[21st June]
With the wort cooled down I could pitch the yeast, but first I measured the original gravity with my hydrometer.
Not quite as high as I was hoping for, but I’m happy with that. Then the fermenter went into the fermentation cabinet and it didn’t take long for the yeast to get to work.
[21st June]
Somehow I ran out of time to spend more than a few minutes in the veg plot today 🙁 Too many other things to get done. The compost heap had “sunk” about nine inches since last weekend, but my daughter and I managed to feed three trailers full of tree prunings through the shredder and have filled it up again.
After all the rain we had last week the cardboard box I used to close off the front of the heap is looking a bit worse for wear, but it’s just about holding up. I reckon as stuff packs down then it won’t matter too much anyhow. It is quite warm which is a good sign, though I’m not sure it’s as warm as the one my wife told me about that was on the “Uncle Alan” (Tichmarsh) programme recently where the gardener had used his to cook a joint of beef in a casserole dish wrapped in foil.
I did manage a little tour of the plot this evening and noticed that something has trampled the potatoes.
It looks like the culprit also went through a flower bed outside my father in law’s greenhouse, too. I suspect it may have been a fox chasing something. There were a load of feathers from a Spotted Woodpecker on the grass, so perhaps that was it.
Otherwise, the tallest climbing bean is now taller than me and the flowers are opening on the lowest trusses.
We also have our first sugar snap peas on the way.
I’m really looking forward to the pea crop. You can see where the partridges got to the lower leaves. I’ve not seen them around since I turned the plot into Fort Knox though. Hopefully they’ve got bored and won’t be back.
My final job of the day had to wait (partly) until sunset. At one end of the house I’d stacked some hive parts that were waiting to be cleaned up for re-use, only before I got that far a swarm found a way in where they’d been knocked out of alignment and moved in. Not a major problem, but it’s right next to where the builder is working and he’s seriously allergic to bee venom. He’s been around bees all his life so he’s not uncomfortable with them, but with the recent changeable weather, particularly the thunderstorms, the bees have become much more moody and defensive which isn’t good if you want to avoid being stung.
It’s traditionally said that you can move a hive up to three feet, or more than three miles. Less than three feet and they’ll find it, more than three miles and they’ll learn where they are now is home and are very unlikely to be confused by flying into territory they already know. Anywhere in between and they’ll probably end up flying back to where they came from in the first place. I’ve been told by a beekeeper who swears it’s true and claims to have done it that if you put a load of greenery in front of the entrance of the hive then they know something has changed and re-orient themselves on their new location even if it is near where they came from. So this afternoon I took all the hive boxes apart and realigned them correctly so there was no chance of escape and fixed them all together so I could move the colony in a single go. After they’d stopped flying at sunset we moved them to the new apiary and propped a load of twigs from the prunings we’d been shredding across the front.
Hopefully that will do the job, but just in case I’ve put another hive back where the first came from. It should at least give any stray bees somewhere to collect tomorrow if they do fly to the wrong place, and I can work out what to do after that.
[20th June]
Brewing is another thing that has taken a back seat of late whilst I tried to get other things finished, but today I finally managed to find some time to start of a brew — a nine gallon batch of Arkell’s Kingsdown made to the recipe in Graham Wheeler’s “Brew Your Own British Real Ale At Home”.
First job was to mill all the grains.
And then set off the mash for ninety minutes.
Finally sparge the mash before transferring it to the boiler.
After the boil I had this lovely-looking wort.
I don’t have a chiller, so now it has to be left overnight to cool sufficiently to pitch the yeast.
[14th June]
Well, more orchard than veg plot, really. I planted four cherry trees in our orchard some years back. One is a “bitter” type cherry whilst the others are early, mid and late-season dessert cherries. The mid-season tree (which usually gives us the biggest harvest) has almost no fruit whatsoever this year. If I recall correctly it flowered right in the middle of that cold, wet period we had in March when there was nothing likely to pollinate the flowers (it wasn’t the only one — we have very few damsons, gages and plums this year compared with normal). The other dessert trees have plenty of fruit, but they’re still some way off ripe:
Apples and pears are looking good though.
[June 13th]
It’s been quite a busy day in the garden for us whilst dodging the rain. My daughter mowed the weeds (they always seem to grow even when the grass doesn’t) and between washing batches of bottles for the beer I have that’s just about ready I did quite a bit of weeding in the veggie plot. I suspect that the partridges I mentioned earlier are noshing on our peas and brassicas on a regular basis as they always seem to be in that part of the plot when I go out and there’s a lot of damage to the plants, so I also tried to protect them as best I could. If the partridges won’t stop however they may well find themselves on the lunch menu.
