Frost hits the runner beans

I’m feeling rather foolish this week. If I was eating an egg, some would most definitely be on my face, and if I had a blackboard to hand, I’d be scribing “Patience is a virtue” 100 times.

After nurturing my runner beans into fine specimens, and blathering on about “there’s still a risk of frost”, what did I do? Well, I’ll tell you… I got a bit giddy with excitement at the sniff of a bit of warm weather a week or so ago, and I planted my beans out. For a couple of days they were going great guns. They looked fit and perky, basking in the balmy climate, and I was envisaging a bean-filled summer ahead.

Then one night… just ONE NIGHT… the temperature cooled and we had a frost. And the beans now look decidedly sick.

Before the frost

After the frost… spot the difference!

I could have avoided this disaster in a number of ways. Most obviously, I could have left the beans in the greenhouse for a few more weeks out of harm’s way. But as they were already out, I could have protected them more from said frost. A blanket of fleece or bubble wrap might have done the trick, as might a cloche. Anything really, to keep the cold air off them. But the damage has been done, so on to Plan B.

The beans have well and truly carked it, but all is not lost. I have planted some stunt doubles up in the greenhouse. Runner beans grow quite quickly, and you can even plant them straight in the ground from the middle of May onwards, so the new plants should have time to catch up. I may end up with a later crop, but any crop is better than none at all.

Dashing out in the garden to soak up some Bank Holiday rays last weekend, I also cracked on with some other jobs.

I’ve planted out my vast collection of leek and onion seedlings. These should fare better than the beans, as they are now a good size, and have been totally outdoors now for a couple of weeks to harden off. They should laugh in the face of any cold snaps, and establish themselves into prize winning specimens now they can stretch out a bit. A good watering after planting them should help them on no end too.

In other news, we’ve had four new chickens. We were down to just two, and as they are quite old girls, the egg production has been a bit sporadic of late. So we popped out at the weekend and bought four new hens. They’re only 17 weeks old, so should start laying at any time. We were expecting a riot when we introduced them to the old girls, but touch wood they are getting on fine so far. I think it helps as there are four against one – Winnie and Maud are outnumbered. We just need to think of names now…

Four new chickens

This one appeared in The Hinckley Times 0n 9 May 2013

The Hinckley Times 9 May 2013

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Insect hotel

A good friend came to stay at the weekend, which of course was great fun. But what’s better than a visit from a good friend? A visit from a friend who’s bearing gifts – that’s what!

A rummage in her overnight bag produced a strange structure made of wood, which she proudly thrust into my arms. I looked at it dubiously and eventually asked, “Err… what is it?”

“Oh, Lynno!” she scoffed. “It’s an insect hotel. It will be GREAT in your garden!”

A closer look at the instructions revealed that in theory, it should indeed be fabulous for the garden. Apparently, it contains all sorts of hidey holes that are a magnet for things like solitary bees, ladybirds, lacewings and other creepy crawlies. Once they’ve moved in, they should happily whiz around your garden, pollinating stuff left right and centre.

Although we’ve been lucky enough to have had tree bees in our bird box for the last couple of years, I’m all for enticing a few more varieties into the patch. Bees are apparently on the decline, so if we can help any out with a place to stay for the summer, it’s got to be worth a go.

The ideal place for the insect hotel was about a metre off the ground, in a sunny spot where it can catch some of the early morning rays. Without further ado, the other half shot out to install it, and duly shoved a bit of straw in the bottom part, as per the leaflet. We’ve gone for a sheltered spot outside the greenhouse, which should remain undisturbed – but equally is near enough to the veg patch for the insects to work their magic. I’ll be keeping my beady eye out for anything taking up residence.

Insect hotel

Meanwhile, back in the greenhouse, I’ve been busily pricking out seedlings to give them more room to grow. The best way I’ve found of doing this is to loosen the soil around the roots, hold the seedling carefully by its leaves and transplant to a larger pot, trying not to cause any damage or disturbance to the plant or the roots. Then put some soil around the roots, and gently firm around the base. Keep it well watered, and it should soon grow into its new space, throwing up new leaves and growth.

