So long .. for now

It’s almost two years since I started writing this blog and this will probably be the last entry. Our building application is progressing, bats notwithstanding, so we have no plans for the garden next year as building work will take priority. Although it’s quite a while since I last updated the blog – there have been various departures and arrivals of cats, hens and fish since then – it’s an opportune time to review this year’s produce.

Potatoes: Not as big a crop as we’d hoped when we dug them up in September as the slugs got there first. I then read that if you have heavy, clay soil as we do, then it is better to harvest in August before the slugs really get going in September. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Apples: Not a huge amount from out patio variety, and a bit too strong to be eaten by themselves but very flavoursome when ate with cheese. Wish I could remember what variety they are but we bought the bush yonks ago.

Gooseberries: Huge crop but tasted awful if not eaten on the day they were picked.

Raspberries: Beautiful but could do with more.

Blueberries: Early crop had a strange fishy taste when baked in muffins. Couldn’t quite understand that one.

Runnerbeans: We had a decent crop but I still can’t stand the things,

Mangetout: A success.

Peas: Beautiful but could have done with more as they went straight from pod to mouth.

Lettuce, spinach, spring onions, radishes, cucumbers: All a disappointment. Tried growing some salad under cloches but they just became sort of Eden project for slugs.

Tomatoes: Rescued at the last minute. Looked unpromising at one point but we ended up with a fairly decent crop in the end.

Chillies, jalapenos and sweet peppers: Beset by aphids even though they were grown indoors but we’re still coaxing them into production.

Leeks: Ongoing.

Calendulas, nasturtiums and herbs: The pottager was a success. The calendulas, lavender and chamomile in particular are being used to make soaps and bath bombs. Cooking with fresh parsley, basil and rosemary was a treat.

So what’s next? The garden will be pretty much left to its own devices for the coming year. When we’re reinstalled in the house, and have finished decorating, we’ll switch our attention back to the garden. We need to find a better arrangement for our poultry and would like to build raised beds to improve the range and quality of our vegetables and salad. We’d also like to keep bees. Maybe an idea for a future blog?

R.I.P. Gabriella

I was determined to update the blog this week with news on how we are reaping the rewards of our hard work as we were now eating our produce etc., however, sometime late afternoon /early evening on Wednesday I discovered Gabby, our gregarious hen, dead. I saw Megan was standing over her and she was automatically accused, in typical cop show style, as the person first to find the body always is. However, as there was no other evidence she’s now been let off the hook and, as the body was ‘disposed of’ by the buzzard before Jon had a chance to do a proper post mortem (basically I was too chicken, forgive the pun, to get any nearer the body) an open verdict has been returned. Our initial reaction was to give up on keeping birds but I suppose this is something all henkeepers go through at some point and if we all gave up at the first hurdle there’d be a lot more unhappy battery hens to satisfy the nation’s egg needs.  

Back to the original topic, we’ve been enjoying homegrown mangetout for several weeks now, supplemented by the odd peapod. Our fruit bushes are producing blueberries – delicious with yogurt, dreadful baked in muffins – and raspberries that we plan to  have with our mackerel salad tonight (had it in a restaurant on my birthday and they go together really well). There’s a dish of gooseberries in the fridge that will probably get eaten before I have a change to bake them into a tart, and there are another couple of bowls’ worth waiting to be harvested on the same bush. Last Sunday we ate early spuds roasted in rosemary and garlic, all homegrown of course apart from the olive oil, and last night we had them boiled. Either way, homegrown spuds taste so good.  We’re miles away from being self-sufficient but it’s a start.

I’m also planning other uses for the garden produce. I currently have a bouquet of mint and fennel decorating the dining table but, more excitingly, I was bought a soap-making starter kit by Caroline and Mike for my birthday so I intend to source herbs from the potager to make our own decorative soaps in addition to the culinary oils we’ve been making for the past few years.  That’s this year’s Christmas present list sorted!

An Update (and about time too!)

It’s been yonks since I last updated this, not because we haven’t been gardening, I just haven’t got round to writing about it. We’ve settled into a pattern of work that is roughly: every Sunday fortnight – mow and weed; every Monday fortnight: sow, pot on or plant up. If the truth be known gardening, by it’s very nature – seasonal and cyclical – is repetitive, so I suppose it was only natural that when I first started writing about planning our activities it was all ‘new and shiny’.  Now, after a couple of years it’s become fairly routine: sow, transplant seedlings, hoe, weed, prune, repeat ad finitum. Anyway, I’ve included some photos to show the progress we’ve made:

The potager and spud patch from above

 

 

The pea and bean canes

The spud patch

Early spuds and patio apple trees

Peppers and salad seedlings in the mini greenhouse

Hens impatient to be let loose!

Next year, however, may be very different. We’ve applied for planning permission to extend the house upwards and, miracles of miracles when you live in a National Park, the planning process is progressing fairly smoothly. If / when the building work goes ahead, we’ll have to move out for a few months so it is highly probable that we won’t be growing our own vegetables next year, but will have to deal with a jungle of weeds and out of control perennials on our return.

