Fens

On Friday, I travelled down to near Ely, to spend the weekend with Ann, Alan, and their two boys. They moved home a couple of months ago, from near Newmarket, to an 1888-built rectory. It is a fabulous building, with high-altitude ceilings and dado rails, picture rails, and mouldings, all of which I love, so I forgave them for putting me in the servants' quarters in the attic.

Saturday was a reasonably warm, and dry day, so we went out to Anglesey Abbey—which, actually, we went to last time we visited, in February 2015. I appear to have completely failed to note our trip, but it was 21-22 February, and we bought a few 'George' irises which are looking good about now.

Anyway, this time, I bought three hellebores H. lividus, which have really interesting foliage markings, and smaller flowers; and three named snowdrop varieties which were well discounted.

We also admired their leafmould.

Leafmould heap at Anglesey Abbey (© Ian 2016)

Leafmould

A day off for me, and along list of bits done. I've repaired the latch on the door into the utility room (wasn't staying shut); got to the bottom of the inaccessible CCTV (I hope); fixed a problem on the LAN (invisible switch due to mismatched subnet address, which seems to have been causing access points to drop out); constructed a threshold step into the preservatory, now that we're more certain about plans to enclose the porch (more on that later); and plasterboarded above the windows on the front wall of the preservatory (including some roof-space insulation). These last two tasks should make the room considerably less draughty, which is important as the autumn proceeds.

On my way home from taking Liz to work, I also collected five big bags of leaves, which will get stowed away somewhere for a year or two, to become lovely, marvellous leafmould.

Autumn Cut

We've had a long weekend, of four days at home (three for Liz, who had to work today), which has meant being able to get quite a lot done.

This year, we've been maintaining the hillside differently to the previous year. Instead of cutting it all back every time, I've only mown a pair of paths up from the main entrance: one up to the apple walk, and one to where the plum arch will one day go. These two points are where you can then go through to the middle section of the hillside, where the clearings are. The rest of the orchard I've left uncut, and the grass has grown up and gone to seed, and there's achillea, scabious, and...well, brambles, gorse, ragwort, and thistles.

However, it's probably looked better for this, and the colours have gone from a bright green, to deeper green, and on to browns and golds as the grass flowers. We think it's probably been better for wildlife, too: and it's taken less work, as trimming the paths only takes about thirty minutes.

As autumn comes, though, we need to cut the grass down. If we let it be, it'll eventually form ugly tussocks, again, and brambles will grow up and cover everything, and we'll be back to where we were in 2012. We'd like to, eventually, plant the orchard with lots of prairie-like flowers and grasses, which will make excellent foraging for bees and other insects, as well being attractive. However, we're a long way from that, simply because of the scale of the area. For now, we need to cut everything back in the autumn, which will keep it neat over the winter, and stop the grass getting too thuggish.

That's what we've done, with me mowing with Sigrid, while Liz raked up. We've built a few bays out of old pallets, and heaped the material into these. It should, over the next twelve months, break down enough to use as mulch.

Needless to say, it's been hard work, and taken a day and a half, but the hillside looks much tidier, and should hopefully go through the winter in better state. While we had the brushcutter out, I've also done the verges, and also cut down the grass in the copse, and along that side of the garden. I didn't manage to do so last year, and the daffodils didn't look as good, buried in long grass, this spring.

Long overdue, we've also sorted out the composting area, below the wood shelter. There was a lot of rubbish in there, which we've shredded, or moved to the log piles in the back, or in the copse, and we've made space to put out the four Dalek composters. We've emptied the oldest compost into these: it's not quite ready to use, but hopefully will have finished breaking down by the spring, when we'll use it on the fruit cage beds. That meant we could get all the accumulated material into the middle and right hand bays, leaving the left one empty. That should be enough space to see us through the winter, as, once we stop weeding, there's not as much being produced. The Daleks and, hopefully, the right hand bay at least, can be used in the spring, and we can go into next year with more composting space. We never quite got on top of it all this year, which has left us with heaps in front of the compost bays, which isn't lovely.

The other outside job that we've been able to tick off is getting the cables for external CCTV cameras routed into the roofspace. They're unconnected at either end, and are waiting in the loft (to bring together into the central loft space, and the down into the dressing room, where the controller will live), and at the camera points (ready for me to mount the cameras).

That done, we had a few hours yesterday to start tidying the workshop, which has been in a bit of a state for over a year, since we started the insulation work. We've emptied a lot of it into the preservatory, and I'll continue tidying on Wednesday.

Today, as I was on my own, I've drained the radiators of the cleanser mix, and refilled them all with 'fresh' water (it's not, really; it's from the accumulator tank), and added sealant. That'll run through the house pipes and radiators for a few weeks, making sure there aren't any pinholes or weeping joints.

Draining twenty-something radiators, and refilling them, took almost the whole day, but I also managed to take a number of cuttings: a pot of each of the Lemon, Inca Gold, Walther Funcke, cassis, and white achilleas; Verbena bonariensis and 'Bampton'; and the actaea we got at Tatton.

After we painted the apple walk a couple of weeks ago, we didn't get round to tying the apples back onto the framework, so I've gone up and done that. Finally, I've got hold of some extra long coach bolts, which I'm using to better secure some of the wood shelter's frame.

