Pre-autumn garden update

Ugh. It's cold, it's drizzly, it's 12C outside. This is officially the last day of summer, not the first day of autumn but you could have fooled me! Yesterday was a lovely sunny T-shirt weather day and tomorrow it's supposed to be 21C again. It's so cold in the house we have put the central heating on, but as downstairs has underfloor heating, that means it won't warm up until tomorrow, when we'll probably be too hot! For the moment I have escaped upstairs to my office where I have proper radiators that radiate heat the moment you turn the boiler on. Like real central heating should (can you tell I don't like underfloor central heating?)

Normally on the odd cool day or evening at this time of year we'd just light the woodburner, but that's out of action right now due to a swarm of honey bees deciding that our stainless steel conduit would be a great place to make a nest back in May - leading unfortunately to the pest controller having to come out and poison them (no other option). We've been waiting until around this time to get the chimney sweeps back again because we were advised that the wax would have to dry out over the summer. However, to add to our woes we now have hornets coming down the chimney and out into the living room! So the pest controller man will be coming back next week to check out what's going on as we can hardly risk a chimney sweep getting a faceful of hornets high up on our roof and falling off and breaking his neck!

I do seem to be attracting insects this year, both the wanted and the unwanted!

So, that out of the way I wanted to update a bit about the garden and what's been going on whilst I've been away in the land of caterpillar raising. That's all quiet for the moment, indoors at least. Plenty of them rampaging outside, which I'll come to in due course.

The garden is looking very autumnal - much too much so for September. This is mostly due to the (usual) drought situation and many trees dropping their leaves due to stress. We've been crunching through crispy leaves for the last month. There's barely been any rain in 2 months now and only 2 rainfalls worth noting, and even they have only given about 3 days of respite before the watering cans, hosepipes and seep hoses have had to come out again. It gets very, very tiring and I start to get very disenchanted with the whole business of trying to garden.

Right, time to get on with some photos and enough of the waffling, Mandy!

Looking up through the Silver Birch leaves a few weeks ago

Poor Dogwood in the woodland that I'd forgotten to check on.
It has since been watered a number of times and is looking happier!

I had had a bright idea back in the spring to make a small bit of my woodland edge into a more cultivated kind of woodland garden, but really it's just not worth it for the extra watering involved, and the hose doesn't reach this far. I'll plant some bluebells here as bulbs will be fine.

My Cercis Canadensis 'Forest Pansy' looking lovely.
This is kept as well watered as possible as I only planted it a year ago.

Looking a bit crispy round the edges! Some trees are already bare such as my Rowan
(out of the picture)

My beautiful Liquidambar going the same way as last year -
no likelihood of any glorious autumn colours as the leaves just
crisp up and drop off

Pond level is down about 2.5 feet (75cms) and is looking a bit green and murky.
This is no big deal as usually it's a lot lower level than this by now, so I'm happy with this!

I mentioned rampaging caterpillars earlier on - look at this. My poor gooseberries have been totally decimated by gooseberry sawfly larvae! These are tiny little green caterpillary looking things. Two days beforehand the bushes were fine. The two little bushes were only planted out this spring from cuttings I took last year, so I hope that this late in the season it won't have any adverse effect on them. Honestly, how vigilant can you be in the garden? You can't check everything, every day.

Bit hard to show these bare stems against the scruffy
wild background and chicken run fence behind.

Here's another example of caterpillar attack that just suddenly happened within a few days - this time the insect responsible is one of the Ermine moths which attacks Sedums called Yponomeuta sedella. I've never experienced this one before - we normally see Spindle Ermine Moth damage on our spindleberry out in the woodland but that's big enough to withstand an attack and it's a wild tree sized shrub which copes fine. I've also seen the webby 'nests' of caterpillars on our apples from time to time but never in huge amounts.

If you look closely (click on the photo to enlarge) you'll see the caterpillars in amongst
the webs they make throughout the plant. They seem to love the purple foliaged
Sedum telephium best and this damage is spreading like wildfire all around my garden.

Before you think I've gone all doom and gloom on you, don't worry. I have been quite chilled about all this as I've been enjoying the sunshine and butterflies! But now I'm trying to get my act together to do my usual autumn jobs of moving plants around - because no matter how many years you garden, there's always something that didn't work where you planted it, not to mention the plants that need dividing because they have outgrown their space. In this instance here I am trying to rid myself of a ghastly day lily which came with the house - I've never liked it and after flowering it just looks a mess. I have a new shrub to go here and a much lovelier scented yellow flowered day lily in a bed that's become too shady, so I plan to move some of that here too.

