Mulch

Leaf mulch on allium bed

After the last lot of damage to the allium bed I mulched around the plants with cherry leaves, and this seems to have prevented further digging.

The plate of green goo is a harmless preparation with a strong citrus smell, which is supposed to keep cats and dogs away. I'm not convinced that it works, though.

Kale planted out, onion damage

Uprooted onion

Seems that the squirrels have been busy - there were quite a few holes in the beds, mostly in unplanted areas, but some in the allium bed, despite the wires I strung over them. One of the onions had been completely dug out (but not nibbled). A couple more onions had been knocked or trampled. Grr.

I put the onion back as best I could and firmed up the soil round it - it should continue to grow, but it will have to spend energy repairing root damage that could have gone towards further growth.

I also planted out some kale seedlings in bed three. They've been growing from seed since the 5th October, starting indoors, then spending the afternoon in the greenhouse, then moved to the greenhouse full-time. I'm not sure if they're advanced enough to survive the winter and grow to full size, but I might get some winter greens from them.

Wood blewitt

Wood blewitt. The cap is about 5cm across.

This post isn't about gardening, but about another interest sharing the same motivation - cheap, healthy, tasty food.

Out walking today, I found a wood blewitt - a very distinctive lilac and brown mushroom. I picked it, and when I got home made sure that I'd identified it correctly. I sliced it thinly, fried it briefly in a very hot pan with a little butter, and ate it on dry toast. Delicious.

Legumes and alliums

Bed 1, broad beans and peas

The germination rate of the peas seems to be about 75% (~45/60), of the beans 66% (12/18). I will plant a few more beans and peas in the gaps in their rows. This might extend the cropping period a bit.

Bed 7, onions and garlic plants

All but one of the onions now has at least some green shoot, even the two that got trampled. Most of the garlic is showing some growth, but only a few have got to the stage where chlorophyll is being produced, so most of the shoots appear whitish.

The first batch of leaves filled six bin-liners when bagged, and there are still leaves to fall off the trees. If I have nothing better to do, I could also go and rake up leaves from around the neighbourhood - there are quite a few oaks, and their leaves are thin and form leaf mold more quickly than the thicker cherry leaves I've mostly got in the garden.

Leaf mold

Making Leaf mold

I gathered together the fallen leaves from under the cherry and apple trees, and bagged them up into bin liners. The weather has been very wet recently, and the soggy leaves will rot down in a year or two to make a fine soil improver called leaf mold. The leaves directly under the cherry were still dry, so I moved them onto the grass to get wet, and I will bag them in a couple of days.

This was brought on by today's purchase of a spring rake. £2.99, made in China. It has a slightly flimsy feel, but worked well enough.

Garlic growing, new bed dug

Yesterday I dug a new bed, 6' by 4', labelled '0' on the map. I also cut a small round area of turf out for a raspberry cane, which led to me removing a lot of blackberry roots near the holly bush. The ground was quite wet due to all the recent rain, which made cutting the turf much easier, but meant that I couldn't use the soil sieve. I just picked out the biggest pebbles. Beds 5 & 6 are the most thoroughly de-stoned, because I dug them just after getting the sieve! I will plant carrots and other root crops in them because they don't like stony ground.

About half of the garlics are now showing growing tips, and almost all of the onions now have at least a couple of inches of green shoot. Because a few got broken by some trampling animal, I hammered in six pegs around the bed and strung wires between them about 4" off the ground. I hope they will keep cats and foxes off.

First signs of garlic and land cress

Cabbage

Broad bean

After a few days away, I came home to find that the land cress has appeared, there are two rows of tiny seedlings in that bed. One of the garlic cloves has started showing a green tip, but a couple of the onions have had growing tips knocked off by some passing animal. Off to the garden centre for some land-mines tomorrow, then.

Some of the cabbages are now growing true leaves. (The first leaves of many plants do not have the characteristic shape of that species, and true leaves appear a bit later.) The broad beans seem to be doing well, with some good-sized leaves, and the peas are also coming on nicely.

Legume tally, first signs of allium growth

Eleven out of eighteen broad beans have produced seedlings so far, the biggest being about three inches tall now. Forty out of sixty peas have also emerged.

