New year, New Start

New year, New Start

I've got most of the seeds ordered, some have already arrived, and unlike most years I'm on top of things. The greenhouse has been sectioned off with a quarter of it being covered in bubble wrap and a heater placed under the shelving.

For once I'm hoping to bring things on earlier, making a real effort, with Leeks, some Tomatoes, Spring Onions, Broad Beans, Mizuna and Cauliflower sown. 

Greenhouse Jan 2017

Today was quite warm with the Polytunnel getting up to 10.3 deg C and within 10 minutes the heater had taken the greenhouse to about 12 deg C. I'm only having the 135 Watt heater on for the night hours so it'll be interesting what the temp is compared to the polytunnel tomorrow morning. The heating should only cost under 2p per hour (on for 14 hours) and once germinated I'll only have it on when the temperature drops below 7 deg C and hopefully that'll be enough. I'm going to read the light levels under the bubble wrap tomorrow and see if a light will be needed once they have all germinated. It's all a bit of an experiment but if I can bring things on a month or 6 weeks earlier I'm hoping I'll be able to sell plants and seedlings earlier than last year on the market. I didn't really have any plants to sell until June last year.

Large odd tomato

Large odd tomato

I've watched a large tomato ripen and unfortunately my labelling isn't up to much and the plants labels faded in the sun and I can't remember what they are, but this one has grown so much more than anything else. The fruit has grown around the truss and only one other fruit got pollinated on that same truss. The photo shows the large tomato, which has 3 lobes to it, next to (left) the other one of normal size for the plant. To the right is a large Gardener's Delight tomato for comparison.

356g for one tomato!

Admittedly the 356g includes a bit of stalk which the tomato has grown around but none the less it's huge, deformed and there's a bit of scab on it. It wasn't a beef stake type tomato.

The photo doesn't actually do the size or weight of this thing justice and the Gardener's Delight tomato on the right is a large tomato.

I don't know if 3 tomatoes fused together when they were young or whether it is just a freak single one but it's impressive either way!

It stands 8 cm tall and is 10 cm wide and although it may look like 3 stuck together you can trace a single skin all the way around, which makes it physically one tomato. You can see that the right hand side is definitely one piece and the left is joined to the right at the back.

How big and heavy can tomatoes get! The Gardener's Delight on the right is 28g.

Disaster

Disaster

There are always set backs. Some bigger than others but over the last few weeks I've encountered a biggie!

I've done a lot of reading about this and have come to the conclusion that I have herbicide in my manure. I'm not 100% sure of the facts but I think I few years ago the EU changed a few rules and normal broad leaf herbicide was changed, or banned and farmers etc had to change the herbicide they used.

Anyway, while a "safer" herbicide was chosen this change had knock on effects. Instead of the herbicide decaying or being diluted with rain it was getting on to grass, normally in grazing fields. This was not a problem in itself, the weeds died and the grass didn't. The herbicide on the grass was eaten by horses and passed through them unaffected and without affecting the horses. But it ending up in the manure as far as I can tell.

The manure is then used by gardeners. It isn't a problem for many plants but Peas, Beans, Tomatoes and Potatoes are effected. Apparently it can take bacteria 2 years to break it down.

I have spread manure everywhere. I have 2 piles of it and have taken various loads of manure. I think some is / was effected and some isn't but I have been potting up tomatoes and cape gooseberries in a mixture of manure and compost. The main reason for this is that when selling large plants in pots the manure holds moisture far, far better than just compost. My manure is free so it also offers a cheap potting mixture for selling. The bottom 50 to 75% of the pots was this mixture while then top 25 to 50% was pure compost. The plants that have been placed in these pots were doing fine, as their roots were still in the shallow compost but as time has gone on and the roots go into the manure / compost mixture extreme leaf curl is being seen.

Luckily I haven't sold many Tomato plants in this mixture and the plants I have sold aren't affected.

Cape Gooseberry leaf curl

The photos of Tomato plants don't do the problem justice but Cape Gooseberry is also affected and shows the problem better in a photo. The plants are badly stunted and the new growing tips and leaves are curled in an extreme way. The growing tips of the tomato shrivel up and die. Existing leaves are unaffected.

Cape Gooseberry leaf curl

It isn't caused by mites or flies, because I'd see them. It isn't a virus because I think that this would show as discolouration, yellowing of leaves. On one website it was suggested that tiny amounts of herbicide can travel a long distance on the wind but I have discounted this because some plants have never been outside.

A virus would contaminate neighbouring plants but I have some side by side unaffected.

When planting out in the poly tunnel the manure was dug into the ground in patches, with the manure coming from different batches. Some are OK some not.

Cape Gooseberry without leaf curl

It was suggested planting peas and beans in the same place as the problem. If the herbicide is in the soil Peas and Beans would also be effected.  The test sowings of both Peas and Beans have also been effected, indicating that the problem is soil based.

My manure supplier says that he doesn't, and never has used herbicide, and when I first asked him I tried to stress that it didn't matter and that I just needed to know so that I could avoid using this manure for Tomatoes etc for a couple of years and use it for other plants. So I'm none the wiser as to whether it is in the manure, had he said he did it would have at least confirmed what I think.

