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Saturday 22 June 2013

Lazy Comfrey - Does It Work?

Saturday wasn’t a very good day for the middle of June. It was breezy with a few heavy showers in the morning although the showers did miss us in the afternoon.

I saw Monty Don making an evil smelling plant food from comfrey on Gardener’s World. I did have a go at this last year but to be honest the evil smell really does put me off. I find using this stuff stomach churning to say the least so last year’s mix finished up on the compost heap and I continued using some liquid seaweed food.

Of course this doesn't mean our supply of comfrey has disappeared so I needed to find a use for a patch which was falling over some of our potatoes.

This patch of comfrey looked to be out of the way of our potatoes when they were planted on 21 May but now it had grown to its full flowering height it had fallen onto the potatoes. I’m sure I’ve read or seen that comfrey can be cut and laid on the ground to act as a fertiliser or mulch so I thought I’d give it a go.

So half the patch of comfrey was cut back and laid between these two rows of potatoes, Charlotte to the left and Winston. Will it make any difference I don’t know. Will it avoid that evil smelling liquid I hope so. The other half of the comfrey has been left for the bees to enjoy and when it has finished flowering will be cut back and added to the compost heap.

Sunday 23 June 2013

Under Control

Sunday was a poor day weather wise for June. It was a dull and windy day with the temperature only managing 15.6° the coolest of the month.

I took the opportunity to give our grape vine and tomatoes in the greenhouse a bit of TLC.

As the tomato plants get to this stage each year I make a sort of resolution to keep them under control, remove side shoots, keep them tied in, stop them before they reach the roof, and of course to feed them regularly. It’s much easier to plan than do for me and I usually miss some side shoots which fool me into thinking they’re actual main stems and as for pinching the tops out I’m just greedy and reckon another truss will be okay. It’s all under control after some side shoot removal and tying in today.

Our grapevine Himrod presents a similar problem. To be honest it’s a bit of a thug in the greenhouse and would happily take over the entire greenhouse through summer given half a chance. I’m managing to keep it in check at the moment which is my aim each summer but somehow behind my back it gets a little bit out of control. This year I need to make a better effort. Side shoots grow rapidly and need constant removal as the foliage casts too much shade in the greenhouse adversely affecting all our other greenhouse plants. So far so good it’s mostly under control with the promise of plenty of sweet juicy grapes by late summer and early autumn.

Monday 24 & Tuesday 25 June 2013

Ready for Plot Tomatoes

Tuesday was the better of the two days with the temperature managing to make it to 20°C with some decent sunny spells. We did have a chilly start to Tuesday with an over night low of just 8.9°C. Monday was cool and cloudy.

I’ve at last sorted out our plot greenhouse ready for some tomato plants. It’s a little bit late but I’m hoping for a good late crop.

The tomatoes have been growing on in large pots at home so I’m intending to transfer them into some grow bags in the next few days. I thought I was rather late last year planting up the plot greenhouse which I did on 11 June 2012. We had a decent crop last year so I’ll find out what difference a couple of weeks make.

Wednesday 26 June 2013

How’s the Month Doing

Wednesday was another decent sort of a day until around tea time when dark clouds appeared as though it was going to absolutely tip it down. It never did though.

So with June coming to an end I’ve had a look at how the month has been doing weather wise. Temperatures look as though they will finish up a little below normal but certainly warmer than last June.

We haven’t had any temperature extremes this month in fact it’s been the coolest June high temperature I’ve recorded if you understand my meaning.

It’s been a dry month so far with only 23.0mm of rainfall against a typically expected 55.2mm. However we are forecast heavy rain for Friday so this could easily change. Our rainfall  up to the 26 June is shown below.

A good downpour certainly wouldn’t do the garden or plot any harm.

Thursday 27 June 2013

And Finally….

Thursday was mostly dull. Light drizzly rain started just after lunchtime and continued into the early evening but produced a total of only 0.8mm of rainfall, hardly enough to wet the top of the soil.

It wasn’t too bad though, for finally planting up the plot greenhouse with its summer tomato plants. As the dull weather kept the outside temperature down it wasn’t too warm working in the greenhouse out of the drizzle.

We planted up five large growbags. Each one  has a different variety of tomato. Working around the greenhouse in a clockwise direction these are Sioux, Alicante, Brandy Boy Hybrids, Pink Wonder and Amish Gold. So far I’ve just about managed to keep a track of the sowing, germination times, potting on and planting up times for our tomato plants. I’d like to complete this by keeping cropping dates and quantities along with some sort of tastiness rating of each variety.

Friday 28 June 2013

Strange Sort of a Day

Friday was a strange day with some rain through the morning clearing away by lunchtime. Outside it felt muggy even though there was a strong to almost gale force wind blowing at times. We didn’t get the amount of rain I expected from the forecast with just 2.6mm bringing the monthly total up to 26.4mm around half the amount we might expect in June.

Saturday & Sunday 29/30 June 2013

Difficult Digging

The weekend wasn’t too bad, reasonably mild with some sunny periods but with a persistently strong breeze blowing most of the time.

On the plot I had one last bed to dig over ready for some peas and french beans. This bed had grown potatoes last year and had been well dug over in autumn when the potatoes were lifted. Any weeds that had grown over winter and early spring had been cleared a couple of weeks ago. Although it’s been a dry month I didn’t anticipate it would be too difficult to prepare this bed. How wrong I was. I’d anticipated giving it a quick tilling but once I got the machine working I realised the ground had become too hard for the tiller to work. There wasn’t much else for it so I dug the bed by hand.

It was hard going with the soil remaining in large dry clods as it was turned over. A dry June had certainly had an effect.

Even a few hefty blows with the back of the fork didn’t do much to break up the ground and it definitely wasn’t a fine tilth suitable for planting into. Fortunately though my tiller does act as a pretty good sort of harrow at breaking up this sort of soil. After several passes with it I managed to get the soil into what I considered a suitable condition for planting.

I raked in some fish blood and bone fertiliser before the bed was covered with weed control fabric ready for planting our Onward pot grown peas.

As we’ve no rain forecast over the next week it’s probably just as well I’ve no more beds to dig over on the plot. It looks like serious watering is going to be required.