Chippings and Chopping

Earlier this week, I had a large load (about 6m³) of chippings delivered by a tree surgeon. He was very accommodating, as well as offering a good price, and they're split between the driveways, meaning they've been easier to move. The first task has been weeding the hedge up the side of the orchard, and giving it a thick layer of chippings. The plants are looking better than we feared, actually, and hopefully the hedge will grow on well over the next twelve months.

We also weeded the apple walk, and finally spread a good layer of chippings over the weed membrane that goes up the centre of it. More still went around the beech trees at the edge of the games lawn, and over the path in front. We've finally laid out membrane along the two paths of the herb garden, and covered with more chippings, and done the same up the two bare paths through the Colour Wheel to the future patio. We then topped up the paths through the kitchen garden, and, finally running low, used the last to weigh down some membrane in the copse, which we're going to slowly start bringing into cultivation, and not leave grassy.

Today, for a change, we chopped firewood.

Compost Turning

I've had a day off today, getting a few bits done around the house while Liz works from the sitting room. It's been a useful one, with reasonable weather, too, and we finished the day with a trip to our local garden centre's Christmas preview evening (with 15% discount on everything...irresistible).

A lot of this morning I spent getting the plumbing and worktop in our bathroom sorted, and now the sink is properly connected, and the worktop is in place, attached, and sealed. This is rather necessary, as the plan is to dismantle the pink (house) bathroom at the weekend, so we wanted a working toilet and basin, even though we'll be using the guest en suite for showering for a while yet (until we can tile ours).

I've trimmed the old hollow-core back door, ready to re-use in the doorway between the master en suite and the new guest room. For now, it's just secured in the frame: the existing wall prevents it opening, so (as I can't, therefore, get to the hinges) it can't be screwed to the frame until the wall's taken down.

I've finally got round to labelling the plants we bought at Tatton in July, before they die back and vanish for the winter—unfortunately, I've lost track of a eupatorium, and the two echinaceas ('Secret Love'), so I'll have to hunt again for them.

Over lunch, we set soaking the dried fruit for our Christmas cake, which we'll make at the weekend. It has loads of dried fruit, nearly three pounds, which we soak with a mug or so of tea for a few days.

Before dusk fell, I managed to turn the compost heaps, thus freeing up (kind of) the first bay, which promptly half-filled with the mound we'd formed nearby. It has let me empty the bin outside the kitchen, though, which is good. Hopefully the space will suffice until spring, when we'll start needing compost again, thus emptying the third bay, and creating trickle-down space in the system.

I also managed to knock a long-standing job off The List, and cleared a silted up corner of the drive, and the drainage channel between it and the track, so the drive will, hopefully, flood less badly this winter.

This evening's shopping trip was good, with a few Christmas decorations, including a long string of lights for the acer in the front garden, and a half-priced holly (the variegated form, 'Silver Queen'), which will go on the hillside, to complement the pure green hollies already well established.

Last Few Jobs

I'm astonished to say that, of our list of jobs we made on Saturday for the past five days, we've actually done them all. Today, I've turned the compost heaps (decomposing beautifully); replaced the satellite cable and LNB (finally we have two signals to the box, reducing recording conflicts); we've painted the bike shelter (it'll need another coat or two, but there you go); installed the loft hatch in the garage (still so named!); and hung ladder hooks in the same (necessitated by putting a hatch in the hole they poked up through). Liz has done a thorough weed of the long border over the last couple of days, and it's looking loads better. We've also managed to move all the stone (and turf) that we put on the septic tank two years ago when digging the beds on either side. This is because, having transformed the garage, we want to get some of the garden tools out; but, lacking a shed, this is tricky. Our solution (long planned) will be a set of storage cupboards along the septic tank, within the living willow structure we're growing over it. Ideally, these will each have a little green roof, probably planted with alpines (which have their interest mostly in the spring, before the willow gets into full leaf). They arrive on Friday, so in order to assemble them this weekend, the tank top needs to be clear.

Having uncovered it, I've been reminded that two of the five manhole covers don't fit at all well. By which I mean they're alarmingly unstable, and seem too small. The concrete lid sections have also 'drifted' towards the bottom end of the tank. We've pushed them back together, but the covers are irredeemably too small. I shall buy a couple of new ones, and mortar them in, which will make it all rather safer.

While we've been working, the cats have kept us company. Chess found somewhere shady to nap (I don't know how he got through the latticework).

Chess sleeping inside a sweet-pea pyramid (© Ian 2014)

We're almost, but not quite, at the point of enough sweet-peas for every downstairs room.

Liz's sweet-pea (and berberis and alchemilla) flower display for the week (© Ian 2014)

Redesigning the Knot Garden

The herb garden's been in the planning for some time, and the design's evolved in the making. Originally, we thought we'd have just box edging, and primarily herbs. We added roses to the planting, and lavender to the edging. Then, when we worked on the design, rather than the concept, we came up with something that needed three edging materials to work well, and so we added step-over apples. The last couple of years of growing the kitchen garden suggested that we actually needed a little extra edibles space, and so we added runner beans, peas, and French beans to the planting -- which helped with height -- and then over-wintered onions, garlic, and elephant garlic. Trying the design last year made it clear that the squares of the design weren't really big enough, so we made them 50% larger. In turn, that meant the design changed, and now we need only two edging types once more. The design, now, is really one of a potager, or ornamental kitchen garden, encompassing roses (technically edible), herbs, apples, and ornamental vegetables -- the attractively podded (and flowered) Shiraz mange tout, Blue Cocoa runner beans, and red/purple Brussels sprouts. Out have gone the inedible box (now to form evergreen box balls in the herbaceous border), and a predominance of herbs.