Pricked out seedlings

I’ve also popped a few more broad bean seeds in between the established plants in the garden. The plan is that the crop will be staggered, and hopefully I’ll get beans over a longer period of time. The peas and carrots I sowed a week or so back aren’t yet popping up but I’m happy to report that I have healthy-looking rows of radish, turnips and beetroot. I’m sure everything will catch up in good time.

So my final word this week is to our local insect population. There’s a lovely hotel that’s just opened for the summer. Reasonable rates, and available for rent. Come on in… you know you want to…

This one appeared in The Hinckley Times on 2 May 2013

The Hinckley Times 2 May 2013

Signs of spring

Wandering around the garden this week, I’m amazed at the change in just a week. Everything’s bursting into life, and here are a couple of pictures…

 

Daffodils

 

Plum blossom

 

Pulmonaria

 

However, it’s not all good news… I put my beans out a tad early, and the frost seems to have zapped them. Note to self: it may be sunny but it ‘aint all that warm at night.

Onto Plan B I think…

Runner beans – frost damage

 

 

 

The only way is up

As the weather well and truly warmed up and we were treated to a relative scorcher of a weekend, I decided to bite the bullet and get my spuds in.

Like a woman on a mission, I set to work and six varieties were soon planted in the new raised beds – with any luck I’ll be having some kind of potato to harvest right through the season. When it’s time to earth up the spuds, I’ll use that opportunity to put more soil into the raised beds – in trenches over the top of the potatoes.

Looking across at the peas that went out a few weeks ago, I was delighted to discover that these now look well established and have begun to romp away. So much so, that they looked in desperate need of some kind of support. A quick rummage behind the greenhouse produced some sticks I’d saved for this very occasion, and I poked four in the ground around the plants. Around this I wrapped some string to make a wigwam-type structure, and then gently separated the plants and arranged them up the new support. I’ve spotted some flowers already, so am hoping for good results.

Douce Provence peas

Cheered on by this early success story, I planted two more varieties of peas in the bed. One should be a good all round garden pea, and the other should be picked young as mange tout.

Pleased with my handiwork, I stood back and smugly perused the patch. Then it dawned on me. The legumes bed is now fairly well stocked: I seemed to have overlooked the three varieties of runner beans growing in the greenhouse. These should be ready to go out when there’s no more risk of frost, but space is now premium. So I decided to use the space in the air…

Runner beans… coming on nicely

I dashed off into town, and whipped three do-it-yourself arches off the shelf of our local bargain store. Assembling them wasn’t a massive task, and that done, me and the youngest dragged them off down to the vegetable plot. We positioned them so that they straddled the plots, and I think they will look great when they are full of flowers and beans. Hopefully harvesting will be easier too: no more scrabbling into the middle of a wigwam; the beans should just dangle in and around the arch. 

Three new garden arches

Elsewhere in the garden, I’ve also sown turnips, beetroot, carrots, lettuce and a row of radish.

I also used the burst of good weather to have a quick clear up in the flower borders. All the dead foliage has now gone, and some of the weeds have been plucked out. I haven’t gone too mad though – I don’t want to miss any self-seeded plants that may pop up – so I’ll wait until things get a little bit bigger to be sure it’s weeds I’m pulling out, and not potential flowers.

I’m great fan of the word “free”.

This appeared in The Hinckley Times on 25 April 2013

The Hinckley Times 25 April 2013

Slugs and spawn

Hear ye, hear ye… I have an announcement to make. But I will say it in hushed tones: “I think spring may finally be here.”

I don’t make this claim lightly – I’ve been gathering evidence. Out in the garden there are a number of things that suggest that we may finally have shrugged off the winter coats, and will soon be skipping around in our next season.

1.    I’ve found the first slugs
Whipping the cloche off the broad beans, I noticed tiny holes in some of the leaves. A good old rummage around at the base of the plants revealed slugs. No bigger than a fingernail, but they are there nonetheless. I’m hoping if I catch them early enough, they won’t mature into stonking great specimens, so I’m trying a couple of cunning plans this year. As well as setting beer traps for them, I’m sprinkling roughly crushed eggshells around the stems of any small plants. I’ve read that slugs find it hard to glide over the rough surface. We’ll see.

