Gardening Diary April

I think the time has come to restart my monthly gardening diary. Looking back at last year's diary, I realise how keen we must have been to get going, starting to write in January, when apart from weeding and digging there was not really a lot to do.

I feel I may be a bit behind with the vegetable garden, as although I was in Cornwall for a long stretch of time after Christmas, we were slightly distracted by our big tree planting project. We have planted 3 acres of trees, with help and advice from the Woodland Trust. I feel our neighbours may think we are a bit mad, and it was a huge amount of work. Approximately 1700 trees and shrubs. However hard or many of us were working, it seemed impossible to plant more than 100 each day. My husband was the hero, and was out even on days with driving rain. I dug a fair share of the holes, and both our children helped a lot too.

To begin with we planted oak and beech trees in stands of 25

 

This is a long-term project, as perhaps we won't see it as a mature woodland until we are very old, but perhaps our grandchildren (yet to be made) might. It is encouraging to look down the tubes now and see a lot of the trees, which were small bare sticks, with leaves now.

New game is "name that tree"

View of the house (in need of some whitewash), with some of the tree planting area behind

Tree planting seems to be very much in the news, but my husband has been dreaming about managing his own patch of woodland for a long time. I think he thought to find some woodland to work in, and making his own was not the original plan. Some of the trees are filling in between two areas of existing woodland, so he does have some larger trees to look after. The Woodland Trust man was very keen for biodiversity that woodland areas be connected, so that wildlife can move from one area to another. 

The largest part of the trees came through the Woodland Trust, although a few and some through SWLEN, now called Habitats and Heritage. Also quite a few were grown by my husband himself, from nuts he picked up. For several years there has been a section of the fridge where the nuts have to go to simulate winter, before they are planted. He has planted these trees in a small separate area.

We did a little planting in the vegetable plot after Christmas, planting some blackcurrant bushes and a tayberry. I have also just put in 7 more asparagus crowns, in the hope that I will have more than a single asparagus on my plate. Five bought from a seed company, and 2 from Poundland, so we will have to see which do better. My daughter and I went back to London for schools reopening, but while we were there my husband has planted onions and shallots.  

The blackcurrant bushes, and trench for the asparagus behind

First shoots of an onion

 

We have decided to try and grow a bigger variety of plants this year. The crops that were successful last year, we often seemed to have too much. My other resolution is to try and dig in more manure, as that did seem the key to things doing well.

We are only going to plant just one sort of potato this year, but have had a set back, as my husband put the seed potatoes on a low shelf to chit. He then found they had all disappeared. He said he almost started to doubt himself, as there was not a scrap of potato left. But the dog was looking guilty, and tubby. So we have had to buy more and start again. We have now planted two rows of desiree.

In digging over the area where we had potatoes last year, I have dug up a quite large amount. I can only think that our decision to dig a few plants when we needed them was not very sensible. Perhaps with two of us doing this we were missing plants, this year we should just dig them up all in one go.

We didn't grow any strawberries last year, so yesterday planted 12 strawberry plants bought in the garden centre. My gardening book says that you should not let them fruit the first year, but I am a bit uncertain about this, as the label on the plants didn't mention this. Should I remove any flowers, or just talk to them severely? I'd welcome any advice on this.

This morning I have been out in the polytunnel planting seeds in trays. I have planted two types of tomatoes, cucumber, courgettes, squash and sweet peppers. I have more seeds, but it was so cold out there that I have decided to hold off a bit before planting any more.

I have also planted broad beans straight outside, although was a bit disappointed with the small amount of seeds in the packet.

We have got rid of the grapevine in the polytunnel, as it was taking up so much space, and did not really produce any edible grapes. We still have another vine against a wall outside, but thought that we could make better use of the space inside. I have found another large trough, and we are thinking that we might plant salad leaves in the polytunnel where we can better keep off the snails and slugs.

The other thing I have done is removed all the dead branches from the red currant bushes. Some were fine last year, but some of the bushes did not really produce much. My first idea was to dig out the worst plants, but as they all have some green leaves, I thought a really severe pruning might help. I am also going to give the gooseberries a little prune, although perhaps should have done this earlier.

I will be back in London when term begins, so the rest of the planting and looking after the seedlings will all be down to my husband. I am hoping he will send some photos for the next month's update. This has been a really long post, but it is a catch up on six months, so from now on I will try and do my regular monthly garden update.

A general view of the vegetable garden, with fruit trees behind

Exmoor

Beautiful beach at Woolacombe. As you can see we went to Exmoor.

View from near Dunkery Beacon towards Minehead

This year's holiday was a little different for us in several ways. Firstly we left our son at home - he is 18 now, and was very definite that he did not want to come. Despite my worries, he has not starved and the house is still standing. Secondly, we very sucessfully took my daughter's friend with us, and thirdly it was Rosie's first holiday. 

We had to be careful not to do too much walking, as Rosie is still a puppy. But she absolutely loved some of the country and beach walks we did, as well as having a larger, wilder garden to spend time in. The cottage was dog-friendly, and she did not seem to mind being crated at night, as we could not completely trust that she would not start chewing. Here are just a few photos that give a flavour of our break.
 

Rosie had a great time in the garden

We toasted marshmallows later ...

Walk from Malmsmead, setting of R. D. Blackmore's novel Lorna Doone ....

These are some of the alpaca from the farm where I bought my alpaca wool

View of Dunkery Beacon, and an Exmoor pony

Top of Dunkery Beacon - highest point on Exmoor

Somebody else had made this for Rosie to sit by

Walking down from Dunkery

A caterpillar of an Emperor moth

The cottage where we stayed for the week

Conkers

I don't often repeat posts, but it is that time of year again. When I showed this before there was quite a bit of interest in the game of conkers. So apologies if you have already seen this, or if you live on the other side of the world, and are looking forward to Spring.