This weekend, then, we've spent getting as far as possible with the new design. We got started on clearing the ground a week ago, and (after a vet trip that took much of the morning), continued this yesterday. We finished that by about mid-morning today, and then, in an afternoon punctuated by someone coming to finally take away the oil tank, finished preparing the ground by about 5 o'clock.

The oil tank, half-way out ( Ian 2014)

The oil tank has been waiting for removal for a while, and we eventually found someone who wanted it, thus avoiding having to pay (several hundred pounds) for someone to remove something we didn't want. Getting this heavy steel tank off its piers, missing the greenhouse (just the other side of the protective sheet of ply in the photo), across the patio, down two sleeper-built steps, and the length of the games- and pond gardens, and then up the driveway to the truck was, shall we say, tiring.

But now it's gone, and we have a 6x4 space in which a shed might go -- and now no smell of kerosene on warm days.

Now: back to the herb garden. We'd marked out the pattern (basically unchanged) last time, so apart from fine tuning a couple of measurements that had been hindered by rocks (which Liz made excellent progress moving: it really feels thankless work), we were able to immediately see where each square/diamond went.

Into several of these, I sank the climber supports, which Liz started yesterday by painting (I'd only done some of them). We've not had time to add the woven willow sides, so these will have to wait until autumn. For now, there are strings tied round them to get everything growing: they'll be invisible soon, and the willow will be in place for the winter, when it's actually meant to be an attractive feature.

Having sunk the six supports into the ground, we topped up the soil in all of the squares (but not the edges: lavender doesn't want rich soil) with compost, neatly finishing the 'ready' bay of compost, and started planting. The plants are mostly those that we potted up and set outside a few weeks ago, and included enough lavender to complete those edges that we've cleared space for (almost).

From the greenhouse have come the Laguna, Speedy, and Castendel French beans, the White Lady and Blue Cocoa runner beans, and the Shiraz and Delikata peas/mange tout. We've also planted out 32 red sprouts, a load of chicory, a dozen or so bronze fennel, a pot's worth of aniseed, and the Japanese ginger we bought at Tatton. All that obviously needed watering in, and tying to supports where necessary, and it's meant rather a late finish (I came in at 11, and Liz only came in half an hour earlier, to cook)...but it's looking really good.

Weed Control

In one way or another, the whole day's been spent controlling weeds (and the lawn). Liz has spent the entire day weeding, and has mastered the copse bed, the heuchera bed, and the sweet peas' bed. I've put cardboard and chipping layers to mulch the blueberries; put cardboard collars around the fruit trees in the copse bed, the apple walk, the grafting beds, and both clearings; and mown the lawn. I also installed the horizontal wires onto which the first tier of the apple walk espaliers will soon be trained.

Last thing was putting the loft insulation into the loft, after it arrived at lunch: not installed, but out of the way, ready for a rainy day.

We're shattered.

Garage

We've got a week of leave, coinciding with the bank holiday, and a long list of things to get done. We started work on our garage conversion a few weeks ago, putting up the plasterboard ceiling, and beginning the slow process of laying the new floor: we need to get further with that, as the building work will hopefully start in 10–12 days. As normal, there's also a lot to get done in the garden: it's weeding and mowing season, which always takes a lot of effort.

Yesterday wasn't a very exciting day, by all accounts: I re-stacked some firewood that turned out not to have been stable, and Liz weeded the beds by the septic tank. We then cleared as much as possible of the garage loft (the only loft in which we store anything), including a large number of cardboard boxes that are destined to be a weed-resistant but degradable mulch. A lot of other things from the garage are actually rubbish, so we then went on a tip-trip, before going round to Cath and Jason's for a rather tasty dinner.

Today was more interesting. We started by building a stud wall in the hole through which the biomass accumulator tank was installed. I've always intended to do this, but we've had a stop-gap measure for the last nine months of a layer of mineral wool held in place with chicken wire. Not very professional, but effective.

The stud wall will have solid foam insulation packed into it, and a plasterboard screwed on top; that'll be later in the week.

Stud wall partition (© Ian 2014)

After this was done, we spent the rest of the day in the loft, putting down supplementary rafters and boarding a walkway down the centre of the loft. There was a walkway previously, but the floorboards weren't secured, and the extra rafters (giving us space for plenty of loft insulation) meant it had to be taken up and relaid anyway.

Strimming the Orchard

The orchard's been starting to look rather overgrown, after a number of months without cutting the grass, so I was pleased to be able to spend this morning going over it with the brushcutter. Pleasingly, I was able to do this on my own, as it's now almost all grass (and a few short brambles, thistles, and the like), and Liz was able to get on with other work: painting the support tubes for the apple walk. They're now a very striking cream (a second coat will follow in due course), and stand out from much further. Only the Grandpa Buxton apple appears to have broken bud; but many are swelling. By the same token, a number of the grafted fruit trees look as though they will break bud, but not quite.

