Mown

That, I think, is likely to be last lawn-mow of the year. I might be wrong—have often been—but I doubt I'll get to it again, unless we wind up with surprising weather.

Beer, Bees, Lawn, and Painting

This weekend rounds off a week off for us, and there've been a few bits to get done. Firstly the beehives needed preparing for winter, which meant taking off the (modest) honey crop, wrapping them up with bubble-wrap for warmth, and preparing some space in the top of the hive for winter feed.

We also needed to paint the new front door, and touch up the paint on the apple walk, which is looking really good.

Apple Arch (© Ian 2016)

Having got about two-thirds of the way through the current barrel, it's necessary to start a new batch of beer, which is now glugging cheerfully to itself in the corner of the sitting room. Less excitingly, we mowed and edged the lawn...not many more times for that job left this year.

Grass and Blackberries

A quick mow of the lawn, tonight: it's only growing slowly, but I'm trying to keep it trimmed whenever conditions allow, as I can't get that many cuts in before the weathers consistently too wet, I'm sure.

More pleasurably, we started a couple of gallons of blackberry wine off. 3kg of berries, topped up to a couple of gallons with hot water. Once it's at about 35°C, I add pectolase, and then leave it 'til tomorrow before adding the yeast (a general GV3). In five days, we'll strain it into demijohns along with 1.5kg sugar/vessel, and leave it to do its thing.

Mowing

It might be the last mow of the lawn for the year. It might be the penultimate time I cut it. It could be the antepenultimate mow. I just don't know. However, the lawn is mown.

Burger

Yesterday, I had lunch with Cath & Jason at a new burger place in Lindley (delicious; a blue-cheese sauce'd burger, with sweet potato fries), which was a lot of fun. The rest of the weekend has been effective, but less outright fun: a lot of cleaning, tidying and sorting inside—and I've managed to do a load of weeding and mow the lawn.

Late Cuttings

The newly repaired intelligent water heater arrived back this morning from its circuit board transplant. We got it reinstalled as early as we could, and it was up and running again by lunchtime. Not clear, yet, what went wrong with it, but hopefully the manufacturer will get to the bottom of that after testing.

The accumulator tank's lost heat, obviously, in a week of not being heated, but will hopefully be back up to operating temperatures within a few days.

We've spent a lot of the rest of the weekend in the garden, keeping it looking as good as possible for the rest of the season. I've mown and edged the lawn: it's growing really slowly, now, but still looks neater after it's mown. There was less than one hopper full of clippings, whereas it can be nearly five when it's growing at full speed—that's for a weekly cut. Liz has managed to weed practically the entire garden this weekend, another testament to how much slower things grow (and germinate) at this point in the year. I've taken a large number of cuttings: lots of achillea (the Cassis mix, the white, Inca Gold, and Lemon from the colour wheel and herb garden), more Verbena bonariensis
, another clutch of agryanthemum stems (which root in water, before potting them up), sage, box, and fuchsias—the unnamed ones in the front garden and in the long border, as well as Army Nurse, Hawkshead, and Delta's Sarah. I'm trying to get some layers of the Virginia Creeper (in full, fiery splendour at the moment, over the front of the house) to take, as well, though they're a slow affair. I've also divided a number of perennials, ready to pass on to a friend of Liz's who has a new border to fill: the variegated Gardener's Garters grass, the Golden Alexander lysimachia, three heucheras, and (these are seedlings potted up) sweet rocket, aquilegia, catananche, gaura, and wild strawberries. They await collection next week, with some cuttings, and spring-divided perennials, to follow next year.
Liz has spent some of this afternoon plastering the front wall of the sitting room, which looks much better. We're trying to get all of the downstairs plastering finished in the next few weeks, so we can also paint before the Christmas decorations go up. That's partly so it looks better for the six weeks the house will be decorated...and partly because we then won't be able to do any plastering or painting downstairs until mid January.