Elsewhere both the standard onions and spring onions are starting to thicken up and the carrots are looking like they’re doing well. The butternut squashes that are outside (which is where the instructions on the packet suggest planting them) aren’t looking too great though. I had one there wasn’t space for and I put that in the polytunnel where it appears to be doing much better so perhaps they just need more warmth or shelter. A few of the potatoes are starting to flower and I think it will be time to lift a few of the first earlies in a couple of weeks to see how they’ve done. The parsnips are also starting to get into decent amounts of leaf at long last and we have some beetroot about the size of a ping pong ball. The chiles I posted a photo of earlier are quite large now too, and despite the abuse some of the peas have flowers.
I just noticed that the climbing beans have their first buds forming too.
What has been quite disappointing are the radishes. They’ve suffered quite badly from root fly, to the point where I may have to consider growing them under fleece.
Also doing well so far this year is the compost heap. Last weekend I used a plasterboard pallet to make a front for the one we’ve been using so far and stuffed an opened-out cardboard box down the inside to stop things falling out. Now it’s almost full.
That’s about two metres square by just over a metre high. Hopefully it will rot down a bit during the week. We still have this lot to feed through the shredder and dump on it.
If the rain holds off there’s more weeding and planting to get done tomorrow. And of course the ground-to-partridge missile system to set up.
In part thanks to our new Covid overlords, life has afforded me very little leisure time over the last three months and I’ve found little time to do much more than work and get the stuff done that I needed to do, but things are calming down down, so it’s time to catch up and also think about plans for the future…
After the blazing heat, June has turned into a month of weather misery so far. Yesterday and today we have had thunderstorms which I don’t mind at all, though it does mean I have to unplug the phone and internet connection because our phone lines are overhead and I’ve lost network hardware before in such storms. Today however we also had half an inch of rain in an hour. The house guttering just gave up trying to cope with the volume of water:
Outside the door a “pond” about 30mm to 40mm deep appeared in a matter of minutes.
I dread to think what it’s going to be like tomorrow, when “heavy rain” is forecast all day.
I ordered this last week because I wasn’t 100% sure what I’d get and I wanted time to think things over depending on what turned up. As it happens I’m quite pleased. I didn’t get my full order of six tonnes because they could only fit 5.8 tonnes on the truck. The driver told me I’d ordered at a good time because the compost was relatively dry. Apparently many people order during the winter and actually get less compost for their money because it’s holding more moisture at that time of year. This is what turned up:
First impressions are that it’s very clean, black, and surprisingly still slightly warm. It looks very good. Better, if I’m honest, than the compost we make in our own bins. I had it tipped on top of a tarpaulin and I’ve covered it over with a couple more so it can sit there for the next few months until I need it and not get covered in weed seeds and suchlike.
I shouldn’t need so much next year, but I’m already tempted to order a full load again so I can spread a fair bit on the flower beds. And in fact if I have too much I can always just stack it up somewhere out of the way, cover it over and use it as needed.
So, next I need to think about planning the planting whilst avoiding losing track of things this year…
It’s very early to be thinking about next year’s veg plot now perhaps, but I think I might need to.
I’d heard about “no dig” gardening a few times and a couple of local farmers seem to be doing well by moving to “minimal till” agriculture so I thought I’d try to find out a bit more. Eventually that turned up links to Charles Dowding’s youtube channel which makes for interesting watching. I bought one of his books and having read it I think I’m going to give it a go next year.
I should point out that I don’t agree with everything he writes. The stuff about planting according to the cycles of the Moon and other astrological drivel is utter rubbish. Ill thought-out and unjustifiable hogwash masquerading as science. I have no time for it. His ideas about cultivation and raising plants in pots to plant out immediately a previous crop finishes however seem to be worth a try. I think I shall stick with rotating my crops too, as I have the space. And yes, I like the idea of not having to dig from the point of view of reducing ground preparation time, too.
So, my idea for next year is to turn my 14m x 12m plot into seven beds as 1.2m wide strips with a 0.6m path between them. I might use a little more space and go for an eighth strip. I’m not sure. The paths will be covered with woodchip and then I need to add a large amount of compost for the beds. In fact, far more compost than we’ll create in total this year. To that end I started looking around for compost in large volumes. Some of the DIY sheds appear to do it in dumpy bags, but actually they didn’t look an awful lot cheaper than 40l bags from the local garden centre. Then I found that the people who handle the green waste for the local council sell it in volume and will deliver. I got a few opinions and whilst there were warnings that it might contain a lot of rubbish that wasn’t compost I found that local farmers do use it, so eventually I decided to order six tonnes for delivery, which worked out at £30/tonne plus £84 for delivery.
There’s still much more to do though. I think a far greater level of planning is required if you wish to get more than one crop out of the available space each year and I need to organise what can be planted after what else and when it needs to be sown so it is ready to go out at the right time. It’s all a big experiment, but I’m quite looking forward to it.
Not sure this is an entirely welcome visitor. I suspect it may be nibbling on our pea shoots as they’re looking a bit sorry for themselves below a height of about 20cm.
Unless I’m much mistaken it’s a Red Legged Partridge. I’ve not seen one around here for years.