Liz also managed to get the construction wood (3x3 posts, 3x1 planks, and the like) cleared from the site of the pond, so I can get to the old shed panels. I need to chainsaw these into sections, for making compost bins.

We've had to chilli-oil the trees on the hillside, again, as one of the Scots pines has been attacked by deer.

After several years languishing in pots, we've finally been able to plant out our amelanchier, lilac (both in the corner where a pine was, near the top of the drive), and weeping willow (on the SE boundary). Hopefully they'll be happier in the ground, and the amelanchier, in particular, should be a nice feature on that border of the garden.

First Planting

We've had a busy few days, with friends visiting on Good Friday (much baking), and then getting the vegetable garden ready for the new season of crops. It's never been empty, with leeks, beetroot, celeriac, kale, cabbages, sprouts, and purple sprouting all still in, to say nothing of the green manure (mustard) that I only chopped in a few weeks ago.

However, we've finally had to lift these, to make space for new things. That's meant that we've been able to spread the last of the mulch, and the beds are all looking lovely as a result. Liz planted out a stretch of spinach, which will come out before we need the room for a later crop, and I prepared the trenches for the potatoes. Today, with a fosterling's help, we planted the 300 onion sets (150 Piroska Red, 150 Stuttgarter), and the potatoes: twenty each of Lady Christl, Red Duke of York, British Queen, International Kidney, and Lady Balfour (two first earlies; two second earlies; and a maincrop).

We've repeated the system we found worked well last year; 4 (early) or 3 (maincrop) chitted tubers planted at the bottom of a trench, 18" (earlies) or 30" (maincrops) apart. As they come up, we'll backfill the trenches, slowly. The main crop are up the wood-shelter side of the C-bed, with the second earlies along the top. The first earlies are in the bottom bed. The onions are all the way up the right side of the C-bed, leaving a small gap between them and the second earlies (probably a catch crop). The space at the fruit-garden end of the bottom bed will have the courgettes in; there's also space for a catch crop in between, I reckon.

It's later than last year, for planting, but the weather's now turning a bit warmer (and we didn't have a chance earlier!), so hopefully they'll grow quickly.

With the last of the time, we tried making our own potting compost: a 50:50 mix of compost and leaf mould, which we sieved together. There's some potting up we'll need to do later this week, which it'll be used on.

Weeding

In between bits and pieces (garage; lunch; barber), I've managed to spend a few hours in the garden. Mowing the lawn (third time this year) is consistently taking about 75 minutes, which is good: it used to take at least a couple of hours, which was too long to get round to as often as it needed. An hour or so, however, can be squeezed into an evening, if the weather cooperates.

A lot of the rest of the time was spent on my knees, weeding the quince bed and the copse bed. I made a frankly half-hearted attempt at the sweet-pea bed, and the septic tank/pond bed, but they defeated me. The quince bed's not been dealt with since autumn, and generated about three trugs of bittercress, dandelions, and invading grass, and (fortunately, and with great care), no decapitated spring bulbs. They're all looking much neater, and the quince bed will look better still in a couple of weeks, when we can put down the mulch we put aside for it.

Mulch

A fair bit of the weekend's been spent dealing with the 6m³ of mulch that arrived on Thursday. After putting a good layer on the vegetable garden then, on Saturday we worked along the fruit beds, giving the currants and berries a thick mat. We spared a bit for the rhubarb, too, which I've already spread several trugs of compost onto, but more is definitely better for this hungry perennial. I think we'll take our first harvest next weekend: the oldest Timperley Early is doing well (and is earliest!).

The fruit beds will get a weed-suppressing layer of cardboard, and then a topping of chippings, when we next have some: this reduces the weeding so much that it only needs an annual blitz (my job yesterday), which is much better.

We've also gone along the fruit trees on the hillside (excluding the apple walk, and the pear 'Hessle', as they're too small to need it), putting a trug full of mulch under each one's anti-weed membrane. The ornamental plums are on the verge of coming into leaf and flowering.

The heuchera/quince bed is a little too full of rather dainty spring bulbs to want to mulch it (should have done so in January or February!), so we've filled two Dalek-style composters with mulch, on a nearby path, ready to spread once the bulbs die back. Lesson learnt for 2015.

That still left us with a good heap of mulch, so the last job today was spreading twenty-odd trugs over the long border. This bank is reasonably fertile, having had cotoneaster leaves dropping on it annually for twenty years, but it could still do with building up. Liz had been weeding the bank over Thursday, Saturday, and today, so the mulch has gone (as it should) straight onto clear ground, and it looks really good.

While she weeded, I've tidied the over-grown grass in the wild-er bit near the flowering currant and behind the copse bed. I should, really, have strimmed this in late autumn, as it's now full of daffodils, which obviously I don't want to damage. This made it a manual job, which is more tedious, but there you go.

