Down on the Allotment

Hand Pollinating Pumpkins

2009-07-17T18:04:00.007+01:00

I am fortunate to have obtained some special pumpkin seeds in the past couple of years. Unfortunately pumpkins and squashes are famous for cross-pollinating with any other related family member. Unless I take special measures, if I save seed from any of my pumpkins and squashes this year, I will probably get strange, hybrid fruit next year. The female flower above is from my Rouge Vif D'Etamps pumpkin.

The slightly different shaped pumpkin is a female flower from my Queensland Blue pumpkin which Scarecrow sent me from Australia. (G'day mate - you're hammering us in the cricket eh?)

So this is what a male flower looks like. He has no little baby pumpkin behind his flower, and inside the flower he contains the pollen which is the male part of the plant (think sperm...)

So if you want to collect seed for next year you must obtain pollen from a male flower of the same speceis (preferably from another plant) and deposit it in the female flower. You must keep a vigilant watch on your pumpkin patch, staying there all day if necessary to do this at exactly the right time. Both male and female flowers have to be fully open, but they must not have been pollinated by any flying insects - who might bring in other pollen.

Now here comes the sex. Look away if you are squeamish, or if you are of a sensitive disposition! Take the petals off the male flower to expose the pollen at the base of the flower and make it easier to insert right down the bottom of the female flower and brush the pollen all over the female parts of the flower. You can do this with a very fine paintbrush if you can get the pollen on to that.

Now to avoid any further insect pollination of the female flower you must prevent insects from getting in there for a few days more. A fleece bag, pair of stockings lightly tied over the female flower will do.

Just to be sure you have the timing right (let's face it girls, they have problems don't they?) You may have to repeat the exercise tomorrow and the next day just to be sure that enough pollen has been produced. When fertilization has taken place, the female pumpkin will start to swell and the flower will drop off.

Welcome to Matron's Worldwide Veggie Show 2009

2009-07-15T19:45:00.000+01:00

I've had an amazing response from many bloggers to Matron's Worldwide Veggie Show 2009. THANK YOU! So many pictures, I would love to have posted them all but I would be here all night! So I chose my favourites so I chose a variety of edibles.

To get us off to a wonderful start, this fantastic plate of peas from Dan at Urban Veggie Garden in Canada. Fantastic Dan!

What a wonderful picture of six perfectly sized veggies from Amanda in Ontario, Canada at Someone Elses Kitchen. It is a bit early in the season there, but she made a fantastic entry! Maureen at My Lottie Heaven sent me this wonderful picture of her Siamese Courgette! (should this be conjoined courgettes?...)This brings back memories of lots of rude shapes vegetables I used to smile at as a child. Actually I still do! Thanks Maureen! These are Loganberries from Rob at A Plot Too Far. I have also had a great crop this year, they make a wonderful addition to Summer Pudding! Yum! From my dear blogmentor Stan at Naive Zebra who grew these at the end of the runway at the airport at Farnborough! These are Sicilian Long White and Yellow Crookneck squash. ..Can I book my place for this year's airshow please Stan? What a wonderful display of peas from Carrie at Grow our Own. You can see the bloom on these, they are so fresh! These lovely broad beans are red epicure grown by Cat of Stripes in France. This is a variety I must try to grow next year. I shall look out for some seeds. This beautiful photo is from Michelle at Veg Plotting. It looks like you could turn it into an apple sundial! I just love featuring unusual or slightly less common veggies. We should all give them a try! Here are some Rats Tails Radish from RR in Neulichimgarten in Germany. This lovely Kale is from Emily at Greens and Jeans. I just love brassicas! This entry is from Stephen at My Veggie Patch at the Bottom of the Garden - this must be one of the longest blog titles! These are Kelvedon wonder. Hey! that's weird.. I was driving through Kelvedon this afternoon - it is in Essex (not Suffolk)! Matron's SMILE award goes to two bloggers. This is from Karen at Greenwalks in Seattle. These Cascadia sugar snap peas show imagination and appeals to my vanity! M for Matron! Matron's SMILE award also goes to Kath from Veg Heaven. These red epicure broad beans are smiling at me! *******************
The very special MATRON'S JUDGE'S DISCRETIONARY AWARD goes to a junior entry, little Sweetpea from Washington State. Sweetpea is the daughter of Catherine from A gardener in Progress. It really warms my heart to see the next generation of veggie gardeners enjoying themselves with veggies! Atta-girl! The BRONZE award goes to KitsapFG at the Modern Victory Garden. A lovely plate of carrots, beautifully presented!

