Science Lab

David is unhappy with his leeks. He's been unhappy with his leeks for weeks. They're thin, They're short. They're not growing. He loves his leeks, and they're a vital crop to for filling the winter hungry gap. His concerns are no longer allayed by my reassurances that Atlanta is a late developing variety for harvesting December to April, and deliberately chosen by me for that very reason. It's January. Some of the leeks are still little more than fat pencils. The variety is no longer an acceptable excuse for poor performance.

He maintains the leeks were transplanted too late. My (admittedly defensive) response as Chief Plot Planting Planner (not an officially accepted title) is that as we only have one onion bed in the crop rotation, the leeks cannot go in any earlier than the garlic comes out, and the garlic cannot come out any earlier than when the bulbs are ready or we might as well have not planted them in the first place. See how I used inescapable logic here. He maintains that the soil is to blame. Too acid, he says. My response is "so test it then". Not defensive at all really. I found the as yet unused soil testing kit in the cupboard, placed it in a strategic position in full view of anyone passing through the utility room and waited. A few days passed and I put it away again. Nothing more was said about the leeks. Unfortunately nothing more appeared to be happening in the leek bed.

To be fair to Dave (which I always am, of course), it wasn't entirely beyond the realms of possibility that he was right about the acidity. When we bought Banceithin the land hadn't been farmed for years, and the field we'd ear-marked for the plot and polytunnel had certainly never been used for vegetable and fruit growing. We had the soil tested, sending plastic bags of soil samples off to the Royal Horticultural Society Soil Advisory Service (yes, I know, very posh). According to the soil boffins our soil has acid tendencies (probably due to proximity of the bed rock, i.e. we've hardly any top soil) and a potassium deficiency (probably due to a lack of bananas). Whilst we diligently followed the boffin advice for liming and feeding the soil before creating the growing beds, that was six years ago. That six years is a full cycle of our six year crop rotation, and while that is six year's worth of us putting in manure, compost, fish blood & bonemeal, seaweed, egg shells, comfrey tea and our own highly nutritious blood, sweat and tears, not to mention digging out boulders, picking out stones and flicking out the occasional cat poo, it is also six years worth of roots, brassicas, onions, potatoes, legumes and salads sucking out nutrients.

So David turned soil boffin and set up his lab on the dining room table. Soil samples were collected, the little piles in the ice cream tub carefully labelled, and placed on the boiler to dry. Then came the science. Everyone loves a test tube and an acid-alkali colour chart. Mix in the magic soil testing fairy dust, give it a shake, and wait. Hey presto, the leek bed is too acidic.

Interestingly (well to us anyway), from the middle of the field and the start of our veg plot where the acid-alkali level is roughly neutral, the acidity gradually increases across the beds and towards the poly tunnel. More interestingly, the performance of our potato crop, a cultivar with a preference for acidity, dropped off as its planting position moved in the reverse direction. Well what d'you know, there really is a correlation between soil quality and crop performance. Obvious perhaps, but it's always good to see the science confirm it.

None of this is of any help to this year's leeks, which have to remain lying (or rather standing) in their overly acidic bed even if they didn't make it themselves. David will have to remain disappointed, but at least he now has an answer and I no longer have to come up with excuses.

From Poly to Plate

It was Hallow'een. I was in the mood to be amazed. I was feeling ropey after a turbulent night arguing with a dodgy prawn (or at least that's what I thought it was at the time, though it subsequently turned out to be one of it's more deadly relatives, the winter virus). Feeling weak and feeble and very sorry for myself, I was gazing blankly through the window watching leaves fall outside in the garden of my parent's house. I needed something amazing to happen to lift me up out of my funk. Water and glucose energy tablets weren't doing it for me. 

A red admiral butterfly fluttered by. That was pretty amazing for the time of year. But having read an article in the morning paper about the many sightings of the red admiral throughout October, my amazement was somewhat diminished. Unfair to the butterfly. Blame the media. A large dragonfly made its staccato flight left to right across my view through the window. That was definitely an amazing thing to happen on Hallow'een. And all the more amazing for not being an event my morning newspaper had told me to expect. 

