Given it's all about parsnips...

I should really have had this here, but I didn't.  Wider audience and all that...

The white stuff.

Which is generally snow, but in the following photos is more sort of freezing fog. Makes for some nice shots though. Not much comment on this post other than captions...

A bit of hedge.

Some sort of acer.

The dogwood (one of my favourites at this time of year!)

The window :)
A big lovely tree... with other littler trees


Wisteria by the door.


Bunting in the back garden (perhaps that should be a summer thing...)

Bush, complete with robin
Copper beech hedge
Huge evergreen.

A twig of some description.


Big evergreen thing.


Apple tree, complete with remains of the crop!


The orchard.

Plum tree.

Limp looking rhododendron.

Spider web...

On the holly near the door.

Snow.

Good luck getting the parsnips out of here...

We've been busy (as ever...) doing bits and bobs in the garden. We've now made a leaf mould area. Here's Joshua working hard on its creation:
This is one half of it, the basic idea being six posts (four so far in this picture) with mesh around the back and sides, and down the middle. (Mesh should allow the leafmould to breathe more easily...)
The next job was to set up a way of hiding the leaf mould area a little, so on the right hand side (nearer the house) we planted some dogwood:
I should perhaps point out that it wasn't snowing when we did this job. That would have been a little too keen.
And on the left (nearer the public footpath) I thought we'd have a go at planting some more roses:
This is after the success of one such rose attempt last year. I figured I'd combine the time to prune with a planting job. Hopefully some of these will take root and produce nice rose bushes in future. Speaking of which I should probably finish the pruning of the other roses, including the one we planted last year! Hopefully the snow won't cause the new plants any problems. They were all dipped in rooting juice (organic, rather than the powder). In fact, the dogwood sticks were left in overnight. Probably horribly bad for them, but we'll see...
Sadly, one mow of half the orchard was enough to fill one side of the leaf mould area. That wasn't exactly the plan, but we live and learn...

Not such a rake idea.

So, I had this plan. I thought to myself, I know, I'll set myself a little challenge. I'll rake the orchard.A Bad plan. A Foolish plan. A plan almost certain to Fail...
But I'm giving it a go anyway. To be honest, I might cheat towards the end, but here's the rough idea for now.
It's a job that goes in 3 stages (so far...)
Stage one is apple clearance. You'll notice lots of apples in the picture above (towards the back there...)

Same tree, different angle, apples cleared. Stage one complete (for that tree, anyway)

Stage two, outer circle raking.
Thus. This clears a lot of the leaves from the main bit of the orchard, gathers them towards the tree, and is nice to look at, as it suggests you've achieved something.

Stage three, inner circle raking.
Making sure, of course, that you don't pile it too much against the tree itself, so you don't end up rotting the trunk by mistake.
And from there, it will all mulch down and feed it for next year. That's the plan anyway. Given that all the rejected apples end up in the pile of leaves, does that make the tree cannibalistic?
Oh well, the apples taste nice. Anyone want one?

How's that for a squash?

All taken at Wimpole Estate (National Trust property near Cambridge)

Green manure and other things...

Well, I had a quick look at the beds in the orchard today and, blow me down, things were sprouting!
I think it must be the red clover (or, of course, some invasive weed that I wasn't planning on...) but it was very exciting to see.
Intended to take a photo, but then didn't get through the garden gate into the orchard - too much time with Joshua in the fallen leaves, then friends popped 'round. Ah well, maybe shots another day.
And did some raking today. Sort of feels pointless in some ways, given the magnitude of the task, but nevertheless is accompanied by a great sense of accomplishment.

