Sunday 30 June 2013

Bonfire

Earlier this year, we cleared a lot of gorse from the hillside, and have added—during our subsequent clearing and trench digging efforts—brambles, hawthorn and gorse to the heaps. We decided it'd had long enough drying, and the conditions were about right, to burn. It turned into an all-day job, as it burnt better than expected, meaning that we spent the day feeding the bonfire, but it means that it's all done, rather than taking several efforts.

In the nettle-y corner up from the house, I set a small fire (few sheets of newspaper, four bits of kindling and, pleasingly, a single match & firelighter!), and started feeding dry gorse into it. That burnt well, and so as Liz brought over dry material from the various heaps we'd accumulated, I cut the branches from the other hawthorns we wanted to remove, and we burnt them, too. Even though it was wet, it burnt well once there was a good, hot bed of charcoal.

As I say, that took all day, in the end, and we've spent today mostly on the hillside, too. Breaking it into several sections, I've used Sigrid to brushcut almost the entire orchard, clearing grass, gorse, brambles, thistles and ragwort. Liz cleared up behind me, thus replacing a lot of the heaps we burnt only yesterday. So it goes.

Fortunately, the hillside now looks immeasurably better.

In between brushcutting, we got a few jobs done in the garden-proper. All the brassicas have been moved up a pot size (purple sprouting, romanesco cauliflowers, January King cabbages, kale, sprouts), to grow on before being planted out after alliums or potatoes come out. We sorted out the irrigation system in the fruit beds, which had been disturbed when we mulched them in the spring. Lastly, we've sown some more lettuce/salad leaves, and resown Swiss Chard in the barrel (previous sowing was a no-show).

Wednesday 26 June 2013

Long Border

I went out this evening to mow the lawn, which was a frustrating experience, as I first had to replace the motor's drive belt (it snapped halfway through last week's mow, and the replacement part only arrived yesterday). Fundamentally, this is a relatively straightforward operation (although I'm not certain that all eight of the screws holding the motor unit in the body are strictly necessary), but it wasn't in practice. Four of the screws are pretty unprotected, and, as they're under the platform, they get covered with wet clippings, and inevitably rust.

The first wasn't too bad; the second yielded with some penetrating oil and care; the fourth was trickier, but came out. The third was a pig. Despite some care, the (nominally superior) Torx head stripped before the screw loosened, and I had to resort to unprofessional methods to get it out. Success eventually came by way of drilling into the head, and wedging a slightly large bit into the new hole. We shall never speak of this again.

The new drive belt then went on in about five minutes, and the mower's actually much improved. I assume that the belt was loose and worn after three year's use: the suction on the impeller is greater (which means better clipping collection), which I expect means that the power transfer is more efficient. A silver cloud to soothe my frustration at an hour lost.

There was enough light left this evening to take a photo of the long border which replaces the cotoneaster bed that took so long to remove. We started in August 2010, with a modest patch at the kitchen end: more progress that autumn (I note that this is when we uncovered the silver birch and rhododendron: they're both doing much better, and the rhododendron is starting to leaf up nearer the ground); and nearly completed it March last year. The last of it was out and shredded last June.

You can get a feel for what it was like to start with from the two photos here.


Before marking the pond, June 2011 ( Ian 2011)


The last stretch that was cleared in March 2012 (© Ian 2012)

Last year, an enormous number of foxgloves came up. As they're biennial, they were just little rosettes, of course, but this year they're all flowering. We guess that a huge seed bank accumulated under the cotoneaster, but didn't germinate because of it. With that removed, the rich soil (loads of leaf mould!) and fresh disturbance has made them all spring into life. A number of shrubs that were part buried in the rampant cotoneaster are now making a comeback, and, of course, we've added considerably to the planting over the past two years. Not everything has survived: my theory is that it's good soil, but exposed, and only those plants that can cope with the exposure live to make the most of the soil, and the rest vanish.


The Long Border (click through for bigger version) (© Ian 2013)


Foxgloves and perennials near the boundary with the pond garden (© Ian 2013)



Dutch Irises outside the dining room (© Ian 2013)



Lupin at the boundary between games lawn and pond garden (© Ian 2013)



Perennials at kitchen end: the rhododendron is the one we uncovered in November '11 (© Ian 2013)


Looking back along the Long Border (© Ian 2013)

Elsewhere in the garden, the currants and berries are swelling (there's going to be a bounty of both), and so I've sewn up the tears in the netting caused by the snow over the winter. The raspberries are laden with flowers (which are a-swarm with pollinators, pleasingly). The potatoes are doing well, although the Swift are noticeably smaller than the Lady Christl, which is leading us to suspect that we may swear off growing Earlies other than her ladyship (I'd love to know whether it's named after someone). The sweet peas are, I'm sure, growing as you watch them: even though Liz added some more tiers of strings for them at the weekend, they almost need more now. They're on the verge of flowering, too (as are the mange tout), which I'm looking forward to.