In between things, I also collected as many elderberries as I could—which isn't many. It doesn't look like a great year for them: most of the corymbs didn't have a high proportion of set berries, and they weren't as plump as they often are. Still: I bulked them (1.8kg) up to 3kg of fruit with some frozen blackberries, and have set off a 2 gallon batch of wine: fruit, boiling water, nutrient. Pectolase before I go to bed, and then yeast tomorrow. On Thursday (or maybe Friday), I'll strain onto sugar in two demijohns.

Painting, Plumbing, and Green Manure

Liz has spent a lot of the weekend painting: priming, basecoat and topcoat in the master bathroom (two walls), and the guest bathroom (just behind the towel radiator), so that I could finish plumbing them in. Plumbing them in was the last part of getting ready to run a system cleanser round the central heating system for a while, before I then run a leak sealant (just in case), and top up the system ready for the winter. The cleanser is because of the two new radiators, and the new piping in the preservatory, and because it's been a while since it was last done.

While Liz was doing this, I finished connecting the preservatory radiator to the central heating circuit. I'd got the pipework from the radiator along the wall of the room, and up into the loft, but then had to take it around the loft space, through the wall into the porch loft (heavy going, even with the big SDS drill!), through that loft, and then t-junction the two pipes into the flow and return. I was rather trepidatious of that stage, as they're big, 28mm pipes, and I really didn't want to go wrong, as that would mess up the central heating for the house, not just the preservatory. Anyway, although it took ages to get there, I've jointed them in, and they seem to be watertight.

We've managed a few other bits, in and between: the lawn is mown, and we've pulled up the beetroot and onions. I've sown green manure in those two spaces, to overwinter (it's caliente mustard): the sowing I made where the potatoes went is starting to come up nicely.

Tomorrow evening we'll plant out the overwintering onions, which are going to go around the bean/pea supports in the herb garden.

Brushcutting the Hillside

The hillside, and the verges, have been getting gradually wilder as the season's gone on, and it's now been long enough since the daffodils flowered to cut the verges. I had no such excuse for waiting so long for the hillside.

We decided this year to try cutting the hillside paths throughout the year, so that there are two main routes kept clear: from the gateway to the apple walk, and to the plum arch (or, location of the future plum arch, I should say, as it's just a peg in the ground). The rest of the grass we're letting grow, and will cut it in late summer. This should encourage wildflowers, and create a good wildlife habitat. The only exception is ragwort, which we're pulling up when we see it.

It looks a lot neater, now. I also mowed the lawn, which was also a bit wild, though comparitively not long at all. The mower is, unfortunately, playing up, and I had to borrow a neighbour's: ours needs a new switch/capacitor unit.

Today we've spent tidying up the garage, which has meant shifting our new (adopted) fridge-freezer into the workshop, and getting the old two out ready for collection; repositioning the sofa-bed; using the remaining plyboard to reinforce the sewing room floor; getting the half-dozen plasterboards leant up (rather than stacked on the floor); moving the shelving units we acquired into position; and generally making the room rather more habitable. It's taken quite an effort, but with a trip (or two) to the tip, it's much more like a room, now. Better, the planned work of plasterboarding the walls, and putting in sockets, now seems much more achievable.

Gadgets

I've had a day off today, and have got on with a number of jobs. Firstly, I've made myself a couple of gadgets to help guide cables or hoses around the garden, prompted by the fact that there's nothing stopping the mower cable falling into the pond as I go round it. The guides are made from a 60cm length of dowel, 25mm diameter, which I've sharpended at one end (to push into the ground). The other end has a 12cm slot cut into it, leaving two arms. Between these, at the end, is fixed an old horseshoe, which is free to rotate, fully, between the two arms. The effect is that you can push the rod into the ground, then trap a cable or hose in the horseshoe, against the rod, but take it back out easily. I've painted the rod with the same green as the sheds, and the horseshoes black gloss.

I've cut back the ivy and Virginia creeper on the front of the house, and also cleared the gutter at the garage end, which was blocked and overflowing. That, admittedly, has been a problem for six months, but I've not got round to it. The over-flow has probably been most of the reason for the bike-shelter roof's paint wearing off.