The SILVER award goes to Gintonio from Jardim com Gatos in Portugal. Evenly sized and coloured and beautifully photographed.
DRUMROLL ***

Finally the GOLD award for spectacular veggies, beautifully photographed goes to Celia at Purple Podded Peas. Simply stunning!

Once again, a HUGE Thank You to everyone who sent me photographs. I am sorry I can't post all of them (there were about a hundred in all!!!)

Blackcurrants

2009-07-11T07:51:00.002+01:00

I am finding it difficult to keep up with the soft fruit picking at the moment. I go out almost every day and find something has ripened over the past 24hours. I am having to share these blackcurrants with the blackbirds at the moment! They are perfectly ripe, and sometimes you find an enormous specimen! It is also quite entertaining to find dollops of bright purple bird poo all over the garden (unless it is on your clean washing hung out to dry!)

Fruits of the Forest

2009-07-08T07:34:00.003+01:00

I am thrilled with my first decent crop of Gooseberry Invicta. The bush is only a couple of years old and to date I have only ever had 3 or 4 berries each year but 2009 has been stunning. These berries are a slightly yellow colour and the plant is highly resistant to gooseberry mildew. These are now softer to the touch and can be eaten straight from the plant without a hint of any acid flavour - they are just perfectly sweet! The same can be said for all of my other soft fruit bushes. They just ripen at the same time. The joy of soft fruit is that apart from pruning once a year, you really don't have to do anything to the plant - they just produce lovely fruit for you.

Time for another Summer pudding!

Ladybird Heaven!

2009-07-07T07:04:00.000+01:00

My broad beans have been infested with unsightly blackfly. I decided not to spray them, instead just put up with it and wash them off. Mother nature has turned up trumps and sent a host of natural predators in the form of ladybirds to eat them up. The first picture is a ladybird larvae. Almost looks like something from a science fiction film! Their appetite for blackfly is immense! Next picture you can see a ladybird adult just emerging from a case.

They come in all sorts of colours, this one has no spots! Perhaps they are like dalmatian puppies, born without their spots?

Here is one with four spots!

This is a black one with red spots!

This one has lots of spots! Is this the foreign invader ladybird?

Finally, all this heat has brought on my Yard Long Beans a treat!

The Trouble with Weevils!

2009-07-04T20:22:00.010+01:00

Here is another contribution to Matron's Worldwide Veggie Show 2009, you can see here a lovely row of peas.. a picture of pea perfection... almost. For something weevil lurks beneath the pods. The scourge of gardeners everywhere..

It's the dreaded pea weevil! You will most probably find something like this in one or two of your pea pods. On closer inspection you will find a little weevil. This is the larval stage of the pea moth who lays her eggs in the developing pea pods. The eggs hatch into little larvae which munch their way through your lovely peas inside the pod.

These are some of my Golden Sweet peas, I have plenty of seed left over in the packet for next year so I won't save any of these.

Here is one of my Great Wall of China tomatoes just ripening in the greenhouse. I was thrilled to see that Cath from A Gardener in Progress had some of these growing in her garden too. I swapped some seed when I visited the SAGBUTT (Seattle Area Garden Bloggers United to Talk) back in March. I 'liberated' the seed from a plant in the greenhouse at West Dean gardens in Sussex last year. They had been donated to the garden from someone who found them growing on the Great Wall of China.

My potted pineapple is just loving this hot weather inside the greenhouse. When I visited the Azores last year I saw pineapples growing in greenhouses. They just love it hot and steamy!

My early new potatoes International Kidney are getting a bit big now, and because there is a possible threat of potato blight at the moment, I have chopped all the foliage off and just left stalks showing above the ground. Blight develops from spores in the soil when the weather has been both damp and warm for a consecutive number of days allowing the fungus to take hold. The other potatoes you see on the left of the picture are a blight resistant maincrop variety called Sarpo Axona. I have not grown them before, but let's see what happens.

