This and That

First signs of spring

2012-01-25T17:36:00.001Z

Galanthus caucasicus (I like snowdrops enough to have the odd species; it's about twice the size of the normal snowdrop) coming out.

One of numerous hybrid Hellebores I have round the allotment. A neighbour once used some blue plastic by mistake; it disintegrated due to the ultraviolet, and there are still bits around the place. the only plastic sheeting that should be used on a garden is the black stuff used to smother weeds.

And a crow.

Winter's grip

2012-01-20T10:01:00.000Z

As you can see, I'm digging steadily, and covering everything with dead leaves. There's not much goodness in them, but it keeps the weeds down, keeps the soil damp in dry soells, feeds the worms, and adds humus. The recent frosts finished off the roses, but hellebores are flowering, and snowdrops are showing colour. Not long to the end of winter!

One hive has died out; the other three are looking good. The dead one dwindled away over a period, leaving a very small, very dead cluster, with food available. So they didn't starve. I suspect a bowel fungus called Nosema, but without a microscope, I can't prove it.

Frost pocket

2012-01-16T19:19:00.002Z

Frost has been very evident oon the allotment the last few days, making its status as a major frost pocket only too obvious. There's not much frost where I live, and it soon melts in the sun, but on the plot, it hangs about all day. Cold air flows down to the stream, runs along its course, and hits the railway embankment at the bottom. So we get a pool of cold air hanging over the site. I don't think it affects our vegetable growing much, if at all, but it leaves me worrying about the tender tubers I have sitting in buckets of damp sand. Another time, I may leave them in the boiler house at church, which is probably going to be completely frost free. The buckets would take a good bit of freezing though, so they'll probably be OK. One more night of it, and it's supposed to warm up again.

I haven't done a thing down there this week, as I've been getting a new carpet laid in church, along with a sound system, and an electronic hymnal, which is like a little computer which plays hymns. Just what we need when the organist isn't there, but I did my back in shifting chairs. I was expecting the carpet people on Wednesday, they turned up Monday morning, and I had to get everything shifted out in a hurry.

Only six or eight weeks to go till spring!

Robin

2012-01-07T17:50:00.002Z

And here's a crow.

Fallen tree

2012-01-07T10:07:00.002Z

There's a hawthorn down a few yards from my plot. Also a massive sheet of corrugated in the stream at the bottom. Fortunately it was too big to go round a tight bend by the bridge, and block the culvert. The problems that would cause don't bear thinking about. I managed to drag it out from under the bridge, but couldn't get it up the bank on my own. With a bit of luck, I might manage to find some assistance today, and get it shifted. Apart from that, I think we've all survived the week's gales in good shape, and the Council have been informed about the tree. They're usually pretty good about getting somebody out to clear the lane.

Wasps' nest

2012-01-02T17:17:00.003Z

I was admiring this wasps' nest in one of my empty hives yesterday. It almost fills an 18-inch square broodbox; I've never seen anything like it outside the University Museum of Natural History in Oxford. They've got a massive one on display there; from what I remember, they had two nests side by side, and they combined into a monster. This is a single nest, which I watched throughout its development.

I've planted out twenty raspberry canes; they've been on the plot a couple of years, but I haven't managed to get them organised. I tried last year, but health problems plus the drought led to most of the canes dying. This time it should work, as they've got plenty of time to get settled in before summer.

A neighbour just gave me a tray of shallots, whihc need planting out. i haven't had any success with these before, but I'm quite happy to try again. They're his show stock, so they're nice fat bulbs which should, in theory, do well. So that's the next job, along with garlic and elephant garlic which need planting out as well. Walking onions, Babbington leeks and Welsh onions can all stay in their pots for the time being. I'm waiting for maincrop onions to appear in the 99p shop, since I got them there last year, and they did really well. I haven't had any success growing seed yet, but maybe once I get a polytunnel up. Hopefully I'll manage it this year!

Mites and seed parcels

2011-12-23T23:35:00.000Z

I recieved this this morning, courtesy of JayB and the folks at Allotments4all. We just save seed from a few varieties, send it in, and this is what we each get. Lots of rarities in there!

I've given the bees their annual oxalic acid treatment, for varroa mites. I use 100g sugar, 7.5g oxalic acid, and 100ml water. The acid came from Thornes a few years ago; a 500g packet should be enough for a lifetime. All four colonies were alive. The two colonies headed by queens I raised this year are extremely strong, with clusters on 7-8 seams. They flew better than the others during the autumn, when the strengths were more equal. The wakest is the swarm which moved in last May, which is on two seams. It may be dwindling, or it may just be genetically predisposed to wintering in a small cluster, which obviously eats less and is less likely to run out of stores and starve.

Both the colonies with older queens are light, so I gave them both candy. This is made like human candy. I used 2 1/2 Kg sugar, with a mugful of water per Kg, and boiled it until it formed a reasonably solid ball when dropped into cold water. All very unscientific! It's just sugar with added water, so the bees can use it without having to find the extra water. The process has to be stopped before ti caramelises and turns brown, as bees are unable to digest caramel, and the extra matter in their gut can finish a colony off in a long, cold spell with no opportunities for a poo flight.

So far, it's looking good. I just hope it lasts!

Oca

2011-11-26T16:15:00.001Z

This is now dying back after having been frosted during the week. As you can see, a crop appears to be forming. I'm not lifting anything till the top growth is completely dead.

I need to add more varieties for next year, to increase my chances of getting seed. I always get a few flowers, around October, but I haven't seen a seed pod yet. Once I have some, that starts a process of selection for plants which will flower, and set seed, reliably in our climate. It works with cacti. South American species which were exceedingly shy bloomers in Britain when they were first grown here, have now adapted after a number of generations, and flower reliably. No reason why the same thing shouldn't work with oca!

Rare Brassicas

2011-11-23T19:57:00.001Z

I've been minus a camera for a bit but I now have a replacement. 12 megapixels, so I'm anticipating having to make reduced versions of pics for the internet, and the contrast is far better than the old one. No need to enhance it digitally! So here are some of the first pics, taken on a very dull day, and uploaded as they come.

This is Gloire de Portugal, a variety of couve tronchuda. It's a rare old Portugese cabbage type, loose leaved as you see. It's a dual purpose vegetable; you can cook the midribs as well as the rest of the leaf. They're good in stirfries. Harry Dodson makes much of the lack of cabbage smell when cooking it in 'The Victorian Kitchen Garden', but I tend to give everything minimal cooking, and it cabbage never smells when I do it! It tried to bolt during the autumn, possibly because of the drought. I picked off the flowering stems as they appeared. As you can see, it's a large plant. The only source I know of for (generic) couve tronchuda in Britain is Thomas Etty, and they suggest planting a foot or two apart. Two and a half to three feet would be more like it. Some plants have done well despite the drought, others poorly.

'Spis Bladene' (not its proper name; it was written on the seed envelope, and means 'good eating') from the HSL. It's pretty stunted, no doubt due to the drought. They say it's a perennial kale, but I know no more than that. As I only have three small plants I'll probably cut it back when it tries to flower, see if it does regenerate, and plant more next year. With any luck, that might give me a better number of plants for seed saving.

Variegated Daubenton's Kale, looking rather tattered and squashed as the slugs like it, and it's had net draped over it. It's a perennial, non-seeding kale; I'm planning to take cuttings in the spring. I also have Taunton Deane, a similar, redder, variety. My one plant's rather small, slug-eaten, and thoroughly unphotogenic.

Autumn

2011-10-29T18:03:00.000+01:00

I'm still harvesting the Egremont Russet. It's one of my favourite apples, and as they're hanging on the tree well, I don't have to try to find somewhere to store them. A lot have split. The rain after the dry summer made them swell up, and as the skins had already 'set', the result was inevitable.

Much of the soil is now damp, but there are still patches where it's bone dry. It's amazing how much rain it can take to wet it properly. The stream's running at last, but I'm not sure how long that'll last if it stops raining for a few days. I've seen buzzards over the site twice in the last week. They've been appearing for the last few years; I think they're more of a winter visitor, but I'm still not sure.

I lifted the Skagit Magic this last week. May was far too late to plant true potato seed; I've got more coming, and I'll probably start it in January. I did get tubers off some plants; I've probably selected for earlies since it only flowered last month. They're very small, up to an inch. I've no experience of overwintering microtubers (which is almost what they are), but I'm going to try. We didn't have any blight this year, so I don't know whether any of them are resistant to British strains. I'll probably find out next year.

Meanwhile, I've sent off one seed swap parcel, and I've got to do another over the weekend. The beans are still drying, but it's that time of year already!

Crossed beans

2011-10-06T22:55:00.003+01:00

It's been a while since I posted here, dues to my not having been well. I've been harvesting seed, doing a bit of digging, and not much else. The broad beans are hybridised; half the Red Epicure seed was green. It must have crossed with Aquadulce Claudia. I've been thinking of trying to breed my own variety, and I'm going to do it. I'll cross the existing mix with Crimson Flowered, maybe one or two other varieties, and aim at something red-flowered, red-seeded, hardy, and tenderer than AQ. It should be possible, with patience.

One of my Couve Tronchudas was running to seed, with unusual white flowers for a cabbage. I've pulled all the flowering stems off as I don't have as many as I'd like, and I don't want it dying on me before it's had a chance to fertilise my other plants next year!

Meanwhile I'm feeding the bees up. Two colonies have enough honey for the winter, two don't. I've marked both the new queens; one of them gave me a right shock. A couple of weeks ago, I marked her using a crown of thorns cage, which is based on a ring of nails which you push down into the comb to hold the queen against it. She curled up and started twitching. She seemed OK a couple of minutes later, and is still there, still laying happily. I've heard of queens playing dead before, but I've never seen it, and it's frighteningly realistic!

Honey Show

2011-09-12T23:27:00.000+01:00

I spent the weekend helping with the Birmingham Association's Honey Show at Martineau Gardens in Edgbaston. It's the first time it's been held there, and we weren't sure how it would go. In the event, there was plenty of interest, and we sold all the honey we had. I spent the time sitting by an observation hive, answering questions and showing people what was going on inside it. It was the first time I've had a chance to spend several hours watching a queen; I'm not sure her behaviour was entirely normal, but she spent the great majority of the time standing about doing nothing, just laying the occasional egg.

Quite a few people entered jars of honey for the competition; the judge spent hours examining it, but I'm really not sure what the criteria are.

Honey sales were a great success

The observation hive generated loads of interest, particularly from the kids.

Not surprisingly, the bees didn't like being cooped up all weekend with the light streaming in, and they were fanning like mad to keep the temperature down. The're very good at this; I saw a photo in an old 'ABC and XYZ of Beeping' (an American beekeeping encyclopedia) of a hive which had been right next to a serious fire in a timber yard. the back of the hive had been burning, and the wood looked well and truly charred. The bees inside survived.

Find the queen!

New Queens

2011-09-08T22:44:00.003+01:00

I sneaked a look at the two new splits; both have eggs, laid in nice patterns; one egg per cell, and laid in contiguous cells. It looks as though the new queens have mated satisfactorily, so there's not much to do except feed them up for the winter, and see what survives.

A lot Bramleys have been dropping off the tree, so they've been chopped up and frozen. The greengage crop isn't good this year, but I did a massive crumble, and there are plenty more.

Another Swarm

2011-08-22T21:06:00.003+01:00

I've just spent a couple of hours winkling a swarm out of a neighbour's hedge. I put a swarm box upside-down on top of the hedge, and applied smoke to the bottom of the swarm. The idea is that they move up into the box. They moved, very slowly, but they went diagonally, into the depths of the hedge, and I ended up with a third in the box, a third on the outside, and a third still in the hedge. I found the queen on the outside, picked her up, and put her in the box, with the lid on. That made all the difference; I knocked the bees in the hedge into the air, and before long they were all in the box. They're now in an empty hive.

I split the original hives last week, so I now have five; two with laying queens, two with virgins, which should have hatched over the weekend, and one with a queen which is an unknown quantity. The swarm is probably a cast with a virgin, but it's a reasonable size, and it's been hanging in the hedge for at least a week, so the queen has had time to mate.

Vitally, I have plenty of young drones from Hive 5, which have hatched in the last couple of weeks. It takes 12-14 days before they become fertile, so they're at the right point in their lives. It's easy to arrange for new queens, as colonies produce them any time you take the queen away, assuming they have eggs or newly hatched larvae available. Drones are hard; they raise them when they want, not when it suits the beekeeper.

