Sunday 16 August 2015

16 August in Coombe cottages garden


Best flowers - gladioli! They are fantastic still and nothing like the gaudy single toned things we think of. They are butterfly faced patterned in pink, orange and gold. A couple bent and snapped so we just HAD to then pick them and give them to Tim and Alyson who have so very generously given us Poppet, an adorable 7 week old black and white kitten who is drawing us away from the garden...


Best fruit - the mulberries are dropping so the nets have gone down this week. As they ripen they become semi-liquid  and then drop. As the tree is as high as the house there is no way we can attempt to pick - the only picking technique we know is to wear waterproofs and shake the free then pick off the ground.. So we wait for them to drop and 'pick the nets' morning and night, filling the freezer, giving them away and eating them at every meal. They have to be used within 8 hours of picking or they go really very mouldy so a lot do reach the compost heap..

Best vegetables - not a great summer for us overall but the 2 cucumber plants in the conservatory have produced 6 huge fruit already and are keeping going. Wonderful flavour. Courgettes a-coming too!



Unwanted guests - do we have Spanish slugs? We are getting a small child's seaside bucket of slugs every time we pick at night. There seem to be a huge crop of large orangey 8cm ish ones around - the grass is littered with them disgustingly, as well as the normal slightly stripey 2 cm ish ones, the big black squat ones and the tiny white ones. Apparently Spanish slugs are bigger than our usual ones so maybe they have reached Winscombe...We think we will have to do a slug identification course. Control  is by physical removal to a salty bucket or by our resident toads. The toads seem in good heart so were not sure what's going on this year but the dahlias, winter salad greens and squashes are all getting quite a lot of damage. The mizuna has completely disappeared! 

Mulberry folklorePyramus and Thisbe, the ill-fated lovers of Roman mythology, are said to have met their tragic deaths near a white mulberry tree. The mulberry tree, being sprinkled with their blood, bore red fruit forever after.


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