From now on I shall be including any gardening blog posts on http://jansespaceonblogger.blogspot.com/

Things to Remember

There are some things I need to remember for next year, in fact I'd better write them down in my notebook:-

- The long, thin pepper plants are too delicate for our wind and are receiving a battering, whereas the bell pepper, the chilli and the scotch bonnet plants are much sturdier beasts and don't even really need staking, although I have.

- Cauliflowers are cold climate veg and I shall probably not bother with them in the future, well apart from the seedlings that already growing... We can buy lovely coliflors on the market!

- Ditto with the turnips. In my enthusiasm I tried to grow them in this weather and have failed. So maybe one more try in the winter.

- The onions are abysmal. They should be fat and being eaten now and, although we are eating them, we need to use three onions in place of one! Spring oniolns are doing well and getting large.

- The butternut squash plants look very healthy and are flowering... but not fruiting. Is this because I planted seed from a bought squash?

- The beetroot aren't as large as last year, even though they're getting more water. Also about a quarter of them have a small white grub inside the globe. Anyone else had this?

Figs

I've sorted the cauliflower problem by digging the affected ones up! There are lots that haven';t formed flowers yet so maybe they'll be ok.

At last the figs are growing... so obviously the pruning I did in the autumn didn't prevent them from fruiting this year!

Cauliflower Problem!

I've put this as a seperate post so that it doesn't get lost amongst the other photos. Does anyone know what the matter is with most of our cauliflowers? The flowers are brown, more or less from the word go I think, and they don't look right. I'm sure I've not sprayed them with anything other than soapy water, so it's a mystery. Am off to see if I can find anything online!

EDIT: Have had a look at lots of online info, and it sounds as if my poor caulis have got sunburn! I should have tied the leaves over the heads, but I didn't because I tried it last year and the wind untied the string! But I'll tie the rest of them up later because I may be able to save some of them from damage. The curds aren't soggy so don't have rot.

Also, one of the other caulis has little leves coming up through the curd and apparently this can be caused by excessive heat... which we have had!

Conclusion - probably ought to just grow them in the winter, as a caulis optimum growing temp is 63F.

I took these two pics yesterday - the grapes getting bigger under their netting, and one of the four pots of basil. It's gorgeous herb, I've never used it fresh before.

While I was down on the veg patch today I took some photos, although I know it was only last week that I posted some....but get them while you can as I usually forget to take the camera with me!

The third lot of broad beans are growing well, although the ones I've sown this year haven't been nearly as productive as the autumn sown batch and next year I'll sow more in the autumn. The french beans are doing alright, although I wonder whether they'd be better without the ants nests in the bed! The pole beans up near the house are coming along nicely. I just love the colour and it's a great shame that they turn green when cooked! Carrots, which should have been thinned but weren't. And the brussels are appearing. It's so exciting!

Peppers, although I can't remember which ones, and two of the three varieties of tomatoes that we're growing.
The butternut squash has just begun flowering, so Steve's looking forward to making some soup! It was lovely and cool this morning, in stark contrast to the weather recently, so I spent a happy if exhausting three hours with the veggies today, digging, weeding and sowing more radishes and lettuces and feel as though I've got something done!

The First Courgette!

It's only about 6 in long but, because it's so fat it looks more like a marrow in the photo!

More Photos

All the fig bushes are growing well, but there's no sign of any fruit yet and I've been wondering if it's because I pruned them very hard at the end of last summer. Time will tell.

The spring onions are the only members of the onion family to be doing at all well! Why, I haven't a clue.

The first of the french beans although there aren't quite enough for a meal yet.

One end of the legumes bed, i.e. next year's brassica bed (I think, but must double check), which I've been getting ready for some cabbage and cauliflower seedlings that are ready for transplanting.

Vegetables in the Wind...so apologies for the blurriness.

Squash and melon,

Courgette and the first of the "proper" peas,

Tomatoes and peppers,

Radishes and bedraggled but perfectly ok beetroot,

Parsnips and brussell sprouts,

and cauliflowers. The photo of the cabbages seems to have got lost!

