Blagger

Reviving the rhubarb

Nik — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 20:56:20 +0000

We did something at the weekend that was long overdue. We finished cutting down the dead ivy that had been smothering one of our trees, and in the process discovered what a good thing it had been for the rhubarb.

Our rhubarb has never been particularly happy where I planted it alongside the chicken run. I had thought that was because it was a bit too dark there, but it seems now that it was more to do with the fact that the ivy was robbing it of all of the moisture in the ground.

Now this ivy is very old. It was here before I bought the house four and a bit years ago, and probably predates my ownership by a good ten years at least. Down at the root of the tree around which it had wrapped itself it was a good four inches across and more like a trunk than a frond.

So, seeing as it was stripping the tree of all of its leaves I made the decision to cut through the base of it a couple of months ago, and came to regret that decision a few weeks later. The tree seemed to be failing at an ever quicker rate with the leaves falling off all over the garden.

Except they weren’t the leaves of the tree – they were the ivy, which had so completely covered the tree for six feet of its height that there was no tree to see apart from the part that stuck out from the top.

It’s taken two weekends of chopping and trimming to uncover the tree again, and although it’s a bit of a silly shape right now it’s already responding well to the killing off of that horrible ivy. The part that sticks up from the top is flourishing, and there are beautiful red berries appearing all over it, which we haven’t seen before.

The biggest reward, though, is the rhubarb that sits at the bottom of the tree, and which has seemingly come back to life. So late into the season it’s sprouted some good strong stems and its leaves are as broad and lush as we could have hoped. We may get get a crumble this year, and next year holds out great promise, I can feel it already.

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This year’s crabapple harvest

Nik — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 07:40:37 +0000

The crabapple tree has really come into its own this year. Last year it gave us enough apples to look good when in fruit and to make a small quantity of jam, but this year it really went to town.

The top branches were bent right over with the weight of the delicate pink and green fruits, and as I picked them off and each bough got lighter it slowly straightened itself up, like an old man with an aching back.

I’d never have guessed that such a small tree, which we only transplanted three years ago, and which has only six branches, each no more than a centimetre thick at the fattest point, could have proved so bountiful.

I picked more than 400 apples in all, and more than filled the jam pan. A few wonderfully sweet-smelling days lie ahead as I boil them all into jam.

Crabapples in the jam pan

The nasty death of a naughty chicken

Nik — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 16:54:10 +0000

If you ever thought keeping chickens was an idyllic life of waking to their gently clucking and collecting fresh eggs for breakfast – and nothing more – then think again.

Chickens are well-known cannibals. If any other bird in the flock has a prolapse and you don’t get to it quick enough they’ll peck at the dangling flesh and pull out the injured chicken’s insides, killing it in a most horrible manner.

Fortunately we’ve always managed to catch and quarantine any of our hens when they’ve prolapsed to prevent that, but we didn’t manage to save poor Gregory from a similar fate.

She was the bully of the flock, who used to pluck the feathers of her sisters. For the last couple of months, though, she’s been very quiet and withdrawn, keeping herself to herself and pecking nobody. She’s been slowing down, and spending a lot of time sleeping.

Today she clearly slowed down too much, and the other hens either decided she was dead already, and therefore fair game, or made up their minds to get their own back.

We got back from a quick drink to find her wedged at the back of the pen, stuck between the wheels of the coop and the mesh of their compound, bloody and badly pecked.

A whole slice of skin was missing and we both assumed that she must have been dead, so we got a bin bag and our gardening gloves and moved the coop to retrieve her. As we did, though, she moved her head and breathed very weakly.

We put her in quarantine but, as we suspected, she quickly died. We gathered her up in the morning, and she was hard.

She looked very peaceful, poor thing. My only hope is that now that she’s gone the flock will calm down.

Struggling to keep the potatoes under control

Nik — Thu, 19 May 2011 07:48:05 +0000

I‘m still digging up potatoes from last year’s crop. They’re giving themselves away by starting to sprout, and shooting long stems and thick green leaves up through the soil.

It’s a bit galling pulling them all up as they would have made good eaters if they hadn’t started shooting, and I can’t help wondering how many new potatoes they’d deliver for us this year if we left them where they are.

We can’t do that at the front half of the plot as they’d interfere with this year’s strawberries and artichokes. The back half of the plot, though, is a possibility. I had earmarked that for French beans, but they’re not exactly putting on a great performance yet. I started them off in the greenhouse a couple of weeks back, but so far there’s nothing peeping up over the surface of the pots.

So, potatoes stay or potatoes go? They should be fine to eat as they were all grown from seed last year, so the left-overs should be as good as the originals when they bare their own offspring and they shouldn’t poison the soil.

The trouble is, by leaving them in there to crop again I’ll no doubt end up with the same problem next year, with the leftovers of the leftovers cropping again, for the third time. That’s one of the reasons why we’ve gone back to growing potatoes in bags this year.