The last of the rubble from the work on the house has gone, off to Chris's silage storage ramp: there's some tidying up outside the back door to do, but it's very nice to have seen the last of the backs of plaster and rubble.

The high winds over the last few days brought down a largeish branch from one of the silver birches above the Colour Wheel garden. It hadn't broken entirely free, though, so I've got it down, using my very long pruning saw, and tidied up the break. Hopefully it'll recover reasonably quickly. I am conscious that silver birches aren't the longest-lived of trees, and we may, in our lifetime, have to fell these trees, and work out how we replace their function of a visual, noise, and wind barrier along that boundary.

While Liz was weeding, I've made doors to the two ends of the newly re-covered fruit cages. These are designed to slot onto the top of the door-frame, meaning that there's no gaps for birds to find. Hinged doors would have been nicer, in some ways, but the unlevel ground, and nearby vegetable beds, made it unlikely to work, so I found another solution. Each one's a frame of 2" wood, with corner braces and a 'handle' plank half-way up; they're then covered with 2" chicken wire.

Tidying

Two minor notes: I pitched the yeast for the dandelion wine yesterday, which now needs a few more days in the bucket before moving into the demijohn for several months. This evening we've managed to get a couple of hours outside, mowing & edging the lawn (me) and weeding (Liz).

Sweetpea Supports

Last year, I made a number of timber-framed wigwams for growing annual climbers up, but only added the woven willow sides to those for the sweetpeas. They worked really well, though, and it was only time (that is, insulating the walls of the house!) that stopped me doing so for the pea and bean supports in the herb garden. They had to suffice with strings, which didn't work nearly as well. The beauty of the diamond-woven willow is that the tendrils seem to latch on very readily, meaning that they only need a little help to get started, and then the climbers just take off by themselves, with very little twisting in.

Yesterday afternoon, we worked together to get the willows put on the sides of the six remaining supports in the herb garden, spurred on by the growth the beans and peas are putting on while on the dining room windowsill. We're hoping to be able to plant them out next weekend, if the weather's looking stable.

We also managed to sow a number of seeds; some more legumes (to account for germination losses), and a tray of brassicas: cauliflowers, swedes, and turnips.

Today we've mown the lawn, and edged it (have adopted shears from my parents, who don't have any lawn, now), for which it's looking immensely neater; weeded (well, Liz did this), and have started putting a timber frame onto the fruit cages to replace the wire net supports. The nets, and wires that carried them, have gradually deteriorated, mainly because of the combined effect of wind and snow. I'm hoping that timber framework, combined with chicken wire mesh roof, will be longer-lasting. We're about half way on the frame: adding the net/mesh is going to be a bit time-consuming, though.

At lunch, we started a batch of dandelion wine, using flowers picked before I mowed the lawn. The combined yield of the lawn and paths, fittingly, is about perfect for a one-gallon batch. The petals stew (with chopped raisins) until later this week, when lemon and yeast are added. Five more days in the bucket, then it goes into a demi-john until autumn. We've also got round to bottling the two gallons of elderflower, and one of bramble-tip, that I made last year. All very good, so we're planning to make more of both in the coming weeks.

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.

Autumn Cut

We've enjoyed the wildflowers in the orchard this summer, which is one reason why I've left large swathes of it uncut for some time, only clearing paths through it. However, as autumn enters, I've now gone over the entire orchard, cutting it back as close as I can, so that it stays neat, and walkable, over the winter. Heavy work, even in the milder temperature, but it actually only took about three hours, which isn't bad. It looks a lot neater, even with the strewn vegetation.

Before doing that, though, this morning I've painted the arches of the apple walk, coating the steel rebar with cream-coloured metal paint. The arches now really stand out, and will stand the weather much better.

I've planted out the autumn-planting onions (100 Radar) and garlic (30-odd Marco) in the herb garden, through weed-proof membrane.

