2014 season in a nutshell

Thas been a very productive season for us here in Clacton but with some challenges.  We are used to having very dry summers here but this year there has been enough rain and we have hardly used our large rainwater tanks.
We have had a massive harvest of apricots and peaches this year which we have bottled, jammed and dried, we gave away about one third of the fruit.
Tomatoes in the poly tunnel have been great but in the greenhouse all the plants have been killed by a mosaic like disease that makes the leaves dry up and fall off.
Four trees have died very quickly from unknown disease (only a week from full health to death!)
Lots of chicks hatched, we are still waiting to see how many are cockerels!
Two of our large grapevines have suffered badly from a white mildew like disease on the fruit with brown patches on the leaves, the grapes become leathery and crack, we had to cut off the grapes and feed them to the chickens.  The grapes in the poly tunnel are already sweet and being enjoyed as desert grapes.

Permaculture Garden Panoramas

larger image

larger image

Great idea

Thanks to  Frank Gapinski
Easy Vertical Bottle Garden

All you need is a small amount of vertical space around a balcony or an open window which can hang or store a vertical array of drink bottles that can grow all your herbs and lettuce easily. Recycle as many of your plastic drink containers. Make sure they are roughly the same size. Remove the labels. The larger two litre soft drink containers are ideal.

Drill a hole through each screw-on bottle top lid so that water can drip from one bottle down to the next.

Cut the base of the second bottle so the neck of the first bottle can funnel into the second bottle. Secure the bottles together, using plastic silicone or a glue gun to make sure your array of bottles are held securely in place.

An opening in the bottle for the seedling to grow through can be easily cut out with a serrated knife or a sharp pair of scissors. This will allow your plants to grow out and be picked.

Fill each bottle half full with potting mix and hang the assembly in a sunny location. Water the top container and watch any surplus water drip down to the remaining bottles. An empty bottle at the very bottom of your bottle garden can be added to collect any excess water. When full you can reuse this water and start the process trickling down once again.

See http://permaculturenews.org/2012/08/30/vertical-gardens/

What a difference a year makes!

Last year we were well into summer by now and my bees were ready to swarm.   his year I am finding it hard to get warm days for any bee keeping at all.   I haven't started any queen rearing yet!
I am delaying sowing tender plants like beans and corn (which I sowed early last year) to see which way the season will jump.   I will start sowing those next week.
On the plus side we aren't short of rain this year!  and the tomatoes in the greenhouse with the solar heat store are doing well and already in flower.

Its sowing time again!

Yes, isn't it great when spring is around the next corner!
We now have tomato and pepper plants growing on our window sills to go eventually into the green house and polytunnel.  Cabbage and broccoli seeds sown in the polytunnel along with lots of salad seeds, leeks, and climbing French beans. In the propagator are celery, celeriac  and indoor courgette and outdoors I have sown broad beans in the gaps in the autumn sown bean beds and put in some round seeded peas (Feltham First).  I also transplanted the onion seedlings from the autumn sowing to beds (under cloches just in case!)  I have put down pieces of polycarbonate on the beds to warm up the soil for early sowing of carrots etc. Buisy already in the garden!
In the wood the coppicing is coming to an end for this season; maybe two more weeks at the most.  There is lots of space for planting new trees but we may leave the planting till next autumn as the trees we have growing from seed are still quite small.  We have lots of chestnut and some hazel timber to cut and dry for fuel and some for planking as well.
Happy days!

Buddleia garden sticks

Now is a good time to prune buddleia bushes and as a bonus the prunings make great garden canes for next year.

On another topic;  We have had a very nice feature about EcoDIY in the Essex Gazette see http://www.ecodiy.org/gazette%20article.pdf  (its a Pdf download)

Feeding our crops

We are now harvesting (and eating!) 22 different vegetables and 8 different fruits (as they come into readiness).

  This makes me think of how we feed the plants and keep the cycle going with local organic plant feeding.