My pumpkins and sweetcorn are just loving this hot weather. I am particularly pleased with these Queensland Blue squash seeds which were sent to me by Scarecrow in Australia!

Anyway, here is my first Rouge Vif D'Etamps pumpkin. Not big enough to make a pumpkin pie yet, but I wish all Americans everywhere a Happy 4th July!

Aquadulce Claudia

2009-07-02T18:00:00.002+01:00

I think this is one of my favourite varieties of broad bean. Aquadulce Claudia is a variety which you can plant in the Autumn if you prefer and it will overwinter quite happily. I don't tend to do this, there are too many pitfalls in my mind. I have grown an Imperial Longpod this year as well, longer pods (strangely!) but I found that they were not as prolific or sturdy as my old friend Claudia. I made a second successional planting of broad beans and these are just being picked now. They do have a heavy infestation of blackfly, but I don't think that these have much of an effect on the final product. They look awful, but I will put up with it rather than spray the bejazus out of them! Besides which, I noticed today that I have a really healthy ladybird population on my broad beans too! Natural predators - so great to see nature taking its course.

I've had some wonderful contributions to Matron's Worldwide Veggie Show 2009 so far, so please keep your entries coming to me please.

Phew! What a Scorcher!

2009-06-30T22:34:00.002+01:00

London is sweltering in the heat today! At 4pm it was still 88 degrees F. It must have been hotter at mid day. I don't look forward to travelling to work on the London Underground tomorrow! Meanwhile back on the plot, these International Kidney new potatoes are enjoying the rain that we had last night. There have been a few thunderstorms of late and the potatoes are just perfect at the moment. I am trying to dig them up fast because if they get much bigger and older they won't be the same.

A word of warning though. If this warm, wet weather continues we might be heading for another dreadful attack of blight!

Picking Raspberries

2009-06-29T22:37:00.002+01:00

Will these raspberries never stop? I've been out every day for a week and picked every single ripe raspberry and still the next day I am doing it all over again! Absolutely brilliant! Anyway, here is another effort in my online veggie show. You've got until July 14th to send me your entries to Matrons Worldwide Veggie Show 2009. Don't forget there will also be a Judge's Discretionary award for causing me to smile!

Six of the Best!

2009-06-28T17:47:00.003+01:00

I have never entered any kind of vegetable show! My joy is in the growing and especially in the eating. Since I have been pondering the idea of Matrons Worldwide Veggie Show 2009 I have been getting an idea of what competitive growers might feel. These are some of the first Sungold tomatoes this year. You might be tempted to straighten bent beans! You might get out a cloth to add shine to your tomatoes! Certainly in order to get 6 fruit or veg as evenly matched for size, shape and colour - you may have to grow quite a collection in order to choose.

Please don't take Matron's veggie show that seriously! Send me something to salivate or something to make me smile. There will be GOLD, SILVER and BRONZE awards, but variety is the spice of life!

Matron's Worldwide Veggie Show 2009

2009-06-27T17:51:00.005+01:00

I hadn't realized just how difficult it is to get 6 veggies all the same size, shape and colour! I have been having a few trial runs to enter my own online Veggie Show! These are Black Forest climbing courgette. Please email me your entries by 14th July and I will include them in Matron's Worldwide Veggie Show 2009. I will be awarding a GOLD , SILVER , and BRONZE award, along with Matron's special Judge's Discretionary award for making me smile!

Join Matron's Worldwide Veggie Show!

2009-06-27T07:20:00.001+01:00

I am asking fellow bloggers to submit entries into Matron's Worldwide Veggie Show 2009. You might not have the time or the inclination to submit a plate of your best fruit or veggies to your local county show, but can you spare a few minutes to send me a photo of your best harvest?

Take a picture of 6 items which should be of uniform shape, size and colour. Display them on a plate or line them up on a bench and take a photo for me! Please let me know which variety they are! Email your entries to me. As this is a worldwide show, I would particularly welcome entries from far-flung and exotic places! but if you are in USA, OZ, India, Suffolk or Yorkshire... I am looking forward to your entries too!