Sadly, then, I’ve resigned myself to digging them out. It feels a bit of a waste.

Eating the first lettuce of 2011

Nik — Sun, 15 May 2011 14:36:20 +0000

We’ve just eaten the first of this year’s crops. Admittedly it was only lettuce, but we celebrated by pulling up three whole baby heads, dousing them with some dressing and eating them with half a lunchtime pizza each.

Sadly no tomatoes to go with it yet.

We’ve transplanted our tomatoes

Nik — Tue, 10 May 2011 07:20:41 +0000

Already, our tomatoes were starting to look cramped in their little 9cm pots. It’s only a couple of weeks since we moved them from the kitchen windowsill out into the greenhouse, so I didn’t think we’d be doing this so quickly. Nonetheless today we transplanted nine of the finest specimens into the larger pots where they’ll live out the summer, hopefully providing a better crop than last year’s plants.

I guess we’re still a good two or three months off picking our first tomatoes but it still feels like we’re making good progress to be moving them on so soon.

There’s plenty else in the garden to tend to while they’re slowly maturing, though, with the strawberry patch and the raspberries already showing the first signs of fruiting. How many strawberries we can expect this year, though, now that the cat has clearly decided to make it his favourite sleeping location most days, I don’t know.

The cat, snoozing in the plot

The artichokes are rising… and so are the errant potatoes

Nik — Sat, 07 May 2011 17:38:56 +0000

We’re growing artichokes for the first time this year. Why? Because we had them when we were out for dinner a few months back and loved them. Neither of us had ever eaten them before, and we actually thought they were potatoes when they turned up.

Not surprising, really. They looked like potatoes in the dish in which they were served, smothered in butter. So we decided to turn over part of the plot to growing our own, and you know what – even the tubers from which they stem look like seed potatoes.

We planted them a month back and they’ve recently put on a real growth spurt with the tallest one about a foot above the ground now.

The only trouble is, because we did actually give over the whole of the plot to a potato crop last year we clearly missed digging up one or two of the crop and they’re starting to sprout (see the picture below). It’s a shame, but we’re having to dig up these errant spuds so that they don’t interfere with this year’s growing pattern. If we didn’t, we’d probably be more confused than ever about what is – and isn’t – an artichoke.

Potato leaves

Curing the pecking hens

Nik — Mon, 02 May 2011 18:11:53 +0000

The chickens have had a tough few months. They’ve taken to pecking each other – not in the friendly, gentle way they do when they’re mutually grooming, but in a quite vicious manner. Some of them have lost a serious number of feathers and are starting to get sunburned.

There’s a ringleader – one of the youngest hens – which has subsequently lost the most feathers as her sisters turn around and peck back whenever she pulls out one of their feathers.

If it was just a bit of naughtiness I think we could put up with it, but since they’ve learned that they can all eat the feathers then pull out of each other it’s turning into mild cannibalism.

So we’ve bought Stockholm Tar. The tub warns that it’s thick, black and very sticky, and we’ve read elsewhere that if you get it on your clothes or hands you’ll have a job getting it off again.

The idea is to paint it onto your chickens’ bare bits and it stops the others from pecking them any more. I can’t imagine they’ll enjoy it much, though. Every time they dust bathe they’ll get the dirty stuck to their bums. In the meantime, then, we’re dosing them up with copious quantities of poultry spice in the hope it calms them down.

So far it seems to be doing the trick.

We’re still going to have to give them some sun block, though.

Stockholm Tar

Our rhubarb has made it through the winter

Nik — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:43:47 +0000

I can’t tell you how pleased I am that the rhubarb has survived the winter. I thought it had died as it was taking so long to pop up above the soil line – particularly when there is plenty to be seen already on the allotment – but it seems I needn’t have worried.

Rhubarb is one of my favourite cooked vegetables (yes, vegetable) but you shouldn’t harvest it in its first year – which was last year. If they hadn’t made it through the frost and snow to the first possible harvest, then, I’d have been very disappointed.

So, determined to stop the neighbourhood cats sitting on it as they did last year I’ve put a couple of cut off milk bottles over the first spears and will leave them there until they get established. Hopefully it will also force them slightly as they race for the light.

Crumble, here we come.

Milk bottles, protecting our rhubarb

Time to clean the greenhouse windows

Nik — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 15:20:59 +0000

I keep looking at my seed packets, waiting for the first day of planting, but spring seems to be so long in coming. The daffodils and crocuses are up, and the Christmas rose is in flower, but the seed packets still insist it’s far too early to get planting.

Still, there’s preparation to do, so I invested in a better spongey mop and set out to clean the greenhouse. I can’t believe how grubby it’s got in the last two years. The roof had a healthy coat of green growing on it, and in places it was starting to run down the sides.

That would seriously impact the amount of sun that made it through to the plants when we started them going, so I spent a happy hour before the rain washing it all off. I’m pretty pleased with the results. Hopefully the plants will be, too.

Clean greenhouse windows