Catch up

I’ve been very remiss updating the blog recently, not that we haven’t been gardening, but my default Internet browser page usually displays eBay at the moment. My best sales so far have been three broken, plastic watches and used ticket stubs. How bizarre! Back to the garden though. If (no pun intended) Telly Savalas was correct and a picture paints a thousand words then this photo should have quite a bit to say for itself:
 

The lowest bed contains lines of rhubarb, main crop potatoes, and early croppers which are just starting to show. In the bottom row of the potager we have culinary herbs, behind them the cloches contain cos lettuces, radishes (slugs had a good go at them despite the beer traps) and spinach that were all started off indoors. The twine rows indicate where the leeks were sown – although the hens have been playing cats’ cradle with the strings - intercropped with spring onions, garlic and more radishes. Runner beans, mangetout and peas seedlings, again started off indoors, are being trained to run up the canes. Calendula officinalis and nasturtiums have been sown directly into the ground, whilst livingstone daisy seedlings surround the fountain paving stones. Okay the daisies aren’t edible but I had a surplus of them and they are pretty.  To complete, creeping herbs, such as thyme and chamomile,  have been dotted around to spread and deter weeds. That’s the plan anyway. I’ve just had to do a major weeding session as they went wild as soon as we had a spot of warm weather and I suspect I may have inadvertently disturbed or weeded out many of the naturtiums and marigolds. 

Meanwhile, the hens are settling in nicely. They’ve had a few adventures: the odd run-in with the younger dog who still can’t believe that they don’t want to play with her; made sworn enemies of the  jays; murdered a few slow worms in cold blood (that did not go down well!). But apart from one day when Gabriella got spooked, first by Megan and then by the gale force winds, so hid until bedtime, they pretty much rule the roost. They’ve made themselves at home by creating various dustbaths round the garden. Very cute, especially when they get too excited and roll over down the garden path steps.

Tales From (quite near) The Riverbank

So, we have dogs and cats lazing in the study, fish swimming (in a tank!) in the lounge, hens wrecking the garden, tadpoles doing whatever tadpoles do in a bucket in the conservatory, and now we have caterpillars in the bedroom. Jon’s Christmas present from his brother’s family was a butterfly garden net. Caterpillars are only available from March to September so I duly sent off for them last week – all my earnings from my first eBay sale went on their P&P! – and now we’re just waiting for something to happen.  

Meanwhile, I planted more herbs in my potager garden (Jon keeps saying “Your what?!”) last week and spent the weekend sowing the rest of the leeks and a lot of Calendulas. Closely followed by the chicks, who in turn were closely followed by various robins. We shall have to see how many plants actually come up, but there are significant bare patches on the area of grass lawn that we have just sown and Gabriella and Monica are definitely the main names in the frame.     

Today has been an overcast, rainy day, not one to be spending too long in the garden, so I planted the second batch of various seeds indoors: lettuce, peas, mangetout, runner beans and gladstone daisies. The onions and sweet peas I planted a fortnight ago have failed to show so the seed is probably no longer viable but the mangetout in particular is looking good. I was just watering the seeds when I glanced up and spotted an oddly coloured lamb in the field. It quickly dawned on me that it was a badger venturing out in daylight, presumably because the rain had brought all the worms and slugs to the surface.  I tried using Jon’s camera – too complicated to use when I was in a hurry – so grabbed the little Finepix instead and made my way down to the gate on to the field:

By this time, badger had spotted me (and Megan) so decided to make a run for it, just in case.

The chickens are taking over

Another busy week. More rhubarb bought and planted, the last of the early crop spuds also planted whilst the vacant egg boxes have been filled with main crop spuds waiting to chit. The framework of the potager is now pretty much in place, apart from the legume tripods, and I’ve made a significant start on removing the blind daffs to make room for new bulbs. Meanwhile, the hens are living up to their Cheeky Girls names and making their own contributions to the task of gardening, some useful such as eating bugs and other creepy crawlies, others less helpful like scattering the rose bed mulch over the lawn, eating the newly sown grass seed, and trolleying the best winter primrose display we had.

 The other pets are starting to fight back now. Megan is fascinated by them so I still can’t let dogs and hens loose at the same time, but I’ve just caught one of the cats trying to stalk them as well. It could be that Minto was putting on an act of bravado in front of me, as he is wont to do, but I had to haul him in to be on the safe side. I tried bribery to get the hens to go back in their run, but whoever coined the phrase ‘chicken-brained’ hadn’t met these two because they’re as cunning as foxes and work as a team. Several handfuls of soggy sweetcorn later, I’ve admitted defeat. Cats and dogs are confined to barracks with me and those two are, well, Gabriella is currently enjoying another dust bath whilst Monica is staring into the porch, waiting for me to go out with more sweetcorn. Meanwhile, the dogs are sitting mournfully on the step desperate to go out.

Just been out again to try and persuade them to go into the run as I feel sorry for the dogs and I don’t want to have to mop up any puddles. I got Monica in, somehow, but Gabriella kept evading me – she lets you get so close, then throws you a dummy with a shrug of  the shoulder/wing - allowing Monica to escape again. The pair of them are now strutting around the lawn, chuckling.

