Mothering Sunday

I've been at my parents' for the weekend, which has been lovely; film, cheese, table-tennis. Back after lunch today, and Philip and Rachel have been with me mid-afternoon until tomorrow mid-morning, on their way back home from Manchester.

I need to start getting on with sowing seeds—mainly vegetables, but also sweet peas.

Rearranging the Fruit Beds

Over the last couple of years, pruning the gooseberries, and then picking the fruit, has been a rather painful, thorny proposition. In addition, the plants have always tended to grow out into the path, which has made the journey along the fruit garden a little perilous when wheeling a barrow, and the wide handles almost always bring you rather close to the gooseberries spines.

Enough of that: we've dug up the nine gooseberries, and replanted them: the three red and green are now spaced out along the centre of the bed where all nine were previously, meaning they're much further from the edges. The three golden/yellow ones are where the bottom blueberry was. It's never really got going, in many years, so we're cutting our losses.

At the same time, we've lifted all the raspberry canes, and replanted the strongest along the centre of those beds: we were finding that the double row wasn't cropping well, and was a pain to weed and pick.

The revolution hasn't ended there, either. We've taken off all the nets, too. Over the next couple of months, I'll be replacing the wires which ran between the posts to support the cages with timber bearers. The roof is then going to be chicken wire, and the sides will either be netting, or wire. However, we're going to have doors at each end of the passage, making it one big contained cage, rather than four. It ought to make weeding, mulching, pruning, and picking an awful lot more pleasant, which seems sensible.

Today we've sawn, split, and stacked a load of wood, and spent this morning sorting out the garage, which now looks like a room once more.

Tidying the Green Roof

I've had a day off today, though Liz has been working. I started by making a couple of trips to the tip, taking the old bathroom suites, and some other bits. I tried Freecycling them, but there weren't any takers, unfortunately. That out of the way, I did a bit of spring maintenance to the green roof, using a three-pronged hoe on the end of my 4m extendible pole. It's usually deployed for pruning trees, but is equally effective horizontally, for reaching across the green roof, rather than walking on it. That's allowed me to dethatch a lot of last years dead and dry material, with minimal disruption to the new shoots coming up, and has avoided the need to climb on to the roof myself. The green roof's looking an awful lot neater, now, and is starting to come back to life. There were only a few small clumps of grass, which is good, and I was able to uproot them.

This afternoon, I've finished connecting the ethernet cabling, and tested it all, so we now have functional Cat6 ports in the rooms I wanted them, and a few of them can be connected to the four switch ports on the router, meaning faster wired ethernet when needed.

Mulching

As planned, the mulch arrived on Thursday, although it had to be left on the drive proper, rather than the ramp into the garden. That'll make it easier to shovel, as it's on concrete, not gravel/sawdust/woodchip, but does mean further to take it with the wheelbarrows.

My time's been split between helping Liz weed, and moving and spreading mulch: suits me better, as I'm quicker at shovelling mulch and spreading it, and Liz is much better at weeding. It's a long weekend's work, but we've spread two thirds of the 6m² load, and the long border, quince, sweetpea, copse, willow arch, and herb beds are all looking massively improved for it.

As part of the mulching, we've planted out the three variegated and one spiky-looking hellebores we picked up in Thirsk around my birthday, and a three sedums (S. spectabile 'Crystal Pink') that were much reduced in the garden centre in November. The former are in the copse bed; the sedums are in the front of the sweetpea beds.

Mulch Preparation

We've got a load of mulch arriving this week, ready to spread on the beds. That means that the first weeding of the year is now urgent, because the mulch does an excellent job of reducing new seedlings, but just gives existing weeds a boost, which isn't quite what we want. As well as weeding, we've also pruned the apples and pears on the hillside, tying in the slow winter growth in the apple walk as we go; pruned the fruit bushes; and admired the emerging snowdrops.

We also potted up ten new hellebores that arrived this week, which are now in the front garden growing on; six Chocolate Cosmos; and the 20-odd tender yellow things I can never remember the name of. Argyranthemum/margeurites, possibly. We take cuttings of them each autumn to over-winter, and they're out-growing their modules, now.

The other thing we managed was to tie together the willow growing down the sides of the septic tank, to start forming the arched tunnel over the mini-sheds. There's some way to go, admittedly, but you finally get an idea of what it will eventually achieve, which is nice.

Quick Strim

We set off at lunch time for a weekend in Cambridge (staying with David & Ann, but seeing everyone else, too!), but there was just time this morning to sow a load of flower seeds (and coriander, in fact; slug-munched), as well as half-strim the hillside (the apple-walk end, which was looking worse, and the two clearings), and for Liz to work on weeding the herb garden. It's the end of a busy week, and a few days rest will be good.