The beans are at last starting to produce; I've been pleasantly surprised by the runner bean 'Black Magic'. I heard that it was stringy, and had assumed it was going to be a drying bean. In fact, the young beans are stringless and sweet-tasting. I don't like the larger beans anyway, so it's a question of picking them at about six inches long.

My rhubarb got a first at the site show last week; I haven't been well since, but I'll put a few pics up later.

23 August. I went back to check this afternoon, and the swarm was back in the hedge. I've come across that before; they sometimes seem to get wedded to the idea of hanging in a specific spot, and won't stay put in a hive. I'll try again tomorrow.

24 August I didn't have time to extract the swarm from the hedge again yesterday, so I went back today. Naturally, it was gone.

Bees

2011-08-09T22:39:00.000+01:00

I went through Hive 3 again today, broke down a lot of queen cells, and got rid of several that were prematurely capped. If they're capped after four days, then they were raised from larvae which were too old to make good queens. I used to have a strain which never did this, so I have to assume it's genetic, and can potentially be bred out. In another week or so, when the bees have had time to build up and strengthen the cell walls, I'll split Hive 5 as well, and give a couple of cells to the queenless side. It's then a matter of waiting while they hatch, mate, and start laying.

Bees and Riots

2011-08-08T19:52:00.000+01:00

I split Hive 4 - the big one - over the weekend. The brood and young bees are now Hive 3; the queen and flying bees remain where they were. Both splits are extremely strong. I checked them today, and everything is as it ought to be. Hive 3 has several dozen queen cells - more than I like - and not much open brood. That's good; you want lots of young bees, and not much for them to feed, to ensure that the queens get the best possible treatment.

A queenless hive will always produce queen cells as long as it has eggs or newly hatched larvae. Drones are harder. Hives 3 and 4 don't have a drone cell between them, but Hive 4 does have a lot of drones. They'll probably be a bit long in the tooth by the time the queens are ready to mate, but hopefully they'll still be fertile. Hive 5 is better; it has a reasonable amount of hatching drone brood. The adult queen hatches 15 days after the egg is laid, and flies to mate about 5-8 days later, depending on the weather. Drones become fertile about 12-14 days after hatching, so I'd expect mating in about two and a half to three weeks, weather permitting, at which time I should have some reasonably young drones available. That's critical, as bees produce them when they feel like it, not when the beekeeper needs them!

On a more serious note, I just spoke to my daughter in Hackney. She's OK, but they're rioting outside, and she couldn't get to her placement. She's horrified by what's happening; as she says, the damage they're doing will just make things worse.

16 years

2011-07-24T17:25:00.000+01:00

This is us out for a 16th anniversary meal yesterday. People forecasted disaster, tried to sabotage the wedding, claimed Namissa was only marrying me to get her stay here. Our minister at the time wrote and asked me not to go ahead since she's Muslim. Despite it all, we've failed to murder each other, divorce, or do anything else to cause an irreparable breach, and as you see, we're still together. We've never had a single row about religion either. It's the same God, and beside that, what else matters?

Hedges

2011-07-16T23:12:00.000+01:00

I'm beginning to think this may be the year my hedges finally get sorted. I'd given up on cordless tools; a hedge trimmer I had a few years ago was hopeless. But people kept telling me the recent ones are OK, so I bought a Flymo Sabrecut hedge trimmer; it comes with a massive 24 volt battery that goes on your waist, and appears to be the nearest thing to a heavy-duty model out there. I've been pleasantly surprised. It cuts branches as thick as the ones the petrol cutter I used to struggle with could cope with. At the same time, it's far more manageable. It cuts the top of the hedge without my needing to stand on anything, and the battery lasts longer than I do

At the moment I need the loppers for the heavier stuff, particularly along the top of the hedge where I can't get the leverage I can on the side. Once it's done, though, it cuts smaller twigs with ease, so it should be easy to keep the hedges under control. I've said it before, but it should happen this time!

I wish there was a cordless strimmer as good. I looked at several models, and plumped for a Bosch ART 23 li, with a lithum battery. I like the blades it uses rather than cord; they don't last that long, but they work out about 30p each on eBay, so it's not expensive to run. It does the job adequately, but still feels somewhat underpowered. The battery lasts long enough to see me through the amount of strimming I'm likely to do in a day. It would be better with an 18-volt battery rather than 14.4, but I don't need anything like the overpowered petrol thing I used before. Not only did it give me backache, it once cut straight through a plastic bucket. There's no call for that!

Slow progress

2011-07-04T18:24:00.000+01:00

I planted out 40 sweet corn today; they're a bit late, but they weren't potbound so they'll be OK. There are more to do tomorrow. I meant to chop a few feet of overgrown hedge, but I looked at it and wilted in the heat. The thing's quite intimidating, given the difficulty I have handling the hedge cutter. I've ordered a battery powered one (it should have been delivered on Friday, but they didn't knock, and I had an email to say that they'd 'been unable to deliver', and would I rearrange it. It's a recurring problem; I hope it comes tomorrow. It won't do the overgrown hedge, but I should be able to handle it easily, and if so, I can keep the young growth in order from now on. There's a strmimmer comig as well, which will be more than useful. I had battery powered ones some years ago; they were OK for about a year, but the batteries gave up on me. I'm assured they're better now.

The wasps' nest has now grown to the point where it's stuck to the hive roof, and I can't take any more pics till it does out at the end of the season. I've still got lots of bees round my empty hives, but they haven't moved in yet. Hive 3 - the big one - has nine frames of brood; Hive 5, the swarm, has five and a half, and is building up steadily. There should be honey soon, and it's coming in nicely.

Thundery

2011-06-27T18:25:00.001+01:00

It was as hot as the backside of hell this afternoon, and the bees were in a right mood. I couldn't go within ten yards of the hives without being buzzed. That's most unusual, but they're known for an extreme aversion to thundery weather. You don't open a hive on a day like this!

I've mislaid a pea. I had two varieties from a Swedish seed bank; they're so rare that we don't know what they look like, and as far as I know only one other person had seed. Paula is doing fine, but I couldn't find Skansk Margart. Either its lost its label or I forgot to put one on in the first place. I know I planted it out as I found the label from the original pot. I did find a few plants of a strange pea, sharing a wigwam with Clarke's Beltony Blue. It has a pale pink, self-coloured flower unlike anything I've seen before in a pea. I bet that's it, but I'll have to check with the other grower. I hope it's not purple-podded, or it'll be hard to tell the two apart.

Pigeons have been trampling all over some of the peas I'm growing for a crop rather than seed, despite CD's hanging just overhead. They've attacked very few pods - they aren't ripe yet - but they've had a good go at the foliage, and the stems are all broken down. It's not going to make them any easier to harvest.

Wasps, Bramleys and Peas

2011-06-25T21:28:00.001+01:00

This is a wasps' nest I killed for another plotholder. Opening the shed door tore the side off, and they really went wild. You can see the structure quite well, with the horizontal paper combs, and the white grubs hanging upside-down, each one hanging from a silk thread. The adults feed them on insects, and in return, the grubs feed them on sweet syrup.

I planred this Bramley's about six years ago, and it's beginning to crop well. It took a while to get moving because of the waterlogging; fruit trees don't like it at all. It's a partial tip bearer, and the heavy fruit weigh thin branches down, to the point where it grows sideways or even downwards. When it's grown without a trunk, people end up tieing the branches to stakes to keep them off the ground. I wish now I'd given it a taller trunk!

I finished planting out the peas today. 24 varieties, unless I've missed some. There's plenty more still to do!

Wasps, Bees and Weeds

2011-06-23T21:37:00.000+01:00

This is rapidly getting bigger. The wasps still quite unaggressive though, and ignore me while I watch them. The patterns in the paper - made from chewed wood pulp from all sorts of places - are amazing. Both hives are getting stronger; Hive 4 is laying down honey - at least ten pounds in the bottom super during the last week, a smidgeon in the one above it, and a lot more in the broodbox. Hive 5 is expanding steadily, and now has five frames of brood, and a little stored honey.

Weeds are doing better than anything else at the moment. they always seem to at this time of year, but it's far worse than usual as I couldn't keep up last year. I'm really struggling, but as long as I can keep planting things out I'll manage. The slugs hammered the French beans and the Gloire de Portugal when it rained. All the other brassicas were left unmolested, as are the runner beans. I should have some peas soon. I've had a few lettuces, and while the spinach went straight to seed, it is at least beginning to flower, so I should have plenty of seeds.

The Sarracenia flava are eating large quantities of medium-sized insects, up to and including wasps. I've been surprised how many of the latter I see staring up at me when I look down the pitchers. They're not supposed to be looking for nectar this early in the season. S rubra only eats smaller victims, and doesn't seem to get as many, unless it's simply that they're sinking out of sight, while the flavas are getting clogged up with larger prey.

Sarracenias

2011-06-15T18:46:00.000+01:00

These grow in acid bogs in the US. Such an environment is very short on nutrients, expecially nitrogen, and plants have developed all sorts of ways to supplement their diet with small invertebrates. Sarracenia leaves are rolled into a trumpet shape; the upper part produces nectar to attract insects. Just inside the lip, where the plant produces the most nectar, is a very smooth area with no hairs; the insect can't get a secure gip, and falls. Further down, all the hairs point downward, making it hard for the victim to go in any other direction. Eventually, it falls into the liquid at the bottom, which contains a wetting agent, and soon drowns. It rots, and the plant absorbs the resulting soup.

This is Sarracenia flava, the largest species. These pitchers are about fifteen inches high, and well over an inch across; other strains get significantly bigger. They look as though they could probably eat a blubottle or a wasp, but most of their diet seems to be small flies about the size of an aphid.

Sarracenia rubra rubra is the smallest member of the genus, barely reaching a foot high; the pitchers are about half an inch in diameter.

Meanwhile, the bees are flourishing, and beginning to store honey for me. I'm struggling to fins space for everything I need to plant out, as a lot of the plot is still a mass of weeds from last year. I can't go fast enough, that's my problem!

Late frost

2011-06-13T18:05:00.000+01:00

We had a slight frost on Saturday night - 11-12 June; my record late frost here was on the 16th a few years ago. The tips of the potatos were shrivelled, and one or two beans which escaped the fleece were blasted. The oca was OK, as was everything in the mini-greenhouses. Not too much damage, but it's unexpected this late.

I've been planting out peas and brassicas; the Daubenton's Kale is now almost a foot high, and out among the peas. When I pull them, the brassicas can grow on and profit from the extra nitrogen.

Useful insects

2011-06-10T19:31:00.000+01:00

This beauty's in one of my empty hives; I can lift the roof off and watch them without being threatened at all. They get through thousands of insects a day to feed the larvae, and are far too useful to kill. There's really very little chance of getting stung; I've shared my shed with wasps several times, and never had a sting yet.

The bees have just started to lay down honey in the supers, where I take the harvest from. The brambles are starting to flower, but from what I can see most of the bees are still on ground elder.

I fleeced the beans and the oca this afternoon, as they're forecasting a couple of cold nights, and I've already had a couple of bean varieties damaged by frost. Most of the peas are recovering well from the pigeon damage, and the rest should be OK once I've rearranged the netting a bit. Unfortunately that's going to mean readjusting all the ties, and I didn't have time today.

The Helleborus argutifolius has set seed, though it's not ripe yet. I'm not sure there's going to be anough for swapping, but I should at least get some seedlings to grow on, and hopefully have more next year. There's heavy rain forecast for Sunday, but I'm still struggling to get ahead of the weeds.

Bees

2011-05-18T12:33:00.000+01:00

It's now drizzling steadily, which is something I suppose, though the ground's still very dry and we need a real downpour to make much difference. I nipped down to the plot earlier, to check the bees before it started.

I now have half a dozen tiny Meconopsis seedlings; I've falied to get seed of this to germinate many times, but the trick seems to be very fresh seed, and stratification over winter. the Daubenton's Kale is growing well. The name seems to be a generic one for any non-flowering perennial kale; we've now identified three varieties. There's the variegated one I have, a green one, and Taunton Deane, named after the garden in Devon where it's been preserved.

The big hive - No. 4 - is flourishing. I'm slipping a frame or two of foundation in every week, and easing out the remaining standard National frames. When I swapped to 14x12's, I let the bees build comb out on the bottoms of the frames rather than starting with all foundation, and it's worked well. It's time for them to go, however. The broodbox is packed with bees, though there's nothing going on in the supers yet. There's no sign of swarm cells so far, which is good. I don't like swarmy bees. They gave me a bit of a stinging last week, but this time they were fine.

