Just Keep Moving, Just Keep Moving, Just Keep Moving...

The title of this post is what I have been singing in my head all of last week into this, why? Because life's pace of late has been mental, some how I have filled my time with numerous projects and if I don't sing that song in my head I might feel like I have lost the plot and throw in the towel.

But really life is good and I have my health and my family are all well and accounted for, so no more moaning, I have to JUST KEEP MOVING...

So what did I get up too last week in the garden, I will let the pictures tell the story...

Tuesday 13/04/2010

The Tulips are still enjoying the April spring sunshine.



The Hyacinths blooms are properly open.

A hybrid Wood Anemone, blooms for the first time from some free bulbs I got last year.

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On the left is Heartease which has flowers throughout out the winter into this year and has a fresh batch of blooms on it. And on the right are the first of the wild Violas in my garden to flower (its really weird, my wild violas always flower weeks later than my surrounding neighbours, who also have wild violas in their gardens).

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On the left are the blooms of the wild strawberry plants in my garden and on the right is the waterlily that lives in a deep bucket (yes I know, I know, I need to finish the big pond, hopefully this year) slowly coming to life.

Time to give the lawn it's first hair cut.

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I got quite a bit of lawn clippings so I removed some of the wood material from the compost bin which I added last week when I tidied the flower beds and layered the clippings properly with the dryer materials, resulting in a full bin.

Saw lots of mini beast while cutting the lawn.

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Picture upper left of a broken bird's egg, shows the birds are not dragging their feet re: nesting, wasp in the middle picture and a lacewing in the bottom picture, which is very encouraging to see so early in the season as their young gobble up the nasty plant sucking aphids which plague us gardeners.

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I also took a peek into the ponds again and was pleasantly surprised to see a small clump of frog spawn, aww, so the frogs hadn't turned their noses up to my filthy pond/s after all, oh bother, now I'll have to clean it without jeopardising the spawn, see what you get when you procrastinate, that teaches me, doesn't it!!!


To end the day I was lucky to find some descent parsnips to pull and some almost to far gone purple sprouting broccoli, which I baked together with the 'Celebration' winter squash from storage. The parsnips center was woody but was easily removed while preparing for the roasting pan and there was still enough root left to enjoy.

Winter Squash: Celebration

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This is a bush variety and as such doesn't take up much room when it is growing (approx the same amount of space as a courgette plant). The flesh was a little dry but this maybe due to the long time in storage. It was not overly sweet but the flesh was dense and starchy, roasted beautifully, tasted great with the other veges, I will grow again, and hope for more than one squash from the plant.

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Thursday 15/04/2010

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Another lovely sunny spring day and some tulip blooms which I accidentally cut down when I was tidying the flower beds last weekend are opening.

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The Peacock butterflies are still about.

Its time to clean the pond and above are two of the three froggy inhabitants I disturbed while doing the task. the small clump of spawn was it seems only the tip of the iceberg and there proved to be not one but two large clumps of spawn in the pond, which made cleaning the pond even trickier.

Here is the pond all cleaned of old leaves and some excess winter sludge. I choose not to change the water and simply topped up with fresh rain water from the butts, I also tidied up the plants in the boggy perimeter of all their old dead and woody foliage.

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Saturday 17/04/2010

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I worked on preparing the legume bed for sowing seeds direct, there is a trellis for peas, four wigwams; 3 for french beans and 1 for borlotto beans, and behind the wigwams on the right is a A frame for my runner beans. This was my set up last year but in another 'L' shaped bed, which worked well so I'll be repeating it this year.

To prepare the bed I dug in three buckets of well rotted compost and three buckets of well rotted spent rabbit bedding and dropping based compost. If you remember from my posting on the tidying of the flower beds , I showed you a picture of the compost bin having a huge mushroom pile in the cooked compost side. Well the pictures above are what I found when I dug into the compost, it is well laced with the fungi's 'root' system, which I hope will continue to thrive in the vege beds and lend theirselves to a beneficial root symbiosis with my vege plants, which should lead to a better uptake of water and nutrients by the vege plants, you can read up more on this sort of thing here, have you ever noticed sometimes when you pull up a weed like dandelion or even a dense growing grass that the roots and surrounding soil has a coating of white stuff, well that most likely is fungal growth in a symbiotic relationship with the plant you have just dug up. OK science lesson over, I will leave you to research the topic further if you wish.

