Saturday 31 October 2009

Pumpkin Cat

Only just in time, I carved a pumpkin to go in the window: unsurprisingly, with a cat's face. No fantastic artistry, but it does at least look like a cat.

Pumpkin Cat Halloween 2009

In Bed With 'Flu

Although I'm full of 'flu, and Liz is still fatigued from her bout at the start of the week, we were back in the fruit garden cutting beds for the gooseberries and blueberries. Neither is complete (we're probably about 35% of the way there), but both are at least started. My turf-cutting technique is improving (just as well, given the number of new beds we're going to wind up creating---there were only three when we arrived, in half an acre), but it's still hard work. We wanted to make the most of a dry day: the weather's expected to breakdown considerably over tonight, and we don't know how many more we'll have before the plants arrive.

Some of our spring bulbs have arrived, too: Scilla siberica (quite like bluebells), Allium sphaerocephalon (purple globe alliums), mixed crocuses and hyacinths. Together with a big bag of mixed narcissi, they'll be going first under the main copse (in the bottom left, or south-east corner). When we have time to plant them, that is. I think it'd be better to do them all at once: if we do them in phases, we risk damaging the earlier ones in planting subsequent sets.

On the topic of bulbs, the gladioli need sorting out before very much longer. Most didn't flower, on account of late planting and moving up the country: I think we'll need to cut those that did, and cut off the immature flower stems of the others, to provoke their leaves into ripening so we can lift them for the winter. It's going to get colder this week, so we probably ought to do that soon.

Thursday 29 October 2009

Cutting the Berries' Beds

After laying out the bed design yesterday, we made the most of fine weather to start cutting and lifting the turf where the fruit beds will be. Having ordered the fruit bushes/crowns, we realised that there was nowhere ready to put them when they arrive, and so work had to start post haste on creating these beds. Although the vegetable beds are also marked out, actually creating these will have to wait until the fruit beds are made. Even so, we need, really, to get the vegetable beds cut before winter, so the frosts can help break up the soil.

The grass on the bottom tier of the garden is now rather long, as it hasn't been cut since spring (the previous owner of the house didn't cut it after we put in our offer, and it had got out of hand by the time we moved in). I'm not sure whether this makes lifting the turves harder or not: on the one hand, I have to cut through a thicker thatch, but the grass at least gives me something to handle them by. I fear the former, on balance, but I'm not going to waste the time cutting grass I'm about to lift.

We started with the strawberry bed, my turf cutting and lifting being followed by Liz digging over the soil. We were pleasantly surprised by the soil quality: there's a reasonable depth of good soil over the native clay, and relatively few stones (thus far). I reckon the modernizing owners (of the '70s) probably added considerable topsoil. That's the only plausible explanation for finding that much good soil where one might expect clay and stone. We managed to get the raspberry beds (one either side of the path) cut, too, leaving a path at the bottom of the garden in front of where there will, one day, be a hedge.

The resulting loam stack is where the rhubarb bed will be. This may prove to be unforesightful, when I want to establish that bed, but there's nowhere else particularly suitable. I'll have to find somewhere else for the turves from the other fruit beds, as they plainly won't fit in the rhubarb bed. Perhaps it'll make its way to the far side of the vegetable plots: it'll need a year to break down properly, that's the problem.

Wednesday 28 October 2009

Spider's Web

Today we spent marking out the planned kitchen garden. It's at the bottom of the site, on the lowest tier of the garden, in a space roughly ten metres deep, and most of the width of the garden. It's bounded on the southern side by the fence at the edge of the neighbouring horse field; on the east by the fence with the neighbours' stables, and there's a dry-stone wall to a second neighbour's horse field, lightly planted with trees.

At the moment, the site looks like the titular spider's web: we used most of a ball of string and several dozen bamboos and sticks to lay out the beds. The path down from the left of the garden comes past the main corner copse, and leads into the kitchen garden. Eventually, we'll put up an arched trellis, or similar, to divide it off. I'm entertaining slightly whimsical thoughts of growing an edible honeysuckle over it, as the boundary between the areas for food and pleasure (are the two separate?).

Once past the border, there's a bed to either side. One will have the blueberries, with gooseberries opposite. As the site widens out, the next two beds will be for raspberries, and protected behind (north) of these are a strawberry bed, and space for rhubarb. That's the end of the soft fruit: west of this is a squarish area of around 10m edge, divided into about ten individual beds for vegetables: four L-shaped corner beds, a small round bed in the centre, and three L- or C-shaped beds in between. The main production beds are the four outer ones, really; the smaller central ones are at least partly to add interest.

On the west edge of the garden, past the vegetable patch is space for 'the' shed---either the existing one, if it can be persuaded to stay together well enough to move, or a new one in time---and the steps leading up to the middle tier.

That's the easy work done, unfortunately: lifting the turves isn't an easy job!