This morning's Fruit Trees

Blossom on the pomegranite,

but we've not had fruit in the three years we've been here!

We've had about 10 apricots so far

and, although there are only 3 left,

they've been very nice. I don't know

what the brown blemish is on the

fruit, but it's only on the surface.

The grapes seem to be doing well, and

will get all the washing-up water now

that the apricots' needs are not so great!

Agricultural Water Progress

We are hoping that, in the fullness of time, we will have agri-water piped to our land and were excited last summer when we saw that work had begun on the reservoir that will serve this area. The reservoir is now more or less finished, although not filled yet, and now there's been a further development... a path of red sprayed pegs running in a more or less straight line from the res to... well, we're not sure where to, but we think it may be the main pipeline. There's also the beginning of a line of blue pegs branching off the red line. Hmm, a bit of a mystery, but we hope we're right in our assumptions. Of course there's also the question as to why we haven't had a second letter, askin for the deposit monies. We hope this doesn't mean that we're not getting the water!

Runner/Pole Beans

They're a mixture of English runner beans and Spanish pole beans and the first flowers have appeared. I tried them last year, but the whole lot blew over in spite of being what I thought was very securely staked, so this year they're behind the cabin out of the prevailing winds. If you're wondering why the strings go sideways, it's so that they miss the boiler outlet!

Too Hot for Much

I've not being doing much on the veg plot because we've had to go out for the last few mornings and, by the time we get back, it's too hot to do anything. But this morning I walked Jasper at 9 am and managed to get down to the field by 10 am, there was quite a breeze to cool me down, and I managed to get a bit of hoeing done thank goodness.

I picked some broad beans, the very last of the mangetouts (and they've definitely finished now), some carrots and a couple of small onions that the hoe had got up by mistake! The onions should be big by now and ready for eating but ours aren't, as I've mentioned before, and we're sure that it's because we need to add a lot of compost etc. When we bought the house the field was empty and so it's probably been a long time since any organic matter was applied...if ever!

Mixed Feelings

The ploughed field is ours, with the vegetable patch at the left-hand side, and I took this picture this morning on the way back from walking Jasper. It's nice sometimes to have an over-all view of my work!

I've got mixed feelings about the veg area though. On the one hand I enjoy doing the work, and would do even if nothing at all grew. Some veg seem to do well - peas, beans, tomatoes, courgettes and the swiss chard. I don't know yet about the peppers and chillis as they're not very big at the moment and still inside their pop bottles. The radishes, beetroot and carrots did well last year but don't seem to be doing quite so well this year, goodness knows why, and as for the onions... I haven't a clue what's going on there as they seem to have completely stopped doing anything, although they're not fully grown! The spring onions though, seem to be ok.

The other thing is that it's a bit of a trek, down five terraces, to get to the veggies and, if I forget to take something that I need down with me... well it's ten times worse coming back up! Ideally it would be absolutely great to have the veg patch near to the house, but that's just not possible so I'll just have to keep on remembering that going up and down is helping me to keep fit!

First Beans

We ate the first of our broad beans tonight, and they were delicious!

No Need To Water Tonight...

...as we had a storm this morning, and it's just begun to pour again!

Some Blossoms

Today, in the garden around the house,

blossom on the pomegranite,

the olives,
and the grapevine.

We probably won't get any pomegranites

as they will be blown off.

There will be plenty of olives -

they're so hardy.

The grapes will survive if the mice and

birds don't get under the netting!

I've discovered that the mangetout peas haven't finished, not quite, as there were enough this morning for today's meal. Good job I didn't get round to pulling them all up. The "ordinary" peas are growing well, although it'll be a couple of weeks before they're cropping.

I removed the pop bottles from some of the tomatoes as they've reached the top of the bottle, and used them on some of the pepper seedlings instead.

And the first of the broad beans are almost ready for picking.

This morning I also sowed another row of carrots, and transplanted some of the cabbage seedlings........although it was far too hot for that really.

No Need To Water...

