Asparagus

We've managed to pop out most of the evenings after work this week, and have finished the deep-weeding of the herb garden beds that we've been getting ready to plant asparagus into. These arrived yesterday: compost-block grown plants (which are easier to plant that bare-root crowns, and which can be planted any time of year) from Victoriana Nursery. They're a variety bred in New Jersey called Jersey Knight, and we're hoping their origin will mean they're well equipped for our weather. They're meant to be a heavy- and long-cropping variety, producing thick stems; and they're an all-male variety, too.

We've thoroughly weeded the beds, and tonight we planted them out, putting a thick layer of mulch down. We can't crop from them this year, and only very lightly next, but in two year's time, we're hoping that they'll make a big difference during the hungry gap between the last of the over-winter veg coming out, and the new annuals being ready.

House History

We've had a lovely weekend, not doing an awful lot until this morning, as we had Katherine visiting us, and it's been a marvellous reason to sit around, chat, and drink a lot of tea and coffee. We also made use of Katherine's considerable social history knowledge, and made some real progress working out some aspects of the house's history. We looked back at the census records from 1841 to 1911, and managed, eventually, to pick out the house, and find out something of who was living here until a century ago. More on that when I've had a chance to pull it together, but we're hoping to fill in some of the next period, from 1911 until about 1970, when we once again have some idea of who's lived here. As the census data won't (all) be released until I'm nearly 90, we'll have to resort to other methods, I think.

Orchard Maintenance

A day off, for us both, and we've had quite a varied day, on the hillside and in the garden. We've sorted out most of the patio pots, and planted up a number of things that were a bit crowded. The mulch that Liz moved onto the hillside a while ago has now been spread; on top of cardboard in the nursery bed and apple walk, and under the membrane around the small Hessle, and the mulberries, sweet chestnuts (which didn't actually have membranes, we realised...), and walnuts. We've then used some part-rotted chippings to cover the rest of the nursery bed, so the whips don't get swamped. These have been really succesful: there are three Hessle pears, two each of Crabbie's Seedling, and Crimson Superb (that's 100% of the apple and pear grafts, as I took three of each of these, and one of each apple went straight into the apple walk); as well as one of each quince Ivan and Vranja, and a medlar Dutch. That's not bad: I need to decide whether to try again with the medlar Royal, or buy a Flemish Giant, instead.

The quince in the garden is coming into leaf: I have hopes it might not only flower (which it did, lightly, last year), but perhaps set some fruit.

Tubers

We've had quite a busy weekend, and spent almost all of yesterday weeding the long border, and the herb garden, both of which are looking a lot tidier. While Liz was starting with this, I mowed the lawns, and pulled a couple of areas of moss out of the wood shelter's green roof out. The lawn, after a rather shaggy-looking winter, is much smarter now. I need to find some edging shears that work, in order to tidy up the boundaries, though.

We've also planted out the potatoes: Lady Christl and Red Duke of York. We're only doing those two this year, though more of them—two bags (40&ndash50) Lady Christl, and one bag of Red Duke. Maincrops have been a bit blighty the last few years, and we've had disappointing yields, so this year we've got the Jerusalem Artichokes (Fuseau) and early potatoes, instead. We also planted out the onions: about 200 Red Piroska, and 200 Stuttgarter. I had to re-cut a membrane to plant them through, as the one we used last year was ruined when deer more-or-less danced on it.

The dahlias we potted up a month ago (22nd March) have now gone out to the greenhouse, as the weather seems warm enough overnight to allow this. Some are starting to show shoots, but not all. I'm not, really, expecting them all to come up. One border-planted specimen was badly eaten last year, and I'm not sure it was strong enough going into winter. Similarly, six pots are new garden-centre bought tubers, and while I hope at least half will come up, the shop-bought ones aren't utterly reliable, so I expect some losses. We'll take more side-shoot cuttings, and increase stock. That way, we can afford some losses each winter.

The last thing was a load of seed sowing, meaning that the windowsills are, once more, full.

Kentish Spring

We drove back up this afternoon from several wonderfully relaxing days in Kent: filled with brioche, games, a couple of films, and a daily walk, including one longer one along part of the South Downs way, past an episcopal palace (Otford) and through some pretty, vernal woodland. Sadly, it's back to work tomorrow.

