. And the sprouts have remained stubbornly tiny. We have been eating minuscule sprouts and munching on the sprout tops (which are very tasty). The flowering broccoli is looking very healthy and is promising a splendid spring crop. I'm not sure I'll buy the plugs again though. I think they got here a bit late. And it's loads cheaper to plant seeds and do it myself.

The greenhouse in the garden is quite a bit warmer than the rest of the garden. The Builder lined it with bubble wrap to keep the kiwi fruit and the orange tree warm. Well, warm-ish. So far they seem to be surviving well. Also, I've got some sweet peas in there overwintering. They're not looking entirely happy but they are at l
east surviving. I'll plant them out in April, assuming they survive that long.

I'm still considering the possibility of buying a heated propagator to get my kidney/soya/french beans of to an early start. But January is way too early even for inside germinating. Being patient here!

b

2008-11-10T09:15:00.002Z

Well goodness. We actually managed to get into the garden on Sunday morning. The Builder has pulled up the runner bean plants, the sweet corn and the courgette and chopped them up for the compost heap. He also planted the new asparagus crowns which arrived during the week and cut down the fronds of the spring planted plants. We need to manure that bed now.

In the meantime, I've planted out the garlic cloves, in between the cabbage rows. My one little cauli is looking very sorry for itself. I'm hoping that the others will flower in due course and not go quite so brown and squidgy before I get a chance to pick them! The cabbages are doing well. And the tiny, tiny sprouts are finally starting to grow. A bit. They're about the size of a small little finger fingernail now!!

The Builder has now boarded up the front of the third greenhouse where the ground drops away at the bottom, so it's now fairly draught-proof. Barb sent us a small orange tree for our joint Christmas present a couple of weeks ago. We've now planted that at the back of the greenhouse, next to the kiwifruit vine. I might plant the Cape Gooseberries in there next year too. A Fruit Greenhouse :-)

While all this was going on, I made a start on clearing the flower beds. Most of the oats are now gone, I've pruned the lavender, rosemary and hyssop. I didn't get to do any proper weeding, though. The rain came in before I had chance. Perhaps next Sunday! I have planted up two more planters with pansies and jonquils for out the front, and a couple of small tubs for by the back door. I've also got some pansies in one of the hanging baskets and some primroses in the other.

The Builder made a brave dash to the allotment before it went dark in the afternoon. Alas - the capsicums had gone soft and the beans had wilted. There were a few Cape Gooseberries but that was all. I shall start all the beans and things off earlier next year, I think. I am tempted to buy a small heated propagator so I can get the seeds set in January or February. No need for them to be planted out then, but if we have a late summer and an early winter there isn't time for things to mature properly. (Memo to self: Do NOT be tempted by gorgeous spring weather to plant things out to early. It nearly always leads to disaster!!)

Early November report

2008-11-06T09:20:00.003Z

We had three or four nights very sharp frost at the end of October. Killed the courgette plant and the runner beans stone dead! So that's the end of that for this season. Must be said, though, that despite The Builder's protestations that we didn't have enough runner bean plants and that we were never going to have enough beans - I now have a freezer which is half filled with bags of beans! Not all that many courgettes though. Perhaps we didn't have enough courgette plants!!

Fortunately, I managed to get the sweet corn in before the frosts. I don't think that I'll do a second planting next year. The first lot I put in fruited magnificently. The second lot (planted within the time suggested, but about three weeks later) didn't have time to mature properly before the weather turned. Granted, that was quite early this year - but I think I'll just plant the lot out all at the same time next year. The corn was quite happy sitting on the plant until I wanted it.

The Builder planted out some autumn planting onions a couple of weeks ago. They have now started to grow. We haven't yet managed to get the garlic in, though. Might need to go out in my rain kit this weekend and do it in the rain, or there will be no garlic next year ;-(

The weather since the frosts has been horrible. Misty and foggy and grey and damp and wet. We haven't got to the allotment for two weeks now (and it's not looking hopeful for this weekend either). This is irritating because not only are there Cape Gooseberries in the greenhouse, there are also capsicums. And, although I got the (very few) soya beans in before the frost, I didn't get the kidney beans and there were quite a lot of them. I assume the plants are now frosted to death, but the beans would be salvageable, if only I could get there!

And we STILL haven't got into the flower garden. It is looking very seriously neglected :-( And The Builder wants to dig over some of the veg beds and manure them, and that isn't happening either

We bought some planters for the front of the house last Saturday. By dint of working in the greenhouse at the bottom of the garden, I have now got them planted up with winter pansies and jonquil bulbs. There are a few bulbs and pansies left, and a bit of space along the front of the house. I think we might buy another couple of planters - and perhaps some more plants then I can do the hanging baskets as well.

Autumn is well and truly here - it's behaving a lot like winter!

2008-10-15T09:06:00.002Z

We have harvested all the pumpkins. They are now chopped and in the freezer or turned into soup and in the freezer. There is one left to do.

We have also dug up the sweet potatoes. Not really an efficient return on investment, I fear. We only got a few small ones. It has to be said that they were very tasty but they were also very expensive per tuber. Next year I'll try sprouting my own slips and start much, much earlier. I think we might have got more if they had had a longer growing season.

While we were about it, The Builder dug over that greenhouse and it's now ready (more or less) for planting next spring.

We've pulled quite a bit of oxygenating weed out of the fish pond. I threw a couple of pieces in when we first got the fish and it seems to be mounting an attack on the whole world! There's almost no room for the fish!!!!!! We could probably do to get some more out before winter sets in properly. It has to be said that the water quality has been vastly improved since we got the new ultra violet thingy for the pond filter. Must remember to put a new one in next spring.

The flower garden still needs attention! I would really like to get all the stray oat plants out so I can see what needs to be done. We're still harvesting runner beans and courgettes, but it's slowing down now. We've had one of the little savoy cabbages, though - and it was absolutely lovely. Waiting for some more to be ready now. The brussels sprouts are about as big as a small pea :-( The sprout tops are flourishing but the sprouts themselves are not. I think it might have been down to the lack of sun when they were setting. But I'll leave them and see if they get any bigger. The beetroot is wonderful!

Autumn is upon us

2008-09-30T19:08:00.001Z

The tomatoes in the greenhouse have been struck with blight :-( The Builder has pulled them all. We have some in a brown paper bag, accompanied by a banana. Some of them are slowly ripening. On the other hand, the Cape Gooseberries are starting to ripen :-) I have had three so far, and there are lots more to come. The pumpkins are trundling along, though the little one seems not to be growing. Hasn’t died but is clearly not getting any bigger. We are thinking next year of growing all the cucurbits outside, and providing them with trellis to grow up. The Builder says he was watching a gardening program recently and they had a little trellis up over the sweet potatoes for the leafy bits to grow up. You can use the leaves like spinach, though we never have. I wonder if they are producing anything underneath the ground. Interestingly enough, the tomato plants (self invited) in that greenhouse do not have blight and are looking quite well.