1.  Good compost; We make compost from chicken bedding, vegetable waste (including peelings from neighbours and friends who don’t have a compost heap), grass cuttings (from 2 professional gardeners to save them other disposal costs), cardboard (egg trays and boxes are ideal), our own pee, non-seeding weeds, spent pots and grow bags (out of skips) and wood ash sprinkled on as an occasional layer..
2. Well rotted horse manure, treat this with great caution and do a test sowing in it of beans or peas to check it is not contaminated with herbicide, (we collect and stack this for a year before use.)
3. Liquid feed made from any deep rooted weeds, nettles and comfrey leaves left to rot in water in a dustbin.  Makes a good breeding place for hover flies which eat aphid in our garden.
4. Our pee diluted 5 to 1 as a liquid feed
5. Grass cuttings as a surface mulch to feed and keep the moisture in.
6. Top dressing with wood ash to provide potash (round fruit trees for example)
7. If I can scrounge fish heads and guts from the local fish monger these are buried where the runner beans or sweet corn are to be planted. Any feathers and remains from the chickens we eat are used the same way planted under fruit trees, bushes or vines.
8. Occasional use of fish, blood and bone where the soil needs a boost i.e., planting greens straight after another crop. I also sometimes (but rarely) use rock dust, calcined sea weed, and SM3 seaweed liquid feed to provide specific elements I feel might be lacking.

Saving seed

yes it is that time of year again and I am collecting and drying plants with seeds - currently; Rocket, pak choi, lettuce, spinach.

Blooming June

Just a couple of pictures of the vegetable garden in full production.  Lots of flowers visible, I like to mix all sorts of plants together so calendulas all over, borage and phacelia (full of bees) various things going to seed for saving for next year - rocket, lettuce, parsnip, radish (and for eating the pods)

Lots of borage

Squashes centre stage

We are still suffering the effects of Clopyralid (Persistent herbicide)

We are still suffering the effects of Clopyralid (Persistent herbicide) in our compost.  The latest problem is in our main crop peas (see picture)  I have also had trouble with my sunflower seedlings and bean seedlings in pots and in the ground. The pot problem is particularly frustrating as I was planting in pots to avoid low germination problems and inadvertently managed to use contaminated horse manure in the compost.   The Internet seems to offer only time as a healer for this problem! see this useful article;  http://www.jgpress.com/BCArticles/2001/070125.html

 Distorted peas

Damaged sunflower head

Rain at last

Strawberry tart - yum yum

Yes 21 millimeters of rain yesterday! All the tanks are full and I can plant out the winter brassicas today with no worries.  In the wood the new tarp collected 35 gallons - result!

Everything is early

Yes this is a spectacularly early year!
We are picking; Raspberries, strawberries, courgettes, cucumbers, peas and sugar snap peas and would you believe our first ripe tomatoes! According to my gardening diary of last year two to three weeks earlier for most things!

On the rain front; we have had 10mm of rain in the last month.  They are promising rain tonight so we are working hard to make the most of it.  Here is a construction we have made in the wood to funnel rain into a depression and capture it.

In praise of tomato ring culture

I have started using rings (often made of plywood !) to grow my indoor tomatoes.  The advantages are that I can put fresh 'good' soil mixture in the rings each year without changing the whole of the soil in the poly tunnel/greenhouse.  The plants use the lower soil for a water source and the upper roots feed from the manure etc in the ring mixture (my mixture is about equal parts leaf mold, well rotted compost, good soil, and  a little wood ash)  I grow other things in the bed around the rings (salad, climbing beans etc)

Battling a Russian Vine

We are lucky enough to have wwoofers staying with us at the moment - Kaz and her 8 year old daughter Tru.  Great workers both of them!  Today we tackled a Russian vine that had swamped a corner of the garden.  What a job!! The vine had covered about 25 square meters and completely submerged a small shed I keep my bee equipment in.  I used a chain saw to demolish the vine but that was just a start!  The vine had strong roots over all of the area it covered and as I plan to plant gooseberries and tayberry there the roots had to come out.
We are both knackered but the ground is clear and with lots of compost dug ready for the new plants to arrive.

Spring is coming!