...because we've had quite a lot of rain over the last 24 hours. We were woken by the noise of a heavy downpour in the night, which continued for some time, and then this afternoon the clouds began to gather and we had a thunderstorm (which sent the dog behind the armchair!) and had a fair amount of rain. So that means that I haven't had to water the vegetables today.

Edit:-

Having gone down today to get peas for dinner and found that there were only just enough for the two of us....... the rest of the mangetout plants need to come up as they've definitely finished!

Just a Quick Post

Just a quick post to note what I've been up to, although I haven't spent nearly as much time down on the veggies as I would have liked to.

I've now planted out all the tomato, pepper, chilli, courgette, melon and squash seedlings that were in the cold frame, although we were a bit short of plastic bottles to protect against the wind so many of the plants will have to do without. Putting bottles over the seedlings definitely helps them get a start, but the only trouble is that I have to jam the bottles so far into the soil to prevent them being blown away, that they're not very easy to remove (without disturbing the young plants) when the time's right.

Yesterday I pulled up some of the mangetout peas that had more or less come to the end of their useful life... and anyway I want the space to put in some more dwarf french beans!

Today we haven't got to go out anywhere at all, just for a change, and so I'm hoping to get most of the garden jobs done, including sowing more beetroot, broad bean, carrot and radish seeds, and transplanting the cabbage seedlings.

A Few Pics

It's about time that I posted some photos from the veggie patch so, from the top left...

- cauliflowers with radishes inbetween

- brussel sprouts

- cabbage and cauli seedlings

- potatoes after hoeing up

And yes, we've had peas for tea again!

Still Too Many Peas

The mangetout peas are still producing, and how! In spite of giving quite a lot away to friends in the village (and getting a box of cherries in return from one of them), and eating peas every day (!), we are still inundated. Oh well, I shouldn't complain I suppose, but I'll know not to plant quite so many next year!

As usual, at the end of Jasper's walk, we cut back home over the field to have a quick look at the veggies. Most of what you see in the picture above are potatoes...
... and these two rows are ready for hoeing up. Steve can't understand why these rows, on a bed that I dug as deeply as was necessary to get most of the weeds out... in other words quite deeply, are doing a little bit better than the ones we planted on ground that was only rotivated. I know the answer, and my back does too!
The mangetout peas are going mad. We've got too many and our freezer is only large enough for a box of fish fingers and not much more, so freezing them is out, although I did make some lovely pea soup the other day. Steve's convinced that someone comes along in the night and sticks more pods on the plants!

What's This?

Does anyone know what this is? We've got quite a few and they thrust themselves up through the soil and then open up into quite insignificant flowers. Most peculiar.

After getting back from the UK on Friday I was pleased to see that the mixture of pole and runner beans have appeared from the soil! I've planted them in a specially prepared patch round the back of the Cabin, so that they'll be out of the strong westerly winds that we often have, and also out of the sun after about 11am.

I spent more or less all day yesterday down on the veg patches, weeding, and transplanting some seedlings that had grown large enough.

Although we've put irrigation pipe down the beds, on a timer and fed from a cube up by the garage, I have been worrying about the watering situation for a few weeks now. Even though we were dispensing about 500 litres of water to the veggies three times a week (late at night to minimise evaporation), the water seemed to go nowhere. Beetroot, radish and chard have been going to seed, and I assume this is due to a lack of water... in fact I pulled the worst 4 chard plants up yesterday and the soil around their roots was very dry, so that says it all really. So, for the moment, we have gone back to using a hosepipe and I used 500 litres yesterday and gave most of the veggies a good soaking! I don't understand it really... why does a hosepipe deliver it better than slow-drip nozzles that are designed for the job? Even so, we won't be able to keep up the watering at this rate of use as it's quite difficult to get hold of the tokens that we need to feed into the machine at the village well, but I don't think we'll need to use 500 lites at a time from now on. Well I hope not anyway!

Hardly Done a Thing...

...in the garden this week as we've been too busy. BUT today the daffodils that I bought just before Christmas in Leroy Merlins (a bit old and squashed in their bag) have flowered today!

The vine that grows up the pillar of the terrace is doing well, and the lavender just keeps on going! Sorry about the photos, but the wind would not stop blowing!