The swarm - No. 5 - now has brood on three frames. I found the queen, and marked her white; it's last year's colour, but she's highly unlikely to have been raised this year. They're pulling comb steadily, and they sit very quietly during examinations.

Bees

2011-05-11T18:11:00.000+01:00

I had a look at both colonies this afternoon. The swarm is happily settled in, has stored some honey, and has a couple of frames of eggs. So that's looking good. They seem to have stopped buzzing me as well. The original colony (Hive No. 4) is still building up fast. They're moving up into the supers, where the honey crop's stored. They got a bit agitated while I was inspecting them, buzzing around my head. Not a good habit. Unfortunately, not many beekeepers make much effort to breed from the best queens, so you really are taking pot luck with swarms. I've had far worse! Both hives have been given a couple of frames of foundation to pull out into comb. It should do something to discourage Hive 4 from swarming, and it'll enable me to get rid of some of my nastier old comb.

I've also planted out some more peas; Victorian Purple Podded, Glory of Devon, and Lancashire Lad.

The May is out

2011-05-07T18:48:00.000+01:00

And the clouts are well and truly cast.

This last one is (I think) Midland Thorn; it has smaller leaves, and as you see, pink flowers.

Goodlife sent me a couple of small cuttings of Daubenton's Kale. It's perennial, and, as you see, propagated by cuttings. It rarely sets seed, though it does happen. There are a few perennial brassicas; the only well-known one is Nine-Star Perennial Broccoli, which I'm also growing. I also have 'Spis Bladene' (which isn't its proper name; we don't know what it is) from the HSL. They say it 'appears to be a perennial kale', suggesting they don't really know themselves. It obviously sets seed, but I believe some of them flower, and then sprout from the base instead of dying. It'll be interesting to see!

On Thursday morning, I passed by the plot, to see dozens of bees flying around two empty hives. There had been a few around for just over a week, and this usually turns out to be the precursor of a swarm, as they stake their new home out in advance, and defend it against other bees. Sure enough, when I returned after lunch, they'd made their choice, and there was a swarm in residence, having frightened a couple of neighbours on the way in. Swarming bees don't sting, but they can certainly look impressive! Unfortunately they have a habit of buzzing round my head. This is a known undesirable habit ('following'), so I'm going to be requeening them. It's hereditary, and I don't want all my bees doing it.

Planting

2011-04-30T18:47:00.000+01:00

The bees are going great guns, with nine frames of brood, the broodbox full of bees, and a few drones present. I've given them a couple of frames of foundation, to give them some comb to draw. I'm finding wild comb at the beck of the broodbox every week, and they might as well draw some where I want it!

I've been planting peas and brassicas. Caulis, kale, brussels, purple sprouting broccoli. Spis Bladene kale from the HSL is a bit of a mystery; it means 'eat the leaves', and is definitely not the plant's name. Apparently it 'appears to be a perennial kale', which sounds interesting. Half a dozen wigwams of peas meant loads of grass cuttings to be barrowed, but somehow I've managed this far without doing my back in. I'm planting more as fast as I get them planted out.

There's still far too much digging to be done.

Bees

2011-04-21T16:56:00.002+01:00

I've had to take a couple of days away from the plot; I had a vomiting bug, but I seem to be getting over it. All very unpleasant.

Meanwhile, the bees have been taking advantage of the good weather. They now have six frames of brood, with an entire frame of eggs. There are a lot more bees in the hive, and a few have moved through the excluder into the supers. I spotted one drone. That's what I like to see this time of year. The queen's laying flat out, and by the time the bramble, which is my main honey source, comes into flower, there should be plenty of bees ready to take advantage. The one thing I need to watch out for is swarming. The queen headed a swarm last year, and I have to assume she's likely to head another this. So I need to keep a sharp eye open for swarm preparations.

The sowing I planned to do this week obviously hasn't happened, but I can get cracking on that tomorrow if I'm feeling up to it.

Bees

2011-04-15T01:07:00.002+01:00

My hive now has brood covering five frames, with masses of capped brood. The number of bees is now increasing rapidly, and will clearly continue to do so for a while. There's a growing area of capped drone comb, and I expect them to be hatching by the beginning of next month.

So all's well, and I can expect a decent honey harvest as long as they don't swarm. The queen headed a prime swarm in May last year, so I wouldn't be too surprised if I do find them making swarm cells. I'll have to keep an eye on them, and be prepared.

Things are growing merrily, though I lost a lot of the young plants I had in pots during the freeze before Christmas. I look at the amount of digging I need to do and despair sometimes, but at least I can plant some things through black plastic, and evade some digging that way.

Plantings

2011-03-22T16:41:00.002Z

I've just put in Serpette Guilotteau peas, on the windowsill, and All the Year Round lettuce, and Spanish Black carrots, under cloches.

All the Year Round is mentioned in Christopher Stocks' 'Forgotten Fruits', which is mainly about vegetables despite the name. It was around before 1856, and it's a selection from an 18th Century variety, Tennis Ball. This used to be pickled in brine. I've heard of pickled cabbage, but never of pickled lettuce!

Slow spring

2011-03-18T22:16:00.004Z

It's slowly getting warmer. Too slowly for me. The bees seem happy; they were busy bringing in bright yellow willow pollen at nine degrees today, in full sun. They need sun to be active at that temperature, but willow is good. I've always found that bees would only start raising significant brood after it started. If it was too cold for them to fly while the pollen was on the catkins, they were going to be very late.

They've got three and a half frames of brood, and were in a very nice mood; they took no notice of me pulling their home apart at all. There's quite a lot of pollen in there; quite a bit of it under the brood, which is supposed to be a native bee characteristic. These are hybrids, but with, I suspect, a fair bit of native blood.

The broad beans are coming up slowly at last. I've put together two more mini greenhouses, since I couldn't get the right size covers for the old ones. I'm going to use those as shelving for stuff that can go outside. The brassicas I started the other day are now up, and are in one of the new ones. Digging is proceeding fairly well, and I'm managing to move a bit faster. I don't feel any better, but something has to be improving.

LL sent me some oca to replace what I lost last year; there are three varieties, where I only had two before. You can tell because the tubers are different colours. That gives me more chance of getting seeds. Different varieties have different types of flower, and without going into the technicalities, you need flowers of two different types to get pollination. Seed gives the only chance we have - and it's not much, given the number of people interested - of getting a new variety which can form tubers early enough to cope wit our climate. The problem with the existing ones is that tuber formation only occurs as the plant begins to die back, and then the frost is likely to catch it.

First planting of the year

2011-03-14T00:07:00.003Z

Greyhound cabbage, All The Year Round cauliflower, Green Heading Calabrese and Gloria de Portugal, a variety of couve tronchuda. I'm going to try to resist further temptation until these have come up. Meanwhile they're sitting on the windowsill.

Brassicas

2011-03-12T11:26:00.003Z

My Seed Guardian seeds arrived today; Boothby's Blond cucumbers, and Cooper's Bean Pea. It's a little confusing when there are small, rounded beans known as pea beans, and large peas known as bean peas! There's even a Mr. Bound's pea bean and Mr Bound's bean pea, which got me totally mixed up last year.

I read that you can start couve tronchuda indoors in February for an early crop. It's a little late for that, but I'm going to start it on the windowsill in a couple of days, along with a few other brassicas. It'll be good to get a few things started again. There's ben some discussion of the HSL variety Spis Bladene, a white-flowered kale. Apparently the name originated as a mix-up; they acquired it as nameless seed with 'spis bladene' (eat the leaves) on the envelope, and nobody knows what it actually is. So many old varieties have come down to us without their names; it's infuriating. They say it 'appears to be a perennial kale', which is interesting. there used to be a lot of perennials; some flower rarely if ever, while others have to have the flowers picked off to make them last. Over the years, some of them appear to have been selected for biennial flowering; Hungry Gap, if it is the same one, is now a biennial rather than a perennial. I wonder whether anything could be done to breed the perennial tendencies back in? I'd love to try some brassica breeding, but I'm acquiring so many rarities, I'm probably going to be stuck with just perserving them.

Bees

2011-03-10T09:39:00.003Z

I had a look at my remaining hive yesterday. The temperature was at an in-between stage; they weren't really flying, but they weren't clustered either. Bees are always difficult to handle at that point; they fly up freely when disturbed, then crawl over you and get into your clothes. There's nothing I hate worse than bees up my sleeves or my trousers!

Anyway, they had eggs and young larvae on three frames, and a little pollen stored. That's all good. They'll be hatching out at the end of the month - it takes three weeks from the egg to the bee - and the hive will probably expand fast after that. Meanwhile, it's obvious they've been systematically shutting down egg-laying in cold weather. That's a good sign in our climate, when we get significant periods when the bees can't forage. Brood eat them out of house and home, and that's when they starve.

Meanwhile, I'm making slow progress with the digging, but otherwise nothing much is happening. Broad beans planted over a month ago still aren't showing, though there are healthy-looking roots sticking out of the bottom of the pots. Things should speed up now, as there's no more really cold weather forecast. It's a frustrating time of year.

Bees

2011-02-27T13:25:00.002Z

I've let myself in for it now; I've taken on the job of Newsletter Editor for the local Beekeepers' Association.

I had a look at the hives the other day; it was more like April than February. Hive 6 is dead. I was wondering last time. When I think back, they didn't really bring in any honey last autumn, while Hive 4 was storing masses. They slowly windled away over the winter. that's often indicative of hybridisation with unsuitable imports. People bring in queens from southern Europe or other warmer climates; they don't fly or mate in poor weather, and they don't cope with cold winters. I don't understand the attraction.

Hive 4 is flourishing. The queen evidently stopped laying during the cold snap last week, and has now started again. They were bringing in masses of hazel pollen, and actually have some stored. I've never seen bees storing pollen in February before.

My wife has just bought a video camera, and I made my first ever video, of the allotment. It's very short, but I included some shots of the bees as well as snowdrops and hellebores. You can see it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbI6XqPUShQ .

Allotment video

2011-02-24T22:16:00.002Z

I managed a little digging today, but really wasn't feeling up to much. I made my first ever video, and didn't even realise I was recording sound until I played it back. Snowdrops, hellebores and hazel catkins on the allotment, and a very active bee colony.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbI6XqPUShQ

Sarracenias

2011-02-19T16:23:00.004Z

Another chilly and miserable day. I had a splitting headache all night - a symptom of my chronic fatigue syndrome - and felt bad enough to cancel what I'd planned to do on the plot. I did get down briefly though.

Some Sarracenias arrived this morning from Blackkitty2. I've grown them before, when I was in Cornwall, and was keen to try again. So I had to get them potted up. I've just put them in 4-inch pots for the moment; they'll be OK for the moment, but once they start growing they need to sit in a saucer of water or something similar. So I need to concoct something that won't need daily topping up.

They're fascinating things; the leaves form tubes like upright trumpets, and trap insects which drown in the water at the bottom. The plant absorbs the juices as they rot. The ones I had before were about eighteen inches high, and fed on midges and the like.

Of course, the ultimate would be something like the orchid in the H G Wells short story:
http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/9381/

While I was down there I met my new neighbours on the neglected plot next door. They seem keen; I hope they make a go of it this time!

Peas

2011-02-17T12:10:00.003Z

Goodlife has just sent me seed of two varieties, Paula and Skansk Margart (I don't know how to do umlauts and that little o the Scandinavians put over vowels, so that'll have to do!), from one of the Scandinavian seed banks (http://www.nordgen.org/index.php/en/content/view/full/62/). Paula has small round seeds, and Skansk Margart is green and wrinkled. That's really all I know about these so far. I'm looking forward to growing them out and learning more.

2011-02-12T17:43:00.002Z

This is a small butterbur (Petasitses) about eight inches high, which grows in the lane on the way down to the allotments. There's a much bigger version in the woods, and I'm not sure which, if either, is 'proper' butterbur.

The snowdrops are in full bloom, and I'm busy planting a long row of autumn raspberries. These are the popular ones on the site; I don't know the variety, but lots of people have them. They're easier to manage than the summer raspberries; you just cut everything down in the autumn, and they fruit on the new canes the following year. Crocuses are out; I'm not a fan, and haven't planted anything except a few species crocus.

Hive 4 was busy today, bringing in masses of hazel pollen. I had a look at them; they're starting to raise brood - I find most strains stop in very cold weather - and have patches of eggs and young brood on two frames. Hive 6 has bees in a couple seams, and no brood that I could see. The sun had gone in, the light was bad, and I could easily have missed something. They're looking weak, so I hope they get going!