Last short job yesterday was digging an exploratory trench to work out the fate of the land drain we uncovered when preparing the bed for the sweetpeas last spring. We've gone about two metres up-hill, on the other side of the path (which I didn't want to disturb just yet), and found two breaks in the pipe -- but no herringbone joint yet. I'm still hoping that we'll find some: there's no chance it's draining the whole section of garden unless there's either herringbone drains running off from it, or a second drain (hitherto undiscovered) further along. That said, the broken sections, which have filled with organic debris, would explain why they're not working. It's going to take a bit more work to get to the bottom of it all.

This afternoon, my digging was on the opposite side of the garden, as I was preparing what will become beds in front/beside the beech bench. I've cleared the turf from both, but only dug over the bed above the bench (very stony and laborious). The soil's quite nice, actually, once the stones are prised out. Fortunately, one bed was enough to plant 28 lavenders out, as a border, which has freed up enough 2½–3" pots to pot up the 'Alicanta' tomato seedlings that have been outgrowing their communal pots.

Astonishingly, it actually feels like we're more-or-less on track, without too many specific or substantial jobs that should have been done but which we've not got round to. As for actually managing to mulch 'on schedule'... I'm sure it shan't last.

Snowdrops

For my birthday, Liz gave me a 'voucher' for an order of snowdrops, leaving it to me to decide on exactly what I wanted. Accordingly, a week or two ago, I ordered a thousand single snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), and five hundred doubles (G. n. 'Flora Plena'), which arrived on Tuesday. They're from a nursery in Wisbech, outside Cambridge: their season is, of course, a bit advanced on ours, so although our snowdrops are still in flower, theirs have gone over. The flowers are turning into seedheads, but the leaves will remain for a few weeks more, building storage carbohydrate levels in the bulb, ready for next year. The lifting, sorting, and shipping will, inevitably, stress the plants rather badly, but it's arguably the best way to buy them. The packs of bulbs you find in the garden centre in the autumn don't tend to have received the best storage, having been lifted and graded, packed into plastic bags, and then distributed to shops, where they might then spend some time in the too-warm interior of the garden centre. By the time they're bought, and finally returned to the soil, they're all too often dry and dead, or at least badly stressed, and can take years to establish.

The snowdrops we planted like this, in a pot in our old garden, took several years before they flowered at all—in fact, I think it was only after their second year that we were even sure they were growing at all. Fortunately, they now grace our front garden, under the acer there.

Snowdrops in the front garden (© Ian 2014)

If you're a galanthophile, and are obtaining a rarer, sought-after form, then buying them in pots in the autumn is probably the absolute best. However, only the fancy varieties are really available like this—the ones that sell at several pounds per bulb. We need spring bulbs by the hundred, if not the thousand: we've probably planted getting on for three thousand in this garden—daffodils, scilla, puschkinia, crocuses, fritillaries, in the main—and I reckon we need at least twice as many again. Then there's the hillside, which will need its own several-thousand-bulb planting.

There's no way we can spend several pounds per bulb, and I don't think you need to, to enjoy the sight of a drift of snowdrops. Additionally, many of the collectors' forms are doubles, which aren't as good for insects, although they are pretty. So plenty of common singles, and a good chunk of the basic double, is the way we've gone.

They're classic woodland plants, completing their flowering and growth in a quick cycle as soon as possible in late winter, and before deciduous trees and shrubs come into leaf, reducing light levels. Although I'd be just as happy scattering them throughout the garden, we've started, therefore, by planting about 350 of the doubles in the copse bed of the garden, were they'll rub shoulders with crocuses, witch-hazel, and dogwoods. Some more (the rest of the doubles) have gone along either side of the willow tunnel over the septic tank. We then planted about 150 singles in the quince bed, along with ten G. plicatus 'Warham', which were a free gift (quite generously, as they appear to retail at £4 per bulb...), before taking the rest of the tray up to the birch clearing on the hillside. We planted a load of Midwinter Fire dogwoods up there early in December, and the snowdrops have gone around and amongst these and the eponymous stand of silver birches. At the moment, these all look a lot like little tufts of grass, but each is really a dozen or so deep-planted bulbs. Although, no doubt, we'll lose some of them, hopefully within a year, or two, there'll be plenty of flowers.

Planting the snowdrops took us up to lunch time, having got an early start and made the most of the cooler misty morning (hot sunny weather wouldn't be good for the bare-rooted bulbs). About the same time, a delivery of mulch (composted 'forestry products' (bark, I reckon) and manure (horse, by my reckoning), from the ever-reliable Tommy Topsoil) arrived, and was tipped onto the driveway. This afternoon we moved about a quarter/a third of this to fill up the vegetable beds. More will go around the fruit trees on the hillside at the weekend, and the rest will go on flower beds. The fruit beds might get compost, instead, and we plan to repeat the approach of last year, putting down compost, then cardboard, then chippings. The weeding in these beds was then negligible all year, which was much better—and I don't think it's a coincidence that we 

had no sign of sawfly (technically birch sawfly, in previous years), as the larvae pupate underground, and I think the mulch might stop them emerging, reducing populations.

Lastly, while Liz got started on the year's weeding (pond end of the long border), I mowed the lawn for the first time. Since reducing the mowing to around the quince/sweetpea bed, the slope at the foot of the drive, round the pond, and the games lawn, it's a much more manageable job, taking about an hour this time. No doubt it'll look a bit yellowed (and I'll have missed a few strips), but it already looks neater.