Things are slowing down in the kitchen garden. We are still getting runner beans and zucchini, although we have not been over run with zucchini this year. The sweet corn is fantastic. There are two large cobs on each plant and they are lovely and juicy and sweet. The caterpillars are still making determined attempts at the cabbage plants, but the weather is against them now. The savoy cabbages are beginning to heart, and there are some more small caulis making an appearance. I bought some white sprouting broccoli seedlings in Wilton. Had no idea where I was going to put them, mind. But I rather like the white sprouting and we’ve got lots of green and no white. The Builder has suggested putting them where we put the first, not every successful overwintering peas last autumn. Good plan!

We have quite a lot of apples on the bramley tree. They are not quite ripe yet. The apples on the other tree were ripe and have been picked and put in the fruit bowl or in the freezer.

The flower garden desperately needs attention. When I have time, it is raining. When it isn’t raining, I am not there ;-( But I must get on and sort it and the planters out. I’ve bought some winter flowering pansy seedlings and some jonquil bulbs that I want to get into the planters, and I’ve got some hollyhocks and things that need planting in the garden before winter really kicks in.

We’re doing well, really. The freezer is nearly full of fruit and veg. There are still potatoes to sort out, pumpkins to ripen, a few beans to come from the allotment, as few more runners perhaps. The potatoes in the tub in the bottom greenhouse, which I bought to grow for Christmas, look nearly ready for harvesting. I assume, given that they should be protected from frost, slugs and other potato predators (and it is getting a bit late for blight now) in their tub in the greenhouse, that they should be able to stay in the tub until we want them. I guess we’ll find out!

I’m planning to buy a small electric propagator for next year. Get the soya beans, kidney beans, Cape Gooseberries and all the other tender little things a head start

2008-09-09T13:15:00.004Z

We could really do with a few days of sunshine in the garden. Too much rain and the bees can’t fly. The bees not flying means that the runner bean and zucchini flowers won’t get pollinated. Nor have the last couple of pumpkin fruits, but that’s no so important. There isn’t time now for them to grow properly anyway, and seven pumpkins should be enough for anybody’s freezer! Also, some sunshine would be useful for ripening the sweet corn and the tomatoes, not to mention the pumpkins.

I was too late on Saturday to pollinate the melon flowers. They had fallen off the vine. Also, the cucumbers in the greenhouse are not getting pollinated. We’ve only had a couple; the rest have dropped off. Definitely next year the cucurbits can grow outside. I might get The Builder to make wigwams for them to grow up. Or at least tent type structures. But the Cape Gooseberries are beginning to ripen. Some of the lanterns over the fruits lower down the plants are beginning to turn papery :-)

The rain also hampered potato digging over the weekend. Fortunately, the ones we have got up are not rotting, but they are being munched on by slugs and wireworm. I need to sort through them and make ready for the freezer those that have been badly munched. Unfortunately, I am not at home now for a weekend for about five or six weeks :-( And I really, really need to get into the flower garden and get that sorted out. I have desperately struggling hollyhock seedlings to go in.

When we first bought our fish for the pond, I also bought some oxygenating weed which I threw in and left to get on with it. It survived the winter and kept on growing. We noticed that the fish hide in it and play in it and lay on top of it in the sunshine. Then we noticed that there was so much oxygenating weed that there wasn’t very much room for anything else. Yesterday evening, The Builder went and pulled loads out. I think we need to take yet more out. This will probably not entirely delight the fish. Or the very large frog which took evasive action as The Builder’s hand reached down to engulf it. The fish had all retreated to the extension bit at the back as soon as he started yanking out weed and were out of the way!

2008-09-03T14:26:00.002Z

I've had to pull out the tomatoes in the garden. They were beginning to look blight struck. The stems were turning black and so too were the tomatoes. I probably could have treated them but it might well have been too late and there are lots of tomatoes in the greenhouse. It may be just as well I did - there were zucchini hiding underneath them which ambitions to be marrows!

The Builder and I disagree about the success of the runner beans. He says we've not had all that many and that there won't now be all that many to come. We've been eating them in some quantity for a while now and I've got at least two packets of them in the freezer - sort of the size that you buy in the supermarket, if you see what I mean. And there are still quite a few flowers. I reckon we'll get some more. It's only just September. I'm not anticipating frosts just yet (though this may be tempting fate, bearing in mind the late frosts we had at the end of spring!) I think he's just grumbling because he only ended up with 12 plants instead of the 18 or 24 he usually has!! (some seeds didn't germinate; a couple of plants vanished when very small)

We had one of the baby pumpkins on Monday. I've never eaten a young pumpkin before; they're usually mature and "cured" with a hard skin by the time I get my hands on them. The young pumpkin was surprisingly soft and succulent and moist, more like a zucchini. Which makes sense when you think about it, given that they are of the same family and have similar habits. Speaking of which, there appear to be (finally!) a couple of female flowers on one of the melon plants in the greenhouse. I must go up on Saturday morning and paint them with male pollen. They were only very tiny when I was there on Monday so Saturday may be in time. Reading my vegetable books has informed me that all the cucurbits need pollinating apart from some varieties of cucumbers. But I think that next year I may not put them in the greenhouses. THey seem to be perfectly happy out in the open (apart from the one melon plant which I planted with the cucumbers and pumpkins in the garden and which was very rapidly smothered to death!) And I won't put any tomatoes outside. I wonder if I could persuade The Builder to put up a large Victorian hot house on the "wild" bit of the allotment ....

However, if the tomatoes in the garden are blighted, then this would suggest the potatoes on the allotment are also under threat. I think we will try dodging the showers at the weekend and dig the rest up. It's mostly the Arran Victory and the Pink Fir apples left, plus half a bed where I just shoved all the left over potatoes at random. And then all the stray potatoes that are self invited from last year! So quite a lot really. I hope there are lots of spaces between the showers!

The caterpillars are still making merry with the cabbages. Spraying is holding some of them back. The cabbage whites have been replaced by small green ones! We had a very tiny cauli last night. It was small but very flavoursome

I really need to sort out the flower garden. I may need a month's gardening leave!!!

Oh - and there is one, solitary, lonely bog sage strand gamely flowering. I didn't think there were any this year. I must buy new ones next spring

2008-08-27T06:15:00.002Z

There are two sizeable pumpkins in the greenhouse now. We haven't bothered pollinating the other small pumpkins which are forming - there are also five or six pumpkins growing in the garden. Had we realised that the pumpkins in the greenhouse need hand pollinating and got usy earlier, and assuming all the pumpkins grow to a reasonable size, we would need a third freezer just to accommodate all the pumpkins! As it is, I think we're going to have quite a lot.

We have started picking tomatoes, too. So far only the cherry and small tomatoes in the greenhouse. The plum tomatoes aren't ready and nor are the tomatoes in the garden. We are, however, beginning to get a few more courgettes and the runner beans are doing quite nicely (though not nicely enough for The Builder who loves runner beans and wishes we had lots and lots more!). We have now picked and pulled all the broad beans, and all but two rows of peas which won't be ready for another week or so. Almost all the onions are up (must get around to stringing the last lot!) and we are digging up the Arran Victory potatoes. They have been mostly slug/wireworm damaged. When time permits, I'll sort them out, par boil them and bung them in the freezer (once the wedding food has come out!).