I realised that I wasn't seeing the bigger picture (clearly my inner philosopher is roused from her slumber by a dose of the runs and a morning spent in sporadic prayer to the porcelain God). My self-indulgent, woe is me, entertain me, dance for me, state of mind was clouding my vision. Everything I saw through the window that morning was amazing. It's amazing that nature in myriad forms was out there to be seen and, dicky tummy aside, that I was there at that point in time in that spot to see it. The more you look, the more you see. A white-tailed bumble bee was foraging in the begonia. A common carder bee emerged from the trailing lobelia. The bees were still flying - amazing! The flowers were still flowering - amazing! And then I started to think about tomatoes. I had my phone in my hand and I happen to have a lot of photos of tomatoes on my phone, so that wasn't as great a leap of imagination as you might think. I'm sure that every smallholder has a photo gallery consisting mainly of fruit, vegetables, animals or food in varying stages of growth or consumption, but it's possible that this condition is specific to me. But back to the tomato .....

We grow tomatoes in our polytunnel every year. Each plant starts its life in March as a small seed. It's no bigger than a piece of fluff from a belly button. We give it a bed of damp, organic, peat-free compost and a warm spot on top of the biomass boiler. Three, sometimes four or five days later a seedling appears, its head bowed down by the seed case that it wears like a tiny crash helmet. The temptation to free the cotelydon leaves from this burden is great, but we leave the seedling to bear the weight so it can grow strong and healthy in its own time as nature intended. Before too long we have a whole tray of seedlings, a mini-forest on our kitchen windowsill. The three inch tall seedlings are lovingly pricked out, held aloft by the lightest possible touch on their delicate first true leaves, and with a few words of encouragement and some apologies for the disturbance, each is eased gently into its own little pot. It's at this point that failure to label each pot can be disasterous. How else will you know pre-fruiting whether your plant is a Matina or a Saint Pierre, or a Zuckertraube or a Costoluto. Examining plants for minute differences in leaf shape is no substitute for good labelling.

 

Every spare windowsill is now home to tomato plant. We allocate responsibility between us to ensure that at least one person remembers to tend the plants in each room. At this point we have to hope that the point at which the plants hit 6 inches tall and their roots fill the pot, corresponds with a warming of the weather. We check the forecast daily, trying to assess the risk of late frost, as even in the polytunnel the plants can take a potentially fatal knock-back if the temperature plummets overnight, but once they're settled in their final growing site the real magic begins. Manure, water, stinky comfrey tea, warmth and sunshine are the fairy dust. The plants grow, and grow, and grow some more, until that tiny seed is a four foot high plant laden with trusses of tomatoes, a cascade of green, yellow, orange and red. Now that's amazing!

 

 

And do you know what's more amazing? The smell of a bowl of warm freshly picked tomatoes. Bury your nose in it and breath deeply. Everyone says this, but it's true, it's a bowl of sunshine, sunshine that can be sliced, drizzled with oil, sprinkled with basil and munched for summer lunch, or roasted, mushed and stashed away for a taste of summer on a rainy November day like today.

 

Changing Seasons

September began with these happy facts:

- Wales has endured its third wettest summer since records began in 1910.

- For sunshine it is expected to be the country's second dullest.

- Across the UK experts claim it will be the wettest summer in 100 years, and the second wettest on record.

Am I wrong in reading this as meaning that Wales was not as wet this summer as other parts of the UK? Well that has to be good news. Of course, the fly in the ointment is that is also means that at some time in the last 100 years Wales had two summers even wetter than this summer. I sure am glad that I missed out on those!

Last week the BBC weather boffins claimed that climate change will make Britain like Madeira by the 2060s. At first I drifted off into dreams of living in a lemon and almond scented country made of sponge cake. Then the geography part of my brain woke up, sneered at the greedy food part and reminded me that Madeira is in fact an island not just a tasty cake that goes well with a nice cup of tea. So instead I got excited at the prospect of converting the pig field into a pineapple grove, buying a panama hat, and swanning around squeezing exotic fruit saying “yes” in a Mr Del Monte style. Then came the crushing disappointment when it out turned out said boffins were spouting a load of greenhouse gas. You can’t trust anyone these, not even the BBC.

