Salute The Kernel

First pick of sweetcorn today (at 15-30 and 17 seconds) worth the wait? I expect so its almost tea time.

There's always tomorrow!!

Some Rain At Last

I was woken up this morning at silly o'clock by the almost forgotten sounds of raindrops splashing against my bedroom windows. Relief at last I thought for the plants and the ground down my plots, both of which have been starved of any appreciable rainfall for several months. Watering of my plots this season has been done by utilizing water from the drainage ditch situated at the lower, southern end, of my plots. Even that supply was about to dry up. About three quarters of an hour after the first downpour of rain, another followed, only lasting for about 10 minutes, but enough for a reasonable drenching of the ground. I ventured down to my plots later at about 10-30 a.m. to pick some veggies for this weekend. Having thinned out 1 row of cabbages yesterday and replanted some of the thinnings I was glad for the earlier rain, needed to re-establish them. Most of the parched clay on my plots had soaked up the rainwater down to a depth of about 4 inches (10 cm) or so.

Another Pick of Peas (Mid July 14)

Since my last post and during possibly the busiest time of the gardening year, many tasks, other than sowing and planting, have been carried out on both of my plots, whilst fruit and veggies have been developing. The fruit cage I was constructing on N1 Plot, is finished apart from about 50% of the wood preserver still needing to be applied to the wooden framework. The netting for the roof of the cage will be added next year, as most of the fruit growing within the cage has now been picked and frozen or sold at last weekends car boot sale I attended. I am currently covering the ground of the cage with weed prevention fabric (where my strawberries will be moved to and planted). Stronger fabric will be used for paths between the planting areas or "strips", until the full area of ground is covered , except under the currant bushes.

More Gooseberries (Mid July 14)

  For some time now I have been considering removing the wooden edging surrounding most of my vegetable beds on both plots. After the fruit cage was built I began to remove some of the grass paths, along with the wooden edging, running between many of the beds. No easy task during the hot or muggy weather of late. Several paths have now been removed and the turf stacked adjacent to one of my compost heaps to break down ready for re-use as soil. Recently, watering of the plots has mainly been carried out during evenings as the sun was going down, to avoid rapid evaporation during the mornings or afternoons. I am currently constructing a metal cage (box on legs), which, when completed will stand on the bottom of the drainage ditch, with a submersible pump inside the box. The whole contraption is being made from part of the framework of an old greenhouse and the leftover pieces of chicken wire from the fruit cage project. I just hope I've measured the depth of the mud in the bottom of the drainage ditch correctly, at 2 feet 6 inches or just short of a meter, otherwise the project is sunk.

1st Pick of Carrots (July 14)

Harvesting has been fairly regular lately, with a good crop of marrows, lettuce in abundance (and strangely left alone by the armies of slugs and snails), beetroot,  some excellent carrots, runner and french beans are just coming into their own. Most of my peas have been picked and along with currants and gooseberries are already stored in my freezer. My courgettes and main crop potatoes should be ready for harvesting this coming week, with a while to wait for cucumbers and squashes which are slow in developing at the moment. What to sow next week is the next puzzle.

O.K. Lets Get This Years Deformed Carrots Out of the Way

Fruit Cage Finished Ground Cover Going In (July 14)

Gardeners Delight (July 14)

Asparagus Picking Up At Last (July 14)

Grapes in Abundance (July 14)

The End of Another Day (July 14)

There's always tomorrow!!

Gimme A Correct Weather Forecast Here Please

With rain forecast for last Friday, part of yesterday and again for today it was no surprise to find myself down my plots, enjoying hot sunny weather with an intermittent cooling breeze. Well at least MY crystal ball was still working correctly the last time I consulted it. At present the unproductive rain clouds have passed overhead leaving a clear blue evening sky, so I assume temperatures will drop considerably overnight with more hot weather again tomorrow. Just finished watering most of my plants using water from the drainage ditch at the southern end of my plots, about an hour ago, with thanks to the crystal ball.