I will be posting them along with a link to your blog, and judging them by 14th July, the winner will be the contribution which makes me salivate the most! Matron's decision is final!

Summer Pudding!

2009-06-24T18:28:00.005+01:00

According to my calendar, it is officially Summer now! The soft fruit is in full production at the moment and has to be picked daily. This seems like the perfect opportunity to make a Summer pudding. Here I have strawberries, raspberries, loganberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants and gooseberries. Just line a pudding basin with sliced white bread, heat the fruit with some sugar in the microwave until softened. When you pour all this into the basin, the juice will be soaked up by the bread. Leave this to cool and soak in the fridge with a weighted plate on top for a minimum of 24hours, 48 would be better.

Serve with cream!

More news about my Yard Long Beans. You will remember that my first planting in May did not germinate at all. My second sowing in the greenhouse a couple of weeks ago was more successful. I sent an email to the seed supplier Dobies, to ask if in their opinion these would grow outside in the British climate. I received a short reply stating that they should be able to grow outside.

I have planted these outside now, with a little protection from some cloches. Some internet research has revealed that these really are a sub-tropical plant grown in Asia and the Far East. By all accounts they can be temperamental and are prone to keeling over at the first sign of a chill! The red ones, Red Noodle Bean is even more temperamental. I will be happy if I can just get them to grow a bit more.

Thrilled if I can actually get some yard long beans from them!

A Day at the County Show

2009-06-21T19:31:00.008+01:00

Surely one of the highlights of the Summer has to be the County Show! Wherever you are in the world there will be a Summer fete or County fair? This weekend was the Middlesex Show. Let me take you on a whistlestop tour of something quintessentially English...
Here are the lovely ladies from the Hillingdon Allotment and Horticultural Federation.
The South of England Flyball association had some competitions too! For those that don't know, this is a sort of doggy relay race involving tennis balls!

And Matron was able to indulge her passion for riding in helecopters - yes! I'm mad about helecopters. This is what my home town looks like from the air!

The Old Fashioned Pudding Company were there - how many non-English of you out there knows what a 'Spotted Dick' looks like? eh?

There was a wonderful display of vintage cars and tractors.

A very fierce lady tried to force me into joining the Womens Institute!

The local beekeepers association was there too!

And of course, the highlight must be...drumroll.... the South of England Hamster Show!

Is your county fair just as much fun?

Bulgarian Giant Leeks

2009-06-21T07:25:00.000+01:00

I am only growing two varieties of potatoes this year. I planted these from green tubers which I collected last year as the ones I didn't want to eat. They seem to have made perfectly good seed potatoes. The International Kidney are my early new potatoes - I am digging them now and they are a beautiful waxy potato. These flowers here are from my others Sarpo Axona. I chose this variety because I was blighted quite badly last Summer, and this is one of the new varieties which is resistant to blight. Interesting flowers - I don't think I have ever seen so many flowers on a potato before. I think I will snip them all off with scissors, I don't want the plant putting energy into flowers and seeds. My New Zealand spinach has an interesting growing habit. Here you can see the plants have started to creep along the ground. I understand this plant just sprawls and provides rampant ground cover throughout the Summer. Haven't picked any yet, not big enough.

I planted out some of my leeks today. Don't leek seedlings grow so slowly? These and my other variety Musselburgh have been in pots for months now, they just slowly creep along. This one here is Bulgarian Giant. I saw a picture in a catalogue and couldn't resist. Apparently the shafts might get to 3 feet in length.

I will provide lots of well rotted manure and lots of water throughout the Summer and let's see if I end up with a Bulgarian giant! Has anyone grown them before?

They should take off in a couple of weeks time!

First New Potatoes

2009-06-17T22:05:00.004+01:00

Another yardstick moment in the gardening calendar is the date you dig up your first new potatoes of the year. These International Kidney were planted in a compost bag in the greenhouse, especially for an early crop. These are quite a bit bigger than I had expected, so I will give my outdoor crop an exploratory dig tomorrow. June is one of the most productive times on the allotment, you can see my haul from today's foraging.