2.    We have frogspawn
The pond is alive with froggy love at the moment. Wherever I look, they are … ahem… ‘at it’. Coupled with that, there’s a massive clump of frogspawn in one corner. Now, going back to Point 1 above:  I thought that having frogs in your garden cut down your slug population. I’d heard that the frogs go out at night in search of tasty sluggy snacks. Our frogs evidently had other things on their mind this week. I will say no more…

Froggy loving in the pond

3.    The greenhouse is going bonkers
Seeds that I planted months ago are finally popping up. I’ve got five kinds of tomatoes (one of them a mystery as the packet got wet and unreadable), courgettes, celery, cucumbers, runner beans, borlotti beans, chillies and aubergines. All very tiny at the moment, but they are there; they are healthy, and hopefully I can keep them all alive for the season.  Exciting times indeed.

Five varietes of tomatoes – including a mystery one

With all that extra growth going on in I’ve also been making sure that things don’t get overcrowded. I’ve split up my celery, onion and leek plants and replanted them in trays to give them a bit more elbow room. Some of the onion plants were a fair old size, so out they went into the garden. And they are not alone! The first of the raised beds is now full and complete, so into that have gone a row of purple sprouting broccoli, and two rows of cabbages. I’ve left room for some broccoli and cauliflowers that are in the greenhouse but are not quite big enough to go out yet.

Brassica raised bed

The other two raised beds are now filled with a layer of rotted horse manure and yet more compost, and are now ready for some potato planting. I’ve been holding off doing this as the ground was simply too cold, but this week I’m going to bite the bullet. The spuds are going in.

Raised beds

This article appeared in The Hinckley Times on 18 April 2013

The Hinckley Times 18 April 2013

Wordless Wednesday – a lovely pair of pots

Everything’s starting to grow!

Sun starts action to start planting

This weekend I peeked out of the window and spotted a strange orb-like light in the sky. Hoping that North Korea hadn’t gone mardy with the rest of the world, I had another look. Happily, we didn’t seem to be on the brink of a nuclear invasion: the light in the sky was just the sun. I just didn’t recognise it for a moment.

With not a minute to lose, I shot off down the garden to crack on with some jobs. I’ve had the cloches on the soon-to-be legumes patch (peas and beans) for a week or so, to warm up the soil, so decided to plant some of these first.

Broad beans are ready to go in

My broad beans were a good old size, with a decent root structure, so two rows of these went in first, complete with their toilet roll plant pots. Next up were the Douce Provence peas that have been camping out in an old grow bag in the greenhouse all winter. I dug a hole the same dimensions as the grow bag, and managed to get them all out of the bag and into the ground, soil and all. As the weather isn’t quite tropical yet, I replaced the cloche tunnels to protect the plants from any nippy nights.

Douce Provence peas

At this point, the other half joined me to carry on with Operation Raised Beds. In what seemed like no time at all, the last two frames were made and ready to be anchored in their final positions. I was quite prepared to just whack them down in a ‘rustic’ layout, but oh no… the Virgo in him reared its head. The path had to be moved three inches to the left, and the beds had to be in line with each other and an equal distance apart.

I do have to admit the meticulous approach paid off, and the raised beds look rather good – I can’t wait to get stuff growing in them. Wanting to get at least one of them in action, I set to work emptying the compost bins. Before long, I’d shovelled out two hefty barrows of compost, which went straight into one of the frames.

The raised beds

A quick trip to the garden centre, and four bags of topsoil later, and the first raised bed was complete. This year, this bed will be planted up with brassicas. I have a couple of rows of cabbages and purple sprouting broccoli that are ready to go in, but these have so far been in the greenhouse. Not wanting to shock them, I’ve put them under the cloches so they can get used to the change in temperature gradually, before I plant them up outside.

It’s still a bit cold to plant potatoes – the advice from others is that when it’s warm enough for weeds to start growing, it’s warm enough for spuds to go in. I know spring has been late arriving this year, but I do have high hopes that everything will catch up eventually.

The Hinckley Times 11 April 2013

The Hinckley Times 11 April 2013

Time to raise our game in the garden

With the news that family were visiting for the Easter break, and the (once again) chilly weather forecast, we didn’t hold out much hope of any gardening.

However, the weekend didn’t quite pan out to be the stream of gatherings and get-togethers we’d anticipated, but on the bright side, provided an ideal window of opportunity to tackle our raised beds project.

