Cucumbers are Already Here!

male flowers have been removed

This is something I didn't know until a few years ago.  Cucumber plants have two sorts of flowers on the vine.  Male flowers and female flowers.

Removing the male flowers before they open and start pollinating everything is important.  If cucumbers get pollinated, they become bitter and unpleasant to eat.

baby cucumbers

It is easy to spot which flowers are male flowers early on.  They don't have a small cucumber behind the flower. 

I did a bit of cleaning out in the polytunnel today.  When the door was opened it was like going into a sauna.  LOTS of hot and very humid air in there!

When I cleared away some of the super slug infested lettuce, I found these little beauties! 

The first cucumbers!   I predict there is some pickle making in my future!

This is a jar I made last year.  They're still tasty!

Windy Today

We had a scorcher yesterday.  It was lovely, still and hot for most of the first half of the day.  Today is howling with wind.  The baskets are unhooked and down again.

The front beech hedge was clipped back so that we can have better access to the herbaceous border along the western edge of the garden.  We clipped back everything by hand.

This is what the hedge looked like as I started.

This is what it looked like at the end of the afternoon.  Over ten wheelbarrow loads were hauled away.

It is not cool to cut a  hedge during nesting season.  We used hand tools only and went very slowly.  We stopped when we were  two thirds of the way done because there may be nests.

This shows where work stopped.  I heard lots of cheeping so we didn't go any further.  It may be  months before we finish.  I'm okay with that.

We can't get all the way to the top safely.  I'm not worried about that either.  When the tractor comes along in August, the top will get cut back.  I also didn't cut back the hawthorn that has seeded itself in this hedge.  It's in bloom.  The bees need those flowers.  It looks a bit insane but there you have it.

Work stopped when slurry was spread on the field next to the house.  It was supremely smelly, drove everybody indoors and I shut the windows.  A few hours later it wasn't quite so pungent. When it was first put down, it was fierce!  I really don't mind much.  I'd rather have slurry stink than car exhaust.

We went outside toward the end of the day when the smell had lightened up a bit.  There were clouds building in the north so I started picking up tools and raking up dropped leaves.  When the rain started, I was in again.

This is this weeks star visitor to the garden.

A little juvenile weasel.  I saw it running around in the wall near the bird feeders.  I guess this means that all the voles that used to live there are gone now.  The appearance of the weasel also explains why the pheasant chicks aren't around anymore.

I saw a little weasel again later on and it looked like a different animal.  The first one had a shorter tail. When the weasel ran away, it ran to a pile of stones that lives under the big pine tree.   It is in this pile of stones that I saw a weasel years ago.  It is my hope that this pile of stones is a permanent home for a family of weasels.

Spinach experiment

I have an old pack of spinach seeds.  The expiration was 2018.  Two years out.  I don't know what the germination rate will be.  Some seeds can live for decades - other seeds only barely hang on until the next season.

The old seeds are getting planted. There is a good fistful of seeds so  I will plant all of them.  I will start out with two test rows in the polytunnel.

I also have some new spinach seeds.  I ordered them from Amazon and they arrived in a few days  from China!   There will be two rows of these seeds too.

Well well well. . . Chinese spinach.
The warning on the packet is formidable!  Do not open this can/package/container or plant the seeds until you have read and understood the NOTICE TO PURCHASER.  This seed is intended for planting by professional growers who are familiar with this variety *text obscured by photo* under their field conditions.    Cripes!  I hope I'm up to the challenge!


When comparing the appearance of the seeds, the newer seeds are greener.   I don't know what the variety is of this new seed.


The old spinach seed from a shopping trip to Aldi and is obviously variety Matador.  I hope it germinates and is happy here.

I've planted two short rows of each in our big plastic tunnel and watered them well.  I will be interested to see how each variety does.  It is not fair to compare germination rates as the European seed is old. It will be fun to note the physical differences.  I expect the taste will be identical.

I will plant the rest of the seeds outside later on today.  I will plant all the spinach seed.  No sense in keeping it.  I love spinach and will eat every scrap that is edible.