We are fighting lots of caterpillars for the brassicas. They're running amok on the sprouts and caulis - not so much on the red cabbage, for some reason. WE have given in and acquired a caterpillar spray (alleged to be suitable for organic gardening, which we mostly but don't exclusively do). Next year we'll put butterfly proof netting over them.

I've made a start on clearing out the flower beds. Will get back to that next week - though the green bin is now full to the brim and won't be emptied until next Tuesday. It's been quite successful this summer. Lots of colour. I'm going to start hunting for some black/purple sweet pea, cornflower and sunflower seeds for next year. I've got some hollyhock seedlings ready to plant as soon as the beds are ready

Mid-August report

2008-08-12T12:56:00.002Z

I have been wondering for some time why it was that the rampant pumpkin plant in the greenhouse (ambitions not just on the allotment site, Tupton, or even the world, but the whole known universe) was producing lots of baby pumpkins which, when they reached the size of a small chicken’s egg, would turn yellow, wither and die. There’s nothing wrong with the plant. It still has ambitions on the universe. It’s watered regularly. It gets fed seaweed meal every couple of weeks. It seems entirely happy – I’ve never seen so many baby pumpkins on a vine. You usually only get two or perhaps three. Nevertheless, they continued to rot and die despite everything that I tried.

I put the dilemma to a web garden forum I use from time to time. Sounds, they said, as if you have pollination problems. Of course. The pumpkins are in the greenhouse (there are two in the kitchen garden as well, but they are only just starting to produce pumpkins). No bees can get to them. Nor butterflies. Nothing for it but to hand pollinate. The drawback is that pumpkin flowers are wide, wide open in the mornings and gradually close as the afternoon progresses. By the time we get to the allotment after work, they are closed up tight. And there isn’t time to go up in the mornings before we leave for work at 7. So The Builder nipped up before we left on Saturday and took off the ones that are clearly not going to grow and pollinated the ones he could. There are a couple that were too small. We will do those this Saturday and hope that we are in time.

There are cucumbers growing on the cucumber plants. I don’t know about the melon plants. There weren’t any female flowers the last time I was there to look. The tomatoes and the Cape Gooseberries are fruiting nicely, though nothing is ripe yet. And the pepper/capsicum plants are starting to flower so there should even be some capsicums (or peppers, depending on where you are)

We are doing well for potatoes this year. So far no blight. And so far nothing like the slug damage we had last year. We are also doing very well for peas and onions, although the peas in the garden are now all finished. No more wandering around in the evenings and grazing from the pea vines.

The flower garden has gone completely bonkers. I’ve just left it to get on with it. I’ll sort it all out when it dies back a bit in the autumn.

The fruit is now largely finished, apart from one raspberry cane which appears to be an autumn fruiting raspberry, some blueberries which aren’t quiet ripe yet and the apples which will be along in another three or four weeks.

We are doing well for courgettes/zucchinis, runner beans, broad beans and broccoli, though that is all but finished now. Must stagger the sowing of the broccoli next year. 12 large Veronica calabrese is rather a lot for two people to deal with when it all flowers at once! The carrots are only growing slowly. I hope they are big enough to eat before the winter sets in! The beetroot, which The Builder has been despairing of, is now settling into growing apace. He had been waiting for them to form scarlet globes above ground. They were never going to do that. I planted long, underground growing beetroots this year. And very nice they are too. We are getting cucumbers from the plants in the garden (and they are LOVELY). I don't suppose you remember, but last year the sweet corn didn't grow and didn't do and didn't even fruit until the autumn. It's much better this year. The first sowings are taller than me and produced masses of flowers and now there are corn ears growing. I must remember to get you a photo.

The winter veg are growing well. All those brassicas are beginning to fill out a bit and the beans on the allotment are doing quite well – though they never recovered from that later frost that hit them after I put them out much too early in May. They are producing beans but they are only about *this* high so are struggling to produce huge quantities. I shall try and remember for next year – ne’er cast a clout till May is out is excellent advice, more so if you live North of the M25!

Oh – and most of the asparagus plants that we planted in the spring sneakily produced a second spear each. We didn’t notice because the entire bed is covered in forget me nots and we couldn’t see them. We noticed when we went down to weed a couple of weeks ago.

The Met Office keeps talking about how this has been one of the wettest summers for a long time. Can't say that that's how I see it in Tupton. It's certainly been wetter in August than last year (but then we had Ian's sunshine tethered over us). But it's been a much better growing year and we haven't had anything like the problems with blight, things rotting and things bolting. This means that we also don't have as much set aside for the winter. There has been no panic harvesting so far this year! I do, however, have five jars of onions pickling in the store cellar

2008-07-28T14:35:00.000Z

The pumpkins in the greenhouse on the allotment appear to have designs on the whole known universe! The Builder has them growing up strings. They’re now reached the roof and are busy making their way along the wire the string is tied to. One of the plants has three tiny pumpkins. I wonder if I’ll need to support them with nets when they get bigger (They’re Queensland blue pumpkins, so not small ones). The cucumbers in there are also doing quite well. Even the melons are starting to perk up a bit and the sweet potatoes are producing quite a good crop of leaves. I hope they are also producing a good crop of sweet potatoes!

It was just as well we went up yesterday. The Builder had been up and watered on Saturday so we nearly didn’t bother, and the greenhouses were very dry. The beans were quite dry too.

We’ve now dug up all the Arran Pilot potatoes. Will eat those and the rest of the ambos before starting on the maincrop potatoes – blight permitting! We also picked the first two rows of peas (on the allotment). There are still a few pods to go on those rows – but we took home 1.6 kg of pea pods! There is also a LONG row of peas still in the kitchen garden, but they’re not quite ready yet. We also pulled the autumn planted white onions a couple of weeks back. The spring planted ones should be all right for a few weeks, although the shallots are nearly ready.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen garden. The Builder has now fully glazed the greenhouse and we have found some trellis for the kiwi fruit vine to grow up. We must plant that – it’s getting a bit dry sat in the very warm greenhouse in a small pot. And speaking of things in pots in the greenhouse – the Christmas potatoes have appeared. I’ll let them get a little bigger then cover them over and plant the second lot.

I had gone down to pick some broad beans for last night’s dinner. As I was wandering back, I thought: That’s odd; I could have sworn I picked the zucchinis earlier. Then I thought: that can’t be a zucchini. There aren’t any in that bed. They’re all over in that bed there. So I went to look. Tucked under a leaf was a zucchini-sized cucumber! I thought we only had wee, tiny embryonic ones. It is amazing how sweet young cucumbers are, fresh picked from the vine. There’s another one on the other cucumber plant. I must remember to check the vines in the greenhouse. There may be more hidden up there too.