Here are some other mini beast I saw on Saturday...

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More Ladybugs.

And I finally caught a bumblebee on camera.

Sunday 18/04/2010

Hubby wanted me to go to the cinema with him but I wanted to get some tasks done at the allotment, so I gave him a choice of helping me at the plot for a couple of hours so I could get my jobs for the day done quickly then accompany him to the cinema or go alone.

Hee! Hee! guess what he choose.

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I first got him to loosen the soil in the bed in the picture on the left which was part of a foot path and as the weather warms up and as there has been no rain in the last couple weeks the soil is starting to set like concrete. Once the soil was loosened I set to weeding while I gave him the task of digging in some manure into the bed you can see him digging pictured above which is for the brassicus.

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By golly I don't know why he won't come out in the garden or the plot more often, he got both jobs done so quickely he was even able to weed out the main central footpath.

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So with the smaller bed weeded, I watered the emerging beetroot and carrot seedlings, and we cycled back home, I would have loved to also sown the parsnip seeds but I had other tasks at home to get done before going to see the show, so I'll sow those later this week.

PS. I have updated my other blog, check it out if you would like to catch up on what else has been demanding my time.

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And I know I have been quiet on the blog reading front (but if I don't limit my computer time I won't get anything done). I will play catch up and read and comment on all my blogs I like to follow as the week progresses.

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A Wet Job

The mini pond in the fruit area has been irritating me for weeks now with the algae bloom it has grown, so I decided today was the day for cleaning it as I had surplus water to get rid off from the girls paddling pool fun yesterday.

Pea green soup anyone? Blech!!!

So I emptied it and its contents bar some of the sludge which was not smelly thank goodness and it was also full of lots of creepy crawlies, then I well, put everything back and refilled it.

Everyone back in the 'boat'

It looks much better now, I hope it doesn’t go green again this year.

There are quite a few life forms in this pond but I found a new one today, a few fresh water shrimps, haven’t got a clue how they got here but hey ho the kids and I was glad to see it.

Finally Getting Back in the Swing of Things....

I haven’t taken much pictures of what I have been up too but you will have to take my word for it. A couple months ago I blogged that I was going through a bit of a down moment which left me feeling a little lacking in motivation to do much of any thing and this included gardening. The result of this lapse in attention has been the reduced produce I have not got to harvest this month. I simply didn’t water enough or didn’t act quick enough to halt differing early pest infestations and as for successional sowing of seeds??? Which means that my beetroots and carrots are really small this year, when I harvest my last ready lettuce I have none waiting in the foreground (they all in the seed packet) and my brassicus have been decimated by whitefly.

Well late last week I finally started to feel like my old self was coming back to the foreground and started by cleaning up some of the neglected beds and happily found the kale growing new leaves now that the lady bugs have wiped out the whitefly, there was some Chinese cabbages ready to be harvested under all overgrown cabbage leaves and the beetroot is finally getting bigger.

I also got some more seeds sown kohl rabi, swede, mooli radish, fennel and some mange tout peas (yep I know its late in the season but I‘m hoping the autumn will be mild which should hopefully give me a late crop of peas). The spring onions and beetroots I sowed back mid July are making an appearance but the beetroot seedlings were mucked up a bit by birds scratching in the soil so I may throw a ‘handful’ seeds in the area and thin them once they have germinated.

The over wintered chard plants that I have left to go seed are like I said before a great attractor for beneficial insects, the area was a real mess all falling down into the foot paths and onto my celeriac crop. Well I have tidied it up using lots of canes, I don’t need the area as yet so now its been tidied I would leave well alone for the hoard of ladybugs and hoverflies visiting the area and maybe I would also get some seeds off the plants for sowing in the future.

Other jobs I got done over the last few days was watering undercover plants such as the tomatoes, sweet peppers, aubergines and plants in the greenhouse. Some weeding of the foot paths was also undertaken. The celeriac plants that were uncovered from the flowering chard and poppy plants were tidied up as well, following from advice I gleamed off of the web I removed some of the lower leaves and gave them a really good soaking as they have not really been watered by me. The area they are growing in benefits from a little shade so the soil in that area rarely dries out. But I think I will be watering them more often from now on to help them put on more size.

