Basket of goodies

This was today's little haul, and the lighting doesn't do the veg justice - they really do ping with freshness! Carrots, courgettes (which are growing like crazy - anyone have any recipe ideas?), the first of the spring onions, and the obligatory egg.

The last few weeks have ben busy at school, with children and watering. The unremitting sunshine, without even fluffy clouds to break the relentless heat, has taken its toll on the garden, never mind a pale northener like me. It's been a delight the few moments when I've been able to snap a picture of raindrops on any plant.


I'm a bit behind on my blogging, but over the next week I'll try and catch up - I've remembered to take photos as I go.

More soon.

How to... get the most from your tomatoes (Part 1)

I've had quite a bit of success with tomatoes over the last few years. Indeed, it's the only crop I've grown every year since I moved here. I was chatting with a couple of colleagues the other lunchtime and realised that I was heading in the direction of having expertise (!), so thought I'd share how I get the most from my tomatoes.

First, pick your tomato. No, seriously. There are so many types you need to decide what you want to grow: cherry, plum, round, big round, novelty etc. This year I'm growing five plum tomato plants (Roma VF), and five 'normal' ones (Shirley). I sowed maybe a dozen of each seed in individual modules, then potted on the seven or eight best, and left them to grow until they looked like this:


Next, I picked the five best (or in the Roma's case, the five that hadn't been eaten by a particularly hungry slug), and put them in considerably larger pots. Think small bucket, rather than standard pot (always drill a few drainage holes if you go down the bucket route). I added a handful of chicken manure pellets to the compost in each pot to give the plants some slow release nutrition:


After a few days they started putting on a bit of growth, so they need supporting. In the wild they trail all over the place, but this is hard to look after in a confined space, and a pain in the neck to harvest from. You can support them with canes, but I prefer to tie a loose-ish knot (the stems will continue to thicken over the season) with garden twine under a leaf:



The twine is then tied up to wires strung along the length of the greenhouse roof. It's a bit of a pest getting this tight, and they will need to be re-tightened over the season as the plants get heavier, so bear this in mind when you choose your knot. Then there you have it, the plant in its final pot, all supported and ready to be fruitful:


I'll talk about the importance of 'side-shooting' another time.

Bumblefoot update

Hurray! Harriet's foot is almost completely healed. I took care to pierce the abscess scab in two or three places every four or five days to draw out the pus (mmm, nice!), and then to rinse it with dilute Dettol. I injected this through the scab and plunged until it leaked out through the holes I'd just made to draw out the gunk. Anyway, gory details to one side, it seems to have worked really well. She still slightly favours the other foot, but no big deal I reckon.

First Harvest

What a proud little boy C is, eh? He loves gathering up the eggs, and the idea of a special basket (left over from a flower arrangement given to us for E's birth) to collect them in, as well as picking the first lettuce leaves was, well, too exciting for words! I have to admit, I always get a little thrill from harvesting my own produce, even something as simple as a few eggs and some lettuce leaves.

In other news: Harriet's foot seems to be responding to treatment (hurray!); the leeks are beginning to bolt, so need to be harvested pretty sharpish (blimey!); the sweetcorn is basically a write-off after the frost (boo!); the gooseberries are just beginning to swell (more hurray!).

Thanks for reading, and I hope you're enjoying the sunshine as well.

Buzz off!

On Friday I went down to check on the bees at school. They were a couple of days overdue for an inspection (I'd been run off my feet and hadn't had time), the weather was warm and still, and one of the chaps down on the farm had seen a swarm on a fence post near the apiary (the bee hives).

Sadly, the new hive was empty except for the lovely piece of drawn-out wax in the picture above. They hadn't touched the combs in the brood-box at all. This, along with the empty cells in what they'd produced, made me wonder if their queen had not survived the rehoming, or if the two swarms had actually been just one after all and we'd grabbed the half without a queen.

Better news, the original hive were on fine form (I had to squish a couple of queen cells to stop them taking off) so I took the lid off, laid down a queen-excluder (a thin metal-sheet which allows all bees except a queen to pass through) and put a super on top. Being new to this, I'm rather enjoying all the terminology - a super is another layer, like a brood-body but shallower, full up with eleven wooden-framed wax sheets (the combs). The bees draw out the sheets into those beautiful hexagonal cells and fill them up with honey. Without the queen excluder, she'd get in and lay eggs in the cells making the honey extracted more protein-rich, but less tasty!

It is just possible that I was the cause of the new hive failing (assuming they had a queen, or chance of laying a virgin queen - if I understand right). I'd set the second hive up so it was facing in basically the same direction as the first. Chris told me that this can cause 'drifting' where the bees returning to the hive get blown slightly to one side, try to get into the wrong hive and start fighting; a weaker hive can be destroyed in this way.

Lessons learned!

Frost!

What a disaster! We had a couple of degrees of frost on Wednesday night, which put paid to all the pumpkins, courgettes, and left most of the sweetcorn looking fairly withered. Bother!

I didn't want C to be too upset, so I portrayed it very much as just something that happens. When I took him down to have a look, I was very proud of him - "Oh dear, Dada, pumpkins gone. Hmm. Plant more?" So we did. Fortunately there's plenty of time until harvest, so we can get a few more seedlings brought on.

How to... make a raised bed

I get a lot of inspiration from other blogs, so I hope some of what I learn will be helpful to anyone who finds their way here.

Having completed the two main beds, and started to lay bricks as paths between them, it was time to tackle the fruit bed. When fully complete, it will stretch the full length of the plot, but for now it will only be as long as the first plank. Anyway, this is what it looked like after I'd removed four wheelbarrows of brambles and dug the soil over:


Next, I put down and leveled enough sand so that I could put two bricks down at a couple of points along the existing bed. This let me see exactly where to put the new edging of a ten foot length of 6 inch by 1 inch outdoor treated softwood with a two foot long stake of 2" by 2" at each end. Get your builder's mate to check that you've driven each end in evenly to make it level:

"Bubble in lines, Dada!"

The bed finished (for now), with some pathway down alongside (the usual bricks laid on sand), the bed partially filled up with soil, and the blueberry planted. This was an inherited plant so I don't know the variety.


A bit more path laid, and the gooseberry bushes in place, ready for planting when I have a moment:


Hope that is of use; stay tuned for more amazing 'How To' posts!