Sprung

Today's been a phenomenally nice day, with temperatures around 17°C, and bright sun. Yesterday was cooler, and a bit cloudier, which made it an ideal day for chopping a load of firewood (sticky tricky pine, but never mind).

The warmth and bright sun today's meant that there are probably a dozen daffodils pretty much out, where yesterday there were three. The crocuses enjoyed it, too, and I'm pretty sure a bee flew past me (too fast to be sure) this afternoon.

The dwarf irises in the long border, and around the pond, are out, and beautiful.

Dwarf iris (© Ian 2014)

When the acer in the front garden was first planted, in a large pot in our last garden, we underplanted it with snowdrops. They never came to much, but after we planted the acer in our new front garden (before starting this blog: I think it was September 2009), they've started to come up, and the last couple of years have given us a decent show.

Snowdrops under the acer (© Ian 2014) 

I've actually got a big consignment of snowdrops on order—1000 common singles (Galanthus nivalis) and 500 doubles (G. n. 'Flora Pleno')—which will hopefully arrive, in the green, soon, and can go out, on hillside and in garden.

Which brings us to today's efforts. First thing was finishing the winter pruning, by working on the fruit bushes. The blackcurrants, gooseberries, and red/whitecurrants all needed pruning, and we also removed some old wood on the blueberries, which are still proving troublesome. The two oldest ('Grover' and something unknown) were several years old when planted in 2010, and the other three are now four years old—and still not very large (to say the least). These three have definitely grown better over the last year (hopefully the good mulching last spring and resultant weed-free year has got them going), at least. However, we decided that we had to take out some old wood on the oldest pair, as ageing stems is possibly the cause of their much-reduced yield.

Once we'd finished in the fruit beds, we went up onto the hillside, to start work on clearing the blackthorn at the back of the orchard. This is partly to increase the size of the orchard, as the two sweet chestnuts are nestled into clearings in the blackthorn, and the space for the second mulberry (which, I'm astonished to realise, I never mentioned) is currently somewhere inside the blackthorn shown below.

Orchard, with back boundary of blackthorn (© Ian 2014) 

The blackthorn (which have never produced loads of sloes, sadly) lies in front of a line of trees (hawthorn, elder, and holly, primarily) which would make a better boundary, probably underplanted with hazel, beech, and bulbs. We're working on it from above, so it looks much the same today as it does in these photos, but we've actually hollowed out the undergrowth quite effectively. It's probably still a couple of days' work, but it's a good start. As Liz cleared, I was burning the blackthorn on a bonfire in the upper clearing (a hot, fast burning bonfire, I must note: no smoky, smouldering eyesore), as blackthorn's a nightmare to chip.

The entrance to the clearing, through, hopefully, arch-trained plums, will be roughly central in the photo below. You can just make out the sweet chestnut's stake on the far right; the other is hidden on the left. The mulberry will probably go behind and left of the established apple tree just in front of the blackthorn (for now). So; the mulberry. For several years, our local garden centre has sent a voucher around early November, which I've managed to use for a cheap fruit tree: a Broadview walnut in 2012, and a Serbian Gold quince in 2011. Last November, they had a 'Chelsea' mulberry (also known as 'King James', as it comes from a plant grown at Chelsea Physic Park as part of King James IV's misguided silk industry initiative), which we thought would make a good partner to the Jerusalem mulberry planted nearer the front of the orchard. And with 50% off, it was rather a good deal. It's had to remain in its pot, unfortunately, as we've not finished clearing its space, but fortunately, as it's container grown, it should be fine for a little longer: there's not the rush to get it in the ground, unlike bare-root, field-grown trees.

The orchard, looking up at the doomed blackthorn bank (© Ian 2014)

Chippings

Back in June, we made some progress getting the paths in the kitchen garden towards their long-intended final state. They'd always been grass, in theory, which in reality meant mud down the middle, and weeds along the edges. Long dissatisfied with this, we wanted to level them, put down weed membrane, and lay a thick layer of chippings. This worked well in front of the woodstore, and so a week ago I arranged for our friendly tree surgeon to drop off a truck-load of sycamore chippings. This is the small branches, twigs, and leaves, put through a Timberwolf shredder. The mix is quite a lot like hedge clippings, which compost well, though it's probably got more wood in it. Anyway; while it's not as 'nice' as bark chippings, it has a lot to recommend it. It's free; it's a waste product that would otherwise be processed by someone into peat-free compost; it works well on paths to keep them weed-free and drier.

The biggest benefit: after a year, it should turn into really nice mulch.

We put a load of the chippings onto the paths, which now look really tidy. We then started scraping up the chippings from the front of the wood store, which have, now (after six months in a heap, and a year on the path) turned into really well broken down compost. That's been going on the sweet-pea beds, and we're about half way up the path, replacing it with new. We ran out of light, unfortunately, which is often the case at this time of year. Four weeks, I make it, until the solstice.

