Floods!

Half the site was under water yesterday after a severe thunderstorm. The Association secretary had her hallway flooded, which is worse.

My broad beans, looking even more miserable than before. They were perking up and growing with the warmer weather.

There's a sewer under the lane on one side, and it always blows in a severe flood; this manhole cover has lifted right up. Part of the problem is that floodwater goes down the same pipe as the sewage, which obviously saves a great deal of money, but it means that the system floods. When it gets overloaded, it blows into the streams, so any time we get a flood it's safe to assume it's diluted, untreated sewage, with all the health implications that implies.

This is the culvert at the bottom. The curved line of masonry is the brickwork over a three-foot tunnel running under the railway and canal. Normally the water's an inch deep; if it had been any deeper, it would have started backing up, and the whole lower end of the site can flood.

On a brighter note, a large swarm of bees, bigger than it looks here, moved into one of my empty hives on Tuesday. I've been expecting them for several weeks. Every time the sun came out, there would be excited bees staking out the hive. Every time it rained, they'd disappear. Bees only swarm on good weather, but they moved in as soon as we had a sunny day.

Miserable Broad Beans



 These are the broad beans I planted at the begining of March. As you see, they're a fraction of the size they ought to be, owing to the dismal weather. I put in seven varieties; the tougher ones have survived well, and are flowering well considering their size. The weaker have done nothing but sulk. A lot were finished off by slugs, but every variety has produced at least a couple of plants with flowers. So the plan is to save seed from every one. The stronger varieties have the bulk of the flowers, so everything can be expected to have crossed with them. Next year's seed should preserve 90-odd percent of each genotype, while at the same time hopefully being tougher, which is one of the characteristics I'm looking for. I'll add a couple more varieties to the mix, save seed, and comtinue the process the followint year. Meanwhile, I'll have at least some beans to eat!

A dog rose in the hedge. 

A Small Copper butterfly sunning itself when the yellow god in the sky made a brief appearance.

Yellow Flag Iris

When they dredged the local canals about 15 or 20 years ago, they did a certain amount of planting along the banks. These irises are brightening up the view on the way into the city centre.

These baby orb web spiders were in a hedge I pass on the way to the allotment. I think they must have been affected by the carbon dioxide in my breath - I know bees react to it - because they were clumped a lot more tightly, and began to scatter as soon as I took a close look.

And here's variegated Daubenton's kale flowering on the allotment. It flowers rarely, and it's propagated by cuttings, so it's interesting to have a few flowers - it's a very weak flowering stem for a brassica - a year after I planted it. It's right next to some Ragged Jack kale which is flowering like mad, so it should produce some interesting crosses.

Wet!

 Orange tip butterflies mating in a sunny spell. If this weather continues, it'll be another really bad year for flying insects.

This is more like the current norm. There's a lot of waterlogging, but this is the only plot I could see with standing water.

And the flying rats have been at my felderkraut. Brassicas are an easy meal when they're hungry, but it's the first damage I've had since that last very cold spell in February.

The bees were flying this afternoon, until a heavy hailstorm put a stop to that. I had a look at them; there's very little uncapped brood, and most of the capped brood I saw last week has hatched. The queen must have been laying like mad through the warm weather a while back, but she's done very little since it turned colder. That's no bad thing; a colony with a large broodnest in bad weather is in danger of starving. I had a train like that years ago, and every time there was a bad spell in May, a lot of brood was thrown out of the cells, since the bees were unable to feed it all. There were quite a few drones in the hive.

The broad beans are coming up, along with the first of the peas. I'v planted three varieties of leeks, and several kales and other brassicas. There's not a lot happening in this cold weather; I'm continuing to clear ground, and the pears are in flower. The plums are almost over, and the apples are starting to show a little colour.

Some pics

Coltsfoot growing in industrial wasteland by the canal.

A coot nesting on Edgbaston Reservoir

Crown imperials. They like drought and heat in summer, and this is the only place on the plot where I've ever managed to get them to grow. It's probably a little dryer in winter than the rest. They suffered badly in those two very wet years we had not long ago, but they're coming back slowly.

Trillium Kurabayashii, flowering two or three weeks earlier than usual.

A view over the site. 



The row of pines was planted when the railway was built, on the insistence of Lord Calthorpe, who owned the land, as he wouldn't let it go through without a screen.

Swarms to come

The signs of spring are all around us, like the wonders in Conan Doyle's 'Lost World'. Plum blossom is coming out, and the sycamores round the flat are in full bloom. The bees are booming, with six and a half frames of brood, and patches of capped drone brood. That's where I'd expect them to be in early May, not the end of March.

There's a noce frams of brood developing here. You can see the capped brood - the brown areas - with very few holes, and flat capping, indicating that the queen is laying fertile worker eggs, in a nice pattern. To the left, if you enlarge the pic, you can see uncapped honey, which is coming in from willow.

This one's mainly honey, with yellow, greenish or brownish pollen (depending what plant it comes from) in some cells.