Monday 24 June 2013

Last of the Rhubarb

As it's the end of June (that is, midsummer), it's time to stop harvesting rhubarb. It's done really well: we planted it in December 2011, and the combination of young plants and awful conditions meant that we didn't really have any stems from it last year. But this year it's been prolific.

The Timperley Early has done fine, but the late spring probably reduced its usefulness, as by the time it was really growing, the Victoria had come into its own. The stalks on Victoria have been monstrous, as the photo below suggests. Leaf and stem, together, have been nigh-on four feet long, and each stem's weighed about a pound. We've had rhubarb available whenever we wanted it for the last six weeks or so, and it's been delicious.

The Sutton's Seedless hasn't particularly impressed, but we'll have to see how all three do next spring.

Tonight I've taken the last picking, leaving the crowns with a few stems to recover for the rest of the year.


Rhubarb 'Victoria' stem, with Chess for scale (© Ian 2013)

Sunday 23 June 2013

Quince Bed

A weekend of hard work has meant that we now have a new flower bed. We planted the quince in June last year, and covered as much of the rest of its future bed with plastic, weighed down with branches. There's a photo from earlier this year, in April, when we dug the bed in front of this one, for sweet peas.


Sweet pea bed, with quince bed behind (© Ian 2013)

Yesterday, we removed all the branches (replacing that pile behind the orange bag in the photo above, which has now been chipped: it's a Sisyphean task!), and lifted the plastic. It's mostly done its work: the grass under the plastic was dead and largely decomposed. We hadn't put plastic all the way up to the quince—I can't remember, now, whether we ran out of plastic, or didn't want to stop water reaching the quince.

Either way, some turf remained. The mattock head once again proved invaluable, and I cut off the turf and started digging over the bed yesterday. I got about a third of the way through, having started after chopping a load of firewood, and left the rest for today.

It took six hours of work today, while Liz weeded and tidied, but I've now dug over the whole bed, removing about five barrow-loads of stones, and a five foot metal pole (no idea what it once was).

The long border is looking greatly improved from Liz's tidying, as are the two beds along the septic tank, and the whole kitchen garden.

Having readied the bed, we then planted out most of the heucheras that we've had waiting (about eighteen of them); two of the purple stemmed sarcococca; the physocarpus ('Lady in Red'), elder ('Black Lace'), and oak-leaved hydrangea from Ludlow market; calamagrostis (C. x acutiflora 'Overdam'), deschampsia, molinia, and achillea from RHS Tatton Park; and thirteen of the stipa we grew from seed last year.

Many of these will probably be split, in a year, and/or moved around, to build up the planting in the copse beds below it, and the colour wheel above it, but for now they make a pretty range of colours.




New planting in the Quince Bed (© Ian 2013)

Sunday 16 June 2013

Tidying Up

It's been a busy weekend of mostly tidying up, meaning accumulated progress, rather than any particular thing getting very far.

We've sown some more seeds: Dianthus amurensis 'Siberian Blues' (for the rockery wall in the front); Polemonium boreale 'Heavenly Habit' (Jacob's ladder); two aquilegias, 'Magpie' and 'Royal Purple'; and a mixed selection of hostas (hopefully some of which will be pretty!).

We've planted out half a dozen rows (about ninety plants) of carrots, and another block of beetroot (about forty plants) in the bottom bed.

Liz weeded the bed at the front of the copse, and we've done another prune/tidy of the shrubs in the bottom bank, which were hit by the cold east wind.

The pots on the patios, and sitting on the old shed base, needed some attention, so we've sorted through them, removing the dead/empty pots to the back patio, and weeding, tidying and fertilizing the rest. Another heuchera's been hit by root-eating grubs (which seem to focus their predation on primrose and heuchera roots, for whatever reason), so that needed cleaning up and re-potting, in the hopes that it might survive.

We dug up the buddleja that we planted in one of the front beds in 2010 (I think: I don't appear to have a note!), and is the bottom right of this photo (from April last year). Liz has never been sure about it, and we found a pretty acer that will replace it, and go well with the other, older acer that's the centre point of the adjacent bed.

I took the opportunity to add new guide wires to the wall behind for the Virginia creeper to run along. It's almost reached the ivy at the bottom (which I had to cut back earlier this week, as it was encroaching on the windows, again), and is looking pretty with its new growth.


Front garden (© Ian 2012–13)

We re-planted the hanging baskets, with bronze carex, cinereria, trailing nasturtiums, and petunias, and I re-hung the bracket that came off the wall late last year.

Liz potted up another 96 lavenders which arrived this week, into modules. They'll grow on ready to be planted into the herb garden edges later this year, hopefully.

The two clematis (C. florida 'Alba Plena') we bought at Tatton Park last year, and which are growing up the trellis sides of our arbour, are growing well. However, we want, if possible, to move the arbour later this year, in order to dig out and lay the paving that's going under it. That will be well-nigh impossible with clematis entwined up both sides. To solve this, I've used a couple of blocks of wood, and wire, to space two 1'x6' trellis panels, one behind each plant, away from the main trellis. We'll twine the climbers up these, instead of the arbour, so it'll still look good, but when (if) we have to move things, they can be transferred safely and separately.

