August 4th

A busy week at Coombe cottages!

The allottment bed 

It's  out with the browning feverfew, harvested onions, garlic, peas and potatoes and in with the baby leeks and some winter greens (Chinese cabbage and pak choi), the cosmos and dahlias are taking over a bit in terms of colour and height is now dominated by lots of towers of climbing pumpkins and squashes.

The flower beds

They are spilling over with cat nip, lavender and seeded geraniums and really need tidying but there is still color with the echinops, Michaelmas daisies and cosmos...

The conservatory and Mollytunnel

The cucumber plants have been hugely prolific with fruits a really wonderful flavour, the peppers and chillis had a huge knock back with white fly then a burn like reaction to ecover washing up liquid but are slowly coming back, the geranium are still flowering away, and the tomatoes are coming on despite their dislike of the white polythene of the sheep tunnel. 

The sun bed 

It just keeps going - sunflowers and dahlias out, antirhinnums, poppies, love in the mist,  statice, alliums, rudbeckias, teasels all continuing.

Stars of the week have to be the gladioli still - more colours - I didn't know gladioli could be like this! 

Funny fact of the week about gladioli: The singer Morrissey is known to dance with gladioli, hanging from his back pocket or in his hands, especially during the era of The Smiths.This trait of his was made known in the music video for "This Charming Man", where he swung a bunch of yellow gladioli while singing.

Week 10 in the South West

The Orchard

It's been a happy and encouraging week at the orchard with soft fruit bushes bending with delicious produce ... loganberries, blueberries and wonderful sweet plump cultivated blackberries. The blackberries are a revaluation, no tartness just a bomb of sweet juice.

I must mention the apricots which look so golden and gorgeous. I stewed a couple that fell and they were brill. How amazing to be able to grow edible apricots. The tree is only in its second year.

All the veg is growing a treat and the nets are discouraging the pigeons. So far the deer are sparing our beans and beetroot, but we have to be vigilant.

The flower patch is gradually filling up and I have given away lots of bunches this week... Snap dragons, gazanias, gyp (saved from the rabbits with fleece... such a fab cutting flower), cornflowers, Veronica.

The Larkspur has failed but I must try again next year as it is great for cutting.

The rubekia is growing sturdily with a promise of golden blooms in August through to frost, if the orchard creatures spare them.

Solomon's seal is being munged a bit, but going strong.

The Garden

Successes! 

A left for a conference in Cambridge on the 9th with a box full of garden produce for T and H: the first beautiful green cucumber, the umpteenth bouquet of sweet peas, a good dose of broad beans, a bunch of herbs, the first three baby beetroots, and the second picking of courgettes, two punnets of soft fruit (red gooseberries and redcurrants) all on a bed of Coombe Cottage hay!

So, the big story of the last two weeks is the hay! It was cut by a neighbour on 29th June, turned daily until July 3rd and put into bales on that day ahead of a promised thunderstorm (which never came...).

Alliums finally showing their colours:

Beautiful persian buttercups (definitely getting more next year - thank you Father Christmas):

The rose tree over, mulberries coming on, sunflowers growing, a huge patch of old raised bed rescued from the weeds and glorious sunshine for reading outside. 

Interesting fact of the week:

Everyone knows the phrase of 'make hay while the sun shines!' Great aphorism about taking opportunities whilst you can (which we certainly managed with the field - checking the forecast about six times a day became very addictive). 

This proverb is first recorded in John Heywood's A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, 1546:

Whan the sunne shinth make hay. Whiche is to say.

Take time whan time cometh, lest time steale away.

Many proverbs exist in other languages, but this one doesn't and it's a reasonable surmise that the phrase is of English Tudor origin.

Week 6 in the gardens

It's been a beautiful sunny week leading up to the longest day so the gardens are all preparing for productivity! The CC household are contemplating stopping the veg box order for the summer with the prospect of spicy salad leaves, chard and spinach, sugar snap peas and potatoes all begin being harvested in the next week.

The Coombe cottage garden 'allotment' triangle has switched from blues and purples and pinks to a lovely dapled pattern of green and tiny white flowered towers of peas, feverfew and foliage.

Best plants of the week have been 

1. The mixed sweet peas ( sown 18 January inside - Frangatissima, Turquoise lagoon and Purple Pimpernel as well as a few unannmed saved sed from 2014) We started picking this week, and the scent is fantastic. We are planning to give a bunch away every other day.

2. The night stocks  ( sewn 1 March and planted out 26 April)  are beginning to bloom - we'd thought they would be white but have come through beautifully pink, white and purple. We can't bear to pick them yet!

3. The bright star-white flowers of love in-the-mist - the contrast between the green frondy foliage and the white is even better than the traditional blue.

4. The cutting patch is coming along nicely with the alliums finally beginning to burst at the front and the sunflowers at the back starting the spurt to the sky phase of their lives. The technique of planting in a trench which you then earth up to give more support seems to be working alongside the new support canes and wires. 