Autumn action

Well, have taken out all the pumpkin/squash plants. They were hit by the recent frost, so the fruit softened and was then munched on by vermin (probably squirrels). Today Joshua and I have weeded and hoed the beds, and sown green manure.
The long thin bed has forage pea - two rows about 20cm apart, and 10cm between seeds. One or two (or in Joshua's case, six) seeds per hole. I poked holes with a stake and then brushed over and trampled up and down.
The T bed has forage pea both horizontal and vertical (poked and covered). The horizontal then has winter tares broadcast and raked in, then flattened with the rake. The vertical has red clover broadcast and then raked in. Then flattened.
The corner bed has winter tares, broadcast (quite heavily) and then sort of tussled in with the rake, and flattened by rake.
Loving the colours at the moment...We've done mega work in the orchard recently. I've almost kept on top of it, and Paul and Penny kindly helped collect apples on Wednesday to take to be pressed. Probably about 60-80 kg. Should produce about 50 bottles, with luck...
We've also picked loads for the crumbles. Aiming for 100 this year...

Update (yeah, boring title again)

Well, the last few days have involved some harvest (as mentioned, this has included inventions for the orchard...)
Here's some other stuff we've brought in...
We've had a little bowl of tomatoes. (A little bowl of little tomatoes, in fact). We've had boxes and boxes and boxes of apples (thus the crumble mixture that's being stockpiled in our freezer). I've taken off the last (sizable) squash things (we had a frost on Saturday night, which gave me a pumpkin and squash scare...) Ironically, there are now about 6-8 butternut squashes on the plants outside, no more than 3-4 inches long, and therefore not really big enough to pick. I've left them on, but don't envisage they'll grow much more before being killed off by the weather...
Plant them sooner next year!!!
I would also have pictures of the courgettes (the last of the season), but we ate them on Saturday night...
Tonight we ate some spuds from the garden (sadly, some of them died because I'd stupidly put them in a box rather than in a bag/sack.
I've ordered some onion, garlic and shallot sets last week, that will hopefully come in time to be planted in the holidays!

Time in the garden has also included a fair amount of clearance over the course of the last few days. The Sweet Pea and Tomato boxes have been cleared out. In fact, in the clearance process, I came across something that I thought was very cool indeed:
It's a tomato that had fallen off the plant and ended up buried in the bed. All its seeds have started to sprout! Very impressive piece of design there. It does worry me slightly about how many windfall tomato plants we'll end up with!
The rose bed has been weeded, cleared (the pumpkins in there didn't come to anything) and compost has been added. I've also taken a couple of rose cuttings to plant, with the hope they'll root and grow next year. I've done them in pair to double the chances, and if both of a pair root, I'll just pull one up anyway. It was a 20 minute job, so if it works, I figure I've saved some more cash!
I'll blog again soon about what's been going into all these beautifully cleared spaces :)

Apple picking.

Well, 'tis the season, and it's fast approaching the 'crumble' time of year... So today saw apple picking. The most exciting thing about this was the apple picker. I've just done a blog on it, so if you want to see what about an hour's work can achieve, with coat hangers, home-made 'catchers' and poles, go check it out.

Yet another...

Well, this is a quick update on things in the garden...
The Team have done some proper chopping in the front flowerbed, which may just have motivated me enough to create some sort of cutting-garden type thing. It will involve far more digging, but could be fun to do.
Out the back, I've dug up the lavender. No, not the stuff I've been carefully nurturing along the drive, but a plant that was probably nibbled on by dinosaurs in its younger days. It's created a rather bare patch. (Well, lots of weeding may have helped!). The patch will probably have some of the bedding plants that are still being 'brought on' on windowsills around the house.
(Yeah, the manhole cover isn't the most attractive thing to have in a flowerbed - we've got one in the flowerbed opposite too...)
Meanwhile, in terms of harvest, the toms that haven't died a horrible death (which most, regrettably, have) are pumping out their crop.
And the carrots sown a little while back have been thinned (a few days ago...) and are growing merrily. Well, wetly, probably. It's a bit damp outside for much merriment.
Can't be bothered to write any more atm. Am shattered and it's only 8.00.

Just catching up...