Otherwise, all is well. We have finished almost all of the fruit, except for a few raspberries and some tayberries. The apples, of course, are not ready yet. The flower garden has run amok but seems happy enough. I need to plant some more wong bok and pak choi – I was too tardy in planting them out and they’ve run to seed. I must do that this week.

Early summer 2008

2008-07-14T09:22:00.000Z

Greenhouse:

The Builder has now almost finished glazing the greenhouse in the kitchen garden. He stopped only because he’s run out of glass and bits. He’s ordered some new pieces of Perspex (rather than glass) and more clips. He thinks that the reason the panes kept blowing out when Clarissa and Mike had it was because the workmen who erected it didn’t put enough glazing clips in. Two on each side, he thinks, are not enough to hold in a wind. He thought that three probably would hold but, just to be on the safe side, he’s put four. (Our garden can be Very Windy Indeed down a the bottom, when it is minded!)

We have bought a kiwi fruit vine to put in the greenhouse when it is finished. I was quite surprised to find them in the garden centre but am more than happy to have one. The Builder is going to put up a trellis for it to grow along. In the meantime, I have put the potato barrel in there, where it is properly glazed. I bought five seed potatoes for Christmas purposes. They were quite big so I’ve cut them in half and put the first lot in the barrel about half way up. As they grow, I’ll fill the barrel with more growing compost and plant the other half about three quarters of the way up. With luck, we’ll have fresh new potatoes for Christmas.

Kitchen Garden:

We have finished the peas in the first pea bed. The Builder has now dug that over. We’re going to scatter manure over it and then plant the pak choi and wong bok there. I’ve also started pulling out the broad beans in the first broad bean bed. I’m having to be careful, though. I put the last of the seeds in there to fill the gaps from the patchy autumn germination. Wouldn’t do to pull the new plants out.

The second lot of brassica plugs finally arrived. I’ve planted them between the broad beans along the fence, and between the long rows of peas and amongst the runner beans in the runner bean bed. They seem to be settling ok. We’ve got 15 each of Tundra savoy cabbage, Marcher cauliflower, Revenge Brussels sprouts and purple sprouting broccoli.

The zucchini plants are growing well. The pumpkins are also growing well. The cucumbers are trundling slowly along. But the melon plant is seriously sulking. I don’t know why. The melon plants o the allotment are sulking too, but not as loudly. I suppose it might be the seedlings rather than the conditions. Next year I want to see if we can grow miniature watermelons!

The amaranth and asparagus sees that I threw into a couple of spare bits of ground a few weeks ago have finally germinated.

We are eating peas, broad beans, carrots, a few courgettes and a couple of the Veronica broccoli while they were very tiny. They’re growing apace now and will be ready for eating as proper vegetables in a few weeks. Everything seems to be doing quite well and to have very much enjoyed the rain and sunshine of last week.

Orchard:

We are doing remarkably well for fruit. I am absolutely over run with strawberries – if there is only one member of the household who can eat strawberries, then a bumper year is a bit of a struggle! I’ve been giving them away by the punnet load! Alas, I don’t much like strawberry jam, I’m not hugely fussed by strawberry ice cream and I never make strawberry sauces, because The Builder can’t eat them. I shall just continue giving away what I can’t eat, I think. Maybe I should have a cull!

The gooseberry bushes have done quite well, given that they’re only small. We’re doing well for raspberries and cherries as well, though the morello cherry hasn’t been all that productive. There are apples on two of the apple trees and, I think, two plums on the plum tree! I’ve picked all the gooseberries and popped them in the freezer. Oh – and there are two new tayberry canes growing where The Builder dug up the tayberry last autumn. We’ll dig them up this autumn and move them over to the “fruit fence”.

Flower Garden:

Is verdant, over grown and in dire need of weeding – largely because of the extensive wheat crop that’s growing everywhere. Although, bearing in mind the doomsday predictions about the fate of commercially grown wheat – maybe we should encourage it?

Allotment:

We’ve now dug up the last of the ambos and Colin has given us a half trug load of rocket potatoes to try. They’re a first early too. Very nice, but I think I’ll stick with the ambos, which this year have been a huge success. Not a slug-bite or wireworm trace in any of them. I think that this week we might dig up the next lot (Arran Pilot). They’re beginning to go a bit yellow, and the conditions at the moment are perfect for potato blight. I really don’t want all the potatoes blight-struck. I especially do not want the tomatoes struck. Must get some more of that copper stuff to spray the tomatoes.

The Builder has dug the red onions I planted last autumn. It was more or less time, although we haven’t yet dug the white ones. But he did it yesterday because the red ones were beginning to rot. Colin says mildew. That would be an improvement on onion rot, which would be an unfortunate thing to find on the allotment. I am going to pull the garlic too. It’s beginning to die back. I suspect the onions have not much enjoyed the dry spring followed by the damp early summer. The spring planted plants seem quite chipper. So far.

The peas and the beans are doing well, as far as I can see. The soya bean seedlings I planted out last week have settled in and are beginning to grow nicely. I am hoping to get some fresh soya beans this year.

2008-06-30T14:21:00.004Z

The Builder has now finished levelling the area where the greenhouse is to go. Not only that, but he's put the frame up. Took quite a bit of swearing and throwing things, but it is now up. All that needs to be done now is to put the glass in, and then the greenhouse will be ready for its new life as an orangery.

The Builder has also dug the rest of the row of ambos and the next one. We have a trug full of new potatoes. They are VERY tasty! He's also supported the tomato plants in the greenhouse on string. Everything on the allotment is growing beautifully, including (now) the bean plants that were hit by that late frost. We lost a handful of bean plants from that. Fortunately, my soya plants are now ready to go in, as are the capsicum plants. I'll plant them some time this week.

So we're eating quite well at the moment. There's no need to buy much in the way of veg - just a bit of beetroot and some cherry tomatoes this week. Oh, and some mushrooms, but we always buy mushrooms.

Something has been eating the raspberries and the strawberries just as they were getting ripe. So we've netted them. There were several raspberries this morning which looked as though they would be perfect this evening. I do hope that whatever has been munching them can't now get to them.

Oh - and last autumn, I put some chocolate cornflower seeds into one of the flower beds (that's seeds for chocolate coloured cornflowers, not seeds made out of chocolate which would just be silly. Nothing came of them. I decided that I must have hoed them out as weeds when they germinated and decided to do it again this autumn, but to put the seeds in a seed box rather than directly into the ground. I was pottering about yesterday, thought: What are they, ambled over to look - and I have TWO chocolate coloured cornflower plants which have survived :-) But I will still put some seeds into a seed box this year.

I've potted up all the peace lilies. They look much happier. And I've put the orange tree and the bay tree out onto the patio and tidied up the front door "conservatory".

It's all looking very productive. I wonder if my next instalment of brassicas will arrive today. They were supposed to arrive during June. The May contingent arrived on May 31st. There is no 31st of June!