Veggie patch in the background with sunny Sunflowers and Calendula!

However I don't do things by half. Digging out day lily roots which have gone down over 1 foot into the subsoil and bedrock is like some archaelogical excavation. It took me 2.5 afternoons of work as I just know that any fleshy bits of root will come back as a plant, eventually. 

Removing soil, subsoil, rocks, roots....
and adding tons and tons of half rotted compost in the bottom
before filling back with soil again.

To be honest I will never get these garden jobs finished as everything takes so long! You can see how dry the soil is yet I thought this was a bed I'd kept well watered!!! Can you imagine how dry the rest of the garden is?

I have treated myself to two new shrubs as well, a blue Caryopteris which I've always fancied to go in the space I've just excavated, and I wanted something yellow for another bed so chose this Potentilla. Both plants were covered in bees, hoverflies and butterflies at the garden centre, so even if they are not absolutely drought tolerant shrubs I couldn't help myself.......

The Potentilla at home with a Small Blue butterfly on it!

This is what the last few weeks have been like in the garden.
Some days I can barely move for butterflies!
(There's a Hummingbird Hawkmoth at the top middle as well)

My sunflower heads have been attracting Goldfinches, both adults and juveniles so I have been enjoying hearing their twittering coming from the veg patch as I work. I also spotted them eating the seedheads in my weedy, scruffy lawn this morning - one of the reasons for leaving the Lesser Hawkbit to go to seed, which has seeds like a dandelion head. This has almost made up for the fact that our Swallows have gone. We are still seeing migrating Swallows passing by and stopping to have a swoop about over the garden but it's not the same as them being here all the time. When they first go the skies seem so empty and quiet, but the good thing is that we know they will be back!

Naff photo taken with my Cybershot - there's an adult and two juveniles in this shot.
I can't be out gardening with a big camera and telephoto lens in my pocket!

In other news one of our older hens had to be put down yesterday as she'd gone all wobbly on her legs and could barely walk; this is now the third hen this has happened to so I'm guessing it's all too common in old age. She was not one of my favourites, being totally neurotic and was never a good layer whose eggs were always brittle (and often crushed by my big Light Sussex hen!). Her laying days were over and it sounds a bit callous but it's a good thing as that's one less mouth to feed which is not repaying us with eggs.

To end on an upbeat note, the solitary moorhen who made a reappearance some weeks back has now been joined by another - so hopefully we'll have a pair again who will delight us with their presence and cross fingers will breed here next year rather than disappearing off to pastures new like they did this summer!

Next posting will be recipes and sweet veggie cakes as I've been baking cakes (and eating them......) :-)

Veg patch update - September

Some weeks ago my OH discovered a chrysalis on one of our watering cans, so of course I was straight out there with my camera. There must be tons of chrysalises about, somewhere, given the amount of butterflies we have here, but they are well hidden. His passing shot was "I bet it's a Cabbage White".

Large White (Pieris brassicae) chrysalis

I marvelled at the beauty and the two little 'feet' still sticking out, but as soon as I'd looked close up at the photos the first thing I googled was... yes you've guessed it. Sigh! It's the chrysalis of the Large White (Pieris brassicae), the one whose caterpillars look like this. Anyone who grows veg in Europe will recognise these!

Large White (Pieris brassicae) caterpillars on Nasturtium leaves

I have tons of nasturtiums self seeded that I am happy for them to eat, but I've only just planted out my winter brassicas (purple curly kale and PSB), and I've only been able to sow radishes and rocket (also brassicas) since August, due to flea beetle making it completely impossible earlier in the year. So now the battle commences - especially as the Large White lays a whole lot of eggs in a cluster like this:

Large White eggs, AND whitefly!

It's not just the Large White which is a problem, there is also the Small White (Pieris rapae), both species being known under the general term of 'Cabbage Whites', but at least they lay their eggs singly, so it is a bit easier to control and squidge single caterpillars as they hatch out.

A single very small caterpillar of the Small White (Pieris rapae).

In case those of you in Europe wonder why I'm harping on about Cabbage Whites and their eggs and caterpillars when you are all so well acquainted with them, it's because I have some readers from North America, who are 'lucky' enough to only have the Small White to deal with (thanks to us Europeans releasing them upon the unlucky North Americans somehow or other in the dim and distant past. Oh well, they got their revenge giving us the Colorado Beetle!).

So, onto other veg. The spuds were all harvested and despite having to cut back the haulms last month due to the spreading blight we got a good harvest of decent sized red Desiree maincrops. This is just a small amount of them! Still have some of the 'new' potatoes, Belle de Fontenay left as well.

