Mid September at the orchard

Over at the Orchard

So, S is away for the whole of September (*sobs*), so A and E went round to take a sneaky peak at the Orchard one morning in the fog. We thought the fog would make for some beautiful artistic photos, but it didn't really work so well.

Autumn is really set in! Everything is going over ready for planting out next Spring... Still, there were treasures to be found.

I counted 34 butternut squashes waiting to be picked! That is an amazing number.

Rudbekia still looking gorgeous in all their autumn glory colours.

Still some runner beans! (A didn't manage this year). Cooked up: there's nothing like homegrown. Also took a few sweetcorn cobs - ones past their best for AJ's chickens and a couple for A and J at 2CC.

Bright blue of the cornflowers against the brown of flowers going over. (Sorry it's out of focus!)

The last gladioli! Glorious colours to mark the start of autumn.

So, a little look at the goings on. S and R - hope you're having a great time away, thinking of you here.

Autumn approaching at the Orchard

The flower patch is losing its colour with the cornflowers almost over and the snap dragons looking sad. They have had a second flush in previous years but just one spike per plant this year. Cosmos still producing blooms and the scabious a late addition.

The last gladioli now picked, they have been fantastic. 

Zinnias have been a great success as well.

The stars of the patch are the reliable Rudbekia which are performing magnificently and profusely, providing daily bunches.

We have had the first sweet corn depriving the Badgers of their favourite food. They are getting revenge with the parsnips.

daily raspberries and the wonderful blackberries, so unlike brambles.

The magic beans never give up with bags full every day.

Feeling sad that we are off next week leaving the orchard in full swing but it's been a very good growing year, and fun to record it

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 folklore: Pyramus 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.

Early August in the Garden

Ten good things about the garden today:

1. Sunshine for the first time in what feels like aaaages. The flowerbed looked luminescent in the dusk. Rudbekia turning from brown to orange.

2. The dahlias are coming out more and more - every day a new one seems to split out if its bud.

3. The sweet peas are still grow-grow-growing!

4. Cutting back the valerian seems to be making them flower even more.

5. The pumpkin towers seem to be working - lots of pumpkins and squashes setting, as well as glorious veg spaghetti. Considering butternut squash for next year...

6. Two new remaindered plants bought by A from Sandra's world - Señorita Blanca and Señorita Rosilitta. (£2 each!) Now out in the garage bed.

7. Glorious cucumbers from the conservatory - on the fourth one already, one huge one on the plant, two medium ones and still more setting!

8. Five tomatoes from the tomato plants! (Edited to add: Six! I got it wrong!)

9. Beautiful bunch of flowers for T's birthday - love-in-a-mist, cosmos, poppies, white antirhinnums, Michaelmas daisies, mint and one piece of clarkia.

10. The Bramleys are all rosy on their tops ready for a bumper autumn harvest.

Interesting facts about cucumbers:

These are apparently all alternative uses for cucumbers... Believe as you wish!

• Rub cucumber skin on a fogged about post-shower mirror and it will disappear without smears
• 'Cool as a cucumber' was coined because it actually cools the blood and, applied topically, will reduced facial swelling, hence the use in DIY kits.
• Cucumbers are a good substitute for chewing gum: the phytochemicals will kill bacteria that cause bad breath.
• The steam from a boiled cucumber, when breathed in, is a destresser.
• Waxy skin can be used to erase mistakes when made in pen.
• Cucumbers are a better pick-me-up than energy drinks due to the preponderance of B vitamins and carbohydrates.
• Use cucumber slices in a tin to repel pests from your garden. (if only it were that simple...)
• Cucumbers are a good cure for a hangover.
• Use cucumber peel instead of shoe polish.
• A 'green' way to clean sinks etc: rub a cucumber slice on dirty surfaces to remove years of tarnish and bring back the shine.

See if any of these work? Not sure I'll bother...

E x

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.

Sunny Sunday at The Orchard

The Orchard enjoyed the deluge last weekend and when we returned from WOMAD it was looking almost tropical with towering sweet corn, beans reaching skywards producing bags and bags of produce, raspberries taking over from loganberries, huge onions from the pound shop and so on.

The flower patch looking colourful and many bunches picked.

Gladioli fabulous despite rust last year. 

The dahlias just too difficult to protect from slugs...maybe in barrels next year. Disappointed that the larkspur did not germinate. Sunflowers looking good. Had a full moon BBQ Friday eve with all garden produce.

Week 12 in the gardens of the west- 22 July

We can't keep up with it all!

20 bags of red currants 14 of red gooseberries 4 of green gooseberries 4 of black currants and more still to come... The Bramley is brimming and the mulberries are getting bigger and slightly pink. It feels like everything is rushing faster and faster.

There are new flowers every day - pink love-in-the-mist:

butterfly gladioli,

bright daylillies, the first of the sunflowers - a dark chocolate variety,

the bright white of the old Michaelmas daisies 

and the wonderful helterskelter tassles of the teasels. 

The vegetables are in abundance too - the best brassicas ever including some very presentable cauliflowers and hispi cabbage, a mountain of peas and a great tangle of pumpkin vines now enveloping all the tiny crannies of old potatoe and broad bean plots. 

Beautiful (but sort of useless for eating) glove artichokes.

Good week in the garden - rain and sun, good for the garden.

Week 11 in the South West

2 CC

The garden looks like it's going over a bit, sadly. BUT there are still some really beautiful bits. The garden is bi-coloured with mostly white and green: green of all the veg leaves, and white from this lovely flower:

 We're not sure whether it is chamomile or feverfew! We've done lots of research online (where would we be without google?), but the jury's still out. There are two slightly different varieties - maybe one is feverfew and the other chamomile? Any suggestions welcome!

Lots of rain this week - which is great for everything grow-grow-growing! (Including the slugs... A has been diligently picking them off at night, and she found 30 on Wednesday!! All munging the lovely veg and the dahlias.) The field is greening up again after the hay making too, so it's looking much prettier from the house - and better for the sheep.

Lots of firsts this week!

A and J ceremonially ate the first tomato last night - apparently it was very good.

The first sunflower is out! We think it may be a little confused actually as we weren't expecting them until late August (normal time), but never mind!

First gladioli out - beautiful, and a bonus as we weren't expecting flowers until next year.

First peas eaten - apparently very good.

And thousands and thousands and thousands (maybe a slight exaggeration) of redcurrants. Beautiful on the bush - glistening jewels of red colour against the green. Also blackcurrants and gooseberries, and raspberries from a neighbour. Drowning in soft fruit! Lots in the freezer, raspberry jam, redcurrant jelly, crumbles, little tartlets and on cereal every morning.

Slugs coming back in force, although A doing very well on slug patrol.

Broad beans and sugar snaps over, making way for squashes and pumpkins. Beautiful courgette and huge cucumber picked this week.

All looking very good - and the cutting patch is about to spring into even more colour!

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!