2008-06-25T07:38:00.004Z

We dug the first of the Ambos last evening. I put them in as first earlies (though the websites all say that they are second earlies - they are, however, well advanced on the Arran Pilots which actually are first earlies!) The Ambos, which were sadly slug and wireworm damaged last year, seem fine this season. And they tasted fantastic. We had them with carrots, broad beans and mint from the garden.

There is one tiny zucchini on one of the zucchini plants. The summer onions are oh-so nearly ready. And everything in the greenhouses is growing.

Won't be long before we won't have to buy much in the way of vegetables at all!

(I have run out of carrot and mesclun seeds. Looks like a trip to Dunstan Hall is called for this weekend)

The Builder has made a start on putting up the new greenhouse. It's going where the volcano was. The volcano remains have been moved up to where all that rubbish was. Eventually the ashy remnants will be spread over the garden and new veg beds will take their place

2008-06-23T11:24:00.003Z

The soya beans have germinated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It wasn't me, after all. The last packet must have been duff. Only about half of them are up, but that is a very vast improvement on none!

I had noticed that most of the radishes had gone very woody, even though they were not yet full grown. Then I noticed that the orange carrots were also woody, though not the purple ones. A little investigation suggests that carrots go woody when their growing conditions are too cold. This would makes sense. The white radishes are fine; they came from seeds which were to be sown late winter or early spring. Likewise the purple carrots. The other seeds were from a collection which didn't give sowing instructions. I think they were planted too early. I think that next year I might put the first boxes in the greenhouse. It's been lovely and warm in there since the beginning of March!

Last night for supper we had new potatoes, which were not yet from the allotment. Still a bit early. But with them we had steamed peas, broad beans, carrots (purple!) and tarragon all from the garden. Eaten about 7 minutes after I picked them!

I made some elderflower "champagne" last weekend with elderflowers from the track down to the sewage farm. I bottled it this weekend. It smalls fantastic. The recipe says to leave it for at least a week before drinking. Most other recipes say to leave it for several months :-S I've never done it before so I don't rightly know what I'm doing! If I had any more bottles I'd try making some more. I wonder if The Builder could be persuaded to drink more beer from bottles with the resealable lids.

We haven't had all that much rain. There is a bit more water in the water butt up by the house. We might have to set up a watering programme!

Current Garden/allotment plans

2008-06-17T13:11:00.002Z

2008-06-17T10:39:00.005Z

It has been a very satisfactory time from a gardening point of view. Lots of sunshine, reasonable warmth, a few light showers (could really do with a bit more rain) and general growingness.

The top of the allotment is looking wonderful, like a really, proper allotment. There are rows of potatoes growing nicely, rows and rows of onions, rows and rows of peas, now with wire mesh to grow up. The beans are struggling along (they could really do with some rain) - and the good news is that I *think* the seeds from the new packet of soya beans might actually be germinating; if so, I'll be able to fill the bean bed right up. Everything in the greenhouses is going well. I'm very pleased. The potatoes in the bed at the very bottom are also growing well. As is the rhubarb. We have digging plans for the autumn and the winter, and the thought that we might put in a proper bed for the rhubarb to grow in.

Back in the kitchen garden, things are also going quite well. We have had our first, very light pickings of the peas and the broad beans (interestingly, in the case of the broad beans, not from the overwintered plants, which are still too early to pick, but from the early spring planting). And I now have a ratatouille bed - I had a few extra tomatoes and have planted them in with the zucchini plants and the spare onions. I've now mulched that bed with newspaper and dried grass. Over the weekend we planted out more beetroot seeds, some scarlet amaranth seeds and I put some Chinese cabbage and pak choi seeds in the propagating tent (though they may not do all that well - I think I watered them in a bit vigorously! Still, there's time yet to do it again.) We've also planted up another carrot box, a parsnip and radish box and a mesclun box. The Builder has been mowing and clipping and whippersnipping with enthusiasm, so the kitchen garden and the orchard look very tidy. He's also lit another bonfire to get rid of as much of what's left of the garden rubbish as possible. Then, when that's burned out and we've moved the ash for later use on the garden, we're going to level it out and put the new greenhouse up where the bonfire is (When I say "we", I mean that I am going to supervise!).

The flower garden is just looking beautiful. And it smells wonderful. Oh - and the fish pond is finally beginning to clear.

2008-06-08T21:09:00.000Z

There is a garden centre in Wilton which we have never been in to. Partly because there has never been need but mainly because both Barb and The Builder told me that it was very expensive and that it didn’t really have anything special to justify the extra expense. Yesterday, however, we called in because it was en route from Salisbury to Barb’s place and I wanted to pick up a melon seedling for the greenhouse to continue outside/greenhouse experiments. After all - how expensive can a melon seedling be?

I have to tell you - it’s lovely. It took some hunting to find a melon seedling, but when I did --- there were Cape Gooseberry seedlings there as well!!!!!!! And well advanced Cape Gooseberry seedlings. I bought three. I looked for soya bean seedlings but there weren’t any. Or none that I could find. There were, however, loads of different sorts of capsicum seedlings and a huge variety of tomatoes.

And the seed selection is amazing. So many different sorts of things from all over the world. I bought some asparagus pea seeds and another packet of soya bean seeds. I planted, on Thursday, a final sowing of soya beans with the plan that if they didn’t germinate inside ten days I would abandon soya beans for this year and buy a fresh packet for next. So far I’ve had a 100 % failure rate with the present packet spread over two years. I begin to think it might be the seeds rather than me! Now that I’ve run across a packet in a garden centre (has never happened in or around Chesterfield!) I might try a fresh sowing when we get home. And I will buy a small electric propagator for next year. They’re only £25 and would advance things by quite a way.

So my three Cape Gooseberries, 2 melons (there are two seedlings in the pot) and two packets of seeds cost me £9. I don’t think that’s too bad, especially when you consider how advanced the Cape Gooseberries are :-)

Ooooooh Nooooooooooo :-(

2008-06-04T13:12:00.003Z

Something has eaten ALL my cape gooseberry seedlings. Every single one of them. They were just starting to germinate. They take a LONG time to germinate. I went down this morning and there is nothing whatsoever in their seed box. Nothing. No sign that anything had ever been in there.

I assume it was slugs, though there is no slug evidence.

No cape gooseberries for us this year. It's too late now to try again, I think. They take 3-4 weeks to germinate and I don't think there would be time to ripen the fruit if I start again now.

Definitely buying an inside propagator for next year!!!

End May/beginning June

2008-06-03T08:18:00.004Z

60 brassica plugs arrived on Saturday. I ordered them back in the winter - 60 for May and 60 for June. The May ones arrived on the very last day of the month. I devoutly hope the June ones don't arrive at the very beginning of June! I've planted 15 Famosa Savoy and 15 Skywalker cauliflowers in amongst the bottom broad beans, and 13 (as it happens) Integro red cabbages and 16 Diablo Brussels sprouts in with the broad beans along the fence. The Builder has netted them to keep the pigeons off. I have slug pelleted them to keep the bloody slugs off. So far, so good. I have also put out 2 x pumpkin seedlings, 2x cucumber seedling and 1 x melon seedling in the empty bed. We are going to put the rest in the greenhouse and see what happens and where.