We’ve decided to install raised beds as we lost so many plants last year due to the continual wet weather. Raised beds should let excess water drain away more easily, should allow the soil to become warmer, more quickly, and should be an ideal shape and structure for us to net against birds and insects. Oh, and they should look rather smart, too.

As our vegetable bit of the garden is quite large, we decided to initially build the first raised beds on the lowest part of the garden.

The wood was delivered last week, courtesy of our cheerful farmer friend: nine lengths of 8ft planks. This would be enough to make three beds measuring 8ft by 4ft (or 2.44 m x 1.22m for the metric-savvy amongst us). They would be long enough to provide a substantial growing area and narrow enough to be able to reach all the plants without trampling all over them.

Staining the raised bed wood

After staining the wood, the other half set to work. Sawing three planks in half to provide the end panels, he attached the ends to the sides using small angle brackets in each internal corner. We then knocked a length of wood (re-used from some old bed slats) into the soil at each corner to provide a sturdy anchor to attach the bed to.

A quick check with the spirit level, a couple of screws later, and Hey Presto! The first bed was made.

This is how it looked before…

Before the raised bed was installed

And after…

I lined the bottom of this with a layer of cardboard. Apparently this should rot down, enrich the soil, and suppress weeds in the process. Next in went a layer of chicken coop waste, which we’ll follow with a layer of rotted horse manure. I’ll then empty the compost bins and spread that around, and judging from the size of the frames, I may well have to invest in a bit of top soil at some point too.

The garden is still too cold for planting, but I have stretched a couple of polythene cloches over parts of it to warm up the soil before anything goes out. The chill can’t last forever, so the better prepared I can be for start of warm weather, the better.

In other news, the cold snap got the better of Mildred, our chicken last week. She was fine one day, gone the next. Mercifully, she didn’t appear to have suffered and slipped away peacefully during the night – she was still perching in the coop when we found her.

So my final thought for this week is:  “Rest in peace, Mildred… you laid some cracking little eggs…”

The Hinckley Times 4 April 2013

The Hinckley Times 4 April 2013

Snow fails to impress chicks

Snowy, squally, sleety, slippery, skiddy.

I bring you last week’s weather courtesy of the letter ‘S’. Please do feel free to add to this list with any other words that might pop into your head.

Apparently we have had the coldest March in fifty years. You heard correctly… FIFTY YEARS! And it’s not altogether very funny. Could we have a quick word with whoever’s looking after the weather: “Lay off the wise cracks, and send us some of the bright stuff please”.

I nipped down to the chickens at the weekend to make sure they had plenty of fresh, not frozen water. Replenishing the water supply with a fresh container, I hoped they wouldn’t rumble me and realise this had worming drops in it. I decided to start the year as I meant to go on and worm the girls regularly. Worms can live in the digestive tract of the birds, and if they take hold, they can be pretty tricky to get rid of.  And obviously a dose of worms can be fairly unpleasant for the birds.

As the garden was covered in snow, I decided to let the girls out for a run around. Since they scoffed the green manure I planted last year, and demolished the entire crop of runner beans the last time they were out, I figured that they couldn’t really do much more damage. Flinging open the coop door with a flourish, I tried to tempt them out with a handful of corn. I know that they love corn, as I made the mistake of mixing it with the layers pellets – just once – a couple of weeks back. Since then, the girls are on the constant lookout for the stuff, flinging all the pellets out all over the run in their quest for it. It became apparent that not even corn would to do the trick this time though.

Winnie, Mildred and Maud came to the doorway, looked at the snow then looked at each other. I swear they all then collectively looked at me, with an expression that simply said, “Are you crazy?”, before retreating back to the coop.

Mildred is not impressed with the snow

Leaving the door open in case they had a change of heart, I then had a quick check on the greenhouse. Remarkably, everything seems to be surviving the cold in there. Don’t ask me how, but the celery seeds began popping up in the week. I covered the pots on the bench with bubble wrap, to keep any impending frost off them, and trudged back up to the house.

A short while later, I was impressed to see the girls slowly but surely making their way up the garden. They weren’t exactly skipping around with glee, but they did have a bit of a mooch and a scratch around before taking themselves off to bed for an early night.

The Hinckley Times 28 March 2013