Spring is coming!

2011-02-03T19:45:00.005Z

The first snowdrops are out, and there's no more hard frost forecast. I've planted sixty Aquadulce Claudia, in pots. I's a pretty indestructible variety, though I've given up trying to overwinter it due to waterlogging, which does kill it. If the worst comes to the worst, I have more. Come April, I've got Red Epicure and Crimson-Flowered Broad Bean to go in, but they're not so hardy, and I don't want them flowering at the same time. I can cope with two varieties at opposite ends of the plot, as they're unlikely to cross-pollinate, but I'm not sure about three.

Someone in the States has sent me eleven named varieties of couve tronchuda. It's a rare old Portugese cabbage, which is apparently loose-leaved, somewhere between a modern cabbage and a kale. A couple of places used to stock generic seed, but it's now disappeared, So I asked around, and that's what I ended up with. I've now got more rare brassicas than I know what to do with; the seed is in the freezer as it'll take several years to grow it all out. I can probably manage two varieties a year if I net them on alternate days while they're flowering so they don't cross. The hedges round my plot do a lot to isolate it from the rest. I'm scrounging unusable net curtains from the church charity shop, which gets inundated with stuff that's fit for nothing but the rag man.

There's a short clip here about couve tronchuda, from the BBC series 'The Victorian Kitchen Garden'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt8KMWiq48M

Bees and allotments

2011-01-19T10:22:00.002Z

I just spotted a pot about this on Chris Slade's Bee Blog http://chrissladesbeeblog.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/bees-on-allotments/ .

I've had bees on my plot for ten years, mostly illegally. Originally, Birmingham allowed a couple of hives on a plot, but there was a row about someone keeping very bad-tempered bees on my site, and it caused such a ruckus they were banned. It was a long time ago now, and the rule was recently relaxed. You're still supposed to check with the Allotments Department.

My view is that it shouldn't be a problem, as long as common sense is applied. In any situation with close neighbours, temper should be a priority. Most sites are open, and people are likely to be working or passing within a few yards, in full view of the bees. I have hedges, which makes a lot of difference, but there's still no excuse for nasty bees. Low swarming should be a major consideration as well; swarms may do no harm, but they do frighten people. They make extra work for the beekeeper as well.

Then not too many hives should be kept. I can see a potential problem on some of the sites in London, where plots are about the size of a tablecloth, and in this case the answer might be to set aside a quiet corner of the site rather than having hives on individual plots. At the other end of the scale, my plot is very large, with six-foot hedges, and has more scope than most. A couple of hives on the average open plot is probably about right.

In ten years, I've only had objections to my hives once, and that was from someone who was openly trying to drive me off the site. I had a letter from the Allotments Department years ago, pointing out that bees weren't allowed, and asking me to remove them 'as soon as possible'. Somehow or other, it never became possible, and as the letter was never followed up, the bees were never removed. I had the impression at the time that they weren't very interested! Apart from that one incident, everyone has always been quite supportive.

Vegetable Seeds.net

2011-01-18T09:17:00.002Z

I've just had £25 worth of free seeds from this online company for putting a link to their site on here. I discovered them just before Christmas, and got a small order very fast, right in the middle of the Christmas rush.

Postage is free, prices are excellent. Prive per packet is under £1, at least in most cases, and this leads to my one criticism. The quantity of seed varies wildly with the variety, no doubt reflecting seed prices. Some seed - hybrid Asparagus, for instance - is extremely expensive. leading to packets with two seeds. Very few places stock this seed, so I wonder, forstly, whether it's worth it, and secondly, whther they'd have done better to make an exception and have a more expensive packet with, say, ten or a dozen seeds.

Overall, though, an excellent little firm, and one which seems very responsive to Emails.

Oxalic Acid Treatment

2011-01-13T17:21:00.004Z

A couple of days ago, I mentioned to my neighbour on the allotment that I have trouble managing the tops of the hedges. I got there today to find that he's done the whole length of it down his side. That's the first time in eleven years that a neighbour has taken the initiative and cut the hedge! I've still got the other side to do, but it's on the lower side, so the worst half is done for me.

I've just given an oxalic acid treatment (for mites) to my hives. It involves mixing up 7.5g of oxalic, and 100g each of water and sugar - that's enough for my hives, obviously the quantities can be altered appropriately if necessary - and squirting 5ml over each seam (between combs) containing bees.

Both are alive, and looking healthy so far. They're a bit light so I'll give them both some candy in a few days. One has a gigantic cluster filling the entire box, and was flying. A colony like this will build up quickly, and probably give a good honey crop in a good summer. They eat themselves out of house and home though, need a lot of beekeeper support over winter, and may eat as much as they bring in in a bad summer. They may well be swarmy as well. The other has a much smaller cluster on five frames, occupying about 1/4 of the area of the first, and wasn't flying at all. That's much more what I want, especially given that it arrived with two queens, mother and daughter. This is a native bee characteristic, associated with strains which swarm less often. It'll also eat less over winter, and need less support from me. After this winter, it probably won't need any.

So I'll requeen the first colony as soon as I've got a reasonable number of drones, and keep the queen in the second for another year at least. That's assuming they both survive that long!

End of the big freeze

2010-12-30T16:54:00.003Z

At least, I hope it's not coming back! I've sorted out some of my compost bins ready for when I start clearing ground again, and checked the hives. Everything's still alive. Meanwhile, here are some snow pics.

A couple of the local reservoir.

Frustration

2010-12-01T18:25:00.004Z

I haven't posted for a while; I haven't been fit to do anything on the plot, which is in a sorry mess, and now I'm feeling well enough to try - even if I can't guarantee that I'd get very far - eveything's frozen solid. My soil freezes very solid indeed, and after a few days of sub-zero temperatures I can't get a spade or fork into it. Not that I'd want to; digging frozen material in deep just makes the soil slower to warm up when the thaw finally comes.

So I'm sitting at home feeling frustrated, and dreaming about what I'm growing next year. Multiple wigwams of some of the better pea varieties, for a start, with one kept exclusively for seed, and masses of dangling CD's strung between them to fruighten the pigeons. One thing I'm not going to do is allow them to make off with half my seed crop!

Daffodils

2010-10-21T09:17:00.002+01:00

There's a piece in the Guardian today, arguing against planting daffs: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gardening-blog/2010/oct/20/why-i-hate-daffodils . I partly agree, partly disagree. It all depends on context.

I wouldn't plant them where all the rather drab foliage is going to show up after they've finished flowering. In many situations, I prefer the miniature version, as full-sized daffs can be overpowering. But in the right place, they're superb. I plant them in the lane outside my plot, where they brighten it up no end, and then the leaves are buried in vegetation for the rest of their short season.

I have trouble with crown imperials, the other bulb the article mentions. I agree they're superior to daffs, but I've only got one spot where they condescend to grow at all, and they suffer badly in wet summers. At bottom, I think they need drier conditions than I can offer.

It's been a while since I posted, due to illness. I've been able to do nothing on the plot for a while, and it's in a truly disgraceful state as a result.

No progress

2010-09-09T12:18:00.002+01:00

My ME's been troubling me all year, and I haven't been able to cope with the work on the plot, which is in a right mess. The last couple of weeks it's been so bad I haven't even got there, let alone done any work. If that wasn't bad enough, it also affects my ability to concentrate. I've been struggling to write anything at all recently. I think - I hope - I might be getting a little better, so hopefully I'll be back soon.

Show

2010-08-18T13:30:00.003+01:00

Our annual vegetable show, which I organise, was on Sunday. It's taken me this long to recover! The person doing the teas had to drop out on Friday due to work, and then we had a thunderstorm in the middle of setting up on Saturday. It all worked out on the day, though. We had 18 people enter - not a lot out of 80 plots, but we get a couple more every year - and as you see, we filled the benches. There were a few minor glitches, and I really must get myself organised and get coloured card for the certificates well in advance. This year I couldn't get any locally, had to print them off myself, and they ended up curling. I didn't get the thirds really brown either, more a brownish pink. I could do with putting the date on them somewhere as well. As long as I can get it a bit better organised every year, and get a few more entrants each time, everyone's happy.

It's not competitive at all, more a bit of fun and an excuse to get people together, and anyone can win something. I entered eight classes, and got a first for my onions, plus a second and two thirds. That proves it's not competitive!

Bees

2010-08-06T11:54:00.002+01:00

Hive 6 is back in a good mood, which is a great relief! Something must have upset it last week, as I didn't get a single sting today. There's still no sign of drone brood. I wish I understood more about the reasons why they do or don't produce it. I didn't have my camera unfortunately, but I potted patches of brood which were being uncapped, with the pupae sitting there looking at me. that's a good sign. It's known as 'hygienic behaviour', and suggests that this particular colony is good at detecting larvae with something wrong with them. If we can breed strains which detect varroa mites in cells and deal with them, we'll be well on the way to breeding a bee that can handle them without chemical assistance.

Hive 4 has a good patch of drone brood coming as long, but not as much as I thought. I'm always optimistic about these things. I need them to have a good big patch or patches capped over by the end of the month so I can raise a couple of queens. I didn't see any evidence of hygienic behaviour, but that could be because they haven't yet got enough bees to spare any for the job of removing sick larvae. Time will tell.

I repotted a Trillium recurvatum which I planted in 2005. It started germinating in the spring of 2007 - they tend to come up over several years - and it now has fat little rhizomes up to two inches long. They need a lot of patience, but it's worth it in the long run. My interest goes back about ten years; I was given several bin liners full of unwanted plants from someone's garden. They were a treasure, mainly Trillium kurabayashii, Cyclamen hederifolium and snowdrops. Some other species were stolen by a neighbour, but I still have those.

Bees

2010-08-02T08:36:00.004+01:00

Both those hives seem to have settled down. The first swarm to arrive - now Hive 6 - has a broodbox brimming with bees, and has reached the stage where its temper is beginning to show. The bigger the colony, the more older bees there are going to be in the hive, and these are the ones that sting. Yesterday they got up my arms and under my veil - a habit I loathe - and stung, so I won't be raising queens off that one unless it turns out to be a one-off. They don't have any drone cells that I can find; swarms often don't produce many in their first year for some reason.

The other one - Hive 4 - hasn't had so much time to build up, but it does have drone cells appearing. It's got a slightly bigger broodnest; 8 frames as opposed to 7. In a couple of weeks I should be able to start raising queens.

The wren's bringing beakfuls of insects into the shed, so the eggs have to have hatched.

Round the Plot

2010-07-30T22:19:00.008+01:00

This is a Kent Blue pod, at about the stage when I pick them. It's very sweet-tasting, while bijou, the other mangetout I grow, is massive but less sweet. Unfortunately I couldn't get to the plot for a few days over the weekend, and meanwhile the dangling CD's I use as pigeon scarers got tangle up. The result was that the flying rats completely stripped Kent Blue and Lancashire Lad, and partially stripped several other varieties. Kent Blue is hard to find, but fortunately I have a source in the US.

This morning I had a newsletter from the HSL saying that Lancashire Lad isn't what it pretends to be, as it was originally a green-podded variety. It's still a nice purple podded pea, even if it is now nameless.

Bijou and Robinson side by side. Robinson is a very good-looking pea with large, well-filled pods, but it's dwarfed by the five-inch Bijou pods. If I can time them right, I should do well with one or the other in next year's show!

Carlin pea, the oldest known variety. It was recorded in 1562, four years after Elizabeth I became queen. It's probably a lot older than that. It has small, green pods, but plenty of them, and as you'd expect, it's not particularly sweet.

The roses have done well this year. This is the Jacobite Rose, known by many other names as well. It's a very old Alba, possibly the original White Rose of York. It was definitely used by the Stuarts as their emblem, hence the name. Their motto was 'Rosa Sine Spina', a Rose without Thorns. The young stems are almost thornless, but the old stems develop vicious spines. Whoever thought this one up was no gardener! I had cuttings of Rosa alba Semi-Plena, the other candidate for the White rose of York, but they perished in the drought. I'll have to try again.

Rosa Mundi, an ancient sport from the Apothecary's Rose. It may be named after Rosamund Clifford, Henry II's mistress, or that may be mere romantic nonsense.

I acquired this nameless rose as a neglected plant in a pot a few years ago, along with my Jacobite Rose. I could see it was a climber, so I put it under a lilac; it's now grown right up through, and started putting on a show. The question now is whether it'll carry on up through the hawthorn beside it.

Lastly, I have a wren nesting in my shed. The male builds several nests, and the female picks one to lay in. I've had them build there before, but not lay, so I wasn't too hopeful. They're definitely on eggs this time though.