Watered In

It's been dry for a week, and having moved a lot of earth around, things are actually pretty dry, so, having planted out a lot of plants yesterday afternoon, I've watered everything again. We're now about to drive down to Kent to see David and Ann for a couple of days, calling in to see the cats' friend in Cambridge on our way.

Bobcat

Last bits today for our week of work, as we're off to visit David and Ann tomorrow. We started by moving the last of the topsoil we needed down to the veg garden. There's still a small heap on the driveway, but not very much. There's a mound of mulch on the hillside for the nursery beds, apple walk, and trees, which we'll need to top up with chipping mulch. The rest of the driveway heap is probably going to be used topping up the two beds to the sides of the beech bench.

That done, we had just enough time to plant up some of the herb garden extension and the colour wheel beds, though it did mean we were finishing off, watering in, by moonlight. The box that remained in the herb garden (having moved several into the long border) have neatly delineated the corners of the colour wheel beds—there are similar plantings in the herbaceous borders at Harlow Carr, which I've long admired, and this mimics that. The Tail Feathers grasses (Pennisetum macrourum) that we sowed in January 2014, and grew on all last year, have gone around the outer edges of the beds, to give some boundary and height. We've then planted out a lot of perennials that, mainly, we've been growing on from plug plants for the last year or so, and which overwintered in the greenhouse in 9cm pots. We also put about nine Deschampsia cespitosa that have outgrown the beds near the beech bench (planted 27 Mar 2014?). As a result, the beds are looking much less empty, but there's space we're planning to grow some annuals in, particularly ones that can be useds as cut flowers.

Mid afternoon, though, we also had to say goodbye to Bobcat the mini-digger, after seven days of hard work. It's let us come on leaps and bounds in the garden construction—in fact, structurally, the garden is now all but complete, as the beds are all where we want them. A little more work in the copse, the laying of the patio, and the construction of the pergola around the access ramp, and the Big Things will be done.

Last Excavations of the Pond

Back to the pond today, with a lot of time spent sorting out the edges, and making sure I'd taken out enough for the various levels. We wound up needing to take out about a dozen more 'scoops' using the minidigger (now affectionately known as Bobcat, after all its hard work), but I think the depth is now right. There needs to be more work getting the footings of the retaining wall properly placed, but that is, necessarily, careful mattock/crowbar/spadework, rather than excavator.

Building the Colour Wheel Beds

We took a break from the pond, today, and have spent the day, mostly, moving topsoil around. First thing, a delivery of 6m³ of topsoil arrived from the ever-dependable Tommy Topsoil. Unfortunately, the ground's still pretty wet, so it couldn't all be delivered onto the access ramp into the garden, and two-thirds are on the driveway, instead, which means barrowing it further. Never mind.

Before getting the topsoil moved, though, we first marked out the edges of the new beds in the corner 'Colour Wheel' garden. For this, I bought hand-cleft chestnut stakes, 15" long, which we've put in the ground every 2'. Between these, we've woven cleft chestnut laths—they're usually used to create a matrix onto which lime plaster is applied, in restoration work, but they've worked beautifully here, four courses high, to make 6" edges/retaining walls.

We've then barrowed in topsoil, to cover the soil we've moved from digging the pond. It's actually reasonably good, but a couple of inches of new topsoil will, if nothing else, be less prone to weed germination, and will help to gradually enrich and build the soil.

Once the four new beds were made and topped up, we had enough stakes to mark the intersections of the edging in the herb garden, which is, following Saturday's work, now twice as large. That, in combination with some sticks marking the edges (as well as the intersections), means that the layout is a lot clearer. We've added topsoil here, too, to the squares that will be planted, but not to the areas that will form a path. We still need to decide on a planting plan for the edges: our original plan of box made way to a combination of box, lavender and apples; and then to lavender and apples; it might yet become just step-over apples.

The other place we've moved topsoil to is the vegetable beds, which need an annual topping up. Still need to spread it around, but it's heaped in roughly the right places.

The Bulk of the Pond

We had to use the headlamp, mounted on the side of the digger's boom, in order to get there, but we've finished the main digging of the pond tonight.