One of the onions had half an inch of green shoot when it was planted, and that one is about two inches tall now. Three other onions are showing a new green tip emerging or about to start. One of the garlics has risen up half out of the soil - I couldn't see any signs of animal digging around it, so I'm hoping it is being pushed upwards by its own root growth.

Tree felling

 

Before...

...and after.

There were two sycamore trees, about 25' and 30' tall, at the bottom of the garden. They weren't blocking the light too badly, but they grow fast and would have become a problem. I decided to cut them down, and managed to fell them just where I wanted them. If they had fallen too far to the left, they could have damaged the blackcurrant or the peas, and too far to the right would have put them onto the roof of my neighbours' outbuilding. Fortunately it all went to plan - another job done.

By next winter, the trunks should be dry enough to cut up and burn in the fireplace, so they're free fuel as well. This year I'm using old, dry boughs from the much bigger sycamores visible at the very end of the garden. They are covered in ivy, and I've cut most of the ivy stems at the bottom of the trunk so that the plants die and the leaves fall off, to give more early morning light to the garden. Unfortunately, while cutting the thickest ivy stem, I broke the bow saw I'd borrowed from a neighbour. I'll have to replace the blade, and it means I didn't get to finish the job, which has slightly taken the shine off today.

Update: Tony was great about the broken blade, he just replaced it and lent me the saw again. I finished off the ivy and (very carefully!) cut up more dry boughs for fire-logs.

Bean seedling; onions under attack

The largest of the eight broad bean seedlings.

Today I found that one of the onion sets had been dug up, by a person or persons unknown. Possibly a squirrel, possibly a bird. It was lying a few inches from the hole it came from, undamaged as far as I could see. There were numerous small roots which had developed since it was planted, and I tried not to damage these when I replaced it in the hole and firmed up the earth around it.

Garden layout

Here is an updated garden layout diagram, showing the new blackcurrant and other features such as the former site of a shed, now just slabs, and the compost heap.

For the thrill-seekers, here is a picture of the compost heap:

Compost heap.

Greenhouse

I took advantage of an end-of-season sale, and got this small plastic greenhouse for £17.

At the top, a small raspberry plant, the next shelf down is occupied by the herbs, and at the bottom are three chilli plants and a bag of compost.

The nights are getting colder now, and I hope this will be enough protection for the herbs over the winter.

In the garden, the rye in bed four doesn't seem to be growing, and the cabbage seedlings look a bit forlorn too. More broad bean shoots are poking out now, however.

Winter salads in, blackcurrant planted

Blackcurrant 'Ebony'

Bed five now has lamb's lettuce and land cress planted - two rows of each. The blackcurrant has been planted too, with plenty of compost and some slow-release fertiliser in a hole much larger than the root ball.

The seedlings spotted yesterday are definitely cabbages, they are in neat rows where I planted them, and several more peas are showing. One broad bean seedling is just poking out of the soil too.

Alliums in, and seedlings spotted

Bed seven has now been planted with onion sets (senshyu yellow) and garlic (Avignon), half the bed for each. I planted the onions in four rows, the first two at a spacing of 10cm apart in rows 10cm apart. These looked a bit cramped, and I also didn't have enough onions to fill the remaining quarter of the bed, so the last two rows are 12cm apart and have onions spaced at 12cm in the row. I'll see which do better. The sets varied in size considerably - the smallest were less than 2cm high, and the largest about 4cm. I tried to mix large and small ones evenly over the area.

The garlic had huge cloves, and I had half a bed (about 6' by 2') for them, so I planted them about 20cm apart. The two bulbs of garlic had about a dozen cloves each, but a couple were withered or mouldy, so I ended up planting 21.

While doing some inspection and hand-weeding of beds one and three (legumes and brassicas) I found two pea shoots starting to poke out of the soil, and about ten of what I think are the cabbages (although I could be mistaken, maybe they're weeds.) No sign of the broad beans yet, but they are planted deeper than the peas, and may be slower to show. Those two beds, and the alliums, are covered with garden fleece. I hope this will speed their early growth and keep cats and birds off them.

The first sowing of rye now has quite a few blades 2-4" tall, and the second sowing has started to show some root growth. (Beds two and four, respectively).

Rye in bed two

Herbs

Mint, sage, oregano, and rosemary (and some kale seedlings).