Bon appetite!

Yard Long Beans

2009-06-15T22:14:00.005+01:00

I planted a first sowing of Yard Long Beans direct in the soil in the middle of May. Unfortunately, germination was non-existent! I don't know if it was too hot, too cold, too dry or too wet - it was OK for the rest of my beans but not these. Anyway, a second sowing in modules in the greenhouse has been 100%. I also have some precious ruby red yard long beans which I am particularly looking forward to growing as I obtained them in a seed swap with the Seattle garden bloggers group 'SAGBUTT' (Seattle Area Garden Bloggers United to Talk) My climbing courgette Black Forest is going great guns at the moment as well. These were a good do-er for me last year, they climbed up a trellis all Summer long and were extremely productive.

Meanwhile in the greenhouse, these Ildi tomatoes have the most amazing display of trusses. There are probably more than about a hundred little yellow cherry tomatoes on each truss. Like little golden sweeties!

Meanwhile, below, these Great Wall of China tomatoes have an interesting habit too. They seem to have a truss of fruit every two set of leaves which is quite unusual.

Finally, there was a bit of storm activity over North and East London today, which I missed. I did see these storm clouds gathering in the Eastern sky over London this afternoon. This is an angry cumulonimbus cloud. If you are interested in different types of cloud formations, then why not click on the Cloud Appreciation Society website and go find some more.

Actually it looked a bit more dramatic in real life!

Have you seen the Painted Lady?

2009-06-12T17:23:00.005+01:00

I have read reports this Spring that we are to expect a huge number of Painted Lady butterflies in the UK this Summer. Apparently they migrate from Africa to Northern Europe each year and there are supposed to be millions on their way now. Yesterday I saw 4 of them just on my lavender flowers alone! Has anyone else seen large numbers in the UK yet? and where are you? Another sort of insect, in the garden is the plum maggot moth. Below you can see that I have hung out a pheromone lure in my plum tree. The little rubber thingy in the centre is impregnated with female plum moth sex hormones!! The poor male moths fly in there thinking that they are going to get lucky... and they stick to the sticky paper! This prevents them from laying eggs in my lovely plums.

Couldn't resist another photo of my Golden Sweet pea and my Purple Podded pea, they are in full production at the moment! Glorious.

This was my first raspberry, it ripened yesterday and I ate it straight from the bush! Today I had two more ripen, but one of them was half eaten by a blackbird. Naively I thought that perhaps these London blackbirds might not know what a raspberry was.... and perhaps they might leave them alone. Wrong! tomorrow I will cover them in a big sheet of fleece!

One more point, I have started the habit of leaving just one or two vegetables from each crop to go to seed each year. The broccoli flowers early in the year were a real magnet for the bees who were climbing all over the yellow flowers. Here you can see that I left a parsnip 'Hollow Crown' to go to seed from last year. Already it is 7ft tall and covered in yellow flower buds. If you have just a little bit of space, it seems to me that they prefer vegetable flowers to flower flowers... or am I just a little bit biased?

Spare a thought for your pollinating insects and just leave somehting for them!

A Visit to Gipsy House

2009-06-11T18:55:00.010+01:00

Today I visited Gipsy House, Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire. The National Gardens Scheme opens public and private gardens to the general public for charity just once a year. Gipsy House was the home of the late Roald Dahl, and it is still the home of his widow Felicity Dahl. This is a spectacular English country garden.

First port of call, naturally, was to the compost heap! It did not disappoint!

Next came Roald's rhubarb. The gardener there told me that it was a shame that most of it did not get eaten. I suggested that they could sell bunches of it to the public who were entering the garden!

In the front corner of the garden this Gipsy caravan had been bought and restored by Roald himself.

In the walled vegetable garden there was a greenhouse in which was an espalier nectarine tree. I have never seen a nectarine growing in the UK before.

Right next to it in the greenhouse was this espalier pruned peach tree. I wonder if this peach will grow up to be a Giant Peach??

This was the most wonderful walled fruit and vegetable garden. It was a series of raised beds made from railway sleepers which were edged by well maintained step-over apple and pear trees, and fan trained and espalier trained fruit trees on the walls.