If one variety does particularly well, I will let a plant or two bolt at the end of the season and harvest the seed for next year.

dead lupin seedlings

On another note, it is vital to check and water everything in a greenhouse every single day.  Sometimes you should water twice a day if the weather is particularly warm.   This poor tray of lupin seedlings is now dead.  It sure didn't take long to go from healthy and growing to crispy and dead. I am upset with myself for being so careless.  I had great plans for those plants.  I have a few seeds left in the packet so . . . do over.

Nets on the Fruit Cage

The poles to the fruit cage were put up a few days ago.   We promptly had a couple days of high wind so I just left the project until we had more favourable weather.

Yesterday I dragged the nets out of the greenhouse and unrolled them on the grass.  I looped the meters of net over my arms like an enormous bridal veil and draped them over the wobbly poles.

Birds thwarted for another season

The nets go on when the fruit looks like it may start to be inviting to all the local birds around here.

blackcurrants starting to plump up

I like having song birds dart around the soft fruit bushes the rest of the year.  They clear everything of insects that may be harmful to the crop.

gooseberries are now protected

The gooseberries were looking the plumpest of all the fruit over there.  They are a favourite of The Man of the Place so the berries need to be protected. 

Now that the net is over things, the trick is to not let the birds sneak in any gaps. I believe that I have pegged down the net in all the places where tiny songbirds can sneak in. . . but only time will tell.  If a bird gets in under the net, it is difficult for them to find a way back out.  They could die if somebody doesn't check the fruit cage regularly and release any trapped birds.  This is yet another reason we need to stay at home! 

Baskets up - Baskets down

Earlier this week we were enjoying a lovely stretch of fine warm days.  We got loads more done outside in the garden.   

The bold step to hang the hanging baskets out was taken.

Baskets at the kitchen door

It gave so much more room in the poly-tunnel and greenhouse.  No more bumping my head! 

On the "courtyard" side of the house we have three doors.  I put a hanging basket on either side of each door.  That makes a grand total of six hanging baskets.  They really brighten up the place.  It is a daily activity to water them completely (until water is running out the bottom).  The spent blossoms also get pinched off.  Deadheading keeps the plants blooming for longer.  If they don't make seed, they will keep producing flowers.

There are two big enemies of hanging baskets, not watering them enough and wind. In the last couple of years we have not only lost a hanging basket to the wind, we lost an entire bracket that was bolted to the wall! 

Baskets unhooked because of wind

When the forecast was for wind today one of the last jobs I did last night was to unhook all the hanging baskets from their brackets and place them on the ground.

I am glad I haven't planted out the beans and pumpkins yet.  This wind would shred them.  It's really rattling the windows.

comfrey jungle near the chicken run

There is a lot of comfrey growing here.   The bees love it!  On a warm, still day I could be mistaken for a beekeeper.  There are hundreds of happy little buzzers.

We didn't plant the first comfrey plant for the bees. The bees were a delightful added bonus.  The comfrey was planted so we could make fertiliser for our vegetable plants.

We cut down loads of comfrey leaves and fill a bucket.  Nettles may or may not be added to the mix and then top it up with water.  The whole lot is left to putrefy for a few weeks.  There is a lot of protein in the comfrey plant so when the leaves rot down it really stinks! 

rotting comfrey leaves

When diluted this mess is a brilliant high potash feed.  Great for tomatoes and flowers.    It costs nothing, is completely organic and boosts the fertility of the garden enormously.

This bee was in the kitchen this morning.  He isn't supposed to be in there.  I gave him a little feed and then sent him on his merry way.

Don't Get Caught Out!

We have enjoyed WEEKS of sunshine and mild temperatures!  There hasn't really been a frost for a while either.  It is SO tempting to just put stuff in the ground!

Vegetable plot patiently waiting

The vegetable plot is ready.  The plants in the greenhouse are ready!  The weather is fine. 

