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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Farewell Mildred

If you are of a sentimental disposition, I suggest you look away now, for I am afraid the news is not good.

A couple of days ago I nipped down to check on the girls, and discovered Mildred, our Cuckoo Maran sparked out in the hen house. On further inspection it transpired that she wasn’t just having a sneaky kip… The prognosis was worse than that… She’d carked it.

I had noticed she had a bit of blood on her comb the day before, but as she had seemed quite perky in herself, had assumed one of the others had simply got a bit over-enthusiastic near the feeding bucket. Obviously it was a tad more serious than that.

We adopted Mildred and Maud from the RSPCA a good while back. I’d dubbed them ‘the evil twins’ as they were inseparable and always appeared to be hatching cunning plots and plans from the back of the coop. They were a good deal more skitty than Winnie, our other bird, and if you tried to get near them or pick them up, they screamed blue murder.

Aside from that though, they laid cracking eggs…

So, we duly removed Mildred’s stiff little body, wrapped it tenderly in black bags, and she is currently in the chicken morgue otherwise known as ‘the black bin’.

The other two didn’t even seem to miss her: Maud simply dashed into the nesting box to squeeze a quick egg out. It was as though she just couldn’t concentrate on the job in hand with her prone twin stretched out before her.

In other news, our omelette intake is down.

A nice shot of Mildred, Winnie and Maud

Mildred is on the left. so called because when we first had her, she came with a red tag around her ankle. Mild-Red… see what we did there?

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

Wordless Wednesday: My new Kindle book

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From drought alert to full on flood warning

I know I welcomed a bit of rain last week, but can I have a quick word with whoever’s been in charge of the weather lately? “Enough!”

The butts are brimming, the plants have had more than a good drink, and we’d like a couple of buckets of sunshine now, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.

It’s amazing that in just a couple of weeks we’ve gone from a drought warning where ‘hosepipe’ is a dirty word and all the pond creatures are on the danger list, to a full-on flood alert, where the little critters are all getting washed away.

Our garden’s had so much rain that my patio could easily double for an overflow pond, and bog plants could live happily in my lawn. A few sections of the veg plot are currently under water, and if we have any more wet, I’m certain the chickens will start to develop webbed feet. Although there are several drier areas of the run, and logs for them to sit on, I was a bit concerned about the amount of paddling they were doing, and asked my friends on the ‘tinterweb if they had any ideas. According to form, I shouldn’t put things like bark chips and sawdust in there. True, it will keep their feet dry for a bit, but the chips/sawdust can go mouldy very quickly and can then cause lung problems for the birds. The advice was to use hardwood chips from a tree surgeon instead, or put some pallets down until the weather cleared up. Sound advice indeed.

On a slightly more cheerful note, I stumbled upon a corking facebook group recently, called ‘Leicestershire Garden Exchange’. Set up by Sarah McCarthy,  the aim is for people to swap or sell their surplus garden produce, fruit, veg, flowers and plants… all to make Leicestershire a little bit more self sufficient. Genius! No longer do you have to face a summer of eating the produce of the forty tomato plants you sowed: you can now swap a few for another plant someone else may be overrun with.

I soon learned that Sarah had excess courgette plants, so we’ve set up a swap for some of my aubergines I’ll have left over. I may also be interested in some of her dwarf beans that may become available, as the ones I planted haven’t fared too well. Only two have popped up so far: one got eaten by something, and while I was trying to help the other one into the world by easing off its seed shell, I sort of managed to snap his leaves off.

Joking aside though, the group is open to anyone – so if you’re a keen Leicestershire gardener with produce to swap or sell, you’ll be made more than welcome.

 

This one appeared in the Hinckley Times on 3 May… with a curious picture of a compost bin Nice of them to feature me beside my house that I have for sale at the moment too…

Wordless Wednesday… the last cry for help went unnoticed

A brand new vegetable plot

A while back we dismantled the trampoline as it wasn’t being used any more, and gave it away to some friends who would get much more enjoyment out of it.

We were still left with a massive pile of rubbish that I tried a couple of times to have a bonfire with, but with limited success. Happy to say though, that ‘The Great Fire’ finally took place last weekend, leaving the patch relatively clear for me to do something with.