A couple of things done recently.
I finally put some more compost/soil in the boxes, but the toms and sweet peas don't seem to have done much better yet.
Beef toms probably won't ripen before frost
Red cabbages taking a hammering from darn caterpillars.
Carrots peeking out of the ground.
B'nut squash sat on a tile growing happily.
Have fed squash, pumpkins and toms (on tom food)
Filled up courgette tubs a bit too. They still look unhappy.
Ate a couple more raspberries.
Tidied veranda (wow, such fun).

Need to:
sort lavender gaps
sort marigold gaps
prune raspberries

Consider ordering some sweet potato slips...

Many Marigolds.

I finished planting them at long last:


112 marigolds, from seed, all along the driveway. It took three separate stabs to get the job done, but now it is. And they'll hopefully be blooming soon.

Meanwhile, the pumpkins are growing, the red cabbages are being ravaged by darn caterpillars, the tomatoes are struggling to life, the courgettes still producing. The spring onion and lettuces are just beginning to show themselves, and yesterday saw the sowing of two rows of carrots where the last lot was dug up (is it a problem, planting them in the same place? Hope not!) The lavender's ok, a couple of ropey looking ones perhaps. The sweet peas have decided to offer up a few more flowers, and the spuds should be dug soon (though we had a batch from Wales, which was lovely!)

The 252 miniplug plants (primula, pansy and viola) have arrived and the viola is now 'potted on' into the trays (40plugs per tray)

Update:

So, we came back and the harvest started, but it's slowed down a bit since. In the last week, I've tidied up the long bed out the front of the boarding house (2/3 of it so far...) and planted marigolds. So far, I think there are about 80 in there. Need to do the last 2 1/2 sections and that'll take us over 100 I imagine. There are about 4 that haven't made it so far, so I'll have to replace them (I'd already replaced two which had been dug up by something - I blame cats.) They're all from seed. So apart from the hours of work, they cost about 2 quid. Not bad for 100+ flowers.
I've just (today) ordered 252 plants (£9.99 off Thompson and Morgan) with the following write-up
"Pansy 'Universal' is ideal for any season of the year and remains a best-selling variety. Viola 'Sorbet' is just as winter hardy and will produce an abundance of flowers, but just a little more dainty and in bi-colour variations. The gorgeous new Primrose 'Petticoat' Mixed gives a outstanding display of compact double blooms in bright-warm shades, which resemble miniture roses, again very hardy flowering through frost and snow." (Yes, they did spell miniature incorrectly)
They are sold as 'plug plants' but they may come as mini-plugs, at that price... We'll have to wait and see.
The squashes are growing well, it would appear. I'm going to put them on tiles tomorrow (we don't have bricks lying about, but we do have some roof tiles!) to keep them off the ground. Will probably also bung slug pellets on the tiles!
Sowed two rows (sideways) in the big bed. Next to the path, there are lettuces, and one row in are spring onions. Didn't want to start too close to the spuds, as they'll be harvested soon, and I intended just to tip the soil onto the bed and fish them out. The beef toms are beginning to appear. Cherries in the boxes are getting there too. We had the last of the carrots at the weekend, so I'm going to sow a bunch more this week too. We had some parsnips at the weekend too, which was satisfying, but I didn't take any pics!
Enough for now!

Carrots, carrots and more carrots.

Mentioned the carrots yesterday. Well, today, I started to harvest them.
The first one I got (which was a bit of a sad start) was mutant carrot.
It had these fab little arms and legs, and a very stubby body. It was not an altogether glowing start to the carrot harvest, but they did get better and better from there in.

Here's a shot of some of them having just been harvested, and they're not looking bad at all. (That's mutant carrot in the front there, but he's lying on his tummy, so you can only see one arm and one leg).