To finish the weekend, we made use of a prolific spinach crop (very pleased with the spinach: it's 'Lazio', which is effectively new to us, as it didn't grow in last year's horrible conditions), and made a batch of spinach black pudding ('boudin noir du Poitou'). It's made with a kilo of spinach, a pint of light bechemal, half a pound of onion, four ounces of breadcrumbs, a pint and half of cream, and eight pints of blood; the seasoning (salt, pepper and mace) is extended to include nutmeg, too.

As with our batch of 'fry-up' black pudding (with pork fat and oatmeal, instead of spinach, bechemal, and breadcrumbs), we cooked it as cakes, in loaf tins.

It's frankly delicious, and a fine conclusion to a weekend of hard work.

Sunday 9 June 2013

Kitchen Garden Paths

Long planned, but never accomplished: since building the vegetable and fruit beds (during 2010, with the last vegetable bed completed March 2011), the paths have been left as grass. The buttercups, dandelions, and grass growing along them have made the paths difficult during the late summer, and the mud has been awful when it's wet (which is, frankly, often).

We quite quickly established that we needed to put down weed-suppressant membrane and chippings, in order to help with both of these problems—and then promptly spent two years bemoaning not getting round to it.

I said, last August, that we hoped to get round to the paths, intending at the time to get it done during our usually productive autumn phase of work, which didn't happen (I think the wood shelter and hillside intervened, probably reasonably).

But lo! We've got it done. Taking advantage of the warm and dry weather, we decided we had to get it done before it got wet (it'd be a horribly muddy job, if the ground's sodden, à la the hillside trenches). I bought a mattock head for the pick-axe a couple of weeks ago, hoping that it would make this sort of work easier, and it's worked really well for cutting the banked sides of the paths off, so that the ground's more level. It's incredible how much soil has built up against the raised beds, which must have furrowed out from the path centre (where the wheelbarrow tracks, I suppose).

The paths cleared, we then worked along wedging woven weed suppressing fabric along all the paths (we ran out of woven stuff with the two shortest paths left (between the bottom raspberry bed and the two beds to either side), but they're the lowest-traffic paths (hence leaving them 'til last, as I knew we weren't flush with membrane!). They've been done with the slightly less tough non-woven fabric (which I used under the woodshelter), which I think will cope with the low wear, though I wanted the polypropylene woven material for the main tracks.

We probably don't have enough chippings to cover the paths, but that's 'easily' sorted, as we can order a truckload as soon as the drive's clear.

That was the other part of the weekend's work, splitting a couple of tons of wood. The driveway is, therefore, rather more clear.

Lastly, we planted a delphinium (picked up cheap last week while buying the border tools), astrantia, aquilegia, and three schizostylis that we bought earlier in the year. They've all been in pots, but there were clear spaces in the long border, so in they went. The border tools have proved useful!

In other news: on Friday I started a batch of 'Harvest Mild' beer and chardonnay, both from kits. They both claim to only take a few weeks, which is, I suppose, plausible if it stays warm.

Wednesday 5 June 2013

Path Clearing

Yesterday evening, I managed to spend three quarters of an hour on the hillside, clearing some of the grass, brambles, thistles, and other weeds with Sigrid the brushcutter. I managed to cut a path roughly from opposite the garage, along the bottom boundary, and then up the natural path all the way to the entrance to the first, main clearing behind the treeline (which wasn't so grassy, but had bracken ready to cut). I cleared quite a large area around the plums and pears, in doing so, as well as a big stretch of brambles up in the corner.

The square in the bottom right corner (opposite the colour-wheel garden) is full of cow parsley, so I'm planning to leave that alone for now, as it's pretty; but I'll cut it down once that's over, as it's also full of nettles. I'd like to provoke them into new growth, as they're starting to flower, which means they're no longer much good for cooking, or making into cordial or beer/wine.

This evening, we took advantage of an offer at the garden centre, and bought a border-size spade and fork from the Joseph Bentley range. 'My' spade (the one that's the right size for me) that we bought a few years ago is lovely to use, and we added a fork last autumn. The border tools are a bit narrower, which will come in handy when working in and amongst plants, as the digging-sized tools can be a bit cumbersome then. They're all really nice to work with: strong heads, and wooden handles are a pleasure to handle (and they're never cold, in the winter, to the touch). 

Sunday 2 June 2013

Tulips

We've enjoyed a lovely weekend in the company of university friends (Katherine, Rachel, Philip, Liz, Robert, and their five-month-old, James), for which the weather cooperated magnificently. While we spent a lot of time outside, little of it was working, until this afternoon, when we managed to get a few things done.

We sowed the last of the RHS-produced ornamental seeds, potted up new lavender plants (48 Hidcote, 48 Munstead) that arrived on Friday, planted gladioli in pots, sowed some more cauliflowers (Mystique) and leeks (Prizetaker), watered everything, and admired the tulips.


Pots of tulips (© Ian 2012)