Other than that, we've started clearing and levelling the ground where the apple arch walk will go, in the corner of the orchard. I think we've hit a terracing wall, as I seemed to be digging out a pile of stones. It's gone reasonably, though: I think another couple of days clearing/levelling, and a couple of days actually digging the planting trenches (which will probably need a good deal of compost or topsoil adding in).

Pig Processing

Our half-pig went to slaughter this week, and I collected it from the butcher's yesterday morning. We spent most of the rest of the day outside, getting things a bit tidier, including a mammoth weeding session along the long border, filling the compost bin in the process.

Today's been a very long and busy day, processing pork into various finished products for the coming twelve months.

We started by getting the various bags of meat sorted, into those that needed something doing, and those that were getting frozen as they were, as joints. That's about half a dozen. Another half dozen, and a big piece of belly, went back in the fridge, ready to go into a curing brine once that was made.

I then started working on the bag of trimmings, and the joints we wanted to turn into sausages, cutting them up into pieces small enough for the mincer. That generated about 12lb of bits, which went back into the freezer, to chill. The mincer works well on nearly frozen meat, but as it gets warm, the fats get messy, and the muscle doesn't get cleanly chopped by the blade. As a result, you get stuck every few minutes, with sticky, stringy, sinewy bits getting clogged on the rotor.

And that's no fun. So, we put the meat back in the freezer, and got on with other things until it was really cold.

The next was brawn, which involved getting all the odds and ends, tidied up (I'm not persuaded of the virtue of putting quartered head into it), and putting in a big pan. Covered with water, and with a few onions and muslin bag of thyme, bay, and peppercorns added, it was set on a simmer for a few hours. Liz then picked over the solids, extracting a dish full of meaty bits. The stock is cooked further, to reduce by half, and then sieved over the meat. This looks much tastier, actually, than last year's: there's less of it (pickier about the bits), but I think it'll be more valued.

While the brawn pot simmered, we got on with black pudding. We made a very tasty boudin noir de Poitou earlier this year, and a British fry-up black pud last year. On the basis of these, we modified the fry-up recipe, hoping to make something better seasoned, and a little more structural, but on the same lines. The new recipe, then:

• 750g of onions, finely chopped, and sweated in an ounce of butter
• 250g pearl barley, cooked (for about 45 minutes)
• 250g rolled (porridge) oats
• 50g salt

These get stirred together over a low heat, which seemed to help prevent the barley lumping up. We then added:

• 1l light white sauce (or Béchamel)
• 2tsp ground coriander
• 2tsp ground pepper
• 1tsp ground mace
• 1tbsp brandy
• 2l blood

Stirred thoroughly, we poured this into six 1lb loaf tins (and a 2lb tin), which had been lined (but not greased: there's enough fat in the mix). These went into a bain-marie in the oven for an hour at 170°C. That was enough: it's a lot less time than the batch this time last year took, and more like the Poitou blood cakes. I think the Béchamel helps them set, whereas cream doesn't. Sliced, packed into double portions, and frozen.

After this, I ground the sausage meat, and we added 12-15% chopped apples, 10% blended porridge oats, and 1% salt. I didn't add any liquid, this time, as the mix seemed moist enough. This then went back in the fridge, while we made the cure for the hams.

We really enjoyed the two Wiltshire cured hams we made last year as a trial, and decided to do all our hams that way this time. The ingredients are brought to the boil, then allowed to cool, before putting the hams into the chilled mix. In theory, you can pre-brine the hams, but that seemed superfluous (and a waste of salt!).

• 3l beer (the Harvest Mild we've been enjoying!)
• 50g saltpetre
• 750g black treacle
• 1400g salt
• 30g black peppercorns
• 35 juniper berries

They'll come out in three and a half days (Thursday morning).

I then mixed up a batch of 'Ray's Liver Pâté' (HFW's River Cottage Cookbook), scaled to the amount of liver we'd received (about 450g), which went into the oven (another bain-marie!) along with some baked potatoes.

The sausagemeat having chilled, we set to with the mincer, and turned out 96 sausages, running out of skin just too soon. The last of the meat made 12-sausages worth of patties, which will be useful for stuffing, and similar. Arguably, we didn't run out of skins too soon, really.

Last, and late, we settled down with our baked spuds (very tasty Druids), sausages, and black pudding. A very tasty reward at the end of a long day.

Tidying Up

It's been a busy weekend of mostly tidying up, meaning accumulated progress, rather than any particular thing getting very far.

We've sown some more seeds: Dianthus amurensis 'Siberian Blues' (for the rockery wall in the front); Polemonium boreale 'Heavenly Habit' (Jacob's ladder); two aquilegias, 'Magpie' and 'Royal Purple'; and a mixed selection of hostas (hopefully some of which will be pretty!).

We've planted out half a dozen rows (about ninety plants) of carrots, and another block of beetroot (about forty plants) in the bottom bed.

Liz weeded the bed at the front of the copse, and we've done another prune/tidy of the shrubs in the bottom bank, which were hit by the cold east wind.

The pots on the patios, and sitting on the old shed base, needed some attention, so we've sorted through them, removing the dead/empty pots to the back patio, and weeding, tidying and fertilizing the rest. Another heuchera's been hit by root-eating grubs (which seem to focus their predation on primrose and heuchera roots, for whatever reason), so that needed cleaning up and re-potting, in the hopes that it might survive.