Fruit Cage Under Construction N1 Plot 4/July/14

  A busy week yet again down the plots, with the construction of a fruit cage on N1 Plot being the main center of attention. My intention is to protect the currant bushes growing in one of the beds, mainly from birds taking the fruit. The strawberry plants from the adjacent bed will be lifted and re-planting into the southern (lower) end of the same bed, inside the cage alongside the currant bushes. As I already had a few re-cycled fencing posts I decided to purchase half a dozen more, 4 corner posts are now in place with 1 post positioned midway between each corner post. The posts have been sunk into the ground and held in position by packing them in with stones and clay to avoid the use of concrete or meta post supports. 2" X 2" wooden battens are connected to each post at a height of 7 feet (just over 2 meters) above ground level. The total area being covered in will be about 288 square feet or approximately 30 square meters, that's as far as my maths goes. Chicken wire is being attached to form the "walls" of the cage with the usual nylon type netting being used to form the roof.

Poly Tunnel Left From Door 4 July 14

Poly Tunnel Right From Door 4 July 14

Fruit picking has been one of the priorities this weekend with enough red and white currants and gooseberries picked and already in the freezer. The black currants require a few more days to ripen fully before they are picked. The remaining currants and gooseberries will be picked within the next few days and prepped for selling. I lifted a few carrots today which were of good quality, size and flavour. With 9 fifteen feet (5 meters) rows of garden peas growing on N2 Plot, several picks of peas have taken place during the past week. I thinned out my turnips (Purple top milan) today, cooking a few of the baby turnips (thinnings) along with the carrots for my tea. More sowing has been done with dwarf french beans and a second sowing of runner beans completed on N1 Plot. 63 leek plants have been planted out during the past 2 days on N2 Plot where the 4 small beds (now 1 large bed still being cultivated) is situated. After 5 earlier sowings of spring onions failed to germinate, 2 further sowings are now growing well, one row in my poly tunnel and one alongside my asparagus on N1 Plot. The sweetcorn plants on N2 Plot are enjoying the recent spell of hot weather, with many of them bearing up to 5 good sized cobs already. I sow the same variety (lark F1) each year and generally speaking each plant usually produces 2 cobs at most.
 

Frog Weighing In At Under A Pound 4 July 14

Another Pollinator 4 July 14

Collecting Last Years Leek Seeds

Leek Soup A.K.A. Nitrogen Feed 4 July 14

A Nice Show of Lettuce 4 July 14

Marrows Looking Good 4 July 14

A Single Poppy 4 July 14

First Few Carrots This Year 6 July 14

It's A Mess Behind My Sheds 4 July 14

Leeks Planted Out 6 July 14

 If you want a larger image click on the picture.


 There's Always Tomorrow!!

Its Busy Lately!!

First Pick of Gooseberries & a Few Cherries (29/June/14)

First Pick of Raspberries & a Few Strawberries (29/June/14)

First Pick of Runner Beans (29/June/14)

Garden Friend Azure Damselfly Amazing Colour You May Have to Enlarge This Shot (29/June/14)

Another Garden Friend Hedgehog (29/June/14)

There's Always Tomorrow!!

Rooko's July Top 10 Tips & Tryouts

1. When you have finished boiling your veggies for a meal, use the water they have been boiled in (after it has cooled down) to water your potted plants with.

2. If you have a compost heap don't forget to turn it. The heap should be kept moist but not saturated with water. If the heap smells sweet then it is decomposing correctly.

3. Have you ordered your Autumn planting bulbs yet? It'll be Autumn before you know it.

4. Use a high in potash liquid feed each time you water your tomatoes.

5. Ventilate your greenhouse or poly tunnel during hot spells of weather. Leave the doors open if necessary and remember some plants and vegetables are pollinated by insects overnight.

6. If you have an over abundance of fruit on your fruit trees, thin some out to prevent branches snapping due to too much weight bearing.

7. Wooden structures such as fences should be painted when the wood is dry. Use a good preservative that soaks into the woodwork as well as looking nice on the surface.

8. When thinning out and re-planting or planting out vegetables and other plants, ensure they are watered frequently until they become established.