Visitors

With having Mum and John here this week not much has been done on the vegetable garden, but I've begun to collect photos of the wild flowers around us, in order to look them up on the internet and assign a name to them at some later date. Ha! I hear you say, but I will... in good time. Here are a few of them:-

The cappuchino pea flowers are so beautiful...

...and there were enough today for all four of us!Just a quick one of the broad beans.

They're coming along nicely, and no sign of blackfly.

We also sowed some more beetroot seeds today.

Tatties!

Yes, the potatoes are all through now (and about time too), so at least we know where we can't walk on the fruit terrace!

This afternoon I scattered some Morning Glory seeds given by a friend, and have put them at the base of the vine and the rose on the sun terrace. They should like it there. They also gave us some frilly lettuce plants and two red cabbage seedlings, so they were all planted as well, plus I put as many seedlings out of the cold frame into the ground as I could, spring onions, melons, cucumbers and courgettes, although those last three are all protected by pop bottles! I also sowed more cabbage and cauliflower seeds.

Dun It!

Yep, I dun it... the weedkillering that is, so now I've just got to wait for them to actually DIE!

Last night we had our first proper (small) handful of cappuchino peas which went into a rice dish I was making up as I went along, as did a few swiss chard leaves and stalks. The chard just seems to go on and on... we've been eating these plants since about August, having grown them from some UK seed, and I assumed that they would have got tired by now, but no.

Yesterday I lifted the fleece that's protecting the brassica bed, in order to sow some seeds, and am very proud of the baby caulis and sprouts that are under there. Hopefully it'll stop the cabbage whites getting in and will also conserve moisture a little, although it is a bit of a nuiscance to have to move all the stones holding the fleece down!

A Day of Gardening

A gorgeous day today and it started out with very little wind... very unusually... and with rain expected tomorrow (unless things have changed) we've had a hard days work down on the veg garden.

We've sown lots more seeds in order to keep a continuation of vegetables coming (broad beans, dwarf beans, radishes, parsnips, peas and lettuce), and I've done loads of weeding of the paths inbetween the veg beds. I am definitely going to do the paths with weedkiller so that I can hopefully get rid of a very determined perrenial weed, although I don't know what it's called. But I need a very calm day for weedkillering and we don't often have those. This morning would have been good, but we'd already planned to work down there so that was out, and so I pulled the easy-to-pull sort of weeds out so that they don't seed and make things worse. A very good day at the office, as my hubby says!

Rain 2

After another night of rain both of our cisternas are FULL!

Veggies

I walked down the terraces to the vegetable beds this afternoon just to check that all was well, and it was. Some of the potatoes have come up, the chard is growing like crazy (we must eat some) and the young brussels and caulis are growing well. I've covered the brassica bed with some of that gardening fleece to try and stop the butterflies and the rabbits from getting to them!

When we walked Jasper I found more different wild flowers, so I came back yet again with an armful and planted them either side of the garage path.

Just a Quick One...

... so I can post some photos.

The first is one of the two small hazel trees which I took from the bottom of one of our neighbour's trees. Both of them have taken well.

The second photo shows our vegetable beds with the irrigation pipes in place, although we've hardly had to use them yet because it's been raining!

And the last photo is of one of our fig trees. I say trees, but actually they're all more like bushes now since I severely pruned them last autumn, shortening many of the branches and taking all the old wood out of the centre. I wondered whether we'd get much fruit this year after that, but perhaps we will.

Wet Walk

When I took Jasper for his walk this afternoon it was still raining, although not quite so heavily as it had been. We just walked along the lane which runs along the ridge because I didn't fancy sliding down the tracks off to the sides with all the mud that's about!

It can't have been longer than a week ago that Steve and I walked along here gathering wild flower plants to put in the scrub terrace garden, but I noticed today that there were several little plants that had since come into flower that we hadn't noticed previously... so I carefully pulled them up. The soil was so wet that they came away very easily and, as soon as I got back home, I planted them at the sides of the path to the garage. It's going to look very beautiful there next year.