The only true signs of changing climate or even just changing season are those I see before me. Sadly “Dave’s Nature Notebook” has scant records for 2012 so there are few facts to cross-check against the initial enthusiasm of the 2011 records. All I can say for certain is that the housemartins arrived at least two weeks later this year and are still here, that the barn owls failed to rear any chicks after successfully raising four to fledging last year, that the honey harvest was 15lbs instead of 35lbs, that the carrots are like babies of babies of baby carrots ….

… that the beetroots are like marbles, and that the slugs are just as slimy but twice as fat as last year!

The traditional signs of summer turning to autumn are already there to be seen – blackberries ripening; mushrooms springing up across the field; horse chestnut leaves turning from green to burnt orange. The somewhat less traditional signs are there too – getting a tad too chilly to wear pyjamas for the early morning animal feeding chores; shouty, egg laying, “I want out” chickens waking me at 7 a.m. instead of 6 a.m.; loading six logs in the wheelbarrow for Bertha’s breakfast instead of four; washing going from wet to dry to damp again if “someone” forgets to bring it in after tea; the sundowner “I’ve been really busy, honest I have, I deserve it” beer gradually getting earlier and earlier. But despite all this, Mother Nature is having another roll of the dice and has been throwing out summer days willy-nilly. The bees and butterflies are supping greedily and drunkenly on the late nectar flow like wedding guests at a free bar. Brush past the flowering herbs and you risk a face full of buzzing and fluttering. Inhale too sharply in surprise and you get a mouthful too!

Our third summer season may be drawing to a close, but it’s onwards and upwards here at Banceithin. In just nine days time work begins on phase one of the Boardwalk Project. The wood has been bought. The woodsman has been booked. The brambles have been cleared and grown back. There’s no going back. Unless it rains. The plan is to start with a ground level platform between the trees by the stream, over which the hammock will swing. Hammock?! Are you crazy? After the summer we’ve just had? Hey, who said that lazy summer days have to be in July or August. I’m happy to swing in the breeze any day of the year. Isn’t that what blankets were invented for? Next to the hammock platform, just a hop, skip and a few ladder rungs up will be not one, but two hideaway decks in the trees. Pour a glass of wine, grab a book and disappear amongst the leaves for some quiet contemplation.  

3……2……..1………Germination!

First let me apologise to any regular readers about the recent tardiness and lack of blog updates. I completely blame the evil that is ‘Chirper’, ‘Tweeter’ or whatever it is. Since Philippa immersed herself in the 142 character world, it seems the blogosphere has taken a back seat. I made an announcement today, over some rather yummy cheese on toast, that I would take on the baton of the Banceithin blog, and log the progress of our first full operational year.

Bertha the boiler has again been busy providing the warmth to start germinating our first seeds that are destined for the poly tunnel.

Chili’s and toms

The window sills are awash with new young plants. We have loads of tomatoes, Matina as our main crop, Favorita as our cherry variety, Sparta as our bush tomatoes and a couple of Italian plum (San Marzano, Costoluto Fiorentina) which Philippa is in charge of. I have assumed responsibility for herbs after criticising Philippa for the lack of parsley and coriander last year. You can imagine the conversation, with the words “…well you can b***** well do it this year!” ending the discussion abruptly.

Mmm, tasty parsley…..now that wasn’t that hard was it :-)

POND WATCH

I love my pond, it’s official. The plants I pulled out from the ditch and transplanted into the new pond have actually flowered and it seems that they are Water Crowsfoot and are oxygenators. In terms of bugs I’ve spotted two types of water boatmen, pond skaters, snails, tiny beetles, and my favourite, the whirligig beetle. This iridescent beetle whizzes around in circles on the surface. The tadpoles have all hatched and are swimming around happily, but they need to keep away from the water boatmen, who apparently are quite partial to a little wriggler.

Philippa and I are continuing with our volunteering work. I’ve started working at a different RSPB reserve, and very excitingly it is going to be the venue for this years Spring Watch, but as it’s not official yet I’ll have to keep the site secret. I have been asked to help during the time the team are there. I am hoping for the role of Miss Humble’s cushion plumper, but expect I’ll be asked to man the shop to handle the influx of Humble and Packham spotters.

Another year, another spring

The Twitterati are busy twittering about the signs of spring and I’m seeing photo after photo of flowering daffodils, nest building birds and trees in full leaf. As usual, our West Wales valley microclimate is at least two weeks behind everyone else. Those daffodils whose heads have not been munched by an as yet unidentified night time beastie, are keeping their flowers tightly wrapped up. The blue tit, star of our “Tit in Residence” short movie, has stolen all the straw out of our best box and disappeared, and is no doubt busy constructing a straw lined palace in someone else’s garden.