Another possibility is that it is in the shop bought compost. This has happened to other people in the past. I can't rule out the bags of compost because although the Tomatoes that are OK are in pure compost I also have purchased compost from 3 different places and have had 4 batches of compost so this could also explain why some plants are OK and some not. 

All the plants in the greenhouse are OK - pure compost used here, half in the poly tunnel are effected and plants in pots outside are almost all affected.

It has stopped me from selling about 20 large tomato plants, and about 8 Cape Gooseberry plants. The others are for us, which is less of a problem although will have the knock on effect of not having their fruit to sell or eat.

If it isn't one problem, it is another but does highlight why commercial growers are paranoid about eliminating pests, viruses and having quality control on all inputs and why they try and control their environment to such a high degree. It also helps to explain why farmers are happy to kill soil bacteria and bugs with gay abandon and rely on applying liquid fertiliser. We may see it as destroying the environment but they probably see it as controlling the environment and eliminating as many unknowns as possible that could effect their crops and income.  

Seeds Sown and more trees brought

Seeds sown and more trees bought

Some wild flower seed sown around poly tunnel, 150 Centurion Onions set, Carrot sown and trenches for potatoes have been started with Leek, Brussels, Tomatoes, Oak Leaf Lettuce, Peas sown in the green house. These were done over the last week or two and Peas and Brussels have already started.

Yesterday, Sweetcorn, Strawberry Spinach, Sweet Peppers, Broad Beans and more Tomato were sown in the Poly tunnel. Hopefully others will be done today.

It's full steam ahead now and the last chance to buy bare rooted trees taken with 10 more Hazel, a Peach, Nectarine and a Cambridge Gage tree ordered along with Hop seed.

Sweet Chestnuts

The Sweet Chestnuts that I planted as seed in a grow bag, with the hope that one or two might germinate and grow has seen most of them germinate. I think I sowed about 20 and perhaps 15 may grow. I had been told that mice would almost certainly get them over winter if I left them outside in a grow bag but that hasn't happened. 

Fruit Bush cuttings

The Red and Black Currant cuttings I took late Autumn seem to be growing. They have fresh buds on them as well as the Gooseberry cuttings. It looks like all have taken. I had simply cut them (old and new wood) and stuck them in pots with compost and left them outside. If they work then this will be something I'll do a lot more of as it was so easy. Reading about taking cuttings the books make it sound quite complicated, cut here with x number of buds after leaves fall, cut at this angle, plant and keep moist using rooting hormone and if the conditions are kept correct they should take. In reality all I did was cut small branches with and without leaves and stick them in a pot of what ever was to hand and left them. I rather wish I had done another 20.

Poly Tunnel
The tunnel went in last October but the high winds damaged the cover so for most of the winter the cover was off until a few weeks ago when we replaced it with a new one, not before putting up some trellis along one side and a bit of the front. Hopefully the trellis should reduce the wind by 20 or 30% and remove the danger of damage. This last week has seen temperatures top 25 deg C inside the tunnel when the sun shines for any length of time and with overcast days it's around 10 or 12 deg C.  

Still Harvesting Tomatoes

Still Harvesting Tomatoes

It's January 10th and we are still getting ripe tomatoes from the greenhouse. I think the plants are slowly dying, some tomatoes have got black marks and many leaves are now dead, but tomatoes are still ripening! Only 3 frosts this winter so far and one of those was slight.

Amazingly they are also sweet. I think this is largely due to the lack of watering that they have received which has helped concentrate the sugars which would have otherwise been diluted by the water. They are taking a long while to ripen as expected.

Jobs that needed doing

Jobs that needed doing

One of the jobs I've been meaning to do for a while is finish digging the main Autumn vegetable bed and move a Raspberry plant as well as plant an Apple Mint that we picked up in a local community market. One of our biggest problems when buying plants is that they stay in their pots until it is too late. Recently we have taken the decision to be more systematic about planting things out as keeping them in a pot means watering gets forgotten and the plants normally die. At some stage I end up putting the pots outside the greenhouse with the good intention of planting but they get eaten by rabbits or fall over in the wind. Not any more - hopefully. The Apple Mint went into a hole cut in the grass and left to go as rampant and wild as it wants. I did the same with the Raspberry that was in the vegetable bed. 

The bed I wanted to dig also had a tomato plant in that I put outside because the pot it was in was far too small. The plant was about 1ft tall when I moved it in about June and it flourished amazingly well. It was a plum variety and I didn't expect it to do well outdoors but we have been picking ripe tomatoes from it for ages and a fair few but it's vines had gone along the ground, around each other and made a real bushy knot. I knew there were still a few ripe tomatoes on it so I picked them, and ate most of them there and then, but amongst all the foliage there must have been 100 or more green and semi ripe tomatoes. You can see the pile I made with them, plus a load, may be 30 or more that fell off which I left to dig into the bed plus a load more still on the plant which will go into the compost heap. I intend weighing the bag of green tomatoes and will leave them in the greenhouse to ripen. I think there must be around 2KG of ones that seemed good enough and big enough to keep. That's just off of the one plant.