It's taken all day, but we've made the ramp from the apple, the deep section across the middle, and the large shelf around the back, as well as cutting the planting pocket that will soften the retaining wall, and tried to create the shelf on which the wall will be built. It's going to take, probably, most of another day to check the levels and tidy up the sides, but the bulk of the hole is now dug.

Working on the Pond

For most of today, we've been working on digging the pond, which is going well, and I think will only need one more day of digging in order to have the basic shape completed. We took a break for a couple of hours to dig over the bed we started creating in the games garden. This runs alongside the septic tank (where it's already planted with hazel, willow, achillea, geums, daffodils and snowdrops), round the corner, and in front of the lower bank of shrubs up to the path and steps down into the kitchen garden. We ran out of steam when digging this, several years go (June 2012), and only got as far as the end of the septic tank. We've now done the wider bit round the corner, and along the back as far as the rhododendron...and it's been considerably faster than the day spent digging about a quarter of the area. Needless to say, the micro excavator pulls big stones out of the ground with, essentially, a wave of the hand. We've lifted several really large rocks out of here, and the pond, which would have each taken hours to extract, if we'd managed at all, so it's definitely been worth it.

Digging Over the Herb Garden

Having got the land-drains in the new garden sorted out yesterday, we were able, this morning, to break ground on the pond. My plan has been to dig it out from the bottom apex, near the apple tree, and work back to the top corner, at the entrance near the sweet pea bed. I've had to change my mind, though, as the reach and depth of the digger, and the risk of overbalancing, are problems. Instead, I'm going to do the bottom corner, then the far corner, and work back to a position roughly half-way up the side (basically, sat next to the plum). I think I'll have to then take the digger along the path next to the long border, to finish off, before driving out.

We only got a bit of this done before Katrina and Dan arrived: they're up for a wedding near us, and we're B&B'ing them. After lunch, Dan was immensely useful in helping us dig over the herb garden. We did the first half of this by hand last summer, and it turns out we did the harder half. The remaining area, we'd covered with weed-suppressant membrane, and it's actually had all the rubble from the house renovations sat on it. This has totally wiped out the grass, which has rotted down into lovely topsoil.

Dan ran the digger, turning this over, and we picked out the stones we found. We've also moved the last of the big stones from last time down to the growing piles around the pond, where I'll build them into the retaining wall we need behind the pond (the path along the long border is about 60cm higher than the apex at the apple).

The herb garden's now completely dug over, and tomorrow we'll return to digging the pond.

Draining the Colour Wheel

The minidigger arrived yesterday afternoon, and as the evenings are lighter now, we managed to make a start. We discovered that we'd made the path down the drive wide enough, which was good, and got the digger down the ramp, turned (first bit of lawn chewed up!), and over into the corner of the new flower garden. I started by digging up the topsoil and turf, depositing it in the newly marked beds, which revealed the expected clay subsoil. I then moved the heaps of hardcore/rubble, which had been sitting in the beds, back into the corner. We wound up doing a lot of this by hand, as the digger—in my inexperienced hands—was picking up a lot of soil as well as stones.

Once we'd got the stones into the corner, I took the digger to the back of the furthest bed, having dug up the soil in the other sections, to level out and dig over. It sounds quick, now, and in many ways it was fast to do, too: the topsoil there isn't very stony, and the digger made quick work of it.

However, the messy work was only just starting, and unfortunately, so was drizzle. The rest of the day has been tiring, wet, muddy work, digging three trenches across the garden and laying land drain (in geotextile sock, as before), to improve the drainage. This corner of the garden's always been really wet, with standing water and waterlogged soil through the winter, which has always limited its usefulness. The landdrains are the first part of trying to fix this. There's an old clay pipe land drain, which is broken off at the top end (we think, at the site of an old milking parlour), but does drain away into the lower parts of the garden. It goes into the copse, which, if anything, is drier than needed, so diverting water to here is no bad thing.

We managed, before collapsing inside, to get an L-shaped pipe along the top of the beds, and down into the old pipe; one across the garden just under the bottom edge of the patio, and one two-thirds of the way down the garden. Between them, they should sort out the drainage, but we'll also be raising the ground level with the spoil from the pond, which we anticipate being gravelly (that is, better draining) soil.