In The Garden - Havoc Wrought

...Not least on me... I seem to have developed some kinda late-onset hay-fever. My nose runs like a tap and glows like a beacon. My eyes are small, shrunken and peppery. I sneeze and sigh and feel very sorry for myself. Ah well.

But we do eat potatoes from the garden. In fact, I do dig up all the first earlies on account there is no doubt but we have been blighted. First time that it's got to the lovely tatties themselves. Had to wash and sort them, dry the survivors lovingly and put them in a box in the cool garage. Meanwhile The Old Man do cut the foliage from the second earlies what be showing dire signs of same. Hoping to have caught it before it trickles down to the tatties beneath.

This morning I do go to check my poor broad beans what have suffered weevil depredation and snails (snails don't usually bother them but I guess they saw an opportunity...) To my outrage I find the finally healthy tips are weighed down by fat dark greenfly with black legs... each the size of a tank. I have no option but to pick out these healthy tips with their sitting tenants... revealing as I do, the scurrying black ants what be placing the fat, reproducing beasts on my lovely bean plants. Blimey! The veg garden is challenging this year. But... am eating the strawberries... Yum! And eyeing up the peas for a first pick this evening. If something doesn't get there first.

In fact the whole cycle of life is a bit challenging this spring. Birds are fledging and quivering in fat, feathery bundles deposited in shrubs and trees whilst the parents hunt high and low to satisfy their hunger. The other day I skip like a ninny to film a caterpillar spinning its chrysalis on a sedge stem by the side of the drive. Truly, I be borbling on about the miracles of nature and so on. Next day I do find the chrysalis.... gone. Along with several of its brood-mates. I realise now it be likely that the desperate bird parents have taken them off to eaten by their children. One miracle of nature have been devoured by another.

Dreaming Up Stuff And Digging Up Stuff

Sorry to be so slow in posting. I have just laid around and stared at the Miyazaki skies we is having, it's true.

Dreaming up? We-e-ell.... can't forget an image from the other day...down at the petrol station. The Old Man do drive in to get his paper. I notice we do pass a parked car with an Alsatian dog sitting in the driving seat... upright, eyes ahead, full of dignity. The Old Man do park up and goes in to the shop. A moment later the dog-car passes and pauses to pull out of the forecourt. A man now sits in the driving seat (of course) and the Alsatian sits in the passenger seat by his side.... side by side... same height....both of them... upright, eyes ahead, full of dignity.
Image just won't go away.

Mrs D has become similarly obsessed and appears to be constructing a cardboard "pick-up truck" for the dog and bike-girl to sit in... in similar manner.
Heigh-ho. The artistic mind is a mind capped by a bonnet containing a bee.

Digging up? Mmm. My first new potatoes.

Planting Garlic

OK. A vegetable eater's gardening is never done.
Rain has stopped long enough over last few days to tidy up a bit in the veg patch. And I done bin planted some garlic for next year. They do like a bit of winter if you plant the right sort. Sad to say the bulbs I ordered are a bit rotten... Truly. But I makes up with some of me own crop from the summer.

Already worrying over where to put what if my veg-growing dreams come true next year.... taties, beans, peas, leaf beet,.... where will they fit in?

Badger Digs Potatoes... Again

... the summer is starting to be fruitful in the garden. Starting to eat the strawberries and potatoes.... Peas and broad beans be setting to make fruit. I kind of like the challenge of seeing what I can make a meal of from the garden.

So I be a bit annoyed to find some flattened potato plants cos Mr Brock have rooted around in me roots.

Grumpily I do harvest the flattened plants and wonder what to do with the prematurely harvested tubers. But cleaning them up I do see that there be the start of some rot or blight going on in the largest of them.  Not to mention an excellent set of claw marks on one.

...So. I do say thank you to Mr Brock (who be after worms rather than taters, I'm sure)... cos I do realise that it's time to get those taters up and out .... before it all be truly blighted.

Bombay potatoes and leaf beet tonight I think.... wiv some black-eye beans and mushrooms... rhubarb pie for afters.

A Little Help in The Garden

Looks like the badger which we think visits the garden at night...

has given me a helping hand digging up me potatoes.

Good news is that they ain't interested in eating them or marking them as their own!! (I've known badgers to crap in the holes that they dig.)

Must be looking for worms, leaving us the potatoes.