Conkers are the fruit of the horse chestnut tree. Finding a spikey green case,  slightly split open, and removing a shiny conker from its white cushion, is one of the pleasures of Autumn. But it has been on my mind that my pattern did not include the conker case. So I have reworked the pattern adding a shell section. So now you can make a lovely little home for your conkers. The new pattern is available on ravelry and Craftsy.

The shell is knitted on just two straight needles and in two pieces: green and cream. So the only sewing up is joining the inner and outer shells. There is some short row knitting to create the curves. As you will see I have made two variations: a half shell, which is how I often find a conker on the ground, or the two halves sewn together so you can have your conker just peeping out.

The game conkers is played between two people. A hole is made in the conkers, and they are threaded on a piece of string. They take turns hitting each others conker with their own. Each player holds their conker out in front of themselves, and the other player takes a swing at it with their conker. The conker that breaks the other one is the victor. The dangers are that you can be hit by swinging conkers, which are quite hard, or being hit by flying shards of conkers when the hit is successful. Hard conkers usually win, but it is considered cheating to harden your conker artificially.  Apparently Michael Palin of Monty Python was disqualified from a conkers competition for baking his conker and soaking it in vinegar.

Then there is the whole business of scoring. A conker that defeats another is a oner, etc. But if a conker beats another conker, it also takes on that conker's score. So if a twoer beats a threer, it would become a fiver. It is that conker that takes the title, not the human swinging it! 

 Happy Autumn Conkering

Conkers Revisited

Last year at about this time I wrote about conkers. There was quite a bit of interest in the game of conkers, and apologies for repeating some of the photos and information below.

Conkers are the fruit of the horse chestnut tree. Finding a spikey green case,  slightly split open, and removing a shiny conker from its white cushion, is one of the pleasures of autumn. But it has been on my mind that my pattern did not include the conker case. So I have reworked the pattern adding a shell section. So now you can make a lovely little home for your conkers. The new pattern is available on ravelry.

The shell is knitted on just two straight needles and in two pieces: green and cream. So the only sewing up is joining the inner and outer shells. There is some short row knitting to create the curves. As you will see I have made two variations: a half shell, which is how I often find a conker on the ground, or the two halves sewn together so you can have your conker just peeping out.

The game conkers is played between two people. A hole is made in the conkers, and they are threaded on a piece of string. They take turns hitting each others conker with their own. Each player holds their conker out in front of themselves, and the other player takes a swing at it with their conker. The conker that breaks the other one is the victor. The dangers are that you can be hit by swinging conkers, which are quite hard, or being hit by flying shards of conkers when the hit is successful. Hard conkers usually win, but it is considered cheating to harden your conker artificially.  Apparently Michael Palin of Monty Python was disqualified from a conkers competition for baking his conker and soaking it in vinegar.

Then there is the whole business of scoring. A conker that defeats another is a oner, etc. But if a conker beats another conker, it also takes on that conker's score. So if a twoer beats a threer, it would become a fiver. It is that conker that takes the title, not the human swinging it! 

My new improved conker pattern and the horsechestnut leaf pattern are available on ravelry separately, or with a discount if you buy both together. Also my samples are available in my Etsy shop.

 Happy Autumn Conkering

If you haven't seen my little giveaway please Click Here. Thank you to everyone who has entered. Some of your entries have really made me laugh. There are still two weeks until I announce the winner. I would love to see some more entries from crocheters.

Age, Beauty and Snakes

Happy Chinese New Year

Year of the Snake 

Chinese Lantern Plant

I took this photo back in the Autumn. My daughter is learning piano, and this lovely Chinese lantern plant was in her teacher's garden. I love the way it gets more beautiful as it ages (just like some people). Do you know anyone who is getting more beautiful as they get older?

I had a second trip to the British Museum, and on the journey there my son decided what I should try to photograph. He suggested snakes, as it is the Chinese Year of the Snake.

Snakes were much harder to find than I had imagined. At first I had to really hunt to find any. But they were there in nearly every culture. And eventually I did find some ...

in Mesopotania

in Ancient Egypt

and in Egyptian Hieroglyphics

with the Romans

 in China

and an Aztec Rattle Snake

in Africa

and finally in Ancient Greece with some other animals.

I really love this Greek bowl. The painting is so fresh it is hard to believe it is so old.  

In fact the only part of the museum where I couldn't find snakes was Ancient Britain.

Picking Up Conkers!

 Picking up conkers, picking up conkers,
How many conkers have you got?
  Four big prize ones, Six small-sized ones,
  One little mouldy one and that's the lot.

I'm always a bit nervous about posting about a WIP, just in case it doesn't work out, but I'm so pleased with my conkers and horse chestnut leaf that I thought why not. (I was going to take "big one" out to look for real horse chestnut leaves and conkers today to use in the photos, but once again it is pouring with rain.)  

Clearly the horse chestnut leaf is totally the wrong colour, and the final version is going to have 7 leaflets. I'm knitting an autumny coloured one, and am going to do one in a better green colour. So a watch this space.
 

The conker seems to have just the right shape and dimple at the top.

Conkers do seem a bit hard to find this year, and they have been banned by some British schools because they are considered dangerous. Health and safety gone mad! Hubby thought they could be marketed as the safety conker. I do think they would look really nice on a nature table, and also have an idea to make a conker collecting bag, with the leaf as applique, and the conkers on the end of a drawstring fastener.

Finally, on another autumn note and for Saturday Snapshot, this is the rowan tree in my front garden. It is looking particularly lovely at the moment. We bought it when I was expecting "big one", and 13 years ago it arrived in a small tube through the post.