The Enthusiastic (?!) Gardener

Over the past two days I’ve dug over, fed and raked the soon-to-be spud and rhubarb bed (I have the “old gardeners’ hands and back” to prove it), planted the first tray of seeds indoors – mangetout, peas, runner beans, lettuce, onions, sweet peas and livingstone daisies – and reseeded the bare patch on the lawn, which the chicks found very interesting. The spud bed now looks like this …

which may not look that impressive but it took hours to get it to look like that! I couldn’t do anything with the nearest corner as the bed rock is just under the surface.

I know I ought to be repotting tomatoes, planting the garlic bulb, making a start on the ‘potager garden’ (I do like the sound of that!) and planting the 122 bulbs we bought at the weekend, but I also ought to walk Sam and Meg the five miles, then back, to our nearest Post Office to post an eBay item I’ve just sold. Decisions! Decisions!

The Chicky Girls

On Saturday morning we picked up Gabriella and Monica to add to our little menagerie. After years of wanting our own chickens, and becoming progressively more jealous as chicken coops appeared in gardens up and down the valley, we finally bit the bullet and invested in an Eglu, a moulded plastic hutch that was recommended to us as a beginner’s introduction to chicken keeping. It’s produced by a company called Omlet and, whilst not as cheap as some wooden coops, is perfect for us novices.

By Sunday lunch time, they had produced their first two eggs (large and delicious) and are certainly doing their bit to fertilize the patch of grass they currently reside on. We need to keep them in their run for the first week, so they have been visited by the other animals: Megan desperately wants to play with them (and has been soundly told off); Sami’s a bit wary of them (presumably after being told off for trying to chase other people’s chickens); Minto was distinctly unimpressed and sloped off to find some smaller birds that were more his size; George stared at them then, deciding they were too big to eat, just ignored them.

The tadpoles are getting bigger and have been decanted into a bucket of clean water with pond weed. Many didn’t survive but that was hardly surprising as they had been hit by frost.

We actually managed to fit in some gardening as well! With much effort, I moved the  fountain to the veg patch (I’ll have to think of another name. It’s new theme is ‘pretty, edible garden’ but that’s a bit of a mouthful.) when Jon took the dogs out for a walk, dug it over and fed it with Growmore.  During the morning, we had bought more herbs, summer bulbs and grass seed as the last lot didn’t take, but they are tasks for the coming week(s), weather permitting. I also need to dig over and feed the bottom garden – now the heavy duty veg patch – where we are going to plant rhubarb and spuds. That is going to be really hard work. And I need to go through the seed packets and start sowing them instead of prevaricating (such as stopping to write this).

P.S. “Pretty, edible garden” is henceforth known as the potager garden. I’d actually written it down on the plan so don’t know why it slipped my memory. Must be all the excitement of the Girls laying two more eggs.

Spring has sprung

We have lodgers in the conservatory …

Several clumps of frogspawn were laid in the field about three weeks ago but we were still prone to bouts of frost, so Jon insisted that I rescue some before they were all killed off. As it happens, the other clumps seem to be surviving pretty well but the ones brought into the relative warmth of the conservatory are several weeks ahead of their siblings / cousins, which are only just starting to differentiate into discernible shapes rather than balls. The most developed of ours, on the other hand, have left the safety of the jelly and are merrily swimming around. (I would have taken photos of the tadpoles when they were first brought in to chart their progress but I couldn’t find the charger for the camera …)

Outside, we have seeded the bare earth round the table area, potted up our first early spuds, and are in the last stages of planning what to do with the veg patch and what was formerly the rose garden. Current thinking is that the rose garden is going to be given over to main crop spuds, with rhubarb growing in the relative shade of the hedge. Decking can wait another year. Peas, beans, mangetout and leeks will be planted in the veg patch intercropped with more herbs. We’re also thinking of relocating the fountain to the middle of the veg patch, a bit radical I know, but we can’t dig a hole deep enough anywhere else in the garden before we hit bedrock. The stone sundial and bird bath have already been moved next to the stone bench and I spent several hours over the weekend transferring the top layer of mulch from the ex-rose garden to the rose and perennial beds. Next step is to dig over and apply feed before planting so that needs to be done pretty soon. However, next weekend may be a little busy as we hope to take charge of some new arrivals.

Hedge hacking

The weather was fine on Sunday, Jon and the dogs had been out for a long walk the previous day, therefore there was no excuse not to do some gardening. We want to trim the hedges before they start growing again and the birds make nests in them, so we tackled an internal beech hedge first that separates the path running alongside the conservatory from the vegetable patch. We decided to bite the bullet and not merely trim it but hack it down from three foot to a foot, the rationale being that we would be able to see more of the garden when dining. The task was complicated by the amount of embedded rusty chicken wire, but we got there in the end. 

Okay, it’s not particularly pretty at the moment but it has opened that side of the garden up. Once the remaining hedge has got over the shock of such a severe “hairdo” and established itself again we’ll tidy it up before we have visitors.