“Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn’t it Tess?”
I decided to start this post as I ended the last – with a literary quote (welcome to Pseuds Corner). But this week I have been thinking about the term “blighted” and sought out its use in literature. It is used to describe something that has a severe detrimental effect; that inflicts great suffering. It has an old-fashioned ring to it and finding its use in Tess of the D’Urbervilles feels apposite for the Midlife Garden, as rural disaster and destruction have struck. We are, indeed, blighted.
I first noticed the potatoes were showing the tell-tale signs of blight at the start of the week. Brown spots on the leaves, and stems that were turning to mush meant only one thing so I quickly took the tops off and disposed of them. It is not the first time we have had potato blight and I am hopeful that the spuds in the ground can be saved.
In retrospect should not have been surprised by the appearance of blight. The weather has been warm and damp recently – ideal conditions for the spores to spread and do their work. So the earlies are saved, and the main crop should be fine as they are Sarpo Mira, which are blight resistant. We hope.
The same cannot be said of the tomatoes. Blight has struck them too – but there is no saving the vast majority of them. For a moment, I felt as my father did when the cows destroyed his whole crop of Brussels Sprouts. The beefsteak tomatoes – such as the pineapple tomato – were looking stunning but needed a few more weeks to ripen while the Gardeners Delight and Sungolds had only recently started to produce ripe fruit. Instead they were all gone. I picked as many ripe but unrotted tomatoes and disposed of the reast, with the plants.
I was upset for a moment, but avoided a plunge into Hardy-esque gloom. In the MLG we refuse to be resigned to our fate and will make the most of whatever life throws at us. We might be on a blighted star, but we will do our best to enjoy our stay on it, as best we can.
Storm Angus has just ripped through the West Country and dumped a large quantity of rain as well as ripping most of the remaining leaves from the trees. Up till this weekend it has been – by common consent – one of the most beautiful autumns for many years with still days and blue skies highlighting the glorious leaves.
There has even been just a hint of frost to give us justification to pick the brussels – which have been the best that I can remember growing myself, and therefore the best since the night of the cows which prompted this whole adventure in gardening to start.
Herewith a few pics from a morning walk a couple of weeks ago, when the sun was shining, the leaves were on the trees and life was apparently in harmony.
It’s that time of the year again when the evening chill sharpens, the leaves start to turn and we spend a fruitless Sunday morning trying to purchase Glastonbury tickets. And it has been months since I delivered any sort of news on this blog.
Some acquaintances cannot understand the reasons for writing the rubbish I do on this page, but I find a certain sense of unburdening happening when I write. Essentially this is no more than an open diary – in which I record what I am doing in the garden, as well as describing the antics of dogs and other companions as they illuminate my life. If people want to read it, so be it, but having a readership of sorts does give me another reason to do it. So as each year wheels around into another I am able to look back and build on my experiences to ensure that the next garden season will be better than the last.
So what has gone well this summer and what lessons have I learnt in the last couple of months?
My peas and beans were excellent, albeit briefly. Next year I am promising myself I will really get the hang of succession planting. A fortnight’s glut is not the sensible way to harvest these things.
The winter leeks were left too long and ultimately ended up like a small petrified forest with the texture of fossilised wood. But the pigs seemed to appreciate them as they munched their way through the lot.
Elsewhere the purple sprouting, cabbages and brussels look absolutely fabulous, which is because of this year’s other wonder crop. I had read about nasturtiums as a “sacrificial” plant to keep the cabbage white butterflies off the Brassicas and I could not believe the effect that they had. While the nasturtiums were being lacerated, the cabbages, PSB and brussels went unscathed. If I had been trying to cultivate a good crop of nasturtiums I might have been peeved at the shredding of the leaves, but there were still enough flowers to adorn the regular green salads – which were another success this year (an area in which I did manage to achieve some sort of succession, with salad still flourishing in greenhouse and garden).
Experience has helped me grow a good batch of onions – where the return of the Red Barron brought a good crop, that is storing well too. The same goes for garlic – with enough to see us through the next year – and shallots, which I have not only harvested, but have also learnt to use in cookery to good effect, and not be too precious with them.