9. A recent trick I have tried when planting out my cabbages from pots is: leave the plastic collars (made from soft drinks bottles) around the stems of the plants permanently. Earth up around the collars once the plants have established. When later hoeing is done around the plants you are less likely to chop the stems accidentally.

10.

SOWING/PLANTING IN JULY

1. Sow French Beans, Beetroot, Carrots, Chinese Cabbage Spring Cabbage, Chicory, Kohl-rabi, Lettuce, Peas, Radish.

OTHER JOBS IN JULY

1. Watering is usually a major task during July.
2. Mulching may help to retain water in the soil but be on the lookout for slugs and other pests.
3. Keep weeds at bay with more hoeing.
4. Feed tomatoes and Onions.
5. Check Brassicas for caterpillars/eggs.
6. Water brassicas with a salt & water mix to keep caterpillars off them

A Different Aspect

If you like your weather blazing hot with no cooling breezes and a cloudless sky from dawn until dusk, well good luck if you are sunbathing on a beach somewhere. With similar weather here, over the past fortnight, gardening tasks on my plots have been more pleasant, either early on a morning or later in the day out of the searing heat of the sun. With quite a few planting, sowing, weeding and re-organizing tasks still to complete on my plots, utilizing mornings and evenings only, has really been out of the question. Air temperatures over the past fortnight have been around the 17C/20C outdoors and into the 30C + ranges inside poly tunnels and greenhouses. With frequent breaks and some welcome shelter from the sun either in my sheds or beneath the hedgerow at the lower end of my plots, various tasks have been carried out using as little effort as possible. Work on the 4 small beds on N2 Plot (converting them into 2 beds) has stopped for the time being, mainly due to the now hard ground, being difficult to dig. In fact the 4 small beds will now be converted into 1 larger bed with the wooden edging being removed from around the original beds and disposed of. Work has started on the area of N1 Plot, where I will eventually erect a fruit cage, with the removal of the grass path which was situated between my currant bushes and the adjacent strawberry bed.

 Most of my main seed sowing has been completed, (except for successional sowing to be done over the coming weeks). Most vegetables, planted out from pots/trays are faring well but smaller seedlings sown directly into the ground are suffering from the persistent heat along with attacks from flea beetles. One example is my asparagus plants which have died back completely 3 or 4 times to date, then re-grown, after persistent watering. I currently have 9 large water butts, along with 2 large water tanks and 1 bath, (a shower would be good) situated around my plots, all of them, apart from 2 barrels, have been depleted of their rainwater recently and the largest of the tanks has been re-filled twice in the past 2 days, utilizing the water from the drainage ditch at the lower end of my plots. Just chuck in a bucket with it's handle tied to a piece of rope and when it's full haul it out. Later this coming week I will be using a submersible pump to do the work for me, and into the future if this hot dry weather continues, which I suspect it will. Lo and behold the parsnip seeds I sowed into one of my raised beds have finally germinated after 3 months. 

 Apart from working down my plots I've been using some of my time, most evenings, scouring the internet for various spare parts and accessories for my recently aquired Merry Tiller Titan rotorvator. Production stopped on these machines about 1990, so its not easy to acquire spares etc for them. Blogging and Google +'ing have taken a back seat lately at this busy gardening time of the year. In fact, although I enjoy reading many gardening blogs I will have to cut back on some of the Google+ activity, as my inbox has been choked up with "3rd party" posts, being shared from members who are not in my circles. Nothing personal but 300+ emails a day is too time consuming to deal with.

A different aspect in some of the photographs (where its cooler).

