Frogs

Frogs

It's that time of year again.

Last year, a milestone was reached with the pond. This year the frogs have appeared about a week later but there are even more of them. Also, most of the frogs are at the opposite end of the pond compared to last year. No idea why, but no doubt there is a good reason.

March 30 2016

The most frogs I managed to capture, within one photo, last year was 50. This year I think that there is 85 in this photo. Across the whole pond I think there were approx 100 frogs seen at any one time. Probably a lot more still hidden.

High concentration of frogs

I was speaking to a Wildlife chap the other month and he was telling me that this sort of sight has become increasingly unusual. He hadn't seen such a concentration of frogs for years so I think we're very fortunate to see this.

At times most of the frogs are within a 2 feet square area and the water boils as they tumble and turn.

The reason we are doing particularly well with the frogs is because the garden is damp and boggy in patches with a lot of long tufty grass. Also being surrounded by fields, ditches, other ponds and small lakes near by.

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.  

Garden waste

Garden waste

Apart from being a manure dumping ground for the local stables I also tell neighbours that I'll accept their green waste. It all composts, helps them out and I also benefit but when a neighbour turns up with eight builders (1 sq metre) bags of shredded Conifer tree cuttings the initial thought was bordering on shock.

I had only put two barrow loads on the compost heap when I realised that these shreddings may well be the answer to my biggest two problems. Firstly the paths get a bit water logged and muddy and secondly the grass does its best to swamp the young hedge around the garden.

Hedge line with sapplings

Holding back the neighbours weeds plus the vigorous grass as can be seen in the photo is a challenge.

Hedge line after shreddings applied

The shreddings piled several inches deep should keep down the grass.

Main path to chickens covered

Apart from covering 2 sides of the little field for the hedge there was also plenty to cover the main path leading to the chickens. This path has become a bog. Enlarging the photos by clicking on them makes it easier to see. 

Now I'm left wishing I had another 8 bags!

Comparing The Past - February

Comparing The Past - February

It's been three years developing the little field and every so often I like to compare month for month between the years.

Click on images to enlarge.

February 2013

The first year saw flooding.

February 2014

The second year saw trees and a pond plus drainage ditches.

February 2015

The third year saw areas taking shape.

February 2016

The start of the fourth year.












On the enlarged pictures the trees are now getting big enough to see from a distance and there are many lumps and bumps. Bit by bit we are trying to put some height into the field to reduce the wind. Within the last few months a Poly tunnel went in but the wind damaged it and recently some trellis screening went in to protect it (far left with most of it out of view).

The fox has still been an issue for the chickens, well more than an issue, it killed them all, and so better fencing with a better electric fence has just gone in because we took delivery of another 20 chickens this week. The water proof electric fence controller turned out to be not water proof and died. The chicken run has now got 6 ft fences and has been split into 3 pens. Two of which I hope to roof. The theory being that if the fox does get in again chances are it will only get in to one pen before we realise and can react to protect the other chickens quicker.

The drainage ditches are also being redug, because although they work they are slowly filling up and this winter has seen a fair few very boggy patches - no flooding though.

This week I have also ordered 10 Silver Birch, 10 Hazel trees and 10 Sweet chestnut to go mainly around the boundary.  

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.

Mushrooms and Poly Tunnel

Mushrooms and Poly Tunnel

Earlier on in the year I tried growing mushrooms.

Previous posts:

Mushroom Part 1

Mushroom part 2

I didn't think that the temperature was right and gave up on them but over the last couple of days they have appeared. I say they but more correctly "it" appeared.

One mushroom has grown:

It shows that it worked but hasn't exactly been a great success. I think I'll put the idea of growing mushrooms outdoors to the back of my mind for now :)

The poly tunnel on the other hand is going great. Everything is growing strongly even to the point where a harvest can now be taken from the salad leaves. The Spring Onions have germinated as well as the radish. The garlic, although not showing yet has grown some roots and is about to poke through the soil and the field beans sown in a corner to see if they will fruit earlier than outdoors have started to grow.

(Click to enlarge pictures)

On the left the Oak leaf lettuce and Mizuna are going very well as is the beetroot, on the right the Chard and Pak Choi are also growing very strongly.

In the middle the Spinach, Radish, Garlic, Spring Onion, Strawberry and Chinese Cabbage are doing just as well.

What is immediately noticeable is that none of the leaves have been nibbled so everything is looking perfect. The Cape Gooseberry has even flowered. It's only been a few weeks since we put the Poly Tunnel in (see: Poly Tunnel Post) but the extra warmth and humidity has made a big difference as has the fact that it hasn't needed watering much since the humidity and lack of a drying wind has kept the soil moist. The roof of the Tunnel collects water droplets and automatically waters the beds as well, which is a nice bonus.

Today has been a rather breezy day but the Tunnel's plastic isn't noticing the wind much which bodes well for the much windier days ahead. This week the max temp reached 30 deg C and the minimum went down to 1.2 deg C so no frosty conditions inside the tunnel even though a few people have commented that they have had a ground frost in the area. It is now noticeable that the day time sun is not effective enough to warm the soil to keep the night time temp higher than the outside by the end of the night and I think that after a few hours of darkness any residual heat has dissipated by midnight.