Slugs have been rampaging in my propagating tent :-( I think they thought it was a buffet bar just for them :-( We have taken EVERYTHING out, eradicated the slugs and snails, rescued what can be rescued, put (organic) slug pellets around everything and replaced things. Most of it is not quite ready for planting out yet. Soon, but not yet. And my soya beans are still resolutely refusing to germinate. I shall make one more attempt this year and then give up. I think I might invest in a small electric propagator for next year. The Builder has suggested running a power cable down to the new greenhouse when we put it up and having it heated. We could do, I suppose. But I might start with a little heated propagator first and see what happens. If nothing else, my cape gooseberries will be slightly further advanced. And my soya beans might deign to germinate at all!

In the meantime, We have been to the allotment, seriously pissed off two quite large nests of ants, and planted five sweet potato slips, 2x pumpkins and 2x cucumbers. The Builder has run wire around the ceiling and we are going to try growing the cucumbers and pumpkins up strings to see if they like that. Something ate the 1 remaining melon :-( I shall buy another, for I would like to run the out-in-the-open and the greenhouse experiment on melons as well.

I had some watercress in a glass inside. Unbeknownst to me, the glass dried out. The watercress began to look very sad. When I noticed, I plonked it into one of the pond plant baskets and stuck it out onto one of the ledges. I have to say - it's looking very happy!

We are eating well from the salad boxes and still harvesting sprouting broccoli. Won't be long before the radishes are ready. Tried one yesterday. It is VERY peppery. Made my hair curl and my ears fall off!!!

Spring Bank Holiday weekend

2008-05-28T18:25:00.004Z

It was, largely, a dry, extremely windy and rather chilly weekend. The weather boys and girls had been promising rain "tomorrow" but as each tomorrow turned into today - the promised rain remained at tomorrow. It was nice to have a dry weekend, but we did need the rain.

Could have done without the wind as well. I tried to pot on my tomato seedlings, but had to give up. Everything kept trying to blow away! I also haven't sowed my flower seeds. Another day! The Builder and I have, however, "fenced" the gooseberry bushes in the same way that the raspberries are fenced. Will keep the longer branches off the path.

I have been harvesting, chopping and freezing mint. I have a huge abundance of mint up by the pond - and never store it. Then I buy it in expensive sprigs over the winter! I'm going to freeeze more. And I'm planning to do some oregano and marjoram as well. Plus, we have been harvesting our rhubarb glut. I have chutney in the larder and rhubarb in the freezer, plus crumbles and pies, also in the freezer.

The beans, which were accidentally exposed to frost last weekend, suffered horribly from it. But I think they're going to survive. They all have green growing tips. One or two lost their central ones but are sprouting side tips. Fingers crossed! Lesson to be learned. DO NOT plant out tender things in May, no matter how clement the weather has been! All remain in the propagating tent for the time being. Oh - and I have five, perhaps six sweet potato plants ready to go to the allotment. I think I can probably risk planting them out. There is little chance they'll be hit by frost in the greenhouse. And there shouldn't be any proper frosts now. (Having said that, I've had the heating on at home today!)

The Builder has finished digging over the third potato bed. I've planted the remaining seed potatoes there. It's a mish mash of pink fir apples, Aaran Victory, a couple of Lady Balfours and some that were last years crop that we never got around to eating. In the pea bed, I've thickly sown two rows of Feltham First. They're an autumn or very, very early spring planting variety that I found at the bottom of my seed tin. I'm not intending to grow very early varieties in the furute - I don't think you really gain anything. My mid-spring sowings of peas and broad beans are at least as advanced as the autumn sowings and the germination rates were twice as good. But I figured I might as well use the peas and see what happens. Plus, I've put in a couple of rows of Hurst Green Shaft. I think there is probably room for three more rows. Must get some more seed peas!

For the first time since we got the allotment, we've had to water! Obviously, we've been watering the greenhouses, but we didn't water outside last year at all. I grant you that last year was fairly wet throughout the summer - and that we didn't grow anything the year before because we didn't get it till fairly late and it was somewhat overgrown. I would expect to have to water outside most years. But in May? The last couple of weeks have been strangely dry! We seem to have been living under a huge, invisible umbrella. Everyywhere else in the country has been getting more or less the usual amount of rain!

It started raining on Monday evening and has been drizzly, misty and damp since. At least the wind has dropped. And the small water butts, depleted both at home and on the allotment (Can't get to the large ones - the one at home is hidden in a huge swath of long grass and the one on the allotment has its tap guarded by a vigorous crop of stinging nettles!) are now filling up nicely again.

The pond is no longer the colour of tinned pea and ham soup. It's kind of a milky grey-green now. I don't know what else to do to clear it, short of adding industrial quantities of pond clearing chemicals which doesn't seem entirely desirable. The Builder and I are pondering the possibility of catching all the fish (!!), putting them in one of the water butts and emptying the pond, fixing the leak at the back and refilling it. After the frogs have gone!

2008-05-19T12:47:00.005Z

50 wildflower plugs arrived on Thursday. I've planted them along the brick path, next to the fence. Not all of them. About 30. The rest are in the propagating tent, waiting in case the thirty do not all survive. If they do, I'll plant them in one of the flower beds. There are five of ten different varieties. Six tiny chocolate cosmos plants arrived. I've put them in a little hedge along the very edge of the brick patio, behind the lavender and rosemary. Am now thinking happy, growing thoughts in their direction.

We were going to take the magic bean collection and stripy bean seedlings up to the allotment yesterday and plant them out. Inertia and black clouds prevented us doing it. Just as well - there was an unexpected (to us) frost last night. I don't think they'd have enjoyed it up there much!! The Builder has planted out his runner beans (seedlings and seeds). There wasn't time to inspect them this morning but they're in a fairly sheltered spot so may well have been all right.

We did, however, put great effort into trying to sort out the fish pond, which is about the colour of pea and ham soup. We've treated it with Pond Clear a couple of times, but it hasn't made very much difference. In fact, no difference. So we had a look at the filter. And discovered that it's an ultra violet filter which should have its ultra violet thingummy changed every six months. Well, we've been there two years and have never changed it. We have now bought a new one. Was something of a song and dance to fit it, though. I'm hoping that this will fix it. I have no idea how many fish there are. And almost anything could be lurking at the bottom of that there pond and we'd be none the wiser.

There are lots and lots of embryonic cherries and apples in the orchard. And even a couple of pears and plums. But no peaches. And the peach and plum trees seem to have curly leaf. Must do something about that.

Oh - and all ten of the apsaragus plants have now put up a shoot. Excellent. 100% success rate there

2008-05-10T09:24:00.006Z

The asparagus has started to come up!!!! There are six spears showing above ground this morning.