Old English Plaster

For today's first trick, we learnt how to plaster, in Old English finish. In a way, we're lucky, because the rest of the house is plastered in this style, so we're justified in plastering the garage and the rest of the house, in the same way, without it seeming odd. Lucky because neither of us has plastered before, and flat, smooth plastering was likely to take a while to master, even if I have practised on the odd Christmas cake before. I have to admit that it's not a perfectly flat, smooth surface.

Old English finish, however, is not meant to be. Instead, the surface is uneven, with prominent trowel marks. If it weren't deliberate, you'd think it was incompetent. To its credit, it covers uneven walls very well: if the plaster surface was perfect, the underlying lack of right angles, plumb verticals, and parallel  walls would shout at you.

The experiment appears to have been a success: we'll be sure when its dry and painted, of course. For now, we've plastered only the one board that covers the stud wall: in time, I'll dry line the entire room, but that's not urgent. It was more economic than I thought, too: a quarter bag of plaster (6.5kg, plus 3l water) was enough to cover the board, and do the joints over about half the ceiling, having fortunately taped them before mixing the plaster.

That finished, we then put down the last section of floor that can be done before the doors are replaced with walls and windows. The builder should be starting that work in the next week, so we also needed to clear access to everything he needed, which entailed moving everything previously standing in the front third of the room onto the new floor, leaving the front area (almost exactly three sheets worth of flooring: two deep on the door side, one deep on the far side) bare for him to work in.

We then worked through a stack of almost a hundred pots, planting up small plants that have grown on from seedlings over the past few months, and which are mostly now out on the weed membrane. We also potted up a dozen big pots of tomatoes, and a number of chillies and sweet peppers, which are on the benches in the greenhouse now.

It got rather late, so the cats had to come and shout for us to come in.

Cavity Wall Insulation

As part of this year's big push to insulate the house properly, we were having the small area of cavity walls insulated today. They extend only to the 'modern' extensions (by modern, read 1970's), which are the hall, cloakroom, and downstairs loo; the garage and workshop (not, in fact, built at the same time); and the kitchen expansion (ex hallway) and utility room. These are all dressed stone outer leaf, with a cement block internal leaf, and a variable cavity. An excellent team arrived at lunch time, and the pair of them have spent a few hours blowing about eight cubic metres of polystyrene 'Polypearl Platinum' beads, bound with PVA, into the cavity. Theoretically, that should reduce heat loss through these walls by about three quarters, which should be noticeable.

While they were doing this, we put down another section of the new garage floor (SFUF, QuinnTherm, and ply, as before), and packed out our stud wall with more solid insulation, before screwing a plasterboard on top. We'll plaster it tomorrow.

Stud wall without, and with plasterboard (© Ian 2014)

Having grown rather tired of the untidy state of the herb garden, we've decided to cover it in weed suppressant, which will keep it neat, and start killing off the grass, before we get round to digging it over. It now looks much neater, especially where I was able to quickly strim down the grass first. We also laid a strip up the middle of the apple walk, which very nearly met the cardboard mulch to either side.

We've now emptied a large number of small plants out of the greenhouse, and they've gone out on the membrane, to start getting used to life in the great outdoors. More will follow tomorrow, as we've lots of things to pot on, to make more space in the greenhouse for the tender veg.

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.

Vegetable Planting

It's that time of year when the vegetable beds in the kitchen garden go from bare (or green manure covered), to filled, quite rapidly. The onions and potatoes went in about six weeks ago, and are doing well. We've now planted out a couple of blocks of beetroot (half a variety of mixed colours, and half Boltardy), 32 Brilliant celeriac, six courgettes (Defender), and scarlet kale and cauliflowers amongst the spinach. We've sown some more radishes, and sown a pot of scorzonera, as they haven't germinated in the bed. Some of the summer-sown brassicas (winter cabbage, cauliflowers, swedes) have gone into pots to germinate.

As a result, the kitchen garden's looking a lot more full. There's space, still, for leeks to go out (still in the greenhouse), and of course the potatoes get replaced as we lift them.

At the other end of the garden, the rhubarb had put on loads of new growth, meaning there was about 10kg of stems to pick. With such a large amount at once, it's been worth bottling, so we've preserved four and a half big Kilner jars.

While doing so, I've also made a batch of rhubarb vodka, with 8oz of chopped rhubarb, 4oz of sugar, and a 70cl bottle of vodka. Should be ready in a few months...

That was this morning: this afternoon, we sawed, split, and stacked a load of poplar.

