Home & Shop Companion #0120
letter from a small corner of far away
Dear Lynn, dear Everyone,
If April is the busy time for those with field work to do, then May is the busy month in the garden, especially if, as most of us do, we grow plants that are native to regions hotter than our own. Here, that means tomatoes, cucumber and basil, which are the main crops in the greenhouse over summer, and those slightly more robust crops, the zucchini, pumpkins and French beans which can go out when the threat of frost has gone, which is about now. So this week I have been going in the garden straight after doing the horses each morning and putting out the climbing French beans and Berlotti beans to harden them off during the day, along with the lettuce and zucchini, and because I have six plants too many for the greenhouse, some tomatoes too. Meanwhile, the early bed in the greenhouse is growing quickly, with the lettuce just big enough to pick, the mizuna in full leaf, and the rocket, now that the temperatures in there are steeply rising, rocketing upwards and going to seed. The spinach I will start to pick this week, as I am sure it will soon go the same way as the rocket.
While I have been in the garden in the mornings, I have been doing something else each day after the pots and plugs have been moved outside, before going into the workshop to start my working day. At the beginning of the week, I harvested the last of the leeks and forked over the ground, spread compost and watered it to encourage any weeds to germinate. In the next bed, there are still two purple sprouting broccoli plants from last year, we had the last picking yesterday from one plant, while the other is a mass of yellow flowers, but I will probably dig them out today, so then the whole vegetable garden will be looking forwards, last year’s brassica bed now becoming the bed for roots and leeks. In the new brassica bed, there are a couple of rows of broccoli, still not emerged, and otherwise the ground has been bare for a month, hoed a couple of times before I transplanted modules of kale, cabbage and Brussels sprouts yesterday. In some ways I prefer to sow brassica seeds outside, but the tiny plants are so vulnerable to being eaten by slugs, I now start them in the greenhouse and plant them out when they have a better chance of survival.
The other pests to avoid are the pigeons and the butterfly caterpillars, so the whole bed is now netted, making the garden look very different from a week ago. Adding to the change are the sticks for the climbing beans which also got moved to their permanent quarters yesterday. Some of the sticks are hazel, cut out of the wood a couple of months ago, and the rest are bamboo canes. The bamboo canes are tidier and easier to manage since they are straight and without branches, but I like the hazel for the rustic look, and for the twigs the beans can wrap themselves around, even though the sticks get too brittle to use after a couple of years.
I have also started to try a couple of new things this week. The first comes from a YouTube video on germinating carrots, which advised mixing the seed with some damp soil, putting it on a plate enclosed in a plastic bag and then putting it in the freezer for 24 hours. Then you take it out and keep in the light, but not direct sun, making sure it stays moist. Then after about a week the carrots germinate, and you put them where you want them to grow. Given my lack of success with carrots recently and knowing that they need constant moisture during what is normally a two or three week germinating period, I hope this will be an improvement.
The other new thing arose from a conversation with a neighbour who has a beautiful and productive garden. On my way back from the field we got to talking about soft fruit and he mentioned that he puts all his grass cuttings around his raspberries and blackcurrants. He said it kept all weeds at bay, and that the soil underneath was full of worms. Since I replaced my old soft fruit bushes and canes a couple of years ago, taking out the woven plastic sheet and the weeds that had grown on top, in amongst the wood chips, I have been wondering about a better solution. I tried to keep the area weed free the first year, and then I let it slip, so there is a mass of creeping buttercup, some stinging nettle and a variety of other weeds which I have been forking out gradually this last couple of weeks. But as of two days ago, I have laid down cardboard in places, and covered it in grass mowings, so mowing the lawn is now doing two jobs at once. The horses, meanwhile, have been doing even better, doing triple duty while on the last bit of green manure, keeping its growth and seeding in check, eating to provide nourishment, and because I sprinkled some clover seed on the barer areas where the last of the potatoes were lifted last autumn, pushing them into the ground with their hooves.
Then today, exactly a week after I harrowed down the potato ridges, I ridged them up again. For weed control, it might have been better to wait until another lot of seeds had germinated from last night’s rain, but for the sake of the potatoes, which were looking a bit bare round the ankles, it was probably the right time, and while I was there I went up and down the onion rows too, and the weedy strip next to them where I hope to sow the germinated carrot seed.
Whilst rowing up the potatoes with Lucy, Molly came up to have a look. Really, she was wondering what was happening because first thing in the morning is when she and Lucy have been grazing the green manure down these past two weeks. But she stood and watched and whinnied and worried, whilst Lucy and I went up and down the rows, calmly, with ne’er a worried word or action. Who says horses don’t like to work?!
Take care,
William
William Castle is a violin maker, farmer & SFJ contributor who lives in Shropshire, England.