We've Got a Rabbit

Well, I'm assuming we have... as I photographed these irises and then noticed the rabbit hole behind them!

Some Blooms From Yesterday

Just a few flowers that I snapped yesterday... I was trying to photograph a bee, which proved very difficult, but I managed it in the end!

****************************

Today we've bought eight more apple trees, two each of four different varieties, and got them planted at the far side of the field. It's not the most ideal time of year to be planting young trees we know, but the ground is very wet, more rain is forecast, and they are planted in the part of the field that retains the moisture longest. In fact if it wouldn't be an even longer walk to pick a cabbage for tea, the vegetable beds would be better sited down there!

Rabbits I Reckon!

I went down to the veg beds this afternoon to persevere with weeding the onions, even though the ground is still (not surprisingly) really sticky and claggy, and found that two of our big cabbages had been nibbled! There were no footprints, so it's not wild boar, and the only other animal I could think of who would be likely to eat cabbage were rabbits... but there's not a lot we can do about it.

Organised Scrub!

This is the path on the first terrace down that leads to the garage/workshop and, over the last couple of weeks, I've been doing a bit of tidying of the plants here as the rough, tough grass (don't know what it's called) was taking over and smothering everything else. It's all been removed (although I'm sure it'll make an appearance again as the roots are impossible to get out) and we've transplanted some wild flowers growing elsewhere and hope that they'll take while the soil is still nice and damp.
In the meantime the gorse has come into flower and looks a treat, although the thorns are really nasty!

The soil on this terrace is very poor, but of course it suits these plants and I'm not going to make any effort to improve it - they survive or die!

Weeding in the Rain

Well, for an hour anyway this morning, until the rain got a little too heavy! For some reason (?) part of the onion rows never got weeded since we put them in at the back end of last year, so they're a little "overgrown" shall we say and desperately need doing. I was all set to do it all this morning, but I'll see what the weather's like tomorrow. But the rain's great and just what we need!

There's Blossom on the Fruit Trees

These are the fruit trees we bought and planted in the late autumn last year. Beautiful aren't they!

Bees

This afternoon, for hours, the pots in the cold frame were buzzing with loads of bees... honey bees I think. I guess they were after the moisture in the compost.

Turnip Trouble

I've never grown turnips before and so don't know what they're supposed to look like....... but presumably not tall, spindly and sporting a few yellow flowers! I think they've bolted, probably due to lack of water which doesn't really surprise me. I'll have to sow some more.

Aaarrgh, Irrigation Pipes!

Steve was busy with the reassembly of the tractor this afternoon so, having walked Jasper, I thought I'd go down and put some Ts and taps in the right places on the central pipe ready for the pipes that'll go down the length of the veg beds to be attached........ does that make sense? Probably not, I'll have to take a photo.

We had discovered the other day that to get the Ts and taps into the pipe was going to be a very tight fit, so I took a thermos flask of boiling water down to the field with me, thinking that I could warm the end of the pipe and then quickly shove the fitting into it before it cooled off. I hadn't thought that the pipe would get so hot that I couldn't hold it very tightly.... DOH! A steep back up to get my gloves and then try again.

It didn't work. Although I could ram the fitting so far into the pipe, I just hadn't got the strength to push the last bit in. So that was the end of that job for the moment!

Abandoning the pipes, I did a bit of weeding (nearly done it now, well for the moment), so that I'd at least got something useful done.

These calendula are beautiful. I have to admit that I did buy it, but I've also sown a packet of seeds so hopefully there will soon be lots!

It's Hot!

We've been and bought pipe etc. for irrigating the veg beds this morning, although I don't suppose it'll get done until next week. We've got to get some more water before then anyway! I didn't spend long on the field this morning, it was too warm, but I finished tying the cappuchino peas into the sticks as they're really growing well now:- And YES, the first of the broad beans is coming through!

I had a look at the fruit trees on my way down to the field and noticed some lovely fat buds on the two pear trees:-

Potatoes Planted!