We dug up the buddleja that we planted in one of the front beds in 2010 (I think: I don't appear to have a note!), and is the bottom right of this photo (from April last year). Liz has never been sure about it, and we found a pretty acer that will replace it, and go well with the other, older acer that's the centre point of the adjacent bed.

I took the opportunity to add new guide wires to the wall behind for the Virginia creeper to run along. It's almost reached the ivy at the bottom (which I had to cut back earlier this week, as it was encroaching on the windows, again), and is looking pretty with its new growth.

Front garden (© Ian 2012–13)

We re-planted the hanging baskets, with bronze carex, cinereria, trailing nasturtiums, and petunias, and I re-hung the bracket that came off the wall late last year.

Liz potted up another 96 lavenders which arrived this week, into modules. They'll grow on ready to be planted into the herb garden edges later this year, hopefully.

The two clematis (C. florida 'Alba Plena') we bought at Tatton Park last year, and which are growing up the trellis sides of our arbour, are growing well. However, we want, if possible, to move the arbour later this year, in order to dig out and lay the paving that's going under it. That will be well-nigh impossible with clematis entwined up both sides. To solve this, I've used a couple of blocks of wood, and wire, to space two 1'x6' trellis panels, one behind each plant, away from the main trellis. We'll twine the climbers up these, instead of the arbour, so it'll still look good, but when (if) we have to move things, they can be transferred safely and separately.

To finish the weekend, we made use of a prolific spinach crop (very pleased with the spinach: it's 'Lazio', which is effectively new to us, as it didn't grow in last year's horrible conditions), and made a batch of spinach black pudding ('boudin noir du Poitou'). It's made with a kilo of spinach, a pint of light bechemal, half a pound of onion, four ounces of breadcrumbs, a pint and half of cream, and eight pints of blood; the seasoning (salt, pepper and mace) is extended to include nutmeg, too.

As with our batch of 'fry-up' black pudding (with pork fat and oatmeal, instead of spinach, bechemal, and breadcrumbs), we cooked it as cakes, in loaf tins.

It's frankly delicious, and a fine conclusion to a weekend of hard work.

Dandelions

One thing I like about writing this diary is the way it throws seasonality into sharp focus.

For example: the third week in May is, evidently, a time when—having fallen out of the habit over the winter—I suddenly need to start cutting the lawn again. It was untidy in 2010, and again last year. I cut the grass about 5 weeks ago, and haven't managed to do so since (the age old problem of 'no time when the weather's right'), and it's grown more in the past five weeks than the preceding five months.

Still, I managed to cut around the lawn, and at the bottom of the slope, yesterday evening, and finished off with the games lawn tonight. It really needs raking up, as the grass was too long to collect properly in the mower, but that's for another night.

Before cutting, though, I made the most, last night, of the sea of dandelions, and cut a pound of petals to make this year's batch of dandelion wine. This is another seasonal thing: last year was a week earlier, but similar point in the year. The petals, with a gallon of hot water poured over them, will steep until tomorrow night, when I boil them with the peel of four oranges for ten minutes, and then pour into a demijohn over sugar (3lb), with the usual yeast and nutrient.

Herbs and Mulching

Yesterday we finished making the new wildflower/cutting flower bed in front of the quince. We'd lifted the turves last weekend: the ground then needed digging over to removes stones, the damaged land-drain needed repairing, and then it was ready to sow.

We've put four bamboo obelisks in the bed, which we'll plant sweet peas up. As the bed's roughly triangular, that's demarcated three beds, into each of which we've sown a different pack of seeds. One is a pastel meadow mix (gypsophila, Bishop's flower, poppies and cosmos); one is an 'Amethyst and Sapphire' mix (anchusa, salvia, cornflower, verbena); and the last is a combination of several wildflower annual mixes.

Once that was done, we spent the rest of the afternoon starting to mark out the beds for the herb garden. We lifted enough turf to clear a space about 6m by 6m last week, which we've now marked. The garden will be a series of beds about a metre square, set at 45°. Some will have herbs, some will have roses, and we might also include some with spring and summer bulbs in, and some more obelisks with climbers, to add some height.

The edging, we haven't quite decided on. We long intended to use box, mixed with lavender, but this isn't totally fixed. We might use euonymus (probably a variegated form) as an alternative. Partly this is because of the difficulty in propagating more box from the Witley clones, or the cost of purchasing the 500-odd plants we'll need.

Nonetheless, the pattern's more or less decided, subject to tweaks as we uncover more soil, and can lay out the grid, and work out where and how the boundaries fall.

Herb garden outline ( Ian 2013)

Then, today, we've weeded all the fruit beds, and put down a triple mulch: a layer of compost, covered by a layer of cardboard (degradable weed barrier), covered with a layer of conifer chippings. The last of these should mean that the ericaceous nature of the soil is maintained (particularly important with the blueberries), although it'll take a while to break down completely. I shall try to add grass clippings during the summer, to increase the nitrogen content, and off-set the nitrogen lock-up that the carbon-rich chippings will cause.

Hopefully, that should now mean that the weeding of the fruit beds is very easy this year, as well as ensuring that the bushes are well fed and productive.