First job was to get rid of the bits that didn’t burn – the brown bin men are going to LOVE me this week!

Clearing the patch

At the back of the patch was a ridge of clay which we dumped there when we dug out the pond. I had two options – either turn this into a rockery of some kind, or break it up. I decided on the latter, and merrily set to work chopping up the clay and spreading it out. I came across some massive roots from the tree that we used to have, so OH nipped out for a mighty axe, and they were soon history.

Finally I could get my rotovator out and have a whiz round with it.

An action shot

I discovered ‘aerobics for chickens’ too.  Any worms I came across got thrown onto the mesh roof of the run.  All three stood underneath it, and jumped up in a Ninja-type manner, trying to reach it. Eventually the worm dropped through the holes, and one lucky chicken would pick it up and scarper before the others could catch it.

Anyway,  a quick rake over and another couple of laps with the rotavator, and it was all looking rather good.

I then planted up a load of brassicas I’d started off in the greenhouse earlier in the year. We now have brussels, cauliflowers, and three types of cabbages growing in there.

My family are all cock-a-hoop…. they thought they’d seen the last of cabbage…

Wigwams and waste for a batch of borlottis

This week I decided to get cracking on my runner bean trench. As the beans will be grown up wigwams, it’s more like a square ditch. Apparently you dig a hole where you’re going to plant your beans, and fill it full of stuff that will rot down, hold moisture, and hopefully make those beans go flying up the canes, providing bumper crops all summer long.

I set to work, and have to say digging the trench took me briefly back to my childhood, as before long I’d produced a structure that resembled a massive sandcastle.

On quizzing my friend who keeps three allotments, I learned that the sort of things you need to fill your trench with are raw kitchen waste, such as peelings and teabags (not potato peelings though), newspaper and manure. All week I’ve been happily by-passing the compost bin, and chucking all my peelings straight into the trench, ready for the layer of chicken manure and newspaper that would be available when I next cleaned out the girls.

All winter I’ve wondered to myself how it’s physically possible for just three hens to produce the amount of waste that they do. However, that’s all changed now I’m on ‘Operation Bean Trench’: I’m positively egging them all on to plop out a bit more.

The layering sorted, I suddenly realised that as well as the runners, I hoped to be growing borlotti and French beans this year.  So I whizzed off back into the garden, spade in hand, and two more trenches were prepared in no time. I’m hoping I have enough scraps to fill them all before the beans are ready to go in.

The digging over, I set off into the greenhouse to sow the beans. After all, a bean trench is simply a hole full of rubbish if you have no beans to put in there. A quick furtle around the seed box produced a handful of runner beans I’d dried and saved from last year, half a packet of  borlottis that were  left over and some runners and dwarfs that had been purchased at the end of last season in the sale.

I grew borlotti beans last year as I’d never heard of them, and from then I decided that they would be a regular occurrence in my garden. Picked and dried, they last for ages in the store-cupboard, and they’re a brilliant addition to a stew.

However, this idea was nearly thwarted – on closer inspection it became clear that the borlottis hadn’t braved the winter.  They appeared to have got damp at some point, as some had tiny sprouts and all were coated in a thin film of mildew. Nonetheless, I decided to plant them up, and let them take their chances in the greenhouse with the others. I reasoned that in the soil anything could happen: in the bin they had two hopes – Bob Hope and no hope.

So, my collection of beans planted, labelled and watered, it’s now just a waiting game to see what pops up.

This one was in the Hinckley Times on 29 March:

A smell of death in the garden

Aggie and Winnie - the chooks who don't lay a lot

The ongoing, sporadical saga of what came first – the chicken or the rat?

After putting down the yummy blue rat treats for what seems like all summer, they finally stopped being taken. Sigh of relief, as at one point, the additional pets were costing more to keep than the chickens Anyway, last weekend I put a massive pile of rat treats down, and it seems to have done the trick. Two days later – massive pile still there…. but a god-awful smell coming out from under the decking.

I’m assuming it’s the dead rodents, unless I’m completely barking up the wrong tree and one of my neighbours has had a nasty trip on a garden implement and is slowly decomposing in their own garden.

Had a quick head count up and down the street, and happy to announce that nobody seems to be missing….