That's what we've been doing this morning, planting the rest of the potatoes. So we've now planted 25kg reds (Red Pontiac) and 10kg white salad type (Spunta). We haven't a clue if it will be enough, but we'll find out later in the year!

While We've Been Away

We've been in England for a week and a half, so what's been happening in the garden? For a start, quite a few flowers around the house!

See the miniture daffodils? Amazing, so dainty, and I'd pulled them up before I'd even realised that's what they were...doh! I thought they were weeds. Never mind, I've since found some more so I'll let them alone!

Down to the vegetable beds on the field, and the mange-tout peas have grown a lot and I need to tie them in to the sticks or they'll all tangle in the wind. Everything else seems to be growing, but they're all in need of water...

Irrigation is one of the things that's on our list for the next week or so as, at the moment, all we have is a hosepipe going down to the field from a cube that's fed from the washing machine waste water. It's just not enough and, if we're not to waste all the hard work that I've put into these six new beds, we need to:-


- keep the cube topped up with water as we don't really do enough washing produce sufficient grey water
- buy some irrigation pipe and lay it on the veg beds
- incorporate the timer that we brought back with us from the UK so that the watering is automatic.


The rest of the seed potatoes are ready for planting, so that's tomorrows job.


AND......... we bought a rotivator today! I don't want to use it on the veg beds until I've got on top of the perennial weeds as I imagine that they just chop all the weeds up and then each little bit of root will start to grow and the problem will be worse! But, for potato planting in the rest of the field, it will be a boon!

Done Digging...

...well, very nearly. I was struggling to finish the bed designated for potatoes today and had started to just turn the whole thing over roughly and then, when we get back from the UK, de-stone and weed it properly. I'd had enough after an hour and took Jasper for his walk and, when I got back, Steve had finished the preliminary turning over for me. Bless him!

Five and a Half Beds Done

Am almost ecstatic now as I'm very nearly at the end of the hard-manual-work for this year, and hopefully the digging won't be nearly so hard next year. I'm halfway along the potato bed, and have two more days to finish it before we go to the UK for an eleven day visit... will I get it done? I hope so because, if we don't get any rain, by the time we come back the soil will be getting pretty hard. Here are photos of the beds that I've finished:-

There's a lot of bare soil at the moment, but the cold frame's full!

Jasper came with me as usual. He get's a bit bored after about an hour, but stays because he knows I'll give him a biscuit when we eventually go back up to the house! He'd only be asleep in his bed otherwise anyway.

Below is our fruit terrace with the new young trees... apples, pears, nectarine, peach and hazel... although there are now two rows of potatoes down the middle that Steve planted yesterday. We had a look and some of them were ready.

Back to Seperate Blogs

Having decided that I don't like this blog merged with http://jansespaceonblogger.blogspot.com/ this blog is hereby resurrected! And I'll try to stop messing about with them now!

Blogs Merged and Amalgamated

I have now taken the plunge and exported this gardening blog into http://jansespaceonblogger.blogspot.com/ so I hope none of you will mind. I'm hoping it will make my life easier and mean that I won't spend so much time on the computer while attending to two blogs, and so now all the posts and comments on this blog are on JansEspaceOnBlogger. I may even incorporate the Basic Finca blog at some stage, although I'm still trying to persuade Steve to take on the job of writing that one, but he doesn't seem very keen at the moment.

Funny Blog I Suppose

I was thinking today that I've given myself a really hard job, writing three blogs and doing the Blipfoto thing. But not only that, it means that if a reader is only interested in the gardening stuff, then they're not going to get much of a read from me, since the gardening is only a part of my life and not the whole, and I may well go a few days with no gardening.

I tend to concentrate my efforts on the main blog, the one about daily life, and if I haven't done anything, or not much, down on the veg plot then it won't get a mention. I mean, how many posts can I write about weeding?????

My blog about the more technical aspects of living en campo is also one that I don't post to very regularly, mainly because I honestly don't know, or if he tells me I don't understand, what on earth Steve gets up to in that room of his in the garage!

Apparently I could amalgamate all the three Google blogs into one, with the aid of something that I've read about somewhere on Blogger, but can't find now. It would maybe be the answer though......