Now the winter solstice is past and the days are gradually getting longer I have started to think about spring.  I had a busy Christmas break but manged to fit in sorting our seed stock.  As we save our own seeds we always have lots (even one plat produces loads more seeds than we use in a year!)  And now is the beginning of the time to sow them.  Have sown in the poly tunnel - lettuce, rocket, radish, carrot, peas, spinach, red and white beetroot, pak choi and mizuna.  Next week I will sow (in a propagator) tomato, pepper and indoor courgette. In the poly tunnel will go spring brascicas and a few leeks.  Meanwhile in the wood the coppicing goes on and we are planting trees in the spaces opened up. I am starting to think the winter wont be long enough for all the jobs I have planned for it! (only joking)
Happy gardening (between snow)

Good use for old doors!

Here is a picture of the small greenhouse just finished from 2 doubleglazed doors someon gave me.  Planted up with Feltham First peas and carrots.

A sunflower makes a useful tool rack!

Dry and cold but still food to eat.

yes its been a difficult spring this year for the garden and the bees!  Very little rain in the last 2 months making it difficult in the garden with the late frosts and cold have kept us on our toes protecting potatoes and runner/french beans.  I found cut down plastic milk bottles much better than fleece as crop protection. I spite of the cold we have had plenty of salad, early peas, strawberries and beetroot in the poly tunnel and lots of purple sprouting.  The purple sprouting is an interesting case as it was stripped to a skeleton last year by cabbage white caterpillars and yet recovered to give us a great crop!  The tomato plants in the green house now have small fruit and over wintered broad beans will soon be pick-able.  On the negative side the overwintered carrots (under polythene) which we would be eating now have nearly all gone to seed - maybe I sowed them too early in the autumn?  On the bees; I had the same (new) problem as last year with two of the hives with queens that weren't laying?  I am re-queening them with queens from an early swarming hive.

'We sow the seed, nature grows the seed' (apologies to 'The Young Ones'!)

Sowed the first seed of 2010 yesterday.. Now spring really is just around the corner.  I sowed seeds of the plants i intend to grow in the green house and poly tunnel.  Tomatoes - Gardeners delight and Moneymaker, four different kings of sweet pepper and (mild!) chili pepper and  aubergine all in the propagator. Alpine strawberries and greyhound cabbage in the green house (not in the propagator).  I will sow leeks and calabrese in the green house soon and some more salads.  I have lettuce in the poly tunnel ready to plant out under cover.

Not starving in the snow!

Just to reassure anyone who thinks self reliance means starving in the winter cold here is a list of the produce we have available to eat in January (we do buy stuff as well of course)

10^th January 2010 vegetables to eat;

Spinach – outdoors and in the polytunnel

Carrot - outdoors and in the polytunnel

Beetroot (red and white) outdoors and in the polytunnel good tops to eat on indoor plants

Round seeded peas outdoors and in the polytunnel

Cabbage

Purple sprouting broccoli

Leeks

Celery

Celeriac

Pak choi – polytunnel

Rocket

Pot chrysanthemums

Parsley

Herbs

Tomatoes – greenhouse

Basil – greenhouse

Garlic

Squash

Pumpkin seeds

Dry beans (for emergencies!)

Quinoa

Apples

In the freezer:

Tomatoes roasted – lots

Green beans

Strawberries

Raspberries

Blackberries

Bottled

Peaches

Plums

Damsons

We still have good stocks of honey and we are getting at least 6 eggs a day and the (very) occasional cockerel to eat.

Potatoes and onions walnuts and almonds were finished by Christmas and we have just picked our last pepper from the greenhouse.

Next year we plan - more sweetcorn (for freezing) more onions and leeks, and potatoes - Iam sure we will think of other new crops as well in the long dark evenings poring over the seed catalogues!

Happy and Secure new year

A frosty start to 2010 focuses my mind as always on the small holding and how the plants are surviving the freeze - no badly as it happens the greenhouse has hit a plus 7degree minimum but the tomato plants are hanging on in there and the poly tunnel has stayed above freezing (just) and the tender plants (salads etc) are still ok.  The weather also makes me think about our energy supplies; our wood store is holding up well tho we are using a lot more just now with the central heating wood stove and the wood fired cooker being on all the time.  On the world energy front have a look at www.theoildrum.com for interesting analysis and particularly at http://tinyurl.com/ylfomqd for a good page using  'The Matrix' (great film) as a prop.
Keep warm and have fun in 2010
Chris