2010-07-19T21:01:00.001+01:00

I apologise for not posting for so long. I've been feeling really under the weather, but I'll manage something properly in the next day ot two. Meanwhile, I've started a new, theological, blog over at http://theradicalmethodist.blogspot.com/ .

Peas

2010-06-24T12:03:00.007+01:00

I had another look at that hive yesterday, and they now have brood on three frames, and they're into comb drawing mode. For the first couple of weeks, they were tearing down comb, and I'm not sure why. Bees often tear down old, black combs which the beekeeper ought to have removed long before, but these had only been drawn a couple of years ago, and there was nothing obviously wrong with them. Other combs of the same age or older have been accepted without problems.

Rebsie said she's found two different varieties circulating as 'Kent Blue'. That's not unique; there seem to be several King Tut's. Here are a couple of not very good pics of mine. The small, dimpled, olive-green seeds with purple speckles look right; it's about four feet high, and a bit overshadowed by taller peas. As you can see from the second pic, there are splashes of purple at the leaf bases. It remains to be seen whether the pods become sickle-shaped and knobbly.

This is Bijou, a giant sugar pea from Real Seeds. It's an extremely vigorous grower with these hooded, deep purple flowers. It's going to be interesting to see what it turns into!

This one is Ezetha's Krombek Blauschok. I don't know the origin of this one; it could be old, but there are no old records of the name so it could be quite modern. Over there the purple podded varieties are known as Capucijners, after the Capuchin monks who bred improved field peas in the 15th Century.

Peas

2010-06-23T01:14:00.004+01:00

The bees now have two frames of brood. I found a queen, unmarked, and distinctly yellower than the one I originally spotted. They've had no chance to raise a new one, so the swarm arrived with at least two. That's not particularly unusual.

This is the Salmon-Flowered Pea, an amazing old variety with a raft of recessive genes. Pink flowers, thickened, fasciated stems, and all the flowers together at the top. They all bloom at once, unfortunately. The peas are small, round and sweet. I don't know how old this particular variety is, but umbellate peas with this general form were popular from the late 17th Century until the early 19th.

Robinson's Purple Podded Pea, from Robinson's Seeds. These are often sold as generic 'Purple Podded Peas', but they're all different varieties of old field peas, grown originally for dried peas and animal fodder. This one reaches around six feet. The type was first bred on the continent by Capuchin monks in the 15th Century.

Champion of England, a tall marrowfat bred in 1843 by William Fairbeard. Darwin grew this one.

Carruthers' Purple Podded, with a young pod.

Round the allotment

2010-06-10T22:48:00.003+01:00

Everything's a right mess at the moment, desperately in need of a strim, which I haven't done due to backache. I seem to have got over it though, so it'll get done shortly. Meanwhile, here are some of the things in flower at the moment.

Allium 'Purple Sensation'

An old-fashioned paeony.

Serpette Guilotteau, an old French pea which allegedly reaches five feet or so.

Camassia. these are edible, and they're multiplying so fast I'll be reduced to eating them before long!

Onions growing through grass cutting mulch. You can see what happens to Poundland fleece after a short while. I won't be buying any more!

Macondo oil disaster

2010-06-06T23:00:00.000+01:00

There's some very informed comment here;

http://www.drillingclub.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=wellcontrol&action=display&thread=4840

Bees

2010-05-29T21:09:00.002+01:00

The hive that was decimated by the cold unfortunately didn't make it, as there were too few bees left for it to pull through. I was wondering why there were still bees in the top boxes in the hive the swarm moved into (No. 6), so I pulled it apart to find out.

I thought I'd shaken all the bees down into the bottom box, below the queen excluder, but there she was at the top. The bees won't desert her! She's marked green (last year's colour), so that was presumably when she was raised. She's quite small, without the distended abdomen I usually see in queens. She's not laying either, so she may still be slimmed down from swarming. I'll have another look in a week or so, and see what's happening then.

Meanwhile I'm still planting tender veg. The germination I've had from my squashes has been vole, and I don't know why. I've had them on a warm windowsill, so they've probably been warmer than in previous years when I had them in the min-greenhouses. Apart from that, everything's come up fine.

Mice

2010-05-24T17:02:00.002+01:00

They've been at my broadies. Serve me right for leaving them on the ground. Never mind, some are still untouched.

Bees

2010-05-24T02:38:00.005+01:00

Last week, as the temperature warmed up, I found mobs of bees round one of my empty hives. I get this every year, and assumed a swarm was planning to move in. Sure enough, I went down on Saturday, and there they were in residence. They look like Carniolan hybrids, which tend to be swarmy, and can be bad-tempered. They'll be easy enough to requeen if the other hive pulls through. Meanwhile they're more than welcome, and so far they're perfectly well-behaved. This is an annual event, so I think there's someone not too far away who keeps losing swarms!

A patch of comfrey in full sun has wilted in the heat, but no doubt it'll soon recover. I've got a barrel full of comfrey from an unlettable plot at the other end of the site, which will soon rot down and provide evil-smelling liquid manure.

The peas are growing like mad. These are the first I planted. No sign of buds yet, but they'll soon be forming.

The lilac is covered in bloom this year. It varies a lot from one year to the next. A red rose I planted underneath has grown right up through so I'm hoping for a good show this year. I should have moved so as to keep the apple brach on the left out of shot, but it was so bright I couldn't see the image on the camera screen. Should have used the direct vision viewfinder!

Japanese visit

2010-05-19T22:52:00.002+01:00

I had an interesting day helping to show some Japanese visitors round my site, and a second site nearby. Apparently they've only had allotments there since about 1920, and they're still developing. A city plot is about 25 square metres, but in the mountains they have larger plots with huts on them. Unfortunately I forgot the camera (I'm always doing this) so I don't have any pics.

The second site we visited is quite secluded, like mine, but has a completely different atmosphere as there are no hedges. Plots are 2-300 square metres, rather than our 300 or 600. It's more of a standard size, and obviously a lot easier to manage. They've got wide grass verges and communal spaces, with lots of trees. I assumed at first that this originated as plots which were abandoned when allotments were unfashionable, but as far as I could gather, it was actually laid out like that from the beginning. There's a nice communal building with kitchen facilities and toilets; we could do with something similar on my site!

Bees

2010-05-16T21:35:00.001+01:00

The bees are alive, and the queen looks OK. They're greatly reduced in nimbers, and the brood is dead, so they've been knocked right back. They should recover, but there won't be any honey this year. I'll know for sure when I see eggs.

Bees

2010-05-15T20:50:00.003+01:00

Today I found my one surviving colony almost dead from isolation starvation. On May 15th!

They had clustered on the brood, as might be expected; bees very rarely abandon it. But they were a couple of inches from the food, and it must have been too cold for them to be able to bridge the gap. I spotted that no bees were flying on a mild afternoon, opened it up, and they were obviously very weak. When I pulled some frames, I found bees that were obviously dying. The queen was still alive though, so I doused them with sugar syrup. That started to wake them up, and by the time I came home, a few were beginning to fly. The weather's getting warmer, so they should be OK now. It will have set them right back though, and I'm not expecting any honey this year.

I've planted out more peas; Latvian Pea, Irish Preans, Lancashire Lad, Victorian Purple Podded, Commander, and Clarke's Beltony Blue, and started a few more in pots. The beans are looking a bit sorry for themselves, but they're OK. Some of the sweet corn was finished off by the frost, but 35 out of the original 60 I planted are alive, with more to come. Not all the seeds germinated, but I'm not complaining. It'll give me some nice early corn, and spread the season a bit.

Peas

2010-05-13T12:25:00.003+01:00

I'm now the only one in the family who isn't recovering from an accident. Namissa's still off work with a shoulder injury from a fall at the beginning of January, Mina's still got her arm bandaged from putting her arm through a bus window, and now Kumbi's broken her wrist. I had a bad fall in the New Year, so hopefully that's my accident out of the way at least.

I've been planting more peas; Bijou, Champion of England, Kent Blue, Ezethas Krombek Blauwshok, Carlin Pea and Robinson, a marrowfat named after the earliest known grower. Whatever the original name was, it's lost in the mists of time.

The potatoes have been badly frosted, but they'll soon recover. The only ones with significant topgrowth so far are accidentals, and I'm not worrying about those! The ones I've planted are all well behind, showing how cold the soil still is. I've had to replant the Cosse Violette climbing beans, and I lost a lot of the Breja, which is embarassing since I'm growing them for the HSL. I have enough left to get a crop though. They were hit by a cold, but not frosty, night just after being moved to a mini-greenhouse from a nice warm windowsill, and obviously hadn't acclimatised. The toms were frost damaged as well, but it's just patches on the leaves, and the growing points are OK. They'll soon grow past it.

Bees and Peas

2010-05-02T19:53:00.002+01:00

My one remaining colony has had brood on two frames for a couple of weeks now. It's not as much as I'd have hoped for at the beginning of May, but at least the area on each frame is getting bigger each week.

I've been planting out peas; Bijou and Champion of England, both from Real Seeds. Bijou is a Giant Sugar Pea, a Victorian type which long since went out of fashion, and Champion is an early marrowfat from 1843. Both are tall.

It's been a bit of a hectic week since my daughter put her arm through a bus window on Tuesday night. She's OK, fortunately the injury is on the back of her arm where the bone is just under the skin, so there's no permananent damage. She's got eight stitches and a very impressive bandage, but it'll heal.

I let someone persuade me to go on Facebook, rather reluctantly since I don't like chat sites, and as a result I'm now in touch with some of my nieces and nephews. We're the ultimate non-family, and my sister went off years ago to run a shop on one of the out-islands on Orkney.

Himalayan Balsam

2010-04-24T23:24:00.003+01:00

When I was a kid I found this growing along the Wye in Herefordshire (http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/Profile.aspx?pid=480), and got really frustrated as being an introduction it wasn't in my wild flower book. It's only since I got the allotment that I've realised what a dreadful weed it is; it spreads like mad in damp ground.

The one good thing is that the seeds are short-lived. It either comes up the following spring or not at all. I've been trying to exterminate up on the railway embankment above the site. There's definitely less than last year, but still far too much. A good frost would have exterminated it once it was up, but we didn't get one, and it doesn't look too likely at the moment. A dry summer could do it, as the embankment is far from being a good habitat for it. Otherwise, I'll be grubbing about again pulling out every one I can find, and this year I'll bag them so they can't set seed as they lie dying.

Peas

2010-04-24T21:35:00.005+01:00

The daffodils were flowering all round the site while I was off-line, but they're fading a bit now. These are some of the peas I'm growing this year; you can see the variation in colour.

Salmon-Flowered Pea. The reddish tinge is due to anthocyanin, and it's controlled, firstly, by a gene enabling the plant to produce it. Many peas lack this gene altogether. Then more genes are needed, each one controlling its expression in a specific part of the plant. So more peas have the first gene, but we don't see the red pigment because they lack the genes enabling its expression.

Purple-Flowered Russian. This one has red borders to the leaves.

Robinson's Purple Podded. Like many old peas, it lacks a 'proper' name, but this one comes from Robinson's Seeds. The red pigment appears in the flowers and the pods, but is lacking in the leaves.

Hatif d'Annonay, 'Early Annonay'. This is a short pea; the growth habit is far more compact than the others, due to a much shorter internodal length, from one leaf to the next along the stem.

Carruther's Purple Podded. Saved by the family of a Patrick Carruthers, hence the name. Again, no red to be seen.

Kool's Langstro Rosyn, 'Mr Kool's Lang Straw (ie tall) Raisin Pea. The raisin capucijners are improved field peas bred in the first half of the 20th Century. They have distinctive very large seeds, the size of small beans.

Serpette Guilotteau; a 'guilotteau' is apparently an old French type of pruning knife, which the sickle-shaped pods are supposed to resemble. In the second pic you can see that the lower leaves are losing their colour and dying off. I've seen this in seedling peas shortly after planting out before, and I imagine it's due to stress. the growing tips look quite healthy, and I imagine they'll soon recover.

Meanwhile, we have a rabbit on the site. I saw prints in the snow; they come up the railway line or the canal in snowy weather. It's still around, and raiding roots. It's been at my Chinese artichokes and tuberous peas repeatedly, and now it's started on the oca and the spuds.