Last thing, I managed (just, before the light faded and drizzle set in) to mow the lawn. I managed to do the games lawn a while ago, but it's been some time since the rest has been done, and it really needed it. Hopefully, as the weather cools and the days shorten, it'll be a while until I have to do it again. I am hoping to manage to keep trimming it through the winter, weather permitting, this year. I do still need to take the brushcutter to the copse, though, and tidy the verges of the lane, so my grass-cutting isn't over for the year...

Near the End of Mowing

I was a little pushed for time, and only managed to do the games lawn, but I've mown some of the lawn tonight: that bit grows fastest. It's nearing the end of regular/frequent mowing, and hopefully I'll only have one or two more 'weekly' cuts to make. I shall try to do it once or twice over the winter, if there's a dry spell, to keep it neat.

On the other hand, I also need to cut the grass in the orchard in the next month or so. When I have a spare day.

More Perennial Plugs

As expected (though we didn't think it would follow quite so hot on emptying the module trays last night), today we received 96 perennial plugs: 24 each of 'Mussinni' catmint (nepeta), echinacea 'Deep Rose', achillea 'Cassis', and a dozen each of 'Blue Queen' salvia, and 'Lady Strathden' geum. Interestingly, the cats don't seem as interested in the catmint as our other plants, grown from seed or 'Walkers Low', which bodes well for actually being able to plant it out.

Forgot to mention: I was finally able to mow the lawn yesterday, too, after not being able to coincide good weather and time for three weeks. The games lawn really needed it, but actually the rest wasn't too bad.

Brassicas

On Friday evening, we lifted the Red Duke of York, the Lady Christl, and some of the International Kidney/Jersey Royal potatoes, as the haulms were clearly going over. They're being washed and bagged up, slowly.

This has created some space, particularly where the earlies were, in the bottom bed, and allowed us to plant out a number of brassicas there yesterday evening: Romanescu cauliflowers, January King savoy cabbages, Mystique cauliflowers, and Rudolph purple sprouting broccoli. We've also sown two rows of Golden Ball turnips, between these and the Defender courgettes. They, incidentally, are just getting into full speed, and producing almost daily courgettes. They seem more upright plants than our previous courgettes, as well as generating better textured (less prone to disintegrating in the pan) courgettes, and I'm rather pleased. I reckon we'll be into a glut in a couple of weeks.

Tonight's been less exciting, as I've mown the lawn—whereas Liz has collected enough sweet peas for eight vases. We're definitely into 'glut' for them.

Sweetpea Centrepiece (© Ian 2014)

Bramble-Tip Wine

I totally forgot to do this yesterday, so after mowing the lawn this evening, I've transferred the bramble-tip wine (pint of bramble tips, steeped overnight, boiled for fifteen minutes, poured onto sugar, yeast added when cooled, and sat for ten days) into a demi john. It smells surprisingly enticing: I'm looking forward to trying it in a few months.

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.

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.

Mowing by Moonlight

I've just managed to finish mowing the lawn before it went completely dark. I have no doubt that it won't be a particularly well finished cut, but I needed to seize the opportunity, as I've not managed to mow it for two weeks, and it needed doing before it gets too wet, and too long.

It will probably be the last regular mow that I do this year. If there's a suitable dry spell, I'll try to cut it during the autumn and winter, but the weekly cuts are almost certain to be over now.

Yesterday evening I strained a batch of blackberry wine from the fermenting bucket into a demi-john (and second bottle!), which I started last week. It'd been sitting in the bucket longer than it should have been, but I think it's fine, especially as it's been quite cool, so it wasn't rocketing along.

The vegetable garden is noticeably slowing: the courgettes are further apart, and the beans and peas are slower. The sweet peas have almost had it, but are just about hanging on, giving us a little late burst of colour. Even so, I doubt they've got more than a week or two in them now. That said, they're the best we've had them, and it's probably no coincidence that it's also the first year we've had them in the ground, not in a big container.

Autumn, then, is nearly with us. The trees have started to colour, the apples are almost ripe, and the summer flowers are fading. And, not least, I've got several hundred spring bulbs waiting to go in the ground: probably during a week of leave in October.