My next job, and probably tonight, will be to put a heater inside set to the anti-frost setting, on for 2 hours from midnight to see if that will keep the inside temp a degree or two above the outside temp. The tunnel is probably too big for the heater to raise the temperature enough so that it can turn off the heat. If it fails to heat up quickly and be able to turn off then it will be a waste of time as the cost of the electricity will be a waste of energy but it's worth a test. A 2 kW heater on for 2 hours is going to cost 26p a night but if it can manage to do it's job and only be on for 45 minutes then at under 10p a night it might just extend the growing season for a few more weeks before the proper cold weather sets in. Once the proper cold spell starts the idea of a heater becomes silly, price and energy wastage wise but if the plants can just be allowed to grow for another 2 weeks then the amount of salad leaves we get and can sell will make it worth while. The same will apply at the end of the winter. If we can get the temperature up by just a degree or 2 during the night late February and the day time sun starts to heat the tunnel then we might get a months head start on some crops for next year. If we can sell the leaves (as we currently do) a couple of weeks later and a few weeks earlier than the other Alford Country Market growers then we'll have one month per year being the only one selling these products and therefore no competition.

One of the problems with selling home grown produce is that when winter starts the customers will be forced back into the super markets to buy their greens for juicing. By postponing that by a few weeks you can keep them loyal for longer and they can keep their habit of buying from us. By starting to sell the greens earlier in the new year using a poly tunnel we will have more time to pull them back in and get them back in the habit of buying locally again before the main season starts.I can see the possibility that once the regular customers go back to the supermarket over winter they may not start to come back to the country market by the time we start selling again but if we have some of what they want before the start of the main season we can start to grab them back one by one slowly so they are already on the look out and thinking about the country market when our main produce starts coming through. Instead of being a slow start to the main season we may be able to get up to full speed selling quicker....anyway, if we don't try we'll never find the thing that works for us :)

Still hoping that the money and time spent on the poly tunnel will pay big dividends.    

Poly Tunnel!

Poly Tunnel

After years of wanting one but not liking the eye sore that they can be nor the expense we finally bit the bullet and got a very cheap one. So cheap we wouldn't be losing much if it didn't last or ended up not being what we wanted.

We've looked at ones costing over £1000 but this one is £200 reduced down to £139. Surely too cheap to last or be any good? As it turns out it is remarkably good for the money structure wise but did need some extra support to stiffen it up. It is 6m long by 3m wide by 6m high (19.6ft by 9.8ft by 6.5ft). Would have been nice to have a taller one but then again you always want bigger.

Plastic cover wise only time will tell but it is supposed to be UV protected and new covers are £60.

We didn't have a good place to put it so it went where it was assembled and we'll move the path instead.

I had to dig a trench to sit the metal frame into and then peg down the frame. The turf that came out of the trench was then placed on the outside over the plastic skirt to hold it down and stop the wind from blowing it away.

Three beds were dug, 0.5 wide on the sides (they look smaller in the picture) and 1m wide bed in the middle. At the end there is space for a couple of chairs and I intend on having a grape vine at the end in the centre so it can travel the length on the tunnel. The hay actually covers the edges of the beds deliberately to help stop the grass.

A thick layer of hay to kill the grass, a load of manure and we're done. About a day to do.

Finally a load of salad plants go in, which have been waiting for a home, a few posts to stabilise the structure and the centre ones (a couple missing in the picture) have string attached from them to the roof for tomato plants to grow up and they also anchor the structure more. I'll add wooden edges to the beds during the next week to make them into raised beds. 

With the door closed, today, which was over cast for 90% of it, the temp rose at one point to over 40 deg C, opening the door reduced it to 23 deg C while the temp outside hit 18 deg C. I dread to think how hot it could get in the height of the summer!. Last night the outside temp went down to 9.8 C and the minimum temp in the poly tunnel went down to 10.7 C which was the result of 4 or so hours of heating from the sun in the evening when the tunnel was first up so tunnel made 1 deg of difference. 

So the tunnel made 5 C difference during the day and 1 C during the night to the minimum temps. A small heater during the coldest winter nights (or water butt inside) and we might be able to avoid all but the worst frosts.

Planted so far are:

Wild Rocket

Spinach

Ruby Chard

Lettuce

Pak Choi
Chinese Cabbage
Mizuna

Beetroot to see if they grow.

Hopefully we can have salad and leafy greens during the winter and the green house can be freed up for seedlings but these are just planted now in the hope they will grow. Really the tunnel is for next spring but we couldn't resist planting it now.

Just need to cross fingers with the wind and hope the plastic doesn't go brittle with severe frosts and cold spells but if we hadn't of got it we'd never know if a cheap one would work!

Update

Raised bed borders added plus filled up beds with manure, soil and compost.

Added some field beans to see if they fruit earlier than outdoors plus a load of garlic.

Added a small section of staging and strengthened the structure at the back and front against wind problems.


Also sown or planted
Radish "French Breakfast"
Ramrod Spring Onion
Cape Gooseberry that was grown last year and survived the winter, then this summer and is still going, small and pot bound and neglected, but now planted in the soil as it has a few fruits on.