At the end of the garden path which was covered in a pleached lime tree walkway, was Roald Dahls garden shed. In this building he would write for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon. He closed the curtains so that nothing could disturb him, and he always stopped just when things were getting interesting so that he was motivated to come back and continue.

Thinning Gooseberries

2009-06-09T17:16:00.005+01:00

This has been the best year ever for my soft fruit and especially the gooseberries. This is a 4 year old plant of the variety 'Invicta' and you can see that the fruit is much too close together to grow a decent sized berry. I have thinned out the fruit today so that there was a good sized berry about every 2" on the branch. This will result in large, sweet, delicious gooseberries in about a month.

Even though these thinnings are small and very acid, they are perfect for cooking and still have the most wonderful flavour. It seems to me that the acid in a fruit is what gives it a great flavour.

Just a bit of a fiddly job 'top and tailing' them. With a pair of scissors you snip off the stalk and the flower end.

So this afternoon at tea time, I enjoyed a bowl full of gooseberry crumble with cream! Ahhhhhh!

My First Tomato

2009-06-08T19:51:00.010+01:00

This is one of the pinpoint moments in a gardener's year - the first ripe tomato. This is a Sungold tomato in the greenhouse. The Sub Arctic Plenty are extremely disappointing, I was expecting them to be a clear winner, but no. I will wait a few more days to get really ripe, then will just pop it in my mouth, straight from the plant. Another failure in the garden, were my first sowing of Yard Long Beans. I was particularly anticipating this one in the allotment, and also some beautiful red coloured yard long beans. I think they have rotted in the soil. I planted them more than 3 weeks ago and only 2 have come up. I have therefore planted a second sowing in modules in the greenhouse, fingers crossed.

Other beans in the greenhouse are Royalty, Lazy Housewife and Dog Beans. The latter I am thrilled to have received in a swap with Gintonio from Jardim con Gatos in Portugal. The Lazy Housewife beans I obtained from a heritage company in the USA. They are a very old English variety I saw growing at the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall.

Well, you may remember my confession on February 14th, about my obsession with collecting tomato varieties 'My Affair with the Love Apple' - well it has occured to me that I also have a dirty little secret when it comes to curcurbits! I just can't help but collect squashes, pumpkins and cucumbers. I wish I had the space to grow more, but I don't. They are also such rampant cross pollinators that I dare not save seed. Some of my favourites are:

Yellow Straightneck - from the USA, a yellow courgette-type

Queensland Blue - fantastic Winter keeper with blue skin and a deep orange flesh

Rouge vif D'Etamps - traditional Cinderella pumpkin with vivid dark ginger skin

Black Forest - climbing courgette, excellent climber and good producer.

Defender - courgette, my stalwart which is resistant to the dreaded mosaic virus.

Delicata - a small squash with flesh similar to a sweet potato, another good Winter keeper

You see below my Defender courgette growing in a black plastic dustbin.

I enjoy growing something different and unusual, here is one of my Tomatillos. A relative in the tomato family which is grown in Mexico. Makes fantastic salsa!

Gosh, did we have rain at the weekend? or did we have rain at the weekend?

Claps of thunder on Saturday morning and good solid rain for hours. Just look at my potatoes below. They are stood bold upright now, they just loved it. I am growing Jersey Royal (International Kidney) and Sarpo Mira, a blight resistant late crop.

Now I can sit back and watch everything growing! Unfortunately that means the weeds as well. Sigh!

Strawberries in June

2009-06-07T08:32:00.006+01:00

The strawberries have started to ripen! The problem is keeping them away from the pests! If they are not subjected to an assault from below from woodlice and slugs, then the birds will have a go! The biggest predator by far however, is my dog Buddy! I caught him red-handed - or red-pawed! grrr The redcurrants just keep coming year after year. The redcurrant bush is underneath the Bramley tree and in quite a bit of shade. They are quite fiddly to pick and prepare and quite acid to taste. Not my favourite fruit but they make a useful addition to the summer pudding!