The decision to plant early or late came under scrutiny once again this year. The OM would warn against being too preciptate with my planting (“Too early for runner beans”) and – weirdly – this year there seemed some truth in his seemingly inflexible ways with regard to the tomatoes. The early Shirley plants suffered from the extremities of cold nights and warm days and never recovered while the later Sweet Millions were excellent and we will still have a few more to harvest this week before they finally succumb to the colder nights and shorter days. (Mrs B’s pressure to plant early tomatoes to keep up with our horticultural neghbours should, perhaps, be resisted). The beans all did well but are another which could do with a second crop of late planters
The cutting patch for flowers proved to be abundant this year and next season, with a decent marketing strategy, we might actually sell jam jar posies and other bunches of proper British Flowers.
More recently I harvested the squashes which were a mixued bunch – but again, probably enough to see us through the winter with plenty of heart soups! But teh stand out crop of the moment are the chillis which are still growing adn ripening in the greenhouse in abundance.
So next season will be so much better, but like a really good round of golf it is never perfect. We will continue to practice and strive for perfection.
Red Barron Onions
Garlic
Shallots
Small crop of squashes
Pigs consuming greenery
Chillis: Hungarian Hot Wax, Bolivian Rainbow and Joe’s Super Long
Mary Poppins the musical is back doing the rounds and so I somehow got an ear worm in my head that is straight out of the show. Ear worm is an apt description as the song is “Feed the Birds”. It was always something that the parents did and the Old Man has always been diligent in keeping the feeders full of nuts. in recent winters the main recipients have been rats who have climbed the wisteria to hang on the wire cage and feast. This year TOM has not been putting food out for the birds (or the rats) yet. Whether this is because the weather has been so mild our feathered friends really do not need any more sustenance I am not sure.
In years gone by we would be asked to delay pruning the Cotoneaster until the birds had been able eat all the berries, but frankly I have never seen any self-respecting fieldfares helping themselves to the red plenty.
But we have found other ways in which to provide for the wild bird population. A year or two back the starlings would flock around the hen run and clean us out of layers pellets and corn. It cost us a bomb to keep re-filling the feeder – making for some of the more expensive free range eggs around. We now have a feeder that is not accessible to small birds so that is sorted.
Equally, I have put an end to providing fodder to the pigeons, who after I had netted the purple sprouting, turned their attention to the kale and when I covered that, they started to shred the brussels. Can’t fault them for taste, but it amuses me how easily they are put off feeding by a bit of green net.
Birds I am happy to aid in their five-a-day nutritional requirements are obviously the robins who appear as soon as I pick up a fork. Robins act like they are your chums and at Christmas they appear all sweet and festive on cards and the like. But they are fiercely territorial and pretty damned belligerent towards each other. So not all that cute.
The other piece of bird-friendly activity I finally did yesterday was to take the netting off the raspberries – thereby allowing birds to rummage in amongst the canes for any old fruit or other stuff.
And all day long I was humming along “tuppence a bag”…
The recent dry weather well and truly broke last week. The fact that it was half term holiday (and the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations) only added to the air of despondency at the inclement weather. The wind was threatening to knock over some of the newly planted veg and evidence of the strength of the gales was there in the morning in the shape of large parts of the walnut tree lying like bones on the grass. I had transplanted my lupin from behind the hostas in the middle bed (I had not noticed the “dwarf” descriptor on the label) into the more exposed Silver Wedding Bed and the flower subsequently got knocked off. The rest of the plant does not look too happy either. I guess it was happy hiding behind the hostas.
The weather put paid to the wisteria blossom as well as finishing off some of the irises.
Iris in sun. For a short while.
Wisteria always conjures thoughts of mullioned windows and Oxbridge courts, so seeing a fine wisteria blossoming on my father’s tool shed still feels a little incongruous. But I do love the fine new leaves and the stunning flowers. They dazzle in the sunlight. Just not so good in the wind and the rain.
But overall, everything was sound. The mature trees – many of which my parents have planted over the years – give good shelter for the garden.
So not too much doing this week. We put in a row of purple sprouting, planting them closer than I had the Brussels. The Brussels I had put well apart, still thinking about how my father would probably say I had put them too close, only for him to say that I had put them further apart than he normally would. You just can’t win sometimes. I didn’t worry. It will be easier to pick them. But we seem to be balancing our relationship now, with me doing stuff and him offering simple advice where necessary.