With colonies so strong so early, we can expect swarming, especially if the current weather continues. I've heard one swarm report already, and I've seen bees around my empty hives, suggesting that a colony not far away may be making preparations. The interesting thing is that I pick up swarms every year, then those colonies don't often prepare to swarm out of my hives. You'd have thought a lot of swarms would be from swarmy strains, but it doesn't seem to work like that.

A lot of the swarms go on to fill the broodbox with brood at the height of the season, and that may be the key to some of it. There are many different factors which affect swarming, but one of them is space. If the queen runs out of cells to lay in, the colony usually swarms. I use 14x12 boxes, which are significantly bigger than a standard Nations, which uses 14x8 1/2 inch frames. I think some of those colonies run out of space because beekeepers are using boxes which are too small for them.

Spring has sprung

I always feel spring's arrived when I see the bees bringing in significant quantities of willow pollen. You can see the several incoming bees are quite yellow-looking, and have yellow parcels of pollen in the pollen baskets on their back legs. Nectar and honey are nothing but carbohydrate; bees get everything else from pollen, which is loaded with protein and fat. For the first time in five or six months, assuming the weather's warm enough for them to fly, they have a supply of fresh feed. They respond by feeding the queen better, causing her to lay more eggs. They have food available for the resulting larvae, and the colony soon expands, as bees begin to hatch out faster than the old ones die off.

This is the stream at the bottom of my plot, immediately after a heavy shower. Normally it's about half an inch deep at this point. After a thunderstorm, it becomes quite scary, and half the site may well be under water. I can't complain though; it's only the regular flooding which has stopped the site being built over long ago. Otherwise, it would be worth millions as building land.

Birmingham Organic Gardeners

BOG had a stall in town today; I got a white currant, a day lily and a hardy geranium. You can see my currant, which is quite large, put away at the back there on the right, while I went shopping. I'll put it in as soon as I can get to the plot, and probably prune it right back. The important thing for this year is to get it established, not to get fruit.

Planting time

I've started the first little bits of planting. Seven varities of bread bean; Crimson Flowered, Red Bristow (from the HSL), Aquadulce, Grando Violetto, Wizard, a field bean, and Red Epicure, all tp be planted together. I'm going to let them all cross, add more to the mix next year, and see what I end up with. I'm looking for somthing tasty, tough (hence the field bean), red-flowered and red-seeded. I've also put three lines of TPS (true potato seed) in at home; Skagit Magic, which is supposedly blight resistant, only I didn't have any blight to test it last year, Russian Blue, and Blue Belle. Last year I got them in mid-May, and planted then, far too late. This year they've got plenty of time to develop.

My surviving bee colony has far too much brood; four and a half frames of it. That's consistent with what I'm hearing elsewhere, and it's no doubt due to the mild winter. Trouble is, there's no way the bees are going to bring in enough food for that lot in early March. We're going to see a lot of colonies starving this spring, and those tha come through will be unusually strong. All we need then is a dry and sunny May, and there are going to be swarms all over the place. At the moment, they're bringing in a little pollen - a lot for the time of year, but not much in absolute terms - from snowdrops, blackthorn and hazel.

 The first pussy willow is showing, and it won't be long before wllow pollen predominates. It's that time of year; it's often a bit warmer, so the bees can fly for longer, and there are large trees within a few yards. With an ample supply of food for the first time since early autumn, the bees can expand the boodnest, and build up the numbers. They're still vulnerable, though. If there's a shortage of stored food, a spell of cold or wet weather can easily reduce them to starvation.

Meanwhile, the hellebores are in full bloom.

Nosema

I started the winter with four colonies of bees, and ended it with one. The three which didn't make it all died off after New Year, with clusters shrinking steadily. The survivor is extremely strong. This is due to a gut disease called Nosema apis. At least, it's probably N apis. There is a second species, ceranae, which originated with the Asian honeybee, but we don't know a lot about it yet. The disease shortens the bee's life, so the colony wither doesn't make it through our long winters, or comes through weakened.

I know why this happened; it's because I put colonies onto old comb, which must have been infected. So I need to sterilise all my unused broodcomb with concentrated acetic acid. The fumes are lethal to humans as well as disease organisms, so it takes careful handling. I've avoided concentrated acids for many years, but I can get the stuff on eBay, and I'm going to have a go. Then if I get as much new comb pulled as I can, melt the worst of the old, and medicate the bees in the autumn, that should deal with the problem.

On a pleasanter note, it's time to start planting. I went to an event organised by the HSL last Saturday at Martineau Gardens, a couple of miles away. Unfortunately I forgot the camera, but I came back with some interesting seed; shark's fin squash, fenugreek, a Bangladeshi variety of callalloo, which is darker green than the Caribbean varieties - I don't know whether there's any other difference - and halon, which is apparently a sort of spicy cress.

First signs of spring

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

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

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

And here's a crow.

Fallen tree

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.