A neighbour kindly took me along on a trip to a garden centre, and I did reasonably well at not buying things on impulse. I had these herbs on my list, and I also intended to buy a blackcurrant bush, which I did. Only a couple of packets of seeds came along to the till with me out of exuberance - turnips and lamb's lettuce. Oh, and some land cress, which is apparently like water cress but doesn't need running water to grow in. I got that because the packet claims it grows in shady places, and not many edible things do that - most prefer full sun or only partial shade.

First phase of digging beds finished

Finished!

A marathon digging session today, doing all of beds seven and eight in one go. I was knackered when I had finished, but pleased that the initial phase of digging is done.

Next job: planting the onions and garlic.

Since the weather is good and there isn't much else to do, I may add a few further beds before frost sets in. Average first frost around here is mid-October, but there's no sign of any yet - night time temperatures haven't been lower than 5ºC, and mostly they've been much higher, as much as 13 to 15ºC.

Mistaken identity

Adult cockchafer

Those horrible looking larvae aren't stag beetles at all. I found a couple of adult beetles today, and they're cockchafers. This is not good news, as they eat the roots of various plants, especially the grass family - including rye.

I found several dozen of the grubs in different stages of development while digging all the beds, which seems to be a bad infestation.

Update: According to advice received on the excellent Grow Your Own forum, they are not a major problem for vegetable beds, as they tend to move away from cultivated soil (although they are very destructive of lawns.) Phew!

Beds five and six

In progress...

... and finished.

Beds five and six are done now, and with the help of the soil sieve the top 6" or so are largely stone-free. The soil is soft and well-aerated, with some structure - it forms crumbs about the size of a pea quite easily. Looking at descriptions of soil types in a gardening book I think it counts as a sandy loam.

The first signs of germination of the rye appeared today - a lot of the seeds have sprouted tiny roots. There is no sign that birds or mice have eaten any, so I sowed bed four with the rest of the rye.

I have marked out the last two beds with string, and I will plant them with alliums as soon as they've been dug. Beds seven and eight are noticeably sunnier than five and six, so the alliums are going in those. I need to find plants that can be sown now, and don't require full sunlight, to go in five and six. If there's nothing suitable I may sow more rye, or try another green manure crop.

Modified plan

Bed one now has 60 peas in two rows, and I've planted cabbage seeds in half of bed three. Having done that, I realised that 6' x 6' is too wide, and it is going to be difficult to get to the plants in the middle.

I've modified the plan for the higher area, beds five to eight, and I am going to make them only 4' wide. I'm also going to leave a small path in the middle to make access easier, so the new plan looks like this. Having a path between beds six and seven also means that I can grade and plant five and six before having to dig the last two, which is good because I have some Japanese onions and garlic which I want to put in soon.

Yesterday I bought a soil sieve, which speeds up the stone removal process, and leaves a lovely fine tilth, which will be good for the alliums and also for carrots.

Another job done today was removing the large sapling near bed one - I thought it was a maple, but in fact it was a sycamore. I was thinking of planting a hazelnut tree there, but reading up on them I find that they are self-infertile, so I would need two. There are also a lot of squirrels in the neighbourhood, so it might be a lot of money and effort with no crop to show for it. This part of the plan requires further thought, but there's no hurry - I don't think this is the right time of year for planting new trees.

First sowing

Bed one now has 18 broad beans, bed two planted with rye.

Yesterday I finished digging the first patch. Bed four was easier than the others after a small amount of rain softened the turf. I tried grading the whole area (making it level and even), and found that I hadn't dug bed one properly.

Today I forked over bed one, to remove roots and stones, and put string up to show the boundaries.

I decided to change the plan described in the last post. Initially I was going to put rye in beds one and three, thinking that because they are sunniest, I would improve the soil over winter with the green manure crop, and then plant my favourite veg in them. I changed my mind, because the whole area is reasonably sunny, and this is likely to be more of a constraint for winter crops. I also decided to put the brassicas in bed three, because it is more sheltered and they can suffer from too much wind, particularly in light soil. The new plan is thus:

1. Legumes, initially broad beans (Aguadulce) and peas (Meteor).
2. Winter grazing rye, a green manure.
3. Brassicas, initially kale (Nero di Toscana) and cabbage (Advantage F1).
4. Winter grazing rye.

I have planted 18 broad beans in bed one, and scattered rye on bed two. I will see if the rye germinates before planting more in bed four, as I want to see if birds come and eat it before planting all my seeds.