One could be lulled into thinking that putting all those tender plants out will be just fine.  I know better. . . rather I have had this happen before.  I put everything out on a fine weekend before the risk of frost was completely over.  Naturally, a late frost came along and killed everything.  I learned my lesson.

The US has a system of zones that lets gardeners know when the frost risk is gone.  Britain is a much smaller area.  We don't need a zoning system.  Just trust local knowledge and experience.  Folks in Cornwall can plant stuff out earlier and probably grow tomatoes outside.  Scotland has a narrower growing season and some tender things like cucumber and tomatoes do best in the greenhouse.    Some years we don't get enough sunshine for those tomatoes to ripen or the sweetcorn cobs to fill out. 

The rule here is to wait until the end of May.  Seriously - that is late in the growing season . . . but that's our time.  Don't play Russian roulette with your tender plants. You may win but if you don't,  you will have dead plants.

The only things that have been planted in so far are things that are known to be okay with a light frost.   I have sweet peas (pretty flowers), garden peas, onions, garlic, and cabbages.  Peas are super hardy. I love them for that.    The soil is ready.  The bean supports are up and we're ready.  Just waiting for the calendar to move forward twenty more days.

Me enjoying the sun

In the poly-tunnel there are few things to bring me joy.  The scent of the flowers in the hanging baskets and the setting fruit in the strawberry bed.

Strawberries on their way 

I spied a 5 kilo bag sugar in the supermarket the other day.  I grabbed it even though I don't need it just yet.  I plan to need it when these puppies are ripe.

Bad Compost!

At the beginning of the lock-down The Man of the Place was still going in to work.  This drove me insane as 98% of his work is administrative. There was no sensible reason for him to go into an office full of people who had to travel out to visit other people.

Anxiety levels were quite high for me.  I was worried that he was putting himself (and me) at risk of infection.   To placate me, he went to one of the few shops that was still open at the time, a local shop that sells hardware, and gardening things amongst other stuff.  He picked up two bags of compost for me as I was getting near the end of the bag that I had in the greenhouse.

A few days after some strongly worded complaints, he is working from home now.

The new compost that he brought in was a bit rough.  Lots of very woody twigs and bark.  It had not been sifted.  It was practically mulch!  As we are in the middle of a global pandemic I won't complain. I used it.  From time to time I tossed the big wood chunks out of the greenhouse door.

I thought perhaps the poor germination rate I've had this year was due to old seed.  Maybe it wasn't that.

Although there were more failures than normal, some things did germinate.  I was diligent about pricking them out into larger pots as soon as they were big enough.

Some seedlings went into the old compost and some went into the budget compost.

Things were okay until I noticed that some seedlings were not thriving.

Some were not only  not thriving but actually dying!

dying tomato seedling

Today I re-potted a lot of those sickly seedlings.

Look at these two cucumber plants.  Both germinated at the same time.  One lucky seedling went into ordinary compost and the other went into the "budget" compost.

cucumber seedling in the good compost

unlucky seedling in bad compost

These two cucumber plants were from the same packet.  Both were potted into pots at the same time.  The only difference was that one was put in budget compost and the other was put in ordinary compost.

All tomato plants were sown on the same day.

What I am saying that buying budget compost is no savings!  Look at the dramatic difference!

I got another bag of ordinary compost as I was getting to the end of the barky, twiggy compost.    Nice stuff is being used to re-pot the poor plants that are not thriving.   I am now at the end of that bag.  Now it is known that I need at least four big bags of compost to get me through the spring planting season.

I had to re-pot everything that was placed in the bad compost.  So really as I have to remove and replace a lot of that budget compost there was no savings to be made at all!  False economy!

I've got a big 50 litre bag of good compost coming today or tomorrow.  I am so thrilled that one of our local garden centres are making deliveries of garden things for orders over 35 pounds.  My house is just on the very edge of their delivery range so I made my order big.  I am grateful to be able to have enough cash to make a decent order and take advantage of the delivery system.