Sky broadband problems

2010-04-20T08:12:00.003+01:00

I've been unable to post due to Sky messing us about again. It all started at the beginning of February, when the phone bill mysteriously appeared on their account. We tried them for a month last year, found they were more expensive than BT, and that the salesman hadn't been exactly honest with us, and went back to BT. Then Sky slammed the line - ie tranferred it without authorisation. We complained, and found our letters being ignored, so we went to OFCOM.

As soon as we complained, they started messing us about over the TV channels. They cut off most of them on the pretext that we won't give them a Direct Debit. We've now complained to Trading Standards about this. In the end, they gave the phone back to BT, but they're still demanding payment for the phone for the couple of months or so they had it. We're not paying, as they had no contract, and have no right to enforce payment. So they cut off the broadband, whic has now gone to BT. All in all, it's the worst experience I've ever had with a utility. Not recommended!

Seed guardian seeds

2010-03-27T16:54:00.005Z

I should have posted on this days ago but was feeling too dreadful at the time. After sending the HSL a reminder, I got my Seed guardian info, followed a few days later by my seeds. I've taken on three varieties.

There's Mummy's Pea, one of several that the ancient Egyptian myth attaches to. I already have a few seeds of King Tut, which seems to be another of these.Egypt came under British domination after the Napoleonic Wars, and the first modern Egyptologists followed shortly afterwards. In no time, people were cashing in on all the publicity for ancient Egypt. Credulous tourists were sold peas which had been 'discovered' inside mummies, and seed merchants back home were soon offering peas with similar claims.

The remains of peas actually were discovered in Tutankhamun's tomb when it was excavated in 1922, and the myth transferred itself to this, with peas from the tomb supposedly having germinated. In fact, as you might expect, conditions in Egyptian tombs are not satisfactory for long-term seed storage. No seed from such a tomb has ever been found in a viable state, though a 2000-year-old Judean date palm from a dig in Palestine has been germinated, and found to be genetically quite different from any known date palm.

I suspect - though I don't know - that the various 'mummy peas' go back to the pre-Tutankhamun period, and those with variations on the Pharaoh's name come after. King Tut, AKA Prew's Pea (a name which has attached itself to several of these varieties) is grown in the US, and hasn't any history attached that I know of. Mummy's Pea, (also AKA Prew's Pea) comes from Durweston, near Blandford Forum, Dorset. The local gentry are the Portmans, who were friends of Lord Caernavon, who financed the Tutankhamun dig. Peas from Caernavon's kitchen garden may well have been passed on to their head gardener.

Then there's a climbing bean, Brejo, apparently a Native American heirloom. It's supposed to do well in wet springs, so it may turn out to be a winner. Finally there's an Estonian ridge cucumber, Izjastsnoi (I've no idea how to pronounce that!), which is said to be tolerant of poor treatment and cool temperatures, which is what I like to hear. Cucumbers are outbreeders which need to be isolated to prevent unwanted crosses, so it's going to be a bit more of a challenge.

Black Potatoes and Rare Peas

2010-03-23T13:05:00.004Z

I've just acquired a few tubers of another old black spud called Negresse (yes I know, the name makes me cringe as much as anyone!). It's a 19th-Century French variety; the name should come adorned with accents, only I've no idea how to add them. It may well be another strain of the same variety. I'm going to grow both and see how they compare. If they survive the blight long enough to do anything that is, since they're extremely late maincrops. Many thanks to Ian for the parcel.

Supposedly, Vitelotte originated as an import from Peru. If so, then it's quite possible that there may be some genetic stability in it, or that several slightly different versions were brought over. It would be interesting to try hand-pollinating flowers, and see what grows from the seed.

Another parcel which arrived this morning, from Grunt, in Canada, contained Kent Blue Peas, the variety which launched my search for rarities, Carruthers' Purple Podded, supposed to be particularly tasty, and Ezethas Krombek Blauwshok. Kent Blue seeds are small, slightly dimpled, and adorned with purple speckles, which appear again on Carruthers, but not to the same extent. Krombek is a farm in Western Cape, South Africa, so was the variety bred, or preserved there, I wonder?

Meanwhile I'm planting peas like mad, but I've got the worst cold I've had in years, and that's about all I'm managing to do.

Black Potatoes and Pink Onions

2010-03-19T17:45:00.002Z

I've already posted about the probable Vitelotte I found in the market. I've now discovered a page here: http://www.plantnames.unimelb.edu.au/Sorting/Purple_Congo.html which suggests that this and several other old black potatoes are strains of the same variety. It's going to be a question of growing them out and comparing them. If I can get a crop despite the blight, that is, since it seems to be endemic on the site now, and they're all late maincrops.

Not long ago I found some pink shallot type alliums in the market, which I planted to see what they did. I got the Plants of Distinction catalogue yesterday, and spotted a variety called Pink Torpedo (http://www.plantsofdistinction.co.uk/acatalog/A-Z_of_Vegetables_ONION.html , partway down the page), which looks just like it. If so they'll give me seed this year, and I'm definitely not complaining at that. From what they say, it's mild-tasting European variety.

Signs of spring

2010-02-28T15:21:00.002Z

There are a few! The snowdrops are steadily increasing from year to year, and are beginning to form sheets of white. Some of the garlic is beginning to sprout, or was before I mulched it all with a load of autumn leaves. It's still down there somewhere, and no doubt it will reappear. Oca, Chinese artichokes and tuberous peas are all in.

The latter two are new to me. Chinese artichokes are familiar in name, at least. It's a mint relative with small tubers which have a bit of a reputation for being difficult to clean. We'll see; it's easy enough to sluice most things off in the stream. I hadn't heard of tuberous peas until someone offered me some; apparently, they were Linnaeus' favourite root vegetable. He was an 18th century Swedish botanist who invented the modern form of scientific nomenclature for living things. The peas look like everlasting sweet peas, and have small tubers; they're said to be very low-yielding. they must have been grown quite widely at one time, as they're naturalised in various places.

I'm holding off on planting anything else. The soil is nowhere near warm enough to sit on with my bare bum, so I certainly can't plant seed direct. I could start the tomatoes, but then they could easily get too big before they can be planted out. I'm feeling rather half-hearted about them since I've lost them all to blight three years running. Similarly, I could start the peas, but I want a good choice of varieties for the show in August, so I'm going to wait. Leeks and some of the brassicas can be started as soon as I'm confident about the weather, but there's plenty of time yet.

Types of Pea

2010-02-20T16:38:00.006Z

All our modern peas are descended from the wild pea, Pisum sativum, which is still found in the Middle East, though the subspecies which gave rise to the garden pea, probably in Afghanistan or nearby, is apparently extinct. The remains of seeds of this species have been found in Stone Age sites from Greece, Turkey and the Middle East. Around 3000 BC, they show up in European sites, showing that they were being cultivated outside their original range. Later the Field Pea was developed, an improved type with larger seeds, which became a medieval staple.

All peas were originally round-seeded. When dried, they are, as the name implies, round, with little or no wrinkling. They're full of starch, which feeds the seedling while it establishes itself. They're filling, but not so sweet as Tesco's frozen peas. So they're not what you really want for that little green pile on the side of your plate. Originally, they were grown in the fields to provide dried peas for pea soup, mushy peas, pease pudding and the like, providing an important part of the diet. Namissa's West African, none of us like English cooking much, and they're ideal for the type of food we do like, curries, African dishes, and the like. So they suit us. In the garden, they're as tough as old boots, and can safely be planted in autumn for a spring harvest.

Until the 19th Century, the rich used to eat sweet young peas when they were in season, and leave the mature version for the hoi polloi as far as they practically could. Around 1820, a wrinkled pea appeared as a chance mutation in a field of peas. There seem to have been earlier wrinkled varieties, but it was from then on that the great 19th Century advances in pea breeding took place, so it has to be seen as significant. It has far more sugar than the older types, as it's not metabolised into starch so efficiently. This made it possible to breed the sweet-tasting, large seeded marrowfats which are so familiar today. They're tender plants which have to be planted in warm soil, as the seeds rot easily. Their appearance, combined with the development of glasshouses which made it possible for those with money to extend the season, led to the continuing popularity of the green pea, a crop which has never been particularly high-yielding.

Yields are greatly reduced by the virtual disappearance of the tall varieties which were the mainstay up till the middle of last century. Tall peasticks became ever harder to find, and as a result the tall varieties, which often reach six or seven feet, started to disappear. This was exacerbated by stupid laws which forbid the sale of seed of unregistered varieties, the cost of registration, and seed companies which develop crops with farmers in mind, then flog them to gardeners. Farmers, of course, want something which can be harvested by machine, and that means one which is short enough not to need support. So the average seed catalogue nowadays has about half a dozen short peas, where a Victorian one would have pages of peas, many of them tall.

Tall varieties are still around if you look. Alderman is still commercially available, and is one of the best. Other varieties are available from smaller suppliers like Robinson's, Real Seeds and Brown Envelope Seeds. Real Seeds charges 1p for membership, so they're not selling to the general public, others ignore the law. apart from those, a lot more are available from sources like the HSL or seed swaps.

Purple-Podded Peas are old-fashioned field peas. They're not as sweet as the green-podded ones, though many have wrinkled seeds. I suspect most go back to the 19th or early 20th Century. On the whole, they don't have fancy names, either because they've been lost, or because they were bred by farmers and gardeners rather than by seed companies.

Umbellate peas are a curiosity. Sweeter varieties appeared in Italy in the 17th Century, and became popular on the continent. Charles II took a fancy to them when he was in exile, and brought them with him when General Monck invited him to become king. The umbellate peas date to this era. They have wide, flattened stems (the technical name for this is fasciation), branch at right angles to the main stem, and have all the flowers at the top. The only one I've come across is the Salmon-Flowered Pea.

Mangetout peas lack the hard membrane lining the pod, and have been bred for sweet pods which can be eaten whole when the peas are small. There are two types; snow peas, with flat pods, and sugarsnaps, with round pods.

Petit Pois are bred to provide very small peas. I find it hard to see the point when large varieties like Magnum Bonum are as sweet as anything!

Black potato

2010-02-19T18:39:00.005Z

I found these in the market the other week, and got some small ones to grow on. The stallholder had no idea what the variety is. The tubers are deep purple-black, with violet flesh. From what I can make out, the two most likely varieties are Vitelotte, 19th-Century French, supposedly imported originally from Peru, and Congo, 19th-Century British. Both are late maincrops from what I've been able to discover, though someone suggested that Vitelotte may be a bit earlier than that. Congo seems to be very late indeed. I don't know what the chance of it surviving trhe blight is, but I'l try.

Anyone got any ideas?

PS. I've added a pic of the inside. It's not much good but I couldn't see what I was doing. Namissa just said it looks just like black pudding.

Oca

2010-02-19T17:38:00.008Z

I planted two varieties of this obscure South American root crop last spring; one white and the other red. They went in a foot apart, in rows two feet apart. It didn't do much till around midsummer, when it started spreading out. It's frost-sensitive, and the tubers don't form till the top growth is dying back. I fleeced it, and meant to harvest it for Christmas. Thanks to the weather and a bad fall, I only got it up a couple of weeks ago.

Yield was very variable, from a pound or so to nothing. I'm not sure why, but some of the tubers I put in were very small. The red hadn't suffered from the frost at all, while white tubers on the surface had gone soggy. There was very little slug damage, and I found none underground. They taste lemony; allegedly they turn sweet if they're left in the sun, but I didn't try this. I'll be planting again shortly. This time I'll use larger tubers, and hopefully I'll do better.

Peas

2010-02-19T16:00:00.012Z

As you can see, it snowed all night. It's been mild and sunny today, and it's been melting fast. It's now clouded over, so hopefully it won't freeze tonight. Namissa insisted on driving to the mosque for prayers. She injured her shoulder in a fall over a month ago, and I was quite worried as it's been giving her hell. She says it hurts, but it's not as bad as when she did the same thing last week.

I'm going totally mad this year; nineteen varieties already, and another on the way. I've got enough seed of half to expect crops off them. I only have a few seeds of the others, many of them from the HSL, and I'll be growing them to bulk up. Then there are the climbing beans on top, but I'm not going quite so crazy there, and I won't be trying to grow all the dozen or so I have this year. I'm going to have wigwams all over the plot, but it should be interesting!