Black fly, black fly, little black fly…they make me itch just looking at them.
We planted another row of mixed lettuce and also some pepper plants in the greenhouse. However, my experiment with parsnips in newspaper or toilet rolls seems to be floundering as the green shoots are curling up under an aphid onslaught. We will have to see what can do about that. Black fly is another potential problem on the broad beans, but with a little advice from the old man I have started picking the tops out of the plants.
But this has proved too late, as there are plenty of the little blighters crawling into the folding fans of the early leaves and getting milked by the ants on the stems. But fear not! My dad pointed me in the direction of a can of bug spray. It has been sitting on the gas canister outside the greenhouse all winter as far as I can tell and I did not dare ask if it was really full of toxic aphid slaughtering chemicals. Well apparently it is.
One little tyrant making my parsnips curl
So I gave them all a good going over – including the harbingers of destruction on my nascent parsnips. I tend to hold to the policy of “if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing quickly”, so when it comes to controlling pests, I am rapidly finding myself in the spray, swat and splat school of bug control. None of the organic, let’s encourage ladybirds and hoverflies to come and eat them all, “third way” kind of liberal nonsense. No: Direct Action. And fast. That’s what we want. We can send invitations to the ladybirds for next summer. If it means preserving my darling beans of May (or June, or whatever) spraying with Bug Off is what I’ll do.
And I hate myself for it.
The Lost Front Garden raised (or shoud that be razed?)
Meanwhile out the front, I spent a happy afternoon in the rain doing the nearest equivalent of slash and burn on the front garden which some years ago we made into a gravelled patio area but which in recent times has become somewhat overgrown. Judicious use of the strimmer – just a little worrying with shingle stones in the grass – and other destructive tools, and the sweet Monsieur Hulot type path was retrieved. And in the process, more nettles (otherwise known as Ladybird heaven) were destroyed.
Oh dear, no more green planet. A few toxins won’t do any harm, will they….?!
Last night I dreamt I woke to the sound of cows again. It was a dream that has haunted me recently and it is a signifier of more than just a mad fear of bovine TB.
In November when delinquent Friesians from the next door field trampled the Brussels sprout patch in our garden I was more amused than dismayed. Yes, we had lost the best crop of Brussels for many years even before we had eaten any (my father insists on not picking them till after the first frost) but the whole incident was somewhat comical in that the damage had been done under my old man’s bedroom window and he had not heard a thing.
But he was upset. And only now am I beginning to grasp his depression at the destruction wrought by the hungry heifers as, in the fallout from the incident, we have agreed to take over a large part of the gardening duties from my father.
My parents had always been fiercely proud of their garden – and with some justification. They had started it from not much more than a ploughed field and turned it into a well cultivated acre of land with herbaceous borders, trees and, most importantly, a fine vegetable patch. All four sons had been required to do some digging, planting or harvesting, under a certain level of supervision, but it had never really left me with any feeling of satisfaction.
Until now.
Renting the converted barn off my father, we have a vested interest in the state of the garden, and since my mother died five years ago it has become increasingly difficult for him to cope. But it is even more of a struggle for him to let go. Any work in the garden is closely monitored from the control centre next door and is more than likely being done in the wrong way, with the wrong tools and at the wrong time of year. I am approaching fifty (from the right direction, if one asks) but still get myself into adolescent sulks as I try to start the strimmer and hear the inevitable “is there enough petrol in that?” or the catch-all offer of “a word of advice”. I am unable to attempt the simplest tasks without the intervention and supervision of my father and it drives me mad. But I say nothing. Why? Because I think that if I do I will upset him. So I take the angst while he takes control.
But the cow debacle has given us a way in. We have offered (nay – demanded)to actually take over part of the veg patch and that is what I am going to work on this summer – and perhaps even write about. And it might just be the means I need to finally become a mature independent adult. I have already made one step when I was given some advice by the Old Man on how to put chicken wire around the patch to ensure that the mower could still get around. I finally felt compelled to tell him to back off and leave me to do it myself.
“I know how to do this thanks. But if I want advice I will ask. I would rather try things out my way and if I fail, so be it. I would rather fail and learn from my mistakes than constantly have you telling me what do”. There….I said it. And felt so much better for it.
