July – 1st Week

Mr MIDDLETON says: Keep quietly on without over-exerting yourself. That is the golden rule for all new gardeners.

JULY-1st WEEK

July is a busy month in the garden even though the bulk of seed-sowing and planting is done. It is the time, too, when the vegetable garden normally looks its best, being filled with maturing and growing crops.

1. Fertilise Onions, Leeks, etc.- The last summer dressing of fertilizer is now given and feeding of crops, such as leeks and onions, is carried out. Both appreciate a watering with soot water. Water onions if weather is dry. Allow to drain a little, then apply liquid manure. Never apply liquid manure to plants suffering from drought, but first soak them with water.

2. Sow Turnips: Uncover Marrows.- Make a sowing of turnips now in the south for storing in the winter. Marrows in frames can be left uncovered.

3. Feed Tomatoes.- Feed outdoor tomatoes. Top-dress those in pots. Top-dress indoor tomatoes. Good soil, preferably from well-rotted turf, should be mixed with sand and peat, and impregnated with fertilizer as a top-dressing for tomatoes and cucumbers.

4. Work on Celery.- Finish planting main crop celery.

5. French Beans, Mint and Tarragon.- Make last sowing of Dwarf French beans outside. These will mature in September. Make new beds of mint and tarragon by transplanting young growths from old beds.

6. On the Potato Patch.- Spray potatoes with Bordeaux mixture to prevent blight. Lift early potatoes as required. Fill land cleared of potatoes with winter greens, or sow mustard as a green manure. Short-horn carrots can also be sown after potatoes.

7. Sowing and Planting.- Plant out winter greens. In the North this should be done without delay. Plant white and purple sprouting broccoli, late Savoy’s, cottager’s kale and January King cabbage. Every delay in planting in the north reduces chances of real success. Lift shallots if ready. The foliage will die down and turn brown.

8. Fruit Culture.- Continue to summer-prune trained fruit trees, first doing cherries, plums, pears and then apples. Red currents and gooseberries should also have their growths tipped.

July is turning out to be a busy time everywhere and not just in the garden. Funny thing blogs. I mean what are they exactly? Who do we right them for? Ourselves? Yes, to a degree of course, but then we share them with the rest of the world to read and make of it as they wish. So when, suddenly, your life is being taken over by issues that cannot be disclosed on a blog for all and sundry to see, and your time is taken up dealing with whatever life happens to throw at you, it makes writing your blog, at best difficult, and at times almost impossible. Giving up would be very easy. But l came downstairs this morning faced with another pile of paperwork to sort out and thought, blow it, l’m writing my blog. I need to escape back into the world l love and share with people the nicer things in my life. One day, all of this crap will be sorted out and put behind us, but right now its not a nice place to be.

As a lot of you know, we are selling our home and returning to the UK. With a fair wind we will know by tomorrow. Its pretty certain so we are having a week or so back in blighty to look for somewhere to live. All very exciting!

We had some friends over yesterday and they left with a bumper bag of goodies from the garden; courgettes, beans, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, radish, mange-tout and eggs.Enough to keep them going for a few days. I love giving friends some veg. It makes all that hard work worth it when you see their faces so appreciative.

Better get things sorted ready for the weekend. We have a good neighbour who is going to look after everything for us while we are gone. I’ll just add a photo of the potatoes we had the other evening. Whoppers! It’s a variety called ‘Cherie’ and are big enough for jacket spuds. Mmmm…my favourite.

Big Spuds

 

Rain, sun, hail and very, very strong winds!

Yes, we had the lot today! Not as bad as Scotland with their blizzards but bad enough. So, unable to do anything in the garden, l took refuge in the greenhouse.

Greenhouse

I am rapidly running out of staging with all the trays of seedlings and pots of sweet peas, tomatoes and herbs. It soon becomes one big balancing act so l think l will have to make a cold frame soon. The whole greenhouse visibly shook in some of the gusts we had in the afternoon. Beth, the cat, never flinched while sleeping amongst the plants.

In between the showers l had a quick check on everything in the garden. I noticed the rhubarb is really romping away. By Easter l will be picking the first stalks. Rhubarb and custard, simple and lovely!

Spring rhubarb

Bursting bud

This bud looks like the head of an alien! I find it incredible to think that within 10 days or so this bud will have unfurled into a red stem of  delicious rhubarb with a huge green leaf soaking up the warm spring sunshine….l hope. Nature’s great.

When the sky went black and l thought l might be re-enacting The Wizard of Oz and be whisked up into the skies in my greenhouse l retreated to the kitchen. I had seen a recipe for Lemon Curd in this months The English Garden so decided to have a go. Eggs from the girls provided the colour and it tastes amazing. I was well chuffed for a first attempt.

Lemon curd

 

At last its March!

March-1st Week

Mr Middleton says: Soil is the basis of life. Take care of it.

Now that the season of sowing and planting is with us, and we are putting the final touches to the ground, we shall naturally be thinking of fertilizers, and these are going to prove something of a problem this year, owing to a shortage of some of the essential plant foods, so we shall have to be careful that we don’t get a badly balanced diet, or we may do more harm than good.

Mr Middleton goes on to talk about the benefits of using manure and compost in your garden rather than just chemical fertilizers. ‘ To use nothing but fertilizers in the garden year after year is rather like trying to live on tonics and tablets, which, although excellent in themselves, cannot take the place of solid food, or not for long at any rate.’ We have come a long way since the 1940’s with what we can use in the garden to feed our plants. Blood, fish and bone, Chicken pellets and many different organic substitutes can be used but Mr Middleton is quite correct, the soil needs bulky material which decays slowly and releases these foods gradually as they are needed.

So l have three compost bins that all need emptying and spreading on the beds along with a few bags of leaf mould. That’s a start. Then l will dig trenches out and start to fill them with kitchen scraps and the old straw bedding from the hens ready for the beans to go in but at the moment the soil is still far too wet and cold to do much. I had another quick look in the greenhouse and the lettuces l sowed last month are coming along quite well. I am up to my eyes in tiles, plaster, wood cladding, showers parts etc as l refit our bathroom downstairs. It seems to be taking forever and l can see, as usual, that it is going to be one huge rush to get everything done inside and, more importantly l feel, outside!

Early lettuce

Garlic

Autumn sown Broad Beans

Cerinthe & Beth

Big Bad Bertha (The Eggless Hen)

 

Here Comes The Rain Again…

I was just looking in the DOFV book to see what l might have been able to do this week; Mr Middleton advises;

Break down and lime soil,
Plant Onion sets,
Sow Parsnips, Broad Beans, Carrots etc,
Sow Early Peas, Sprouts and Summer Cabbage,

But as the rain hammers off the window, blown in by a near Hurricane force wind, l don’t think l will be doing any of that! I have sown more seeds in the unheated greenhouse and the early spuds are actually beginning to chit….just! The onion sets are ready to plant out as are the shallots and a few left over garlic cloves.
My hens hate this weather but are still providing us with 3 to 4 eggs a day so we won’t starve! The forecasters are telling us we are in for hell of a storm over the weekend up here in Brittany. At least we haven’t got 18 inches of snow like Scotland. I think a cup of tea is in order.
What will you be planting over the weekend if the weather is kind?