In the meantime, I have been rotting some comfrey leaves in buckets.  The leaves will stay in those buckets until they have made a purtrifed and stinky mess.  That putrified liquid will be diluted and used as tomato fertiliser.  It stinks to high heaven.  I believe that this is the nature of fertiliser.  It stinks.  I love using things I already have here at the place. Comfrey and a few stinging nettle leaves make excellent fertiliser. It costs NOTHING.

Weeds!

There is a curse that nobody tells you about when you find yourself in possession of a house with really great topsoil.   Everything grows spectacularly well . . . even the weeds.

You can fool yourself into thinking that you will be on top of the weeds at this time of year.  The weeds are marginally easier to get out of the ground and growth really hasn't kicked into high gear yet.   I can get bits cleared of weeds and lie to myself about how the rest of the year will be.  I can imagine that with almost no further effort on my part, the vegetable beds and flower borders around my place will be a pristine and weed free oasis.

Any plant or flower can be a weed.  By definition a weed is a plant growing where you (the gardener) don't want it to grow.   Grass is encouraged  to grow but only in the area designated as "lawn".  If grass is in the driveway, it is an unsightly weed.

wild strawberries in the gravel

Strawberries are encouraged to grow in the strawberry bed.  Wild strawberries showed up in our gravel a few years ago.  I was so delighted that I left them there.   They are taking advantage and spread too much. The older wild strawberry plants have died and the novelty has worn off.  It is time for the wild strawberries to go.  I want my gravel back.

yellow nettle root

Stinging nettles are easy to manage now but wear gloves.   They are young but still sting. If you're careful you can get a lot of them out of your herbaceous border.  The roots of  the stinging nettle are a marvellous turmeric yellow.  If you are digging around in the border and see bright yellow roots they probably lead to wrinkly, fuzzy and stinging leaves.  Get it out of there!  These plants grow like bamboo when the weather warms up.

One of the worst weeds in the vegetable garden is bind weed.  I hate it!  Really the only way I have found to eradicate it in the past was using glyphosate.  As I am trying to have an organic garden, the use of that stuff is not okay and is linked to cancer.  I have been digging bind weed up.  The only way to get rid of it is to keep digging.  I have been going into the poly tunnel every day and removing emerging shoots.  I know what the shoots look like and I pounce on them immediately.
It is so pleasurable when you get an enormous root up and it hasn't broken.  This particular weed is insidious as every millimetre of  root left in the soil is a new plant! 

See!  there is a solitary inch of root that was left in the soil and it started growing a new leaf and a new root system!  If you have bind weed, you will never get it all in the first weeding session.  You have to wait a few weeks and go back and get the next batch when  the new leaves have started popping up.  It may take a year of constant vigilance to get your patch free of bind weed.

bind weed regrowing from a bit of root

This stuff doesn't sting and the roots aren't as horrid as bind weed BUT the roots do make a real dense matt under the soil.

mystery weed

I don't know what it is yet.  I will have to do some investigating.  We have plenty of it and I wish we didn't.   Thankfully it is easy to get up.

There is nothing more pleasurable when digging up a weed with a long tap root and getting the entire thing.  Weeds with taproots will regrow.  Not right away but they will come back eventually.

Comfrey is particularly tough to get rid of once the root has established.  We planted one crown of it years ago.  The bees LOVE comfrey flower and the area behind the chicken run is all but given over to comfrey.  The air is always filled with the happy buzz of hundreds of bees over there. The leaves of the comfrey plant can be harvested and rotted down with water in a big bucket and used as a brilliant organic fertiliser.

Comfrey by the chicken run

I like comfrey but if a clump shows up somewhere else, it is officially a weed and I have to dig to get rid of it!  This clump is in the stone wall in front of the house.  I tried to get it out two years ago.  I failed.  Not only did I not get it all out, I didn't do anything about it last year.  So now I have to try to get this stuff out of the wall without having to tear the wall apart, remove the weed and then rebuild the wall.

Fruit Cage preparation

A few years ago new soft fruit bushes were planted. We organised a place on the east side of the house where we keep things like ladders, bird seed bins and where the compost pile used to be.