This iceberg lettuce is amazing. Normally I wouldn't touch an iceberg lettuce bought from a supermarket or in a salad - they do nothing for me. Home grown iceberg lettuce is another kettle of fish altogether. This is crispy, crunchy and full of flavour. Still battling the slugs though!

I grew these spring onions 'White Lisbon' from seed. Planted the seed in bunches in small modules then planted them out. I grew them in bunches spaced apart, and I pick them in bunches. I had forgotten how wonderfully hot and pungent freshly grown spring onions are! phew!

This New Zealand spinach has been planted out now. It is quite a tender, succulent plant and does well in a dry, sun-baked spot. Apparently it creeps and spreads over the ground. So far it is doing OK, but we need a bit more sun here to get it going, I think.

The gooseberries 'Invicta' are plentiful this year. Mine need to be thinned out now. Gooseberries are one fruit that you can eat, even at this size! I am going out to thin the gooseberries to enable them to grow big. The thinnings can certainly be used in a pie or crumble. Yum!

There is nothing quite like a gooseberry crumble!

Out in the Big Wide World

2009-06-04T07:12:00.004+01:00

I didn't think it would be long before the tits left their box. I was right. There were little baby birds everywhere, barely able to fly. Parents were flying around everywhere collecting food and feeding them. This little one I think, was the runt of the litter and seemed quite dazed about the big wide world.

Must have been a steep learning curve for it when a big, black furry thing gave it a sniff! Buddy was very gentle and just curious.

The golden rule this time of year is to leave baby birds alone. They may look helpless but they are just finding their way round this scary world!

PS. I found a wonderful bird blog from John in Lincolnshire, take a look at Midmarsh. The photography is stunning.

Let the Season Begin!

2009-06-02T22:50:00.007+01:00

At last, it seems like the veggies have started to grow! Here you can see one of my Golden Sweet yellow peas. I picked up a packet of this old heritage variety whilst in the USA. I have it on good authority that it was this variety that Gregor Mendel used to carry out his original genetics experiments. It looks beautiful growing up with the Victorian purple podded pea. I don't mind if they cross pollinate this year, I look forward to seeing the results if I save seed.

The greenhouse tomatoes are starting to grow as well, these are the Noir du Crimee, a black Russian variety I am trying this year.

And my pineapple plant seems to be loving all this heat in the greenhouse. Today in London it was nearly 80 degrees outside, so you can imagine the heat inside the greenhouse.

If you look closely at the leaves on my Invicta gooseberry bush you will see that some of them have been nibbled down to stalks! This is the surefire sign of a gooseberry sawfly attack. If left untreated, within days these little green grubs will eat their way through the whole plant leaving just stalks. If you don't like spraying your plants then you will have to look for them individually and pick them off and either squash them or give them to your chickens... or both!

The broad beans are getting bigger each day. Don't they seem to hide in among the leaves where you can't see them? Only a few days ago they were just an inch long and look at these. I have grown an Imperial Longpod variety this year.

The sweet corn Conqueror is also loving this hot weather. I keep them well watered and have planted them in a group around my Queensland Blue pumpkins. I have also just sown another tray of sweet corn seeds for a later crop.

I am trying to water my plants less this year, and to see if I can mulch more so that the plants are forced to grow their taproots deeper to find water. Water must be down there somewhere, my plot has been under water for the last 6 months!

Out in the Sunshine

2009-06-02T17:43:00.003+01:00

There's not a lot of room in the titbox today! It looks as if my great t**s are just about ready to fly the nest. This bold little fellow decided to take a peek out into the big wide world today. He didn't seem to mind that I stepped closer to the box when the parents had flown away for a minute to find them more food. Two adult birds are flying to and from the nest at 3 minute intervals, I am not sure how many t**s there are in the box.

It appears that my previous post entitled 'Matron's T**s' may have been the reason for the blogger computer flagging my blog as spam. Perhaps the computer may have misunderstood my wonderful bawdy inuendo, or my 'double entendres'. British bloggers may have twigged by now that my nickname 'Matron' has been given to me because of my 'meat and two veg' sense of humour inspired by the 'Carry On' films...

But it was the most glorious sunny day today in London and Matron's tits just had to come out in the sunshine.....OOh Matron!