Some of the harvests over the weekend and the later part of last week were prepared for the pot before I realised I didn’t photographed it (see second pic), so you will just have to imagine the ones you don‘t see here. The later past of last week more runners and French beans were picked along with my first ready sweet peppers and spring onions. Over the weekend more courgettes, two Chinese cabbages, my only two kohl rabis to grow from spring sowings, spring onions, and other herbs were also harvested.

Today I’m afraid its teeming down with rain so I’ll have to delay my lettuce and carrot seed sowing till tomorrow afternoon after I return from taking the girls out. In the mean time enjoy the photos taken since my last posting.

Crop Progress

The first chillies to start ripening.

The male (see above pic) and female cucumber flowers of this variety 'Burpless' are really big and blousy, the varieties I have grown in the pass are normally much smaller and nondescript.

The Invertebrates

Beetles

24 spot ladybird 'Subcoccinella 24-punctata'

Cream spot ladybug 'Calvia 14-guttata'



There are three variations of the 10-spotted ladybird here are two of the guises they present themselves.

2-spots getting it on.

A pollen beetle an important pollinator.

Female Migrant Southern Dragonfly 'Aeshna mixta'

Female Parastic Wasp 'Gasteruption jaculator (L.)'

Lygus cf. pratensis. Family- Miridae

Field grasshopper 'Chorthippus brunneus'

Male Speckled Bush Cricket 'Leptophyes punctatissima' in his mating colours.

A couple posts ago it showed you what a hoverfly pupa looked like this is the larva which is a voracious aphid feeder.

Lacewing 'Chrysoperla carnea agg'

Well a picture speaks a thousand words, I didn't realise that pond skaters were carniverous till I saw this mass gorging on a dead wasp, blech!!

Garden Spider/ Garden Cross spider

Haven't shown much of these for a while but they are around and very busy.

There are so many butterflies and moths in the garden this year, it makes the place so much more cheery. At the moment the most dominant are the gate keepers and cabbage whites but there are still the odd early spring species to be seen like the speckled wood (see pic below).

I think this is a: Large Yellow Underwing 'Noctua pronuba'

Male Vapourer Moth 'Orgyia antiqua'

Medium Size Wildlife Seen

Friday morning when I went out to put tiles under the young squashes and pumpkins to keep them off the damp cardboard and hopefully away from the slugs, I checked a hole my husband dug for a fence pole to see if any frogs had fallen in as they sometimes do following a night of rain. Well I didn’t find any frogs but two young hedgehogs, I’m afraid its not all nice as one was dead DAMN!!! So I fished out the living put him in an enclosed place with some water and donated raw mincemeat from my neighbour. The dead one was well… thrown out and the hole was dutifully covered as it should have been (I did check it Wednesday but was out all day Thursday so I assume it died from dehydration???). Happily the little one recovered ate all the meat and drank all the water, then escaped.

Saturday must have been frog finding day as I found one in the pumpkin patch, one in the flower beds, another under some sticks in the vege patch, a medium size froglet in the boggy area around the vege pond and an injured frog in the vege pond.

Still a few fledglings around from time to time, saw this young blackbird calling it parent/s.

What’s Blooming

I found this plant growing in one of my raised beds. Its called Small Toad Flax ‘Chaenorhinum Minus’. From my research it doesn't appear to be rare in the UK except NI and less common in Scotland or up north but did find out due to modern farming methods it is starting to decline. So I'm loath to yank it out. I will most likely let it set seed but will sprinkle seed on the edge of the foot paths and in my flower beds. I haven't got a clue how it got here but one probable way is; the bed I found it in was bought top soil, that bed is also full of field poppies so maybe it came from a farmers field.

Coriander seed heads.

Hollyhocks

The buddlia I'm attempting to grow as a standard is beginning to flower.

Still have some california poppies, this sef sown one is in the raised bed with the cucumbers, onions and celeriac.

Not sure what this is but I planted them out along with other summer flowering bulbs that I got free through an internet promotion in the spring from J.Parkers.

I sowed these rudebeckia seeds in the early spring but by the time i got round to planting them out they were terribly root bound in theie individual cells in the seed trays but they have begau to fower at about a foot in hieght. I hope they survive the winter and are able to put on a spectacular show next year.

The sage in the herb patch has been flowering for months now, just thought I would share.