Sweet Peas

We finished constructing the climbing frames for the sweet peas over Thursday and Friday evening; working together, it takes about an hour to willow each one. Yesterday morning I dug holes into which they could be sunk, and positioned them in the bed. The soil's stonier than ideal, really, there, so this was slow progress, but eventually all four were suitably sunk into the ground. We then planted out the sweet peas, about a dozen plants per pyramid, with two or three varieties per support (hopefully complementary colours!). The plants have grown on really well in the greenhouse, so they're bigger than they've been in previous years, which is encouraging. It's also freed up some valuable bench space in the greenhouse, which is good because we discovered that we've got a couple of dozen packs of flower seeds to plant. I moved the tomatoes into the greenhouse, from the sitting room window: they'll need potting on soon. All in all, we need to get things moved out of the greenhouse shortly: fortunately there are a number of pots that can be planted out into the vegetable bed (beetroot, Swiss chard, brassicas), which will help, and a lot of lavender that can go out. A few pots, of dahlias, tulbaghia, and agapanthus, need to wait until we're sure there won't be frosts (probably a week or so).

Sunday was spent putting a third of the new garage floor down. The sealant paint went down over a number of evenings, the last on Friday. Onto this we've laid a high-tech multifoil insulation. The battens on top of this have solid foam boards between them, and then a plywood layer on top. That makes a very well insulated layer, but only takes 65mm of height. Tomorrow we'll move things off the next section of floor, ready to paint that, and lay the floor in a week or so.

Barely, we managed to get that sorted with enough time to mow the lawn (a mixed blessing), which does admittedly look a lot better for it. Liz has also managed to weed the entire long border in gaps in the flooring work, which is now looking magnificent.

I reckon that the quince will be in flower in the next 48 hours...and I can't wait.

Climbers' Supports

A mixed day off, today: Liz spent a lot of time getting beds weeded, which is tedious but necessary work. I've cut back the ivy and Virginia Creeper on the front of the house (the former was encroaching the dressing room window rather); re-attached the hanging basket bracket that came down over the winter; and repaired the bikes.

On Monday evening, Liz painted the feet of my sweet pea/legume support structures with bituminous paint, to protect them once they're underground, and we painted the above-ground bit with outdoor paint last night. That meant that this afternoon I was able to continue putting the woven willow sides into them, and we've now done two of the four sweet pea wigwams. (It's surprisingly slow work.)

We managed to spend fifteen minutes looking at the hillside. A lot of the hedging isn't doing so well, unfortunately: either deer or slugs, but we're not sure which, or whether it's just taking its time to come into leaf. Much better are the grafts, which appear to be mostly alive, and starting to break into leaf. And a lot of the apples, old and new, are in flower. A couple of the old trees, which bore really well last year, seem very light on flowers. We're not sure whether we've missed them/they're not out yet, or whether they're at risk of biennial bearing, having had such a good crop last year. Only time will tell.

Above Ground

I've had a day at home, starting work on the long-planned permanent support frames for the sweet peas, and vegetable climbers, as well as being around to receive a number of garage-related deliveries.

While in the garden though, I've been delighted to see that the quince is, finally, going to flower this year. The cherries and plums are already doing so (not brilliantly, in the latter's case), and the apples, in the garden and orchard, are on the cusp.

In the vegetable garden, many of the potatoes now have shoots above ground, and a large fraction of the onions have shoots. That's a lot faster than in previous years, for both, which I credit with the later planting, and—therefore—warmer ground.

Scarborough

Making the most of the bank holiday weekend, we've had a couple of days in Scarborough, with Liz's grandparents, and a day in Thirsk with my parents. It's the first time I've been to Scarborough in twenty years, and about a dozen since Liz last went, so we were both really seeing it through fresh eyes.

On Saturday, after lunch, we walked down Woodland Ravine, through Peasholm Park, and along the north bay, before turning back past the open air theatre to return.

Spring colour in Woodland Ravine / Dean Road Cemetary (© Ian 2014)

Spring colour in Woodland Ravine / Dean Road Cemetary (© Ian 2014)

Peasholm Park (© Ian 2014)

Peasholm Park (© Ian 2014)

Wildflowers: primroses, wood anemones, and forget-me-nots in Peasholm Park (© Ian 2014)

North Bay and Scarborough Castle (© Ian 2014)

Squirrel Sculpture, Peasholm Park (© Ian 2014)

Peasholm Park (© Ian 2014)

Faux-Oriental sculpture, Peasholm Park (© Ian 2014)

The Secret Garden (© Ian 2014)

The Secret Garden (© Ian 2014)

Although Sunday morning was a bit overcast, we started at Anne Brontë's grave, before walking around Scarborough Castle. From there, we went down the side of the headland, across the harbour, and along the seafront. After going past the Spa, we came up through the gardens to meet our lift.

Ruins of North Transept in churchyard of St Mary's with Holy Apostles, destroyed in Civil War (© Ian 2014)

The Keep, Scarborough Castle (© Ian 2014)

Roman Signalling Station, Scarborough Castle (© Ian 2014)

The Keep, Scarborough Castle (© Ian 2014)

View from Scarborough Castle over North Bay (© Ian 2014)

Sunday afternoon comprised a walk through Raincliff Wood, which has a large number of paths (thank you, Woodland Trust), and an interesting bit of woodland regeneration in Raincliff Meadow.