A Sea of Flowers

Lavender Attracting Pollinators for My Fruit

Cool Under the Hedgerow

Cool Under the Grapevine

Cool Under the Runner Beans

Cool Under the Rhubarb

Cool Under the Frog

Cool Under the Potato Plants

Time to Go Home

Ladybirds?? Cool

Cool  Under There

Best Week So Far

With several warm and sunny days since the beginning of this month, (although the weather befits April), I have been out and about on my plots, sowing, planting, digging and weeding, most of the time that daylight would allow. Converting the 4 small vegetable beds on N2 Plot into 2 larger beds is approximately 50% completed with the digging and path clearing aspect being a little slow due to heavy showers now and again, holding up progress. My fruit bush bed on N1 Plot also needed weeding and the lower half of it required weeding and turning, due to the fact it had lain fallow since I removed the Summer raspberries from it, last year. I estimated that approximately 150 current bushes had self seeded in this area, from the parent bushes. I am currently in the process of lifting and potting up these tiny bushes, no quick task on damp clay. Due to the recent alternating hot, then showery cool weather, many plants have now at last started to develop quickly around the plots. Main crop potato plants look in particularly good condition as do my carrots and sweetcorn. Lettuce is another plant that likes the cooler showery conditions along with cabbages, all of which are progressing well so far. After a couple of heavy rain showers this week my runner beans have finally (almost) reached the top of their bean poles, (most of them anyway). The majority of fruit seems to be developing well, although not as abundant as last year, the individual fruits appear to be larger, in particular my currants. My asparagus plants at the top of N1 Plot are developing very slowly and have been attacked twice so far by asparagus beetle. I removed a dozen of these beetles from around the plants yesterday, after which the bed was hoed and then the whole area sprayed with lemon scented soap spray. (No sign of the beetles today).  One particular problem this year has seen many plants attacked by slugs and snails. These annoying little b*****s have taken a particular liking to some of my french climbing beans, squashes, pumpkins, runner beans and cucumbers, many of which had to be re-sown. Having sown 5 lots of spring onions so far this year only 1 sowing has germinated. This is the first time ever I have had difficulty growing these useful veggies. Parsnips have also been a problem this year too with none germinating from 2 separate sowings. When I constructed the raised beds on N2 Plot last year the intention was to use them as seed beds. The majority of veggies sown into these beds have been devoured by slugs/snail. Due to this I have now decided to use the beds for growing various herbs in. Although I don't normally grow broad beans, this years harvest has been very good and the beans are currently residing in my freezer, with the final picking to be done within the next few days.

Bed 2 N2 Plot Main Crop Potatoes 8/June/14

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to obtain a rotavator extremely cheaply from my local re-cycling center, so my old Howard Bantam has been sold. Having fitted a new spark plug to my latest aquasition and some tinkering with the air filter it was up and running within half an hour. Due to the recent deluges of rain, some more modifications have been carried out to the guttering and rain water down pipes around my shed on N2 Plot and another large plastic water tank was put in place alongside the shed. One of the guttering end stops was replaced with the obligatory plastic milk bottle with a pipe connected to it using duct tape, ensuring that the water from the guttering flowed into the tank. So far this year only rainwater has been used on my plots, with no need to use water from the mains tanks situated around our allotments. My poly tunnel is now, almost devoid of pots and trays containing various seedlings, which have been planted out. Yard long beans, tomatoes (moneymaker), black eyed beans, cucumbers (marketmore) and watermelons (sugar baby) have been planted into the ground areas of the poly tunnel. My next project is to erect a fruit cage around the currant growing bed on N1 Plot and after the strawberries have finished fruiting, they will be transferred into this bed alongside the currant bushes, protected by the cage. Any 3 years or older plants will be replaced with plants from last years runners which at the moment are growing in pots.

N1 Plot L-Shaped Bed Runner beans/Lettuce 8/June/14

N1 Plot L-Shaped Bed Runner beans/Marrows 8/June/14

N1 Plot Lower End of L-Shaped Bed Main crop Potatoes/Rhubarb/Strawberries in Barrels 8/June/14

Fruit Bushes N1 Plot 8/June/14

Grapevine N1 Plot by Shed 8/June/14

Strawberries N1 Plot 8/June/14

French beans Sweetcorn Lettuce Peas Broad beans N2 Plot Main Bed 8/June/14

Roots Bed N1 Plot 8/June/14

Sage Plant Attracting Bees for the Runner beans N1 Plot 8/June/14

Herb Robert by Shed N1 Plot 8/June/14

Grapevine (Muscat Blue) Growing Across Shed Roof N2 Plot 8/June/14

New Water Tank & Pipework N2 Shed 8/June/14

N2 Plot Making 4 Beds Into 2 (8/June/14)