And of course, you can't harvest carrots without the help of a garden gnome (a.k.a Joshua). He was very useful indeed (in that he harvested one carrot and then let me get on with it!)
And yes, he is still in his pyjamas for this. Shocking, I know.
Here's the proof of the amount of carrots - over 1kg! Very pleased with that, especially given how many more are still to come up. I think I'll probably dig up one row over the next week or two, and then plant some baby carrots we got free from the National Trust. That should mean that we've got carrots for a while yet! They take about 7-10 weeks, if the book is correct...
Apparently, the Table Queen should be ready in about another month, but maybe I'll be lucky and have some sooner. They are supposed to be about 6in diameter, according to one place I looked! So they've got a little way to go yet.

We have harvest!

Very exciting day today. Got back from a two week holiday and had a look at the garden. Here's some photographic evidence:
Raspberries (sadly, this photo shows ALL the raspberries currently on our 12 canes...)
Pumpkins - Table Queen, if you're wondering. Not quite sure how to tell if they're ready to pick, but I'll look it up :)








Pumpkins (or maybe these ones are squash, come to think of it) Turks Turban. So named, because they end up looking like a turban. Although this one looks a bit flat, so I'm not sure if it actually will...





This is sort of the pumpkin/squash patch generally, which has come a fair way since the last photo. Also, the rhubarb in the middle is doing a whole load better than it was a little while ago. I think it's mainly recovered from it's long wait to be planted out.





These are the tomatoes. They're most (if not all) beef tomatoes, so we're going to have to consume a fair amount of tomato, basil and mozzarella salad... Sadly, the basil seeds I've sown inside have taken exception to not being watered for a fortnight...




Here are the potatoes. You can hardly see the bins now, which is slightly ridiculous. Again (as with most things...) I don't actually know when I'm supposed to be digging them up. Man, there's a whole lot more reading to be done.







Red cabbage. They're doing ok. Thankfully, the ones that were sown at the wrong time (i.e., when we were going to be heading south before they were ready to be planted out) have also survived, so will be planted out in due course. Note the nibbling that's happened on the far end. Not sure if that's slugs or caterpillars, haven't investigated properly. Note also the vast number of weeds that have flourished in our two weeks away.





I thought this was quite exciting. This is the carrots and parsnip bed (as you'll recognise from previous posts!) They're pretty immense. I also saw (though the camera phone wasn't up to the shot) a real carrot-looking thing at the bottom of the vegetation. Ok, so perhaps this isn't a big surprise, but it's EXCITING!







Here's the intercropping (pumpkins in rose bed) I mentioned before. They seem to be doing ok. Not sure that there'll be much pumpkin action in time for October, but hey. It's all a learning curve. Thankfully, there has actually been some rain up here while we've been away. This has help avoid a mass die-off in the garden. However, not everything has fared quite so well...


The tomatoes in the boxes, and the sweet peas with which they are planted, have not done quite so swimmingly. They don't really get much in the way of rain. They are outside, but probably get a bit of shelter from the patio roof, which means that the boxes can get pretty dry. Next year, I might have to line them with plastic, so that they keep the water in. The problem then, of course, will be waterlogging! There are, however, some tomatoes (they're cherry ones) on these plants.


And finally, the thing that actually came in from the garden today. It's tempting to make this a massive photo, but I'll resist. Unfortunately, these have actually grown a little too much. They're supposed to be courgettes, but have rather outgrown the tubs and are more marrowish. There were two like this, so we've kept one and given the other away. There's also a more normal size one, which we'll have at the weekend... Will also probably get some carrots up and maybe spuds and parsnips... Who knows!

In other news (roundup). Beans are doing much (well, it's in the singular, not plural!). PSB sown earlier is ok, but nothing impressive. Marigolds wilted in kitchen but not dead. Peppers in kitchen dead. Agapanthus growing. Pansies still going despite being uprooted (trying to find more seeds!) Haven't checked lavender. Plums beginning to redden slightly. (Still a way off though). Apples all doing well. Most roses over now. Loads of weeding to be done. Other rhubarb fine.
Will probably do a flower update tomorrow (or soon, anyway.)