Short Break

We've been away for the last few days, on a short trip to Cambridge. On Wednesday, given the run of warm dry weather, I started painting the window frames. As they were new last year, I want to get another coat of paint on them this year, to start building up the protection—and if I start now, I should be able to spread the work out, and make it more tolerable, instead of having to cram it into September. Like last year.

We travelled down to Cambridge on Thursday, paused to pick up a copy of St John's College Cambridge: A History, which is being given to Johnians ahead of its release (a magnificent tome coinciding with the quincentenary). We spent the rest of the day with the Fellow we stayed with, Katherine, who has rooms in Pembroke.

Friday was spent profitably, mooching round Cambridge, and watching some coverage of events in London. It was a lovely day for sitting on the Backs admiring St John's New Court (apologies for the wonky horizon).

We also went back round Clare College's gardens. It was interesting to see them just a few weeks after our last visit. The hyacinths have all gone over, but there are loads more tulips out, and their bed of hostas looks great.

We came home on Saturday, stopping off to visit an old neighbour, who very graciously gave us a peony ('Sarah Bernhardt'), and also called in at our old local garden centre, leaving with some bits and pieces, including a second calathea for the sitting room.

We return to work on Tuesday, which gives us a couple of days to get the vegetable beds in order: we want to plant out lots of the seedlings, and the bottom rectangular bed (now it's empty) needs its fleece cage and irrigation installing, and to be filled with topsoil. We added manure in March, when doing the other beds, leaving it piled at one end: that will need distributing across the whole area. It may make for a couple of long days!

Emptying a Bed

Yesterday's birthday went really well: the party (a few party games, followed by a picnic) went smoothly, presents were well received, and the cake worked a treat. We found take to—once again—water the garden, and we also bottled the elderflower wine that I started last year, and racked at Christmas. I have to say, it's delightful. Excellent bouquet, nice and clear, and vinous taste: a very credible dry white.

Today, I've mown the lawn, and we've started emptying the rectangular vegetable bed. To start, we took up two large clumps of geranium from the rectangular vegetable bed, and divided them into about a dozen pieces. These, along with a couple of woody shrubs whose name escapes me, have moved into the copse. While I was planted these, Liz took the shears to the kitchen garden's paths, which were getting a bit jungle-y: they look much better now, and easier to navigate. I really must get round to ordering weed suppressant membrane to line the paths: we can then distribute some of the chippings along them, which will keep maintenance down.

Watering as Entertainment

We started the day by testing the new irrigation system: a thorough success. Much more so than the fruit beds: I think the 180º jets are better than the 360º version, and having them raised by a foot seems to improve them further.

The painted Easter eggs from yesterday were then dispersed around the garden, in small-child-friendly hiding places. Judging spots that would keep two- to seven-year-olds interested is a little outside my experience, but it seemed to work well: the children (and my parents-, grandmother- and sister-in-law) came round after breakfast and were suitably entertained. Later on, for reasons I can't really explain, the children decided that they wanted to help water our garden. This being a slightly mundane and tedious job, I was happy to oblige...and while I worked from one end of the pots with the hose, they ran back and forth with watering cans. All the while, it appears, loving every minute.

Who knew childcare was as simple as giving them a watering can?

It's the middle one's birthday tomorrow, and Liz and I have been tasked with hosting the 'party', and making a birthday cake. It's a fairy ring, with small doll surrounded by toadstools, cunningly crafted from miniature muffins, chocolate rolls, and chocolate coated marshmallows. Hopefully she will like it...

Eggs

Following on from yesterday's main-line installation, today we put the supply line and spray nozzles in the vegetable bed. These are 8mm tubes ending with mini-jets that spray water over 180°, out to about a metre. The nozzles are a foot above soil level, attached to the wooden posts that support the fleece covers. We didn't gave a chance to test the system, unfortunately, as we had other things to get done...

As tomorrow is Easter Sunday, we've made the three foster children chocolate eggs (18cm jobs, half white, half milk, with 'Happy Easter' piped onto one side: they look surprisingly good), and visited them to help paint hard-boiled eggs. We're going to hide nine of them in our garden tomorrow morning, and they'll come down after breakfast to hunt for them.

Jenny's harvested her rhubarb (which seems notably earlier than mine—though mine, admittedly, languishes in a pot), which made for an excellent dessert, but has also provided me with a big bag of rhubarb leaves. I've chopped these up, and put them in a bucket of water in the shed: once they've steeped/stewed/leached, the resulting liquid is rich in oxalic acid (the reason one shouldn't eat rhubarb leaves), and can be sprayed as an (organic) insecticide. Given the sawflies on the gooseberries, this couldn't come soon enough.

Finally, I had twenty minutes spare, so I've poured the cider (finally—it's taken forever to finish fermenting) into a barrel, and added a couple of ounces of sugar: in a week or so, it should have settled and be suitably fizzy.