Germination rates this year in the propagating tent have been spectacularly better than last year. The beans are all shooting up. The tomatoes are up (seed leaves only yet). So too are the peppers. The calabrese are ready to be planted out. Might do that this afternoon. The sweet potato slip are looking very, very sad, however. I'm not sure they're going to survive. And there's a slug making free with the propagating tent. I have Taken Steps!

Update: I've planted the calabrese (Veronica) in between the broad beans I sowed last autumn. The Builder has built a netting cage for them to prevent the pigeons pulling them out and eating them. We have also properly staked the raspberries (8 stakes along the bed, with three strands of fencing wire running around them to support the canes). I've planted the last of the broad bean seeds and another couple for rows of beetroot seeds. I've also put some sweet corn seeds into the propagating tent. And I gave up on the last lot of soya seeds, which had been on the lounge room windowsill. The seeds themselves seem to have vanished. Can't think what's happened to them! I've planted twelve seeds directly into seed pots, and put another 12 in to soak for 24 hours in an experiment to see which is better.

On the allotment, we've planted 6 rows of Pink Fir Apple potatoes, 6 of Lady Balfour and 7 of Arran Victory. I also put in another couple of rows of peas. The Builder mowed, mightily. He's also mowed back at home. Everything looks much more loved now!

We are eating rhubarb. Oh boy, are we eating rhubarb. To say the two lots on the allotment and the one lot where the chook run will eventually go at home have been neglected for years would be something of an understatement. But they are doing mighty fine on it! I might manure them this autumn and see what happens next. We are also eating sprouting broccoli. And asparagus, but not our asparagus, obviously. There are 7 shoots up now.

Memo to self: the germination rate of the spring sown broad beans and peas in astronomically better than the autumn sown ones. DO NOT DO IT AGAIN IN THE AUTUMN!!!!! (I know this really, but autumnal optimism always gets the better of me!!!)

2008-05-06T18:44:00.005Z

I took the Veronica broccoli seedlings on Saturday, before we went away, and potted them all up into individual pots. They weren't very happy! Fortunately, they have survived the weekend and appear now to be thriving. If they all do thrive, there will be about 30 of them!

Today, I planted out a long and a gem shaped courgette seedling in the second bed. Around the edge, I put the rest of the stuttgarter white onions. I started out planting them quite carefully, though more closely together than I usually would. THen I realised that I had gone all the way around the bed and still had as many again. I pretty much broadcast sowed them in the end!

I've also planted a new row of peas. I thought I'd planted a row before we went to Japan and Australia. I still think I did! However, absolutely nothing has come up, and the broad beans were poking through when we got back. When I poked about today with the hoe, there was nothing there. Either something ate them, every one, or I didn't plant them. I've put a netting trellis for them to climb up, also in the hope that nothing digs them up!

I didn't get to the allotment today to plant the potatoes. The Builder has one bed ready and another nearly ready. Perhaps we'll go up one evening after work.

It was really quite summery today. About 25d and a very light breeze. The plants in the propagating tent are starting to germinate. The sweet potato slips, however, are emphatically not looking happy. And I think they are being eaten by slugs. I must put slug pellets around them.

We are still eating purple sprouting broccoli. The plants seem remarkably productive!

2008-04-28T18:37:00.005Z

And today, I managed to dodge the showers and dashed up to the allotment and planted 6 rows of Ambo (2nd early potatoes) and 4 rows, followed by one very long one along the path of Arran Pilot (1st early potatoes). Plus I sowed 2 rows of Lincoln peas.

This is how things look now:

Late April

2008-04-27T09:23:00.005Z

We came back from Japan and Australia to find that most of the seedlings in the propagating tent had died while we were away. The broccoli had survived. And for some reason th capsicum and one or two of the passionfruit seeds had actually germinated in the last couple of days. They must enjoy being warm and arid!

So I've bought some more tomato seeds and re-sowed them on the 24th. Three different types, two cherry tomatoes and one roma.

On the 25th, we planted out ten ariane asparagus crowns. We can't pick any spears for twelve months. Realistically, that means spring 2010, I think. We're preparing another trench for some autumn planting asparagus too. The sweet potato slips have finally arrived. I've put them into plant pots to root. I cant say they're looking very happy but fingers crossed they'll survive and can go into the greenhouse in three or so weeks.

Something is digging up the pea seedlings in the second pea bed :-( The Builder has put a little fence alongside them so they have something to grow up - and perhaps to dissuade the digger from digging! I am going to plant more peas on a bed on the allotment. I seem to have run out of room in the kitchen garden! And today I am hoping to plant some more broad bean seeds and some beetroot seeds.

On the allotment we have planted 60 red baron onions, 15 res sun shallots, 15 golden gourmet shallots and 60 stuttgarter white onions. I have many onion sets left, and no where to put them! I also have no room for the leek seeds. I'm going to sow them in a seed tray and think about where to put them.

There are two beds more or less ready for potatoes. I could do with another two, or perhaps even three!

I am also intending to plant soya seeds in seed pots today. I'm going to put them on the lounge room window sill. They need to be warm to germinate.

I don't know what to do about the Cape gooseberries. The seedlings died while we were away and we don't have any more seed. It's not available in the nurseries and it seems a bit excessive to buy it online - the package and postage costs more than the seed packet!! I might have a look on eBay!

This morning, I have planted in seed pots or seed trays:

Bean magic mix (6 different types of drying beans)
mammoth pot leeks and white giant leeks
soya beans (to be put on the front window sill)
pea beans (French, climbing)
queensland blue pumpkins
runner beans
cucumber

In wooden boxes:

rainbow carrots
mesclun salad mix
a mix of parsnips, red radish (candeladi fuoco) and long white radish

In the garden:

Boro F1 and Monorubra beetroot
Bunyards Exhibition broad beans.

Haven't got to the allotment yet today. I think it might rain shortly

Early Spring activity

2008-03-10T10:04:00.003Z

We’ve been busy in the garden this weekend. Fortunately, the weather held!

The Builder has dug over the “herbaceous” border, which was very, very overgrown with grass and weeds. While he was doing that, I weeded the two flower beds. I’ve taken out all the wild strawberries in the top bed – they had ambitions which would have put the most ruthless of world dictators to shame! I’ve planted the hellebore which Penny and Steve gave us by the diagonal plant in the top bed, and sown black cornflower seed and black sunflower seeds in there. The crocuses are up and looking very cheerful. The tulips won’t be long. That bed will be, more or less, a black/purple/pink bed. I sowed wildflower seeds in the lower bed and hedgerow and verge seeds in the newly dug over bed, which is looking more like a shrubbery at the moment than a herbaceous border!

Then The Builder made up some more double wooden boxes for me. I planted purple haze carrots in the first one and covered it with a pane of class I found lying about in company with about a dozen other panes of glass. In one of the single boxes, I planted some lettuce, red lettuce, spring onion and spinach seeds, also now covered with glass. A second double one has been filled with soil, now under glass, to warm up ready for parsnip and radish seeds.

