Another two bite the dust..

We have been away for a week on hols in the Lake District, great walking & climbing but far too much cake… 

Must have been warm weather here whilst we were away because everything has put on loads of growth. Two casualties in the greenhouse though, both cucumbers which seem to have withered and died..  

The two on the right have withered away which just leaves one healthy one… Every year some of the cucumbers seem to get sudden death when they get to about this high. Does anyone know why?!  I’ve only got one left the same size which I don’t want to lose, and four that I sowed a week or so ago as a backup.  The only thing I can see is that the compost is a little bit on the wet side?

There is more to pick in the flower garden now, managed to pick a couple of small bunches for the house.

Cerinthe Major and Lunaria Alba (Honesty – White)

Lettuce, rocket and chives picked for tonight’s tea..

‘Im-outside V ‘Er-in-doors

There is a famous sketch by Rowan Atkinson where he plays the father of the bride at his daughters wedding…’there comes a time in every wedding ceremony when the man who paid for it all gets to say a few words…’ the same is true of gardens and that time appears to have arrived sooner than I expected! As Yesper Lynd (Casino Royale) says ‘I am the money’ but I am also the grunt. I am in charge of the hard work…sorry, the hard landscaping. Oh boy, do I have to thank Sarah Raven and others for a lot of it this year. Whilst my wife is tucked up nice and warm planning borders, veggie plots and buying seeds etc off the internet or even venturing out to her heated greenhouse, I am coppicing hazel (in the rain), building raised beds (in the rain) and shoveling horse poo (in the rain and hail)…believe me, you ask a few questions of yourself doing that job. Fortunately the money and the grunt are not mutually exclusive and the more I do of one the less we spend of the other…it has been a very frugal year!

I appreciate that this is in danger of spiraling out of control into a full blown winge but I can end that here by confirming officially and in print that it has actually been quite good fun (horse poo excepted) and extremely rewarding. Being able to say I coppiced the wood from which I built the structures for the veggie patch is a long way from the day job and it must score me some ‘good husband’ points at the coffee mornings. So, armed with no more than a printed photo from Sarah Raven’s garden (note, no breach of copyright…we took the photo) I managed to reconstruct something that, even if I do say so myself, looks better than the original. You will know from the previous entries (few as they are so far) that SR is regarded in somewhat high regard round here. In fact, it would not be unfair to regard ’she who must be obeyed’ as something of a ‘follower’ rather than an normal admirer of her work. Expect the full Salman Rushdie treatment if you ‘disrespect’ the leader…

You may have seen the fruits of my labours in some of the photos already posted but I thought a couple of specific non-plant related images might be of interest. Firstly, I must point out that if I can do this then so can anyone. I have no particular skills other than a small amount of common sense which can also frequently be called into question. I have power tools that I dare not remove from their boxes for fear of important bits of me suddenly and without provocation dropping off. I work with someone who is ruthlessly practical and he laughs at me regularly. I am sure you now have the picture.

So it is that I have discovered that I can no longer live without cable ties, 2 by 2 (technical speak, used at my local Jewsons) and 25mm blue water pipe! I have Geoff Hamilton to thank for the cloches. I managed to knock up 4 for a very reasonable price in an hour or so. The only expensive bit is the dowling which in future I intend to replace with straight 18mm grey water pipe at a fraction of the cost. Other than that they are highly recommended. The bricks and string you can see are an improvised 2am fix to finding them blown all round the garden in the recent high winds, which they survived I must add…a testiment to GH’s design or my execution is still subject to debate. Anyway here is a picture…

 

I mentioned earlier that my wife spends much of her time at the moment planning and purchasing in our office and potting up seeds in a nice warm greenhouse…this is my centre of operations. A little more exposed and not quite so well insulated but the ventilation helps with the two large bags of horse poo…

 

 

Ok, so it doesn’t rain all the time…and I haven’t finished the paving off before it gets mentioned…unfinished project No: 24357…re-scheduled for 2009.