Irrigation

We've spent this afternoon starting to install an irrigation system in the vegetable beds. Last June, we put one into the fruit beds, which works fairly well: it's been so warm and dry that we decided it was time to add one to the rest of the kitchen garden.

Accordingly, we've put in two 13mm supply hoses, one running down the rectangular bed and around the edge of the C-bed; one running around the Q-bed. Doesn't sound like a lot of work, put like that. Each loop can be connected individually to the main hose (I think it'll only be one at a time, as the pressure's probably insufficient to cope with more than one loop), and will feed a number of spray nozzles—that's tomorrow's work.

While we were working on that, we also earthed up the potatoes, almost all of which are coming up fast. In theory, we might start harvesting the Rocket in three weeks.

Potatoes Poking Through

I was watering the newly sown carrots, beans and onions, and thought I'd check the potatoes.

Delightfully, almost all of the Rocket and Lady Christl (that is, the first earlies) had shoots poking through the soil; and a fair number of the Juliette and Nicola (the late earlies/early maincrops) are similarly showing. I've earthed them all over, but I'm pleased that they're getting going.

Intercropped Onions

I was given some spring onion seeds ('Ishikura') last week, so we nipped out after work and planted a few rows between the onion sets (still doing well). They're much faster than the maincrop onions (which will only harvest in August or later), so we should have some available in about seven weeks.

At the same time, we sowed a few rows of 'Early Nantes' carrots (as thinly as possible, to minimize thinning and the risk of attracting carrot root fly), a further pair of pea rows, and a row of runner beans. I shall update the plan as soon as I have a chance.

Marquee

We spent most of the weekend putting the fleece covers back on the Q- and C-shaped vegetable beds, which we had to take down almost as soon as they were up.

This involved putting reinforcing tape patches along the edges, punching a hole in each, and inserting a brass eyelet, which got—shall we say—a mite tedious. However, they're now done, and do appear to be rather more secure. The winds haven't been testing, though, so we shall see.

The onions appear to be doing rather well: I reckon only about ten of the 360-odd Hyred and New Fen Globe have yet to put on leaves, and about 70% of the Autumn Gold are growing. Of course, they seem to send roots out first, so they may well be doing fine, and start to leaf soon. The potatoes are starting to show, with a dozen or so green tips poking through the soil (predictably, they're mostly from the first earlies). These, I earthed over, to keep encouraging them to form tubers and longer stems.

We then had today working at home, which meant we were able to get outside for a few hours this evening. I've replaced the handle on the front gate (about seven months after it broke...), and we've planted another forty gladioli bulbs and 25 double freesias into pots, which will either be cut, or shuffled around the garden when they come out. I also had to water the fruit beds, for the first time this year (and the pots, for the third or so; they more predictably dry out). While wandering, I spotted the tell-tale sign of Craesus sawfly larvae: a lower leaf riddled with small (millimetre) holes. When you turn it over, you find rows of tiny white eggs. It's easiest to just remove and destroy the affected leaves (which are pretty certain to be skeletonized in short order, anyway). Interestingly, this year and last, it's been Craesus septentrionalis that have attacked the gooseberries, and not the common gooseberry sawfly, Nematus ribesii. It makes little odds: they act in the same way. I'd rather deal with them organically (or mechanically, removing them by hand), but if necessary I'll spray with pyrethrum. Technically, of course, that could still be organic, by drying and crushing chrysanthemum flowers, mixing with water, and spraying.

Seeds Coming Up

After several weeks of sowing, we now have quite a number of seedlings coming on. While we were away, a number of gourds, pumpkins and courgettes have come up in the propagators, which is excellent; also, a couple of pots of beetroot are up. These are quite fun: the leaves are green, but the tiny stems are bright red. Lots of carrots are coming up, and a fair number of sprouts, cauliflowers, and kale.

Outside, the onions are coming on well, with many sporting new shoots. Some lupins I sowed last summer, and the pulsatilla, are coming back. No sign of the potatoes still, though.

However, I've mown the lawn, and cleared some grass and moss from where it's spilling onto the ramp below the garden gate, and dead-headed the daffodils. I also started clearing goosegrass from around the puschkinia, scilla and muscari, which are now coming out nicely. The goosegrass is a problem, I think because the ground was turned, and it's going to take some more effort to get out properly.

Wedding

We've been away all weekend, getting back tea-time Sunday. We travelled down to Cambridge on Friday, to stay with Alan and Ann, before setting off to St Albans on Saturday to Liz and Robert's wedding.

