Nearly Solstice and mixed results

As you can see the cucurbit beds are doing quite nicely. They needed a dressing with bonemeal (£27 for 25kg I was shocked) and wood ash because some off the courgettes looked a bit off color but everything looks pretty good now.

















Here's one of the watermelons

Unfortunately it seems the mulch beds have been a complete failure as compared with the dug beds 

I've started digging all the mulch beds. I can't afford to take years to get these productive. I'm planting marigolds, sage, russian tarragon, japanese catmint, catmint, thyme, coriander, basil and other things like chives and garlic chives throughout the beds. Legumes are coplanted with everything but alliums.

As so many of the things in the mulch beds have failed I've scrapped the documentation I was going to do on the vegetables I'm growing. 

Once I have the problems ironed out I'll keep track of that again.

The herb garden has gone berserk and I think it's a wonderful jungle, that's the milk thistle


I thought I'd say a little bit about the forest garden. I've been planting cider apples, a couple of pears (One of which was killed by the deer. I had to bridge graft one of the apples as it was completely ring barked. I took of a couple of twigs from the tree long enough to cover the gap and got to it with my grafting tape.)

The tree dosn't look too bad.)

There are a couple of Albizia julibrissin , three Honey locusts Gleditsia triacanthos a load of gooseberries and some named cobs. There are also a few cherry plums.

For later addition I'm growing a lot of the other plants for the forest garden in the polytunnel garden. The above is the American ground nut Apios Americana I'll have enough of them this year to risk putting some into the garden. They fix nitrogen as well as being a useful food.

Watering is the main chore at the moment but it looks like it might rain today.

Flea beetles

The picture is of the beginnings of a nettle and comfrey tea. The picture was taken about 3 weeks ago and now it's a brown stinking mess bt it's really good plant food.

I haven't posted for a while because there have been some problems and I wanted to wait ntil I knew what was going on before posting about it.

It mostly boils down to a lack of water. I was hoping that the mulch beds would retain water well and for large plants it does but it's not terribly good for seedlings. Because the plants were water stressed we've had an invasion of flea beetles. Once the garden gets going a bit more and the herbs I've been planting arond the edges of the beds get going things will improve and I decided to dig the beds in the polytunnel garden where I had the strawberries for brassicas and I think that's far enough from the beetles to avoid the problem. There's also a water supply nearby so I can water them more frequently. I planted Jerusalem artichoke Helianthus tuberosus
some Taro Colocasia esculenta This is a tropical plant but if we have a decent summer we may get something. I have a plant in my bender that I've kept going for 3 years. I also planted a few sweet potatoes Ipomoea batatas

In any case, the flea beetles mean all the brassicas have been hammered. Everything else is getting big and growing well but I've decided to dig in the mulch in all the beds for next year. The dug beds have been the most successful.

I need to have a long think about water. Wish I had the money to get a trickle watering system. 

No sign of tutors or tutorials yet so no progress on the diploma front.


I've been feeding all the beds with wood ash and bonemeal. Several thjings were looking a bit deficient but they're looking better now. I've also been using rock dust and mycorrhyzal fungi (They work together although the rock dust people talk about worms on their packaging it's mycorrhyzal fungi that pass the minerals to the plants.


Six Bay trees were planted arond the edges of the main garden Laurus nobilis 


All the strawberries were moved into the fenced garden as the rabbits were killing them all by digging them up. They have a bad habit of digging round the roots ot my perennials and damaging them Fortnately Star killed his first rabbit yesterday so maybe he can help scare them off. I portioned it and fried it up for him.

Compost problems

W

Well I'm back  and it turns out that there's a bit of a problem. Although it looked reasonably good wet, it's a bit coarse and has a bit too much woodchip in it and some things aren't doing very well, specifically the brassicas and the carrots. Things are doing a lot better where the beds were dug and the soil mixed in with the compost. I'll be making some finer stuff over the next few days by collecting nettles before they flower and comfrey and building a compost heap with that. If I get it before the seeds set it should be ok and I'll top dress the beds with it once it's well rotted down. Although I don't like digging as it destroys the existing soil ecosystem I may have to do some digging at some stage but for now I'll see what can be done with top dressing.

I moved what strawberries survived the deer into the new garden and we made some more beds in there. That bed is about 10m long by 2.5m wide and about a foot deep. Another 48 strawberry plants were planted in there. 