It's a decent sized area.  We have black currants, gooseberries and blueberries.  The rhubarb crown is there too but it doesn't need any protection.  It can handle anything.

This year should see everything come into high production!  In anticipation of this, I am laying the groundwork now.

I cover the fruit with a makeshift cage made out of garden canes and net.   It works just fine.   It keeps the birds away from the berries but it does nothing to prevent weeds popping up.

Last year we had a pretty good crop but every time we went to pick berries we were either eaten up by midges or stung by the nettles.  I don't really mind a nettle sting.  It's unpleasant but . . you know. . .ouch! 

The ground was scraped of all weeds earlier and this morning, I dragged out the leftover pieces of ground cover and laid them down.  I weighted the ground cover down with rocks.   I am pleased that this is another job done. 

I will put the nets up in a few weeks.  The bushes aren't in bloom yet so we need the birds to continue to eat any bugs that may be there now.

Things are Sprouting

Spring is marching forward at its usual pace.

I find that the fact that I am out of my nightgown by 10 am a triumph! I was up much earler and was out in my robe and slippers to check on things. 

The rhubarb is spectacular this year. It has a great big bud on it.  I don't ever remember a rhubarb blooming.  I'm sure they do. . . but this is new and must be investigated.

The peonies that I love so dearly are doing even better this year.  I am hoping that they grow from strength to strength.

I adore peonies they remind me of happy times in the Midwest.    Yes, I will be going out to weed (carefully) these flower beds.

The soft fruit section of the garden is tucked away on the east side of the house.  The soil around the base of each fruit bush has been scraped.  I swear this year I am going to put the ground cover down before the weeds can pop back up!

One of the best homemade ice cream flavours EVER is blackcurrant.  I adore it so much that I planted loads of blackcurrant bushes.   They are now about four years old.  This means that at the end of the season, I will be removing one third of the large branches.  Every year going forward I will be removing another third.

Anxiety Gardening

Every day the death toll grows.  Spain and Italy still have shocking numbers of people dying.  We in the UK are only a few weeks behind them and are bracing for the worst.  The numbers in the US look to be the worst of all.  Someone in the village has it.  Thankfully this person is recovering. 

The Man of the Place has to go to work.  It is an essential job.  He could probably do it from home but the local government's infrastructure can't handle the bandwidth.   He tries, his connections get too glitchy and then he has to pack up and go back into the office.

I am left fuming.  Later on I realise that my anger is based on fear.  Fear that he'll get Covid-19 and bring it home to me.  I will blame the local government for not protecting him better, for not having better bandwidth so he could have actually worked at home and blame him for not being more careful about what he touches and washing his hands.

With anxiety the best thing for me to do is . . . anything!  If I stay busy then my little brain doesn't stew on things.  I can save the worries for later when I'm trying to sleep.

Today after he left for Mordor, I got dressed, ate muesli and went outside to do stuff.

The poly tunnel cleaning was finished today.   I washed all that green off.  The job would have been a bit more pleasant in the warm sunshine but we didn't have that.  We had okay weather, very little wind and not too cold.

I dragged the garden hose over and started spraying.  I scrubbed with a soft broom and the algae came right off.

I was going to say that there wasn't much to wash, but there was over half left to do.   The entire north side and back door were pretty solidly green.  They're not green NOW!

After that was done and the hoses put away, I sorted out some strawberry plants.

When the strawberry bed was thinned out, there were loads of perfectly good strawberry plants left.  I replanted the most promising plants. 
 

I put a notice on the village hall Facebook page offering strawberry plants to anybody that wants them.  A handful of people wanted free, organic strawberry plants.

We only live a short distance from the hall so I can leave them there. I labelled them up and took them down.  I sent everybody a message so they knew the plants could be collected. We never need to meet and compromise anybody's isolation.

Doing things for others helps me to feel a bit better.

Having tackled a pretty large job, I have to think about which large jobs I want to tackle next.   The tool shed?  The attic?

Heating the Greenhouse

We do not have a heated greenhouse.  What is available is a small parafin (kerosene) heater. 