My Potimarrons in the background. Unfortuntely I have precisely three fruit from two plants :-(

Fast forward several weeks and the purple curly kale and PSB have been planted out.

Normally there are tons of Potimarrons and I train them
through and up the fence wire.

The patch where my peas and beans were now has just French beans left, plus newly planted Chinese leaves/cabbage in a nice straight row at the front of the bed, but some are just collapsing and dying for no apparent reason (not through lack of watering or mulots - burrowing mice in French). I've also got radishes, rocket, coriander and yet more lettuce and beetroot in the background, but somehow the lettuce and beetroot seedlings keep being eaten by slugs. How I've no idea, as this soil is really dry and I only water where the actual plants are. So rocket salad it will be instead of lettuce (unless they get infested with caterpillars!).

Can you see the flowering Dill and Verbena bonariensis that just self seeds?
By this stage I'm happy for them to come up wherever they like.

Leeks have been transplanted into the back of this bed and the spring onions are doing
really well. I haven't bothered planting anything in the gaps as I have more space than I need,
and green manures would only mean yet more watering, which is chore enough right now!
Much of the space is being colonised by Dill, Verbena bonariensis and Nasturtiums
which just do their own colourful thing, so I'm happy with that.

Cucumbers - hmmm well we did get some, but the plants never really grew much.

Normally 3 plants would have swamped this wire support,
but even the bigger plant only had the one stem.

Now it's too late. Every year they succumb to this disease,
whatever it may be. Doesn't matter which variety I grow,
it always happens, and in fact the plants don't last very long.

Courgettes/Zucchini probably aren't a lot bigger than a month back,
but are producing slowly but steadily. Quite nice not to have a glut!

Harvest time. In fact that lettuce was
so riddled with little slugs all the way through
that the chickens ended up having it!

Tomatoes are doing well and the blight seems to have almost gone. I still pick off the occasional leaf with signs of blight but haven't had to spray with any more Bordeaux Mix, which is a pain to have to wash off the tomatoes.

Finally one of the Gardeners' Delight toms which I sowed myself
and was very tardy to do anything, actually growing like it should!

I have rude tomatoes too. I do miss growing rude carrots
but I don't miss carrot root fly.

Mixed tomato varieties after washing off the residual splashes of Bordeaux Mix.
I wanted better light so I put the bowl outside on the concrete,
only for nosy parker to get in my photo!

The tomato varieties I tried this year have been quite disappointing. The two heirloom varieties, Rose de Berne and Andine Cornue (long pointy tom at back, above) are quite dry with little in the way of seeds or juice inside, with Rose de Berne being rather small (front row, right and possibly behind my cat's face!). St Pierre toms are tiny and pathetic, tasteless and barely worth bothering to pick (front row, middle tom). The Roma plant got blight on the main stem so only a few tomatoes were left after chopping most of the plant off, which we've eaten cooked with a fry up and they were delicious. That leaves Fournaise (middle row above) which are a good size, juicy and just like a tomato should be - this is the third year I've grown them and I'm kicking myself for not having more of them but I do like to try different kinds. The cherry toms are all fabulous, of course, so for salads all is well.

Chillis are doing reasonably well, with the Cayennes
(above) doing excellently and ripening up fast.

Tomatoes, chillies and sunflowers
I'm deadheading the sunflowers because the weight of the seedheads
is causing branches to break off. Birds are enjoying the seeds.

Even the Marigolds (Mr Majestic) are liked by hoverflies
and I love their cheery colour, the fact they need little water and are just so easy!

I have to end on a butterfly note. At long last I got some decent shots of
the Small Heath (Coenonympha pamphilus) who stopped flitting for a few minutes
and posed for me on a beetroot leaf! These are one of the tiniest butterflies that I see.
Their larvae feed on various grasses, so absolutely not a problem in the veg patch!

Oh, and the earlier beetroot that did survive being eaten by slugs has done well and I have tons already pickled for winter. I had totally forgotten, until yesterday, about Chocolate Beetroot Brownies, so will be making them next time I cook up some beets - which will be soon, and I'll share the recipe, don't worry!

Veg patch update - August

At the moment there's a wonderful lull in between frantic harvest activities. The earlier fruit is over, the broad beans and podding peas have been harvested and cleared out; there remains only the overgrown mess that was the mange tout to get rid of. Oh my god, did they produce! We got sick of them in the end.

The blight that I mentioned in my last veg patch update in July was kept at bay by several sprayings with Bordeaux Mix; however whilst it was easy enough to pick off affected leaves from the tomatoes it was impossible to do the same for the potatoes. I managed to keep the maincrop Desirees going as long as possible until they started to look a mess and then cut back the haulms. Thankfully they had almost finished flowering and after digging up several plants I'm happy to report they had grown to full size. I've left the others in the ground for now.