Casualties have been few this week - black flies are continuing to really plague the beans, and are now even spreading through the feverfew and bolted spinach. We are continuing to knock them off with a hose. We really need to plant earlier in the year. 

And are those alliums going to burst? They've been at the point of flowering for nearly 6 weeks! 

The orchard allottment

S returned from her French meanderings to a mega-weeding week and now the cutting patch is coming along well. There look to be lots of lovely self sewn flowers from last year coming through. The summer palace was celebrated by book group with a balmy summer evening without any insects swarming! 

Best plants are those amazing carrots again- we swear they've put on 6 inches in a week, 

the bright orange of the calendula, and the fantastically fruitful loganberries and blueberries.

Difficulties are with the gypsophilia-n-bean-eating rabbits. However s and r are finding the organic repellant they applied before going (liquid fence) may be working after all our doubts. 

Fact of the week: For centuries, carrots have been connected with health benefits. In the Middle Ages, carrots were believed to cure anything from sexually transmitted diseases to snakebites. Carrots became associated with vision, particularly night vision, during World War II. The British Royal Air Force published a story that said skilled fighter pilot John "Cats' Eyes" Cunningham could thank a steady diet of carrots for his night vision flying prowess. In response to the story, many British people began to grow and eat more carrots. They wanted to improve their vision so that they could see better during the compulsory blackouts that were common during World War II. Although Cats' Eyes' carrot eating made for a great story, it was, in fact, propaganda put out to conceal the fact that the Royal Air Force's was actually using radar to locate Luftwaffe bombers during the night.

The flower project week 3

The Garden:

What a wonderful week. The garden has just exploded with spires of aquilegia,

bright two-toned colours of valerian in the walls around the little pond at the front of the house,

the allium heads sprouting colour, 

and the yellow-white foxgloves are beginning to flower today.

The Cutting Patch

Highlights of the week:
1. Planting out the 19 dahlias -most are in the cutting patch, with an overflow in the allottment  triangle and side bed and a few in some great pots. The cutting patch is now absolutely full to the brim with possibilities...

2. The beautiful buttercups in the field. Somehow the sheep have grazed the pasture in an odd way - we have a wonderful sweep of yellow in the third of the field nearest the house and the remainder is a waft of grass heads.

3. The conservatory's heat is bringing on the peppers and squashy-marrow things, which are waiting to be planted in holes in the forget-me-nots.

The Allotment

Casualties - no really major ones on things planted this week. The sunflowers and gladioli are slightly munged by slugs and my saved runner seed has had really poor germination. Otherwise the night patrol to remove snails and slugs and the constant picking off of aphids from the peppers and broad beans is keeping everything in an equilibrium. Coffee grounds don't seem to work at all on slugs.

Disaster - M diagnosed systemic fireblight (Erwinia amylovora) in Joes apple tree. We were very shocked as the 'treatment' was to remove it and burn it immediately as it is likely to infect our Bramley. Let's hope we got it in time.

S's orchard highlights:

Growth has been generally a little slow with little rain this week, and germination has also been poor. Larkspur has been particularly patchy but the gypsophilia  looks good and is a wonderful addition to bouquets with its frothy whiteness and filling out with fluff. 

The most exciting event of the week - the giant bee swarm! The noise was obvious first - a low pitched continuous and dense hum and then a menacing black cloud. S and her friend ran for it! P

Highlights: 

1. The iris display has  continued but the last bunch was cut today. The sweet Williams have taken their place  in the flowering line and are about to burst into pink and white and red. It's their second year and although they are not meant to be quite as good second time around these ones look promising. 

2. The carrots in the bin are coming on great - we're not sure of the variety but they are sed given by P next door who has open sown them in defiance of the badgers. It will be an interesting race to see who  gets the carrots first in each plot.

3. During the extensions on Church road S and R transferred a wheelbarrow full of daylillies (Hemerocallis) and Solomon's seal (Polygonatum)  in a bed on the side of the allottment - all looks very promising 

4. There is masses of white loganberry blossom with lots of the bees - yummy there will be a great crop if we can protect them from the birds. 

Casualties :

This is the first year of the precious Willam pear and it had 100 tiny fingers of pears formed BUT all had tiny little holes in leading to and empty nest of blackness. Some of the pears had the nests full of tiny little white maggots - galls of the pear midge (Contarinia pyrivora) . We've taken all of the little pears off and disposed of them wel away form the tree to halt the cycle. 

Aphids (aphodadidae) have attacked one of the young apple trees so it is covered in ants milking the aphid infestation - soapy water isn't really doing the trick. S and R plan to reduce the infestation next year by growing  Morning Glory and alliunms/onions near by, neem oil sprays or thyme/rosemary/peppermint/clove oils 

Interesting story of the week:

Solomon's Seal is named for King Solomon. The Hebrew God gave him great wisdom, and he had a special seal to help him in magic without demons coming to him. Legend has it that he placed this seal on this plant when he recognised its great value. Apparently you can see the seal on the rootstock in the circular scars left by the stem after it dies back!