Learning to use a heater was an education.  There is a trick to it. 

Light the heater the last thing at night and keep the wick trimmed short so that there is no smoke.

Spring from your bed as soon as you're awake, run out to the greenhouse and blow the heater out.

Paraffin is not free and I only ever buy one container of it at a time. 

If the flame on the heater is too high the paraffin be used up way too quickly and undermine the savings you are trying to make by growing your own food. 

The other reason is that the heater will smoke.  This will cause all the glass in the greenhouse to be dirty.  It will be covered in a thin layer of black soot which will need to be washed off at your earliest convenience. 

Do you know what a major pain the neck rewashing the greenhouse is due to the fact that you didn't notice that the heater was smoking a little bit?  Answer:  It is a very large inconvenience. It may cause the use of strong language from the person who has to do the cleaning.

The isolation we have been doing is easy as we are fortunate enough to live in the country.  There is plenty to do.  We have loads of places to walk the dog without risk of running into anyone.  I am still concerned that things in the UK are going to get a lot worse before they get better.  I have no control over other people's actions.  I am really trying to let go of things that I do not have control over and worry about my own actions. 

Panic gardening

As you may be aware, there is a global pandemic at the moment. As of this week, the UK is in lock-down.

I knew this was coming and it couldn’t happen fast enough! I got plenty of chicken feed and dog food in. I can get hungry. I’m okay with that, but not the animals!

My hens enjoying some sunshine

I also kicked my gardening into gear. I’ve always dabbled (I refer you to the title of my blog)

The greenhouses are used for glorified storage outside the growing season. That came to a swift halt.

Cleaning!

I replaced the broken panes of glass. It is an unpleasant job. I really hate the W shaped glazing clips. They ping across the grass at the earliest opportunity. It also hurts fingers when pushing new ones into place.   I still have one left to replace. I noticed it was broken yesterday when I was washing things down.

seed stash

Tomorrow sees me planting lettuce and radishes in the poly tunnel.  More on that later.

vegetable seeds 

I find it reassuring to have tidy rows of germinating seeds. It is comforting to be able to grow your own food.

Work to do!

The man of the place and I are leaving for yet another diving trip on Friday.  Before I go, I have a number of things I need to accomplish.

1. Finish some pyjamas that I am making for my grandsons in Chicago.  I am hampered by the sewing machine malfunctioning when it comes to the buttonhole maker.   This means that tomorrow I have to take the machine into town and hope beyond hope that he can fix this problem while I wait.  If it works, then I can get everything finished!  I would also like to make myself a new nightgown. . .but that is merely icing on the cake if that happens.

2. Make plum jam.  I was hoping I could wait until we got back before I this happened.  I looked yesterday and damn it, the plums are ripening.  The wasps will swarm in and take everything if I don't make the jam.

We lost a big portion of the tree in a spring storm.  The tree is now suffering more damage as the weight of the fruit snaps the branches!

I started picking the plums this morning. I started work in the drizzle thinking that there would be fewer wasps.  There are fewer wasps, but there are still a couple around.  No grabbing the fruit without looking first!

If a plum splits, the wasps will start feeding.  They will tunnel in and then in the manner of James and the Giant Peach will have a dry, safe place to quietly get full of plum.  The wasps were happy enough in their little plum cave but I disturbed the branch. They started to come out!  They were still on the plum but I didn't need any further reason to come back in the house.

I took my two bowls of plums in and I will come back out later with more containers.  I may have to bring buckets!    This means that I have a lot of plums to convert into plum jam. 

As I am going into town to see about the sewing machine tomorrow, I think I will be getting some more sugar.  I think I have enough jars.  Thankfully plums contain plenty of natural pectin and I won't need to add any. 

This little tree that I bought as a sapling from a supermarket display years ago is finally coming into its own.  The first crop of plums was a lone bowl of fruit. The next couple of years were worse.  No plums or the few plums that were there split and wasps got them before I could get them.

I rejoice in the plummy harvest, but I am not thrilled that I am forced into plum jam production this week.