The varieties are:

Purple-Podded varities:

Robinson's Purple Podded

(From Robinson's Seeds, hence the name)

Lancashire Lad

Victorian Purple Podded

Clarke's Beltony Blue

Ezethas Krombek Blauwschok

(Old Dutch variety)

Commander

Green Podded Marrowfat Types:

Champion of England

Alderman

Early Onward

Hugh's Huge

McPartlin

Robinson

Magnum Bonum

(My favourite so far)

Hatif d'Annonay

Mangetout Varieties:

Golden Sweet

(Yellow pods, purple flowers)

Carouby de Mausanne

(Large pods)

Bijou

(Very rare, described by Real Seeds as a 'Giant sugar pea'. Very large flat pods)

Others:

Irish Preans

(Large seeds which look a bit like small broad beans. Allegedly a cross, but I don't believe it! Purple flowers)

Serpette Guilotteau

(From Real Seeds. Small peas, curved pods. The latter is a primitive characteristic, so it may be interesting)

Salmon Flowered

(Pink flowers in a mass at the top of the flattened stems. It seems to be a survival of the umbellate type which was popular in the 17th Century)

Purple Flowered Russian

(According to the HSL, this has purple flowers, and small round peas in thin pods. It sounds interesting)

Some I've grown before, some I haven't. I'll post reports on the ones I get a crop from later. The marrowfat types are often well recorded, with dates and breeders available. These were in the old seed catalogues, for sale to those who could afford to keep buying pea seeds. The purple podded types seem to have been grown by farmers, who habitually saved their own. As a result, there's no history attached to them. They're not so sweet, and were dried for pease pudding, mushy peas, soup, and similar dishes. Most of the varieties I've come across have peas the size of marrowfats, so I suspect they're 19th Century 'improved' varieties, rather than anything older.

Heritage Seed Library

2010-02-11T15:29:00.006Z

I've been meaning to join this for a couple of years, but held off till I was more confident about my seed saving skills. For your membership, you get a few seeds of each of six rare varieties; I also got some Hughes Huge peas as a new member. By sheer coincidence, this was one I already fancied, as I like tall peas, which crop more heavily, and it's ever so easy to save pea seed. If you volunteer as a Seed guardian - I have - you get a list of 'orphans' in March, and choose up to three. You grow them and return seed to HSL for distribution. So I should get eleven varieties (with a lucky dip bonus variety) for my £20, which isn't bad going.

They distribute a catalogue containing about 200 varieties to pick from. the emphasis is on peas, French beans and tomatoes; these are all self pollinated, and really easy for seed saving. I haven't yet experimented with saving seed from cross-pollinated species, but I'm going to have a try. The trick is to stop them crossing with other varieties grown nearby.

Meanwhile, however cold it is, the days are lengthening noticeably, and the first snowdrops are blooming. Spring is at hand!

Oca

2010-02-05T22:43:00.005Z

I lifted these yesterday, from two plants. As you can see, the red

oca didn't produce much. I don't know whether it's typical, though; I couldn't see any more of the same variety with tubers on the surface, which would give me a comparison. Some of the tubers I put in were very small, and I'm planning to plant the biggest next time. I don't know whether that makes a difference. It showed no frost damage at all, having come sailing through with nothing but fleece and snow above some of the tubers. The white variety had a more satisfactory yield, but all the tubers on the surface had gone soft from being frosted. There was next to no slug damage, and what there was, was all on the surface.

The second pic shows some alliums like long shallotts whic I found on a Chinese stall at the Bull Ring market in town. Many of them are shallott size, and at first I assumed that was whaqt they were. Some were much bigger though; for comparison, they're sitting on an A4 sheet. When I got them, there were very few of that size, and I picked them out for growing on. Today, though, I saw they had more in, and a lot were this size. Obviously the customers prefer the big ones! I'll try them and see what they turn into.

Snow

2010-01-16T22:04:00.010Z

I've been a bit incapacitated for a few days due to a rather nasty fall. I went over on some very slippery steps in town, and smashed the base of my spine on the stone. Nothing's broken, but I haven't been able to walk properly, and bending or getting out of a chair are painful. I took these pics a few days ago, but haven't felt up to posting them.

I'm no good at laying these posts out (don't know how people do it actually), but the next pic shows chunks of ice three inches thick on the canal. I can't get it to go anywhere else. The freeze went on for a week or so after the ice was broken, so the ultimate thickness would have been considerably more. Not that I'd have risked walking on it!

The rest of the pics were taken round the allotment site.

Deadouts

2009-12-28T22:07:00.004Z

Hives 2 and 5 have died out. I can't see any obvious reason; neither had touched the candy I gave them, though both were very short of stores. They don't show the normal signs of starvation, so it's not isolation, when a cluster can't move over to food in cold weather. The overwhelming majority of my losses involve first-year queens, so it has to be something to do with the queens. They weren't mated in bad weather, or when there was a shortage of drones, so it's a mystery. Losing half my hives is a major setback!

What do we do with the Christmas story?

2009-12-25T16:25:00.004Z

Despite what the church says, there isn't one Christmas story in the Bible. There are two, and they're different.

Matthew is a strict Jew, writing for a Jewish audience. He hates the Pharisees, insists that the Law must be kept more strictly than they do, but who generally agrees with their interpretations. His Jesus is born in a Jewish context, to a family in Bethlehem (apparently they live there), in the reign of Herod I, who died in 4 BC. The first people to respond to the birth are Gentile astrologers, following a star.

The origin of the star is to be found in Numbers 24:17. A king called Balak has summoned Balaam, a pagan prophet, to curse Israel An angel intervenes, and Balaam is forced to bless them instead. He says that 'A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the borderlands of Moab, and the territory of all the Shethites.'

When devout Jews found themselves impoverished and oppressed in the last couple of centuries BC, they started to imagine that God would intervene decisively, to put things to rights. Either he would send a great angel, or a human king, the Messiah (messiah means 'anointed one'; the king was anointed at his coronation, and was sometimes called 'the Lord's anointed'). This king was symbolised by the star; the Dead Sea Scrolls use the passage in a messianic context.

Matthew envisages an essentially Jewish Kingdom, but there is plenty of room for Gentiles within it. There is no evidence that any Jew ever claimed that Gentiles would not find their place. So to emphasise this, Matthew presents Gentiles as the first people to respond to Jesus.

The astrologers go to Herod, expecting to see a royal baby. He knows nothing of the birth, and reacts angrily. He was a paranoid tyrant; Augustus allegedly said that 'It was safer to be Herod's pig than his son'. When he was dying, he had the sons of Jewish notables arrested, with orders that they should be killed as soon as he was dead, so that the Jews would mourn his passing. In the event, they were released unharmed. So, according to Matthew, Herod ordered the slaughter of all the children under two around Bethlehem. The massacre is not mentioned elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Mary and Joseph have been warned by an angel in a dream, and have run away to Egypt, where they live as refugees. Eventually, they return, believing it to be safe. However, Herod's son Archelaus now rules Judea and Samaria. After another dream, they move to Nazareth, where another of Herod's sons, Antipas, now rules.

Luke writes for Romanised Greeks, and is the most obviously Gentile of the Gospels. His Jesus is born immediately after the Romans establish direct control of Judea. Archelaus ruled as Ethnarch for about ten years, until Jewish complaints led to the Romans sending him into exile, and establishing direct rule.

Judea came under the Syrian Legate, the most senior Roman official after the emperor, who had responsibility for the entire eastern frontier as far as the border of Egypt. This was far too large an area for one man to control directly, so most of it had come under native princes who were subject to Rome. At the time, the Legate was a man named Quirinius. He visited Judea, and carried out a census, to determine the taxation base. This happened in late 6 or early 7 AD. In order to deny that there is a discrepancy between the two Gospels, some conservatives claim that Quirinius may have served as Legate twice. Unfortunately, this is based on a mistranslation of a partial inscription which does not include the mane of the governor it refers to. After the census was complete, a Prefect, drawn from the minor aristocracy, was appointed to govern Judea.

According to Luke, John the Baptist was born before Jesus, and was his cousin. He was born miraculously, to an elderly mother, under 'King Herod of Judea', ie Herod I. Six months later, ten years having been dropped from the story, unless Luke confused his Herods, an angel appeared to Mary announcing the birth of Jesus. She protested that she was too young (parthenos means 'a young woman', not necessarily 'virgin') but the angel reassures her. There is an undoubted virgin birth in Matthew, but Luke is ambiguous, and can be read either way. Both are concerned to say that the birth was miraculous.

The family live in Nazareth, but have to visit Bethlehem for the census, as this is where Joseph's family originated. This makes little sense. Roman taxation was based on where you lived, not where you ancestors lived, for obvious reasons. No system could handle that degree of chaos. Additionally, Galilee was ruled by Antipas, and taxes would have been paid to him, not to Rome. Both Matthew and Like have to cope with a tradition which said both that the Messiah was to come form Bethlehem, and that Jesus was from Nazareth. Luke's solution looks a little contrived!

So, according to Luke, Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem. There are no animals; they were added to the story later. Shepherds are the first to respond to the birth; Luke is greatly concerned for the poor.

So we have two rather different versions of the story, one for Jews, and one for Gentiles. In all probability, neither author had much to go on; very likely, nobody was sure of the exact year of Jesus' birth. But that doesn't matter; they weren't writing history. In fact, in our modern sense, history writing had not been invented. They were writing theology, in the form of story. Matthew writes for Jews at a very difficult moment of their history, and presents Jesus as a suffering Jew. Luke writes for Gentiles, and presents him as having been born into the Roman world, and as being recognised first by the poor. Both show him as the miraculous Son of God from the moment of birth.

After 2000 years, the church should be mature enough to take both stories seriously, with all the tensions between them, rather than smothering them with the saccharine nonsense of the traditional 'Christmas story'!

Cold!

2009-12-22T17:01:00.004Z

I had a quick look at the allotment yesterday; as expected, everything's frozen solid. The canal towpath, which is fancy brick paving going into town, is like an icerink. It's supposed to be warming up a little by the end of the week, according to Metcheck, so with any luck, I might get to taste some oca this side of the New Year.

The failure of the Overconfident Age

2009-12-21T12:55:00.006Z

Somehow, we have drifted into a situation where we think we have the power to find an easy answer to everything. We feel we need 'effective management' of every situation, to make the 'problem' go away, and let us get on with our lives untroubled by whatever it is. When things don't get solved in a short time, we look for someone to blame. We blame the individual worker, the manager, or in politics, we blame the government. But some 'problems' don't have instant or easy solutions.

We think we can solve the 'problem' of crime by imprisoning ever more people, without remembering the historical link between crime and relative poverty, as that would upset our ever more unequal society. We don't think about how many criminals suffer from mild learning disabilities, or mental health probles, which deny them the chance of a decent job. We don't think how many come from broken families, or wonder whether these might be a function of an individualised, very mobile society in which we no longer know our neighbours, and no longer have the support of the extended family. Support networks are missing, so in every generation, some parents fail to cope. Children of dysfunctional families are unlikely to become the parents of healthy families, and so the 'problem' snowballs from one generation to the next.

Then there is climate change. There is, of necessity, no easy or instant solution. So we deny it, and believe every manipulated 'fact' thrust at us by people who are doing very nicely out of deceiving us. Governments meet to seek solutions, but lack the courage to look beyond the next election, the next opinion poll, the next press conference. We have built a society where a government which asks for sacrifice in the face of disaster may well lose the next election to a party which offers pie in the sky. Whatever power struggles are going on behind the scenes in China, their government evidently has as much invested in short-termism as we.

So Copenhagen has failed, as it was always likely to, and Obama is spinning it as 'meaningful', as he inevitably would. Nations get the governments they deserve, and this catastrophe is a function, not of political failure, but of ingrained hedonism. As a society, we are unable or unwilling to face reality.

But a significant proportion of us do realise what is happening. That is our strength. If a grassroots movement could grow until even governments realised that slavery had no future, we can do the same here. None of us have any interest in the collapse of our climate. Only ordinary people, defying when necessary a regime which consistently attempts to criminalise protest, can force can force that regime to take the necessary action.

Bad sex?

2009-12-20T09:38:00.007Z

A church in New Zealand has got itself into hot water with a poster about Mary and Joseph: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/churchs-provocative-poster-begets-almighty-row-1844274.html .

What strikes me is that it doesn't deny the Virgin Birth, as I would, but it asks questions about it. There's nothing wrong with that; as Thomas Aquinas said, God is not the answer, but the question. I suppose the conservatives would get upset. I don't understand the mentality, but to them, it's de rigeur to be offended by any questioning of religious tradition. But questioning is good. As St. Paul said, 'Test everything, hang onto the good'. If we don't ask questions, how can we sieve the good from the bad in our traditions?