A major project recently was to replace the fencing in the flower garden. The concrete fence posts which never decay, erm, crumbled like fresh cheese…the winds took care of the rest. Now I’ve never done fencing before so I decided to draft in some help in the form of my Dad who, thankfully (being a surveyor) is able to read a tape measure and promptly turned up and moved all my canes marking the spots where I believed the posts needed to go…I still maintain that I knew he would check my calculations and spot my deliberate error in not allowing for the posts themselves between the panels. Anyway, I think they turned out ok considering that we couldn’t always dig down as far as we wanted to because of previously discarded bags of cement, metal straps and what I think was either an old oil tank or the casing of an unexploded bomb…either way, we weren’t digging through it.

 

I would like to thank my Dad for all his help and guidance. A mention should also go to my work colleague, Richard, who supplied all the heavy duty gear…6ft steel ram pole and bolt cutters…don’t ask. But don’t struggle to dig a post out if you don’t have to. Just knock it down to below ground level and snip the reinforcing steel with the bolt cutters, set your new posts to one side (if you can)…an invaluable bit of advice and without it I suspect I would still be there digging now!

In this photo you can also see the final stages of the flower garden refurbishment. The beds used to be bordered by wine bottles but they had started to look like the Pogues frontman’s teeth (his name escapes me…Shane something, I think). They have now gone to the bottle bank (4 car loads to the local pub, very embarrassing) to be replaced by 1 inch treated board which if set into the ground should look pretty good…same as used in the new borders below…

Mercifully, I am nearing then end of my slot. It been a long one but I am not planning on doing it again…too many unfinished jobs as you can no doubt see. However, I would just like to indulge myself with a few last looks at the veggie plot and my finest moment…the hazel…

And another…

And the last…

It is now time for a celebratory cold beer. The only thing left to do is to thank my long suffering wife for giving me this opportunity to recognise and enjoy the truly finer things in life.

 

Planting out our 2nd lot of broad beans

We love broad beans and like to cropping them as long as possible, so this morning we planted out our second sowing.  

I grow them in Root Trainers as I like to grow most things under cover first before planting out. Seems to work well, so I stick with it. I read in Sarah Raven’s book that a successional sowing is best done when the first ones reach 5cm, so this was when we sowed this batch.

I also read (SR again) that if you plant summer savoury among the rows it helps discourage blackfly, so if its not too late I might try that and sow some seeds next week.  I seem to always get blackfly, as I usually forget to pinch out the tips and then see that the tops are covered, but it doesn’t seem to affect the beans. Mental note – must be more vigilent this year.  We’ll stake them when they get a bit bigger, I’ve got some birch pea sticks which will be perfect for the job round the back by the compost heap.

The dahlias are alive!

 

Hurrah! The first signs of life from two of the dahlias. Two of my dahlias, Sam Hopkins (left) and New Baby (right) have started to emerge from under the compost (only 16 other varieties to make an appearance).  

The greenhouse is full..

At last the sun is shining!

So this is the first entry of “Courgette Surprise”, a little look at our veggie plot and cut flower garden over the coming months. This is our veggie patch today. 

“Courgette surprise” as it is a running joke in our household that come the summer, the menu largely consists of courgettes in one form or another…  I have collected quite a lot of good courgette recipes now though, which I will add to the blog as I go.

This is our fourth year of trying to grow our own and the first year that we have had something to pick over the winter months kale, chard, sorrel, spinach, lettuce and celeraic!  Seems I am doing something right! Struggling with what to do with a celeraic though apart from potato and celeraic gratin.

Anyway, following a miserable spring so far (weatherwise), things seem to be looking up today, we had a mild frost this morning, but the sun is shining and the greenhouse is packed full of seedlings waiting to go out. 

Nothing from the dahlias yet though.  Potted them up when they arrived three weeks ago from Sarah Raven, but nothing has happened. Have they rotted? Am I doing something wrong? Tempted to unearth them but will try and wait a little bit longer…