I've completely lost track of what's planted in that garden as I've misplaced my notes. Most of it was listed in the seed order I listed earlier in the year. In this garden things are planted in overlapping clumps and swathes in an attempt no create something that looks a little more natural than straight lines. Edible herbs and flowers are also scattered around. The herbs in the hotbeds and some of those from the herb garden will also be planted in when they get a bit larger, I suspect postings will get a bit more regular here when I start my diploma.

I'll be planting butternut squash tomorrow and starting my tea and compost making, weed control and watering is a daily task although Anne got the stuff to extend the drip irrigation system in the polytunnel extended to almost all the rest of the tunnel.

All the large seeded things seem to be doing well.

It's early days, the beds will improve with mulching and that takes time.

Back soon.

Under the weather

I'll be back posting next week. I have a painful abcess so I'm taking time off till it clears up.

Busy times and a dauntingly large list of things to record

Sorry I haven't been keeping up with the docmentation but I had a massive planting and I'm looking at a daunting list of things to docment which will take me a little while to transfer from paper to here.

After a couple of dry weeks we finally had some rain yesterday so everything should germinate soon. I've used up all the compost in the immediate vicinity so the next big job is shifting quite a few tons of compost from the other side of the farm to the new gardens.

I found that the deer had ripped off the tube and ring barked one of the cider apples I planted last autumn so I took some cuttings and made a bridge graft on it and grafted a few scions to other apple trees to try and save the variety. It was done a bit late so I may lose it but we have some 10 year old root stock that I'll be layering in the autumn and then we'll get serious with the fruit trees.

We have a new Wwoofer called Nicholas who's been a great help. 

I will try and get this huge planting post out of the way in the next couple of days but for now I'm having a day off.

The rest of that planting

My email program blew up this week and I lost a few emails one of them was from a potential Wwoofer I wanted to answer and now I have no means of contecting them. If you see this could the potential volunteer in Sussex (Or was it Surrey) please email me again.

A huge amount has been planted in the last week Matt gave me Toby's old garden to work with and it was already mulched in many places with cardboard and a foot of compost.

I decided to turn it into a wilderness of veg. Things are in clumps or in edges. I've tried to make as many edges as possible. I've sown many more than will eventally grow there as I'll be using it as a source of baby veg and will thin it down to it's evental state.


Planting.

Melon bed 2 
Lemon coriander Coriandrum sativum throughout bed

South to north
Watermelon black montain Citrullus lanatus
Collective farm woman Cucumis melo inodorus 
Melon Tigger Cucumis melo 
Cucumber Gherkin National Cucumis sativus

Melon bed 3

Coriander  Coriandrum sativum throughout bed

Watermelon black montain Citrullus lanatus

Pumpkin Full Moon Cucurbita maxima

Cucumber long green ridge Cucumis sativus

Pumpkin Atlantic Giant Cucurbita maxima

Cucumber Gherkin National Cucumis sativus

Melon bed 4

Lemon coriander Coriandrum sativum throughout bed
Watermelon black montain Citrullus lanatus 
Cucumber long green ridge Cucumis sativus
Collective farm woman Cucumis melo inodorus
Cucumber Gherkin National Cucumis sativus

Melon Minnesota Midget Cucumis melo 

I still have pages of planting to transcribe so I'll do it when it cools down later. 

A very busy week and a lot of planting

W

We had an extremely busy week last week, with the help of two Wwoofers, Leia and Noah and Jose and Matt who live here we've made a good deal of progress. There are now four melon beds and five vegetable beds and bean trenches dug all around the perimeter fence.

 A bean trench is just a spade depth trench alongside a support like a fence that you fill with compost.

Melon bed 1 is the covered one melon bed 2 is the one directly South of it melon bed 3 is next to melon bed 1 and 4 is South of that.

From South to North

Melon bed 1 

Courgette De Nice A Fruit Rond Cucurbita pepo
Winter squash Burgess Buttercup Cucurbita maxima (Plants for a future is down at the time of writing)
Cousa Courgette Trieste half long Cucurbita pepo
Winter squash Blue Banana  Cucurbita maxima 

Winter squash Anna Schwartz Hubbard  Cucurbita maxima 
Courgette Nero di Milano Cucurbita pepo
Pumpkin Jack O'Lantern Cucurbita pepo (I think)
Courgette Green bush Cucurbita pepo

These were planted a few days ago and all have germinated now.

Melon bed 2

Short season Water Melon Blacktail mountain
Short season Canteloupe Collective farm woman
Melon Tigger
Cucumber Gherkin National


Blacktail Mountain was also planted in the polytunnel with the ginger.


A lot more to follow too tired to write more.