This photo shows the harvest from nine 'Belle de Fontenay' earlies and three red 'Desiree' maincrops. B de F are not known as heavy yielders but are grown for their flavour, but I find with 25 plants there's more than enough. The Desirees that I dug up had scab but they were at the end of the rows under the overhang of the peach tree thus the soil was bone dry, whereas the B de F's were still nice and moist and had hardly any scab this year. Scab is caused by dryness at the roots (although strangely enough Monty Don was saying the opposite on Gardeners World ???? never heard of that before!!!). Look, I NEVER have wet soil, it's always dry(ish) and I always have scab, even when I use seep hoses to irrigate (which is still never quite enough moisture). The one year when we have enough rain early on that I don't need to irrigate I had no scab on my earlies!

About 10 days ago I harvested my first French beans, first 3 courgettes and first big red tom! Haven't had any more courgettes forming since then and we've had two more tomatoes, but plenty of beans.

My courgette plants are still tiny, but I will be removing the borage shortly to give them a bit more light and room. I'm really happy that certain veg were behind so I haven't been having to cope with gluts of courgettes at the same time as peas and beans. It's actually worked out really well.

Some tomatoes are doing better than others. Since cutting the haulms from the spuds there have been no more signs of blight on the tomatoes. The best tomato for yield and the one that I'm already picking is 'Fournaise'. Every truss is loaded and I wish I had bought more of these plants instead of some of the others. 'St Pierre' is a total waste of space and has about 4 tomatoes forming. 'Rose de Berne' isn't very impressive either.

This is 'Andine Cornue' which is a heritage variety with funny pointy tomatoes; some even look like large chillies. 'Fournaise' is behind it with the ripening fruit.

'Fournaise'. Yes I know I've got to wash off the Bordeaux Mix very carefully as it can't help but get splashed onto the fruit, but what do you think commercial toms have been sprayed with, even organic ones? It's a small price to pay to actually have any tomatoes at all! 

My chillies are finally starting to produce after a really slow start. I even have the first tiny chilli forming on the Basque chilli 'Piment d'Espelette' whose seeds I bought by mail order at vast expense.

Below are good old Cayennes (the larger plants in the foreground above left) which have never yet failed me and are forming tons of chillies already.

Another slow starter were my cucumbers which struggled so much with my potting compost that I complained about in an earlier post called Germination Woes. Look, I have a cucumber forming! Some of the other plants are still only about 3 inches tall though.

My only two self seeded Potimarrons (winter squash/pumpkin) are romping away nicely now and have quite a few fruit forming.

An overview taken early this morning.

A view of what was the bean/pea bed which I haven't finished tidying up yet. Still need to rip out the mange tout and the strawbs on the left hand side are finished as they are three years old and will be composted. So soon I'll have loads more room for planting more veg as there's only French beans in here and one row of younger strawberries.

It's not all rosy in the veg patch. This year I have a new problem. Sparrows. Whole flocks of the damn things that are not only dust bathing in my soil but are eating my lettuce and beetroot greens. I need to fashion some kind of chicken wire covers to keep them off.

In desperation I have covered the munched Little Gem with these cloches. You can see the difference between the one on the left which was left uncovered and the ones on the right which were under the cover and have started to grow back. Trouble is, these cloches aren't big enough for mature lettuce or beets.

Flowers always do well in the veg patch though and I welcome their cheery sight. This is my tallest sunflower, about 3 metres now!

At the barn end of the veg patch the fence is taken over by nasturtiums and there's also self seeded dill, Verbena bonariensis and knapweed, all loved by pollinators.

View from my 'Wildflowers for pollinators' meadow - which has gone rather floppy so is roughly staked up. This has been a huge success and I will be doing the same next year. I will be writing up a blog posting purely about this experiment shortly.

And yet more sunflowers around the edges of the tomato plot. Did you know they were edible? The flower heads I mean. That's another thing I have yet to try as apparently they taste not unlike artichoke hearts and you prepare them in a similar fashion. 

Finally, now it's August, I can start to sow my brassicas such as radishes and rocket. I can't any earlier as they just get decimated by flea beetle. I have sown my winter brassicas (purple curly kale and PSB) which are in the cold frame and need pricking out and growing on a bit more before planting out in the veg patch. I've also got Chinese leaves/cabbage in the cold frame which will be ready for planting out soon. The outer leaves get munched by the Cabbage White caterpillars but I strip them off for the chickens and we eat the hearted bit. It works out well for everyone!