We've not seen them since around Christmas, so that was good: it was an lovely day, with a church service, buffet and ceilidh, and evening meal. I quite liked that arrangement of events. There were a wonderful array of cakes—well over a dozen—each a different variety (to account for taste!), but all white-iced with purple and silver decoration. They looked marvellous, and tasted similarly. The day went smoothly, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

We went back to Cambridge that night, and spent Sunday morning with Ann and Alan, and walked round Clare College's garden. These pulsatilla and tulips caught my eye.

Just in Time Mowing

I took advantage of a lovely warm day, and got out into the garden by 3 yesterday to mow the lawn. Couple of hours later, the compost bin is full, the lawn is shorter, and I have itchy eyes from the clippings. A success, I suppose: I'm pleased that it only took a couple of hours, because it took about twice that for the first clip. More pleasing is the timing, as the weather over night turned for the worse, and it's grey and damp. We're busy this weekend, so I won't have time to do it then, so missing the opportunity last night would have meant leaving it quite a while...and then it wouldn't have been a two-hour job.

A little pottering was also accomplished: I repotted an ornamental and edible cherry (Prunus tormentosa) which had a cracked pot, and planted five comfrey plants which arrived in the post. They're the Bocking 14 variety, which is sterile (no seedlings) and 'less' invasive: the leaves can be rotted into water to make a pick me up, or added to compost to enrich it. Not certain where they'll go, long-term, but they can grow on in their pots for now.

I finally got round to personally testing the treacle soda bread recipe, which was very tasty, and recommended.

Lastly, you might notice the addition of an extra page, where I'm recording what's in the ground in the vegetable garden. Thus far, just potatoes, onions, and a small patch of beans and peas. The onions are showing some signs of growth, which is pleasing, but no potatoes have broken through yet.

Summer Bulbs

Another day pottering in between spring showers: a big effort to sort out the containers split between the kitchen patio and the lower patio (near the workshop) was required, as many are now out of season, or empty, and we needed to plant summer bulbs.

We isolated the empty containers (read 'dead') and put them to one side, and swapped the others around to get those in season, or coming into season, onto the patio outside the kitchen, and those that have gone over or are a way off being attractive back on the lower patio (the 'storage' patio). This meant moving the 100-odd strawberry runners that took out of sight (ready to go in the putative second strawberry bed), and bringing things like an astilbe, lilac and rose round to be seen.

The empty pots were crucially needed, though, for summer bulbs. We've planted 40 gladioli into some, with the same number again to go in in a couple of weeks; they'll either be put somewhere attractive when they bloom, or cut to bring inside. We also planted 25 single freesias, for the same purpose. I think they may be a little tricky to bring into bloom every year, but it'll be an interesting challenge.

We then dug out more plastic pots to continue the sowing extravaganza that is March/April. Fifteen new sowings, including pumpkins, courgettes, tomatoes, various salad leaves, coleus, clarkia, beetroot, beans, and chrysanthemums. We are rapidly running out of window-sill space (which annoys the cats, who like to watch the world go by)! The germinated seeds are doing quite well inside, and we'll probably start planting them out in a week or two.

Potatoes In

The seed potatoes we ordered at the end of January have been cheerfully chitting in the study since early March, and with the nice weather and suitable shoots on them all, it was time to plant them. We dug six-inch trenches in the big C-shaped vegetable bed, put the potatoes in, and covered them back over with an inch or so of soil. As the shoots begin to show, I'll continue covering them over, and then—when they're about six inches clear of ground level, I shall mound the soil up over them again, to keep the tubers from going green.

Potatoes are fairly frost-resistant: the shoots get a check if they're frosted, but recover. Nonetheless, I'll have to keep on top of covering them up as they grow, to protect them. The fleece cage isn't back on after the high winds last week, but once it is, that will obviously help.

We only put out six of the varieties, leaving the Orla and Vivaldi in the study to continue chitting: they're being kept for a second crop of new potatoes. The six that went in were:

• 'Rocket': a very early First Early, which also yields well.
• 'Lady Christl': a fast First Early, but can be left in the ground to crop as a heavier Second Early.
• 'Juliette': can be lifted as a Second Early, but may be left in the ground to bulk out further before cropping as an early Maincrop.
• 'Nicola': an early Maincrop. This replaced the Belle de Fontenay we'd ordered, as it ran out, sadly.
• 'Druid': a late, heavy-yielding Maincrop which stores well.
• 'Golden Wonder': a late, versatile Maincrop which improves on storage.

We then dashed out before the shops closed, and picked up some miscellaneous hardware (nails, screws, and staples) that I'm running low on, and half a dozen new hanging baskets. The four we brought with us when we moved are slowly rotting and falling apart, and have natural fibre hanging ropes (which keep coming apart, testing my splicing skills). The new ones—while I'm sure they'll eventually decay—have a hidden metal frame, and metal chains, so I hope they'll be less laborious to maintain. They're also rather larger (14"), so will make more of an impact on this house's larger façade.