Wood Sorrel (© Ian 2014)

Bluebells (© Ian 2014)

Woodland Flowers (© Ian 2014)

Wood Anemones (© Ian 2014)

Stumps, Raincliff Wood (© Ian 2014)

Tree roots over outcrop (© Ian 2014)

Tidying

We spent all yesterday clearing and tidying the garage and workshop, which now look immeasurably better. The garage is now lined up for conversion into habitable space over the next few months, and we've got rid of a lot of clutter, and better organized it for working, too.

Today was more fun, as we've potted up a load of courgette and tomato plants, sown runner and French beans, potted up and moved outside the broad beans, and planted several pots of gladioli. We're about to set off for Ludlow for the weekend, and a couple of days of rest.

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.

Direct Sowing

Having spent yesterday sawing, splitting, and stacking a load of firewood, today we sowed a few things in the vegetable garden. In the spaces around the potatoes we squeezed a few rows of scozonera, which we've never grown (or eaten, indeed), and a few of radishes. In the herb garden, we've planted a couple of sections of asparagus peas, which we grew last year, and which did well. We even had a few in the depths of winter, it was so mild. The sweet pea beds have also been sown with a mix of wildflowers: some collected, some bought. The three sections aren't differentiated this year: we've just mixed the seeds up. The sweet peas are all in the greenhouse, still, getting taller and twining round their sticks, waiting to be allowed out.

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.

Good Friday

A few photos taken this evening. Some are just for our records, of gaps in the bulb planting that we can fill in the autumn.

Acer coming into leaf (© Ian 2014)

A record for planting in the autumn: gaps in the bulbs in the sweet pea beds (© Ian 2014)

The Quince/Heuchera Bed (© Ian 2014)

The Front Copse Bed (© Ian 2014)

Front Copse Bed (© Ian 2014)

Looking Up The Copse (© Ian 2014)

White Lion Daffodil (© Ian 2014)

Gaps for bulbs in the copse bed (© Ian 2014)

Cherry blossom ( Ian 2014)

Pulsatilla in long bed (© Ian 2014)

Primroses (© Ian 2014)

More double daffodils (© Ian 2014)

The long border: gaps for spring bulbs (© Ian 2014)

A Full Greenhouse

We didn't do anything much in the garden over the weekend other than walk round it, as Philip, Rachel and baby Luke were visiting. It must be said that walking round it was rather nice, as it's an opportunity to ignore the weedy patches, and the not-doing-anything-yet herbaceous perennials, and enjoy the daffodils in full glory, the swelling buds on trees, and the daily lengthening of rhubarb stems.

After they'd set off home, though, we sowed a number of seeds (marigolds, stipa, pennisetum, lupins, verbena, cucomelon, I think), and I pottered briefly in the greenhouse. This is our first spring with a greenhouse, and the young plants we've overwintered in it are much further on than those in open ground. The extra warmth and protection are fantastic. It's full, inevitably. Many of the plants in it are going to be forced out soon: they're hardy plants, that didn't need the greenhouse (even un-heated, it's got no lower than -1°C, and mostly been frost free), but have clearly benefitted. However, with a steady train of seedlings germinating inside, they older plants will need to make way for new plants, and eventually even these will get planted out, to be replaced with tender veg. We've got germinated tomatoes, chillis, sweet peppers, and aubergines, which will all occupy the glasshouse for the summer.

For now, though, it's almost all perennials, and about a hundred sweet peas.

Greenhouse full of young plants, grown on over the winter, and ready to plant out soon (© Ian 2014)

 There are a lot of small lavenders (on the right), which were intended for the edges of the herb garden. We've been doing a bit of a think about this: further work is probably off the cards until the autumn, as anything we do will be trampled by wall insulation this summer. The lavender will have to be planted out in a temporary location. On the far bench are some of the sweet peas, the tulbaghia and agapanthus from Tatton Park, a couple of dozen deschampsia from seed last year, and in the back left the cut-off rootstocks from grafting. These have come into leaf, and look like they've rooted, which is marvellous news. They'll go into a nursery bed for future grafting. On the top shelves on the right are a load of vegetable seedlings: brassicas, beetroot, spinach, chard. There are also some perennials: six herbaceous potentillas, for example. On the left are ungerminated seeds (which don't need so much light), and other perennials: half a dozen astilbes, some geraniums, some clivia (technically not hardy, but they've done fine), and some hostas that are in pots waiting for a bog garden to be built. And, also, a tray of hosta seedlings from last year, which are just coming out for their first 'adult' year.

One-year-old hostas (© Ian 2014)