Something I will definitely do next year is try and plant many more tomato plants outside but next time I must make a cordon for them to grow up.  

I eventually double dug the bed over and tried to protect it from the Rabbits - spot the professional fence. Although no dig may be the answer the fact is our soil is such heavy clay that it needs breaking up so I took the decision that I would double dig every bed, adding manure, sand etc the first season and then I'll have the option of trying no dig in the future. The beds are approximately 24" deep with big drainage channels around them. The channels are for 2 reasons, 1 being it is a weed block and the 2nd is that the soil that comes out of the channel goes into the bed which then raises it. Double dug raised beds. It seemed like a good idea. These were exceptionally difficult to dig in the spring and summer, so much so I couldn't get enough dug for the number of vegetables we wanted to plant so I'm hoping to do much more digging during the autumn and winter after rain since it may be messy but so much softer. Broccoli and Cabbage and Spring Onion will go into this last bit of the main bed.

 

Durham Early Cabbage

This Cabbage is supposed to be about the earliest large cabbage you can get, that's the claim, and although I'd like to say I chose it I didn't. It's all the Garden Centre had left yesterday so I bought a dozen plug plants and have managed to get them in the ground. My own cabbage was decimated by the Small and Large White Butterfly.

 

White Sprouting Broccoli

Nigel Slater wrote in the Guardian a few years ago about how good the White Sprouting Broccoli was so once again I'd have been happy if I chose to buy these but once again I didn't. Small Whites etc got my Purple Sprouting Broccoli. Out of all the veg as plug plants the garden centre had this and the Durham Early were all they had and so I bought a dozen of both.

 

Green  Alkanet

Green Alkanet

In the Spring I scattered many packets of Wild Flowers over the banks of the pond. I of course didn't write down what was in the packets but around 30 different flowers is what I seem to remember. Only a few came up, maybe 6 or 7 different ones but I do remember there being Forget-me-nots although I didn't think they came up and also they are supposed to be biennial. I was expecting, if they had worked to perhaps show themselves next spring but today I think I found a few, shown in the picture. I thought that they flower in April / June time but hey-ho.
Update 25th October
These turned out to be Green Alkanet and not Forget-Me-Nots as previously thought. Another Wild Flower learned :) 

 

Unidentified Flower

I am trying to learn how to identify Wild Flowers but today I found one that I can't find a reference to on the Internet and it doesn't appear to be in my Wild Flower books. I have no idea what it is although it's very hairy and has 4 petals with it's sepals well extended. Purple blue in colour with a white centre. The flower is where I shook all the Wild Flower seed so it is unlikely to have come from anywhere else. Before the pond was there it was simply a field which was well trampled by a horse for 14 years. It must have come from a packet of seed.

Any ideas? Clicking on the photos will enlarge them.
Update 25th October as per the comment below these have been confirmed as Borage for 2 reasons, firstly, a second person said it was Borage but secondly Borage does do this as is shown by the fact another flower opened on the same plant but with 5 petals :) It's hard enough for me to identify Wild Flowers as it is let alone when they don't know themselves what form to take!

More Wild Flowers Sown

Yesterday I pulled the seed from many of this years wild flowers from around the pond and sprinkled the seed over the wild grass area. Some Corncockles had already germinated on their seed heads. I'm rather hoping that enough will take to have made it worth while as the cut grass is about 5 to8cm in height but it rained immediately after so presumably many will have been washed down to the soil level.

Cornflowers were the hardest to sow as their little seed heads don't separate easily so in the main I just split the heads into 3 or 4 bits and dropped them onto the ground. The Marigolds were the same as they were all damp.

Most of the Poppy seed has already been blown out of their seed heads so only a few of these were used.

I think that I will sow a few trays of Corncockles and Cornflowers into trays and leave them in the greenhouse so they can be added in the spring and no doubt I will broadcast sow more seed then as well.

Sweet pea seed was sown all along the fence line so they have something to grow up as well as Sunflower seed, although I did spread a fair few all over the place.

Everlasting flowers, Helichrysums, may not be wild flowers but since they last so long I thought I'd sprinkle a few around the place for added colour. Last year we started a few off in the greenhouse and transplanted them but they took so easily that I think the seed will take readily.

Compost heap

Muck heap 12th October 2013

I also turned over the compost heap/manure heap a little yesterday and it was just a little. I forked the bottom edges to the top and hope to do this at least once per week. Just 10 minutes a time.

Greenhouse

The Tomatoes are still going strong and there were about 100 tomatoes, green and red yesterday but the foliage had stopped much of the light getting to them and since there is so much less sun now I stripped the foliage back considerably, as I have done 3 or 4 times this year although I haven't been stopping any new trusses from forming which has allowed many many more tomatoes to form. The Chilli Peppers are still doing OK and I hope to keep these going all year to see how they perform next year as I understand they are perennials.  I will also try to keep several tomato plants going also, partly because a local permaculture chap said he had picked a ripe tomato on Christmas day last year and partly because they are perennial. Could be an interesting experiment.

Before

After