In the kitchen garden, The Builder over the winter dug a bed down along the East fence and planted loads of those little lavender bushes in it. He also moved the tayberry. Over the weekend we bought a cranberry and a thornless blackberry which are also in there. I’m thinking of trying a kiwi vine as well and seeing how that gets on. Yesterday we weeded all the vegetable beds and have now covered them with compost, manure and/or ash, depending on what we’re planning to plant in them. I put a long row of early onward peas in the runner bean bed, some Canoe peas (about 20) in the bed with the autumn sowing of peas (which are not looking all that happy) and some Emperor broad beans in the bottom bed by the volcano.
The gardens are all looking rather better now, for a general tidy up, though more tidying needs to be done. Oh, and The Builder has begun dismantling the fist compost heap we put in when we first moved in. The first one is gone, dug over and the contents distributed. We’ll do the rest of it another time.

I’ve ordered some asparagus for the first bit of the asparagus bed which is now ready. I’ll get some more for the autumn, when I hope the rest of the bed will be ready.

I hope all the seeds survive – it’s been wet and windy since about 19:00 last night!

The Builder has begun new digging on the allotment, starting at the bottom this time. I’m planning to plant potatoes down there. I’ve begun weeding at the top, and the greenhouses are ready for later in the spring. There’s a “new” greenhouse coming. Clarissa and Mike had decided to replace theirs with a wooden one. We are going to get the rejected one at Easter.

And I’ve started sowing the seeds. It crossed my mind that the lounge room window sill faces south, gets lots of sunshine and is pleasantly warm and would make an excellent “heated cold frame” for the heat loving plants. I’ve got pots of seeds sat in there as from yesterday. It was lovely – I sat outside in the sunshine while I did the potting. So, we’ve got: two types of tomatoes (must buy some cherry tomatoes, though – they can grow outside), chocolate capsicum, yellow capsicum, pointed capsicum, Veronica calabrese, and cape gooseberries. I’ve also got some sweet potato slips coming. It’s all very exciting!

Fingers crossed for some good digging weather at weekends between now and Easter, and in the week after Easter when The Builder will have gardening time during the week as well

This is how the kitchen garden and the allotment look today

February 2008

2008-02-28T09:37:00.000Z

This is how the kitchen garden looked mid-February

2007-10-21T18:14:00.001Z

We’ve had quite a few frosts these last few days. There’s a thermometer on the same pole as the garden clock and it’s been showing -1 when we’ve got up. The sun has come out nice and warmly later in the morning, but it does mean that the zucchinis and the runner beans are taking a bit of a hammering.

So I’ve pulled the zucchini and sort of weeded the bed it was in. The top bit had already been weeded and has autumn planting broad beans in it. I’ll hoe the rest of it and sow some more, though I could do with another packet.

The Builder has pulled the runner beans. I have a basket full of them, some of which have the most beautiful bean seeds in them. Pink and speckled and shiny. He’s kept back 24 of the prettiest of them, for sowing next spring. I’m gradually sorting them out into big beans and little beans ready for winter casseroles. (On a related note, I’ve also sorted out the veg freezer so that things are more or less together and I have some hope of finding things!)

The cabbages and broccoli are doing ok. We’re eating the cabbages and the bright green calabresi; some of the plants are producing sprouting bits now as well. We’re also beginning to get some carrot thinnings. Was a lovely veg collection last evening: little carrots, little zucchini (the last from the plants) and little florets of broccoli. Went very well with the roast beef, roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings.

The Builder has turned his attention to the front of the house. The little “rockery” by the back gate, which had been filled with ivy and a tree which flowered for about a week every spring but otherwise was unremarkable, has now gone, to open up a bit of space around the gate (which will eventually be the door into the porch). He’s intending to cut back the wall in front of the house by a bit and to remove the front rockery. A much larger undertaking than the back one!!

There are still squillions of little fish in the pond, along with the 6 big ones. I wonder how many of them will survive the winter. I wonder what sort of a winter we’ll have. I seem to recall it being milder than this last October (a quick squizz of the Meanderings blog for last October suggests that it was milder and damper and greyer but I wasn’t really keeping a weather report).

I’ve been very impressed with this season’s produce from the garden, the orchard and the allotment. It was the first year for all of them, it hasn’t been particularly good weather for growing food – and the vegetable freezer is full to capacity and we continue to eat from the greenhouses and from the veg garden. True, only brassicas from the veg plots, but I’m not sneezing at cabbages and broccoli.

And here’s looking towards next season.

Autumn report

2007-10-17T19:01:00.000Z

Things are coming on well in the garden. The cabbages and broccoli are growing nicely (and tasting nicely too). We've almost come to the end of the runner beans and the zucchini, but are still getting some. I've started putting the empty beds, and empty bits of beds in use, to bed for the winter. I've weeded them and covered them with manure and or ash from the volcano, then topped that with grass clippings. On Monday I planted autumn planting peas and broad beans in two of the beds and top dressed with ash. We'll have to see if we can beat the slugs, frost and snow this year!!

Oh - the corn has started to fruit. Too late, of course, but it did finally get there. If nothing else, I can make corn stock with it!!!

Things are in a moderate level of disarray on the allotment. The top beds desperately need weeding. There are leeks and tiny onions in there and you can't see them for thistles!! The potato beds aren't so bad. I've weeded the bottom one by the greenhouses and today planted white and red onion sets and some garlic for the spring. The tomatoes are producing prolifically! I came home with yet more today. There's now a huge pot of "ratatouille" waiting to go into the freezer. It's got tomatoes, onions, garlic, zucchini and wong bok (instead of aubergine!) and smells wonderful.

We are considering getting another couple of greenhouses for the allotment, plus a small tool shed. When The Builder has time, he’s going to start putting new beds in, starting at the bottom (I think) and working up towards the greenhouses.

The flower garden is looking very smart. I’ve weeded both the centre beds and they’re looking very cheerful. Last winter, inspired by a friend’s tales of wandering about in her garden the previous summer and eating wild strawberries for breakfast, I moved a few plants I found in the lawn into the first bed. A nice edging, I thought. Well, the most ardent evil dictator in human history could lessons in world domination from those strawberries. They’ve colonised that entire bed, made serious inroads into the brick path and even started to straggle into the next bed!!! I’ve hacked them back but I am seriously wondering whether this really was a terribly good plan. Didn’t even get any tiny strawberries (though I got loads on the real plants in the orchard). I’ve just bought some seeds for “black” hollyhocks, cornflowers, sunflowers and sweet peas. I’m pondering whether to dig out the wild strawberries and replace them with the “black” seeds. Apart from the sweet peas, which I might grow along the fence! That would give me (more or less and not absolutely) a black and purple bed which would be quite cute.

I now need to weed (urgently!) the original flowerbed along the wall. We are intending to take down the two rockery beds out the front and I want to rescue some of the plants in the bed by the front wall. Then we’re going to shorten the length of the wall outside the actual house by a bit. With both beds gone and the wall shortened, we should be able to get the new van onto the concrete and off the road. Mind you, the power pole in the middle of the new gap will still be a problem, but I don’t imagine the power people are going to shift it for our convenience!!