The Number of The Chilli Seedlings

The Old Man is very pleased with himself.
He has just potted up his latest batch of chilli seedlings. He do love a chilli pepper. And so it is that he proudly informs me that the number of seedlings now tallies at 66.

I sit down suddenly and wonder where they will all live and how do we eat them all. This kind of thing do not bother The Old Man. Rather he do worry that there may be a lack....

Who Done Eat That?

Yesterday The Old Man comes out of the garage bearing a bunch of beetroot.
You think this sounds absurd?
Perish the thought.
The garage is cold and its where we keep our larder supplies of root vegetables and fruit.

Anyways he comes in with the beetroots and points out the little continent-shaped patches of raw flesh dotted around their skins.
"He's back." say he.
"Mmn. So I see." say I.

Somewhere.... there is a mouse with very pink jaws and feet.

Harvesting My Squashes...

All two of them! But there you are.

They's a good size each so worth it if they ripen off and store well.
One's a Crown Prince, bless him. The other is a Musquee de Provence which should turn orange when ripe. I've never eaten one of those.

Ooops! Not in front of the children.....

The Old Man Suggests Bean Fortification

So... you may think this is a bridge too far... or should I say... a moat too far? The Old Man has come up with an idea for a barrier against them slugs and snails which is the end of all barriers.

Believe me, I've tried most things short of poison.... egg shell, sharp sand, coffee grounds, copper tape, copper impregnated material, sheep's wool, plastic funnelly things (OK to keep slugs away... no good against snails)

But... sooner or later my vegetable plot is rent by a high pitched wail, my own, as I find the latest glistening stump of what was once a healthy squash, courgette, bean plant, whatever.

I have been thinking of growing some vegetables in pots anyway. So, following The Old Man's Battle Plan... I have purchased a large... very large... drip-tray and some clay pot feet. Then I's put the tray out in the yard; put the pot feet in the tray; put pots on the pot feet; planted beans in the pots.... and filled the drip-tray with water. Voila! A moated bean-growing system.

Maybe the little gastropods will parachute in? I cannot put that past them.... and I will let you know.

Robbing Bees and Ravenous Snails

My beans! My beans!

I's growing broad beans and climbing beans. Finally my broad beans are tall and full of flower as I give up and seriously water them in this drought.

But what's this? No beans comin.

One day I catch the bees at work on them - and the little Bs are nipping round the back of the flowers and makin holes to take the nectar or whatever they go for. So they's not going in "through the front door" so to speak and me flowers are not being pollinated.... and... and ...so I've got no broad beans coming!!

Meanwhile... as usual... the slugs and snails are ignoring any barrier I put around my French beans and gnawing each one down to a stump.

Why do I bother?

Actually, I tell you why. Nothing beats picking your dinner ten minutes before you put it in the pot.

Lunatic Gardening

Yesterday I mostly planted vegetables. Too late, perhaps, to get good crops. But I've had other things on my mind and takin' my time.

So. I like to plant "biodynamically" which is to say - "by the moon". Because I am an old hippy.

A friend once told me that her new neighbours farmed "by the moon". So she imagined them frolicking about at night - scattering peas and lettuces by the light of the moon. Truly lunatic.

Not so. Biodynamic planting is a system based on plant parts, the elements, moon phases and astrology. Told yer I was an old hippy.

But however crazy you think that is. Don't see why the moon shouldn't affect plants. It plays a vital part in tides after all. That's quite a powerful effect, I reckon.
Whatever. At least the system helps me structure my gardening.

So yesterday was a "fruit" day - governing not only "fruit" fruit - but vegetables where we eat the fruiting part: like peas, beans, squash, corn, tomatoes and.... Chillies!

I had seedlings ready to plant out and it may be too late in the year to get good crops from some like the winter squash and borlotti beans - but I had to give it a go. I hope the remains of the summer will be kind to me and give me some squash I can store for winter.

My crops also suffer greatly from the abundance of slugs and snails. So this summer I am trying out a barrier product made from pelleted sheep's wool. It's supposed to be an irritant that inhibits their molluscy slitheriness. But the very smelly pellets are also supposed to provide a mulch and food for the plants.

Let's see.

For sure conditions for the rest of the day were challenging. The afternoon was full of Cornish mizzle and damping. As I finished planting the last of the sweetcorn and squash, my back ached and I was wet through. Cornish mizzle is very damping.

I wondered if any of the seedlings would survive the mollusc filled night.


PS. They all did. So far so good.