We don't know anything directly about Jesus. He didn't write anything down himself that we know about, and if he did, it has not come down to us. Unlike Muhammad, nobody recorded eyewitness testimony about him; claims that the Gospels were written by eyewitness hang on special pleading and dubious interpretation. Rather, we have what some sections of the church chose to record about him a generation or two after his death. Not suprisingly, they disagree. Matthew makes him a strict Jew, insisting that every least bit of the Law [of Moses] should be followed strictly, as they interpreted it. Despite Matthew's loathing for the Pharisees, his Jesus always seems to agree with them on legal matters. Mark, on the other hand, makes Jesus abolish the food laws, and Luke is so eager to whitewash the Romans that he blames the Jews for everything. The evangelists were men of their time and place, wtiting for the diverse needs of their own communities.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't take what they say seriously. If the church wants to call the Bible a holy book - even presume to call it 'the Word of God', whatever that means - then we need to take it ultra-seriously, even the bits we don't like and don't read. It is, after all, the only witness we have to the origins of church traditions. If we want to claim that Christianity has some basis in history, then that is where we have to begin. But let's drop the practice of taking selected snippets, ignoring the diversity of the Bible's witness, and insisting that traditional interpretations are 'what the Bible says' and have to be 'believed'.

How many people out there believe that infanticide can be a blessed thing? It's there in the Bible (Psalm 137), doubtless as the witness of a community which remembered Babylonians killing their kids during the sack of Jerusalem. We can take their despair and grief seriously without making infanticide a religious duty. Why can't we be as mature in our handling of the rest of the Bible?

Oca

2009-12-03T14:50:00.002Z

The oca was, as I expected, flattened by the frost a couple of days ago. it's a south American rootcrop which I haven't grown before, and which, you will have gathered, is frost-sensitive. I had wanted to fleece it, but I couldn't due to a bad cold.

You plant it in spring, about a foot apart, and let it get on with its business all season. Tubers start to develop as the daylength shortens, and you lift them a couple of weeks after the foliagfe dies completely back. I expect to have it for Christmas, if there's a crop there.

All the beehives are still alive. That's a pleasant change from last year. I think the difference is in the autumn weather. Two autumns ago, the weather was so vile that they couldn't go out and forage, and went through what stores they had. I got them through last winter on candy, but that's only carbohydrate. I think the lack of pollen led to malnutrition, hence the problems. There are artificial substitutes available, but they're only used as a stopgap, and aren't satisfactory for more than a few weeks. This year, they were bringing in lots of pollen, so hopefully they'll come through better. Hive 5 is a bit of a worry, with only two seams of bees, but the others all have four.

Internet access

2009-11-25T15:21:00.002Z

It's working properly today. It worked properly yesterday as well.

I changed to Sky a few weeks back, purely because AOL is so damned expensive. Since then, I've regretted it. Very often, it slows right down about 9am, as office connections come on, and stays slow for much of the day. It will still download material without any problem, but accessing sites becomes extremely difficult. Sometimes it's like that all day. A dialup would be faster and more reliable. But then, sometimes it works.

We gave up on their phone connection after a month, and went back to BT. Their salesman lied to us, the service wasn't what we asked for, and it was more expensive than we were told. I'm trying to persuade the wife to drop their TV service, since it's also expensive, and she watches very little that isn't on cable. I'll probably get rid of their internet before long as well.

Mystery bean

2009-11-12T19:15:00.003Z

It's not a good shot, but has anyone got any idea what these beans are? They were at the bottom of a parcel we're passing round, and that's all I know!

PS I've been informed that they're soya beans, probably 'Elena', which is, as far as I can see from a quick google, the best one for British weather. I'l try them next year and see what happens.

2009-11-01T08:06:00.002Z

Last week I should have been in Oxford for a gathering of gardening bloggers, but I've had some horrible gastro-intestinal bug, and spent most of the weekend on the toilet. I'm still not right, but I did manage to check the bees yesterday. All four hives look healthy, with small amounts of brood, eggs, and reasonable quantities of stores. There aren't as much of the latter as I'd have liked, but they'll be OK if I keep an eye on them, and probably feed syrup next spring. This year they've gathered plenty of pollen, which provides most of their nutrition; honey is just a source of carbohydrate. This time last year, the weather was so awful that much of the ivy went unpollinated, resulting in a shortage of berries. The bees hardly managed to forage at all. It's going to be interesting to see whether they come out of the winter stronger than last year, after going into it well fed.

2009-10-02T20:26:00.002+01:00

I knew I should have stolen a frame of brood for that split I made. They've abandoned the queen cell I gave them (which was on a frame of honey), so I combined the hive with No. 2. So that's four hives going into winter, and I won't be trying any more queen raising till June. We'll see what's still alive in the spring.

2009-10-01T13:44:00.004+01:00

I've checked all the hives, and not one of my recent splits has worked. The new Hive 3 had very few bees and no queen, so I've combined it with Hive 4. The top story of Hive 2 had lots of bees but no queen. I did find a hatched cell, but it was unbelievably small, the size of a worker cell, and they were making a loud buzz all the time they were open, as queenless colonies do. Hive 4 had a single supersedure cell, so I've moved that box across to Hive 3, and given it the cell. There are still drones about, so one sunny day at the right time should ensure mating.

The old queen is still there, and queenright autumn supersedure is a regular habit of native strains. This is when the hive raises a new queen without swarming, with the old queen still present and laying. She usually continues to lay for some time before finally disappearing. It's something which should be sought out and selected for, since strains which do this rarely swarm. I haven't had a colony make swarm preparations since 2006.

I don't have as many colonies as I'd hoped to go into winter with. One has an old queen at the end of her life, but if they don't raise another cell, there's every chance of her coming through the winter. It's a pity it was only the one, as if there had been more I could have left one. Three colonies have young queens which appear to be well mated, and one has a cell. We'll see what's left next spring!

2009-09-28T23:39:00.002+01:00

Hive 6 is deserted. There's dead brood, two dead queen cells, and no bees live or dead. I can only assume they all went back to Hive 5 next door. The honey has been completely robbed out. This never happens in hives with my standard reduced entrance, but I didn't have one spare, so this one ended up with a wide-open entrance. I noticed bees going in and out, not wasps, so the honey is presumably in the other hives.

I'm digging over a patch I dug earlier in the season. It had a big patch of bindweed, and there's still some left. I may not have done very well growing veg this year, but at least there's a lot more ground free from perennial weeds, which isn't going to need any more routine digging.

Some of us spent Saturday learning to identify apples. We've got around 70 old apple trees on the site. Many have been idnetified already, but there are more to do. While most are common varieties, there are some rarities as well. As far as we know, it's a unique feature of the site, and we want to maintain it, by replacing trees as they die off. I know, for instance, that there were once three apple trees on my plot. All I found was a few rotting logs, and many others have gone the same way. I've planted trees to replace them, and we've now planted a communal apple orchard at the end of the site, on a plot that was completely derelict.

Last year we had a day to learn how to prune them. Some of us are now planning to get some apple books, and try to identify as many of the remaining trees as we can.

Oca

2009-09-25T09:40:00.003+01:00

This is the oca I planted last spring, sprawling all over the place. It doesn't do much until midsummer, then starts spreading. It's a South American root vegetable; the tubers swell as the shoots die back, so I won't be lifting it till all the top growth is dead, in late November or December. It's about my one success story this year, so I'm looking forward to it!

You probably remember that Hive 5 used to be very large, and nasty-tempered. About half the bees had a yellow stripe, and it was full of drones. I had a look yesterday. All the bees are black, and extremely quiet on the comb, just like Hive 4. I can only imagine that the queen, raised from an egg laid in Hive 4, avoided mating with drones from her own hive, and mated selectively with Hive 4 drones. These may have shared a mother with her, but will have had a different scent.

Hive 4 has lots of honey in the broodbox, so no worries about that one. I'll give it a gallon of feed with Fumidil-B in it, for Nosema, and that's all. Hive 1 is fine, but it doesn't have so much honey stored, so I'll give it candy just in case. It's a lot better off than any of the hives were this time last year, though. Hive 5 has some drones, so there's something for the new queens to mate with. I'll check them out next week and see what's happening.

2009-09-13T19:44:00.003+01:00

I've been feeling a bit better today. I managed to dig a patch of bindweed which was spreading out across the ground and rooting as it went. I split Hives 4 and 5. I was hoping 3, the split from 4, would raise its own queen cells, but it failed to do so, so I gave it a cell, and gave another to the split from 5,which is now Hive 6. I left a cell in the top story on Hive 3 as well, and we'll see how many of them mate successfully.

2009-09-03T17:43:00.003+01:00

It's not been a good week for me. I was in casualty, briefly, the other night - nothing serious - and I've been fit for nothing most of the time. I've checked Hive 1, which now has a laying queen again, and done a vertical split with Hive 2. It's now raising queen cells in the top box. Meanwhile, most of the fruit have been blown off the Cambridge Gage, and the slugs have had a feast, losing me most of the crop.

2009-08-22T22:50:00.002+01:00

I'm feeling a bit better, and today I actually managed to go shopping in town, get back with a load of fruit from the market, and then get to the allotment for a couple of hours. That's a great improvement! My wife's off sick with a whiplash injury after a car crash, and it hasn't been easy with us both unwell.

I've split Hive 2 vertically, preparatory to raising more queens. Hive 5 still has a lot of the old drones, but hopefully they'll be on the way out. Hive 4 has got rid of its drones in the bad weather, but more will be along, and Hive 2 has plenty. Non-native bees tend to get rid of theirs around now, but given reasonable weather, native colonies should have them into October, if not later. It is, of course, a waste of time raising queens if there's nothing for them to mate with.

The peas are starting to produce, but with the pigeon damage, I'll be using them to produce seed rather than eating the crop, such as it is. Salmon-Flowered is the only one with plenty of pods, and as it's rare, I'll keep them for seed swaps.

2009-08-16T22:24:00.002+01:00

We had our site show today. Unfortunately I had a bad attack of migraine yesterday, in the middle of organising it. It was a complete nightmare getting it sorted, and I had to leave most of the practical stuff today to other people. Still, the show was a success, and we got 15 entrants this year, two up on last year. Unfortunately I was so shattered I didn't get any pics. I only had three entries in, and probably missed a first for my garlic because I was feeling so awful last night I didn't get the presentation sorted properly. The question now is, how can I do it better next year?

2009-08-14T22:57:00.004+01:00

I've had some wretched stomach bug, so I haven't managed to do too much. Last weekend I just about got through a work party, building a couple of bins for dead leaves and grass cuttings. We haven't been getting so many this year, so I wonder how full they'll ever be! you can se how they ended up, anyway.

Meanwhile, my Cambridge Gage is well laden with fruit.

The bees have not been in a good mood, and for the moment I'm going to have to stop my usual careless habit of inspecting them in flimsy trousers. I'm not at all thrilled with the new queen in Hive 2, as the bees are decidedly jumpy. However, she's not destined for a long life. Once I have more queen cells, I'll probably slip one into the broodnest and try a forced supersedure. This is a way of conning the ees into replacing a queen you don't want, without too much disturbance. Mostly, it works, and if it doesn't, it's usually safest to assume that the bees know something you don't.

However, everything is going more or less to plan. I'm going to be raising more queens in a couple of weeks, and by the time they're ready to mate, the old drones should hopefully have disappeared, and I should end up with nice docile hives once more, after the new queens mate with drones of my own strain.

2009-08-05T19:51:00.002+01:00

I've been through Hive 5, and checked that the top box has neither eggs nor queen cells. The bottom box has eggs, so the new queen's there and laying. I broke down all the drone cells I could see.

Behaviour is a bit better, they weren't making the same determined attempts to sting. Stinging depends of pheromones given off by the queen, so if you change the queen, you change stinging behaviour. However, they were still jumping - flying off the combs at me - and following, buzzing around me. these are intimidating, and often lead to stinging. They're programmed into the individual worker's genes, so they'll last as long as this generation of bees. Hopefully that'll be the end of it, but I have three queens which will have mated with drones from this hive, so I can't be sure. I'll be getting rid of those queens next year; I can use them to produce drones or honey, but I can't raise good queens from them.

2009-08-03T21:47:00.002+01:00

I went through Hive 1 this afternoon, to break down any queen cells in the top box (I found three) and check the bottom box with the new queen was OK. It wasn't. It had queen cells and no eggs or uncapped larvae. I can only suppose that the queen flew up when I opened the hive last week, as young queens occasionally do, and got lost. I don't want her misbegotten daughters, so I broke down all the cells, and gave them a frame from Hive 4 with lots of eggs in it. If they really are queenless, they'll raise a new one from that.