letter from a small corner of far away

Dear Lynn, dear Everyone,

After the heat of last week [it did get to 40 degrees C in some places], it is raining now. Before the rain this morning I took the opportunity to sow a green manure mix of grasses and clovers over the top of the onions, carrots and beetroot. With the previously dusty dry ground already dampened from light rain two days ago, it was supposed to be fine this morning, but by the time I got to the field it turned out to be the ‘Scottish mist’ of gentle drizzle, of wetness filling the air. It wasn’t enough to put me off broadcasting the seed, then running the cultivator down between the rows, set as shallow as it would go to cover the seed. With the soil damper than I imagined, the soil and the half-dried weeds tended to congregate on the sweeps, which needed regular lifting to clear them, but it covered the seed well enough, hopefully well enough for quick germination and for filling the spaces between the rows. Nowadays, the sight of bare soil is something I like to minimise, and onions with their upright growth habit certainly make the patch look barer than crops with spreading leaves. But as the onions start to dry off, hopefully next month rather than this, the green manure can start to make its presence felt, and with a bit of luck, remain relatively weed free after the hoeing and cultivating of the last weeks. There are, however, a few bigger weeds in the rows, thistles especially, despite my hand hoeing last week, so I will probably revisit with the hoe over the next day or two, before the new seeds start to grow.

Either side of the onions the same green manure mix, sown nearly a year ago, is doing well. Like this year it was overseeded over the onions, but the potato patch was seeded after the potatoes were cleared. About a month ago, the ex-onion patch was grazed, the other mowed, and both have come back strongly, the clover is in flower and some of the grasses are starting to set seed, so another grazing visit by the horses will soon be on the agenda. The grass/clover mix in the vegetable rotation is a relatively new thing for me. Earlier in the life of the field I used to sow rye and vetch as an overwintering green manure, because I ploughed it in the spring and had a bare fallow at some stage, either in the spring, or throughout the summer to cut down on the weeds, sometimes interspersed by a quick growing cover crop of mustard. But now, the grass/clover mix seems to suit me better, the seeds I just sowed will continue to grow until February 2024, before I plough them in for another crop. I am still getting a crop one year in two, but out of every twenty-four-month period, the ground is only bare or in row crops for six of those months. Whether the weed suppressing ability of this rotation will be adequate, only time will tell.

Experimentation is part of the deal when growing things; any gardener you talk to will say that they have decided to try something a little differently this year. So I thought I would bring you up to date on a few of my small experiments. The germination of carrots I mentioned in May has worked well, the method being to put the seed and some damp soil in a closed plastic bag in the freezer for 24 hours and then putting it in the light for a few days. The germination was good, but some of the little shoots were already half an inch long when I planted them out, which was perhaps too late, when they already had an idea of which way was up. Then we were away for a week after I planted the carrots in the field, so they still aren’t anything to write home about, but nonetheless, the row, although gappy, is certainly worth having. So next time, I will start when I can be sure of being here and distribute the sprouted seed before they have grown more than a millimetre or two. A better outcome this year has been using lawn mowings as a mulch on the raspberries and blackcurrants, which are now nearly finished cropping, but there is very little weed growth so picking has been more pleasant, and I am sure the protection from the sun has kept the soil more moist.

The longer-term experiment of planting shade trees in the field in north to south rows has yet to be evaluated since the trees are still short, most being only waist high, except the birches, which are above head height, so I had to put a third ring of netting around them to stop the horses from eating the tips. I am not sure whether it was necessary because there are a couple of similar sized birches unprotected next to where Lucy has been grazing and she hasn’t touched them, but this morning when I gave the horses a bit more space to graze, Lucy was tucking into the leaves of a more mature birch. I don’t know why, perhaps the leaves are different on the juvenile tree compared with the older tree. Near the birch are three small self-sown oak trees. Perhaps self-sown is the wrong word because they aren’t near any existing oak trees, the vector was probably jays, which like to save acorns for the winter by planting them near some noticeable feature, such as the mountain ash and birch I planted some 15 years ago. In time the oaks will therefore steal a bit of pasture, but I think I will leave them be, the tap root of self-sown trees providing greater support to the growing tree than the severed roots of nursery grown trees.

What I have noticed in the spaces between the rows of trees is the greater variety of plants, weeds I suppose, because the grass has not been cut for hay, and only recently, since the trees have been protected, have I allowed the horses to graze in between. But I am sure the variety must be a good thing, why else would the horses browse the hedge plants and grab plants from the roadside verges? Leaving the grass longer as we go into the winter also seems to be paying off, the earlier cut hay being moderately thick, certainly thicker than the later grazed area, and perhaps to confirm that decision, it was just announced that the first half of this year was the driest since 1976, so looking after the moisture seems like a sensible thing to do, especially when set against the fires that have broken out in the south of England, though they are small fry compared with the wildfires in continental Europe and the US.

Although not really an experiment, I decided not to cut the far corner of the field this year, the awkward half acre on the wrong side of the track where Lucy has been attacking the birch tree. The horses are grazing it instead. It would have made poor hay anyway, and thinking about it, it has had less manure than elsewhere, which is probably why. The grass is not very thick even at the bottom and there are not many seed heads either, but it is still a good mix of fibrous stalky stuff and semi-lush green for the horses’ digestive system, and it has delayed the time when they will need to graze the hay aftermath. This is starting to look green and lush, so their intake will be limited behind the electric fence, and I’ll once again give them some stalky hay – I am sure they will eat it, and need to eat it to balance the roughage intake.

Take care,

William

William Castle is a violin maker, farmer & SFJ contributor who lives in Shropshire, England.