Here at Banceithin, you know it’s spring when:

- The first attempts are made to go cold turkey and spend a full 24 hours without thermal long-johns or thermal vest and only one pair of socks.

- The central heating thermostat is knocked down another notch (not by me) on the argument (not mine) that if we open the front door the spring sunshine will warm the house instead.

- The cats are forced to share the windowsills with trays and pots of potting compost and the most asked question of the day switches from “any bookings?” to “any germinations?”.

- The cobwebs, twigs, leaves and bird poo are dusted off Trinny the Tractor because it’s sunny and Dave just can’t wait to bounce around the fields again.

- Froggy goes a-courting, sounds of amphibian loving fill the air, the murky water behind the shed turns to jelly, and the occasional squashed frog turns up on the drive.

But there really is only one sure sign that spring has sprung, that the sap is rising and that winter really is behind us.

Dave starts a new “project”…..

All creatures great and small

It happened while I was in the veg plot. I heard it as I squatted down to whisper words of encouragement to the drooping purple sprouting broccoli. I’d last heard that sound some time back in October but there was no mistaking it. And then there it was again, this time near my left ear. I smiled to myself, feeling relieved and uplifted in equal measure. Yes, the bees had made it through the long winter and on the first day of real sunshine, the kind that feels warm on the face and raises hopes that just maybe spring might really be around the corner, they were out and about, flexing their little wings & stretching their fuzzy legs. It looked like party time outside the hive as bee after bee emerged from the hive, hovered tentatively & then shot off over the field buzzing busily.

I’m a beekeeper with a tendency to worry constantly, so relief soon turned to anxiety. Would my bees overdo the exercise, fooled by the sun into thinking winter is over, fly too far in search of non-existent nectar and pollen sources and not make it back before the sun drops and the temperature plummets? If the queen is still on a winter egg laying break then these precious worker bees still had a vital role to play in keeping the colony alive until there is new brood ready to hatch. No point asking the bees to be careful. Nothing to do but trust that the bees know best. I was itching to lift the roof and peer inside in search of queenie, but as warm as the sun might feel it would be unfair and foolhardy of me to risk the life of the colony by introducing great wafts of February chill into the cluster. Sit tight and keep watching and waiting.

Back on the plot, inspection of over-wintered crops continued – brussels looking like bog brushes, broccoli exhausted by weeks of freezing, thawing, freezing, thawing, winter lettuces stalled at a size that wouldn’t even feed an anorexic fairy.

There’s good news and bad news down in the fruit patch. The bad news is that the winter storms took no time at to deconstruct my carefully constructed network of bird scaring DVD danglers. They’re now tanglers rather than danglers, and I’m picking DVDs out of the grass and hedge. The good news (or perhaps, given the lack of scarers, that should be bad news) is that weeks of way below zero temperatures haven’t killed off the plants – the blueberries and blackcurrants have buds galore… for now.

All shapes & sizes

For nigh on 38 years I’ve waged war against parsnips. As a child I disliked seeing my yummy Sunday lunch roast potatoes sharing a bowl with yucky parsnips and would gingerly pick out the tatties from amongst the devil’s root vegetables lurking in the bowl. As an adult, I’ve avoided that same root vegetable in all its forms, soup, mashed, roast, snuck into a casserole. Yesterday, something strange happened. I ate a parsnip and I liked it. I didn’t love it. Let’s not get carried away. It wasn’t too sweet. It wasn’t too mushy. It was a whopper and it came out of my garden. Perhaps I’m psychologically predisposed to favour my own vegetables, or maybe the thrill of eating a meal consisting almost entirely of my own produce (until Hera meets her maker that is) simply overpowers my parsnip phobia.

 

Aside from whopper parsnips, colourful chard and carrots with legs, the garden continues to yield fruit and veg of all shapes and sizes. The debut blueberry harvest amounted to a bumper three berry crop. Hmm what to make ... blueberry muffin, blueberry pie, blueberry yoghurt … so many options so few berries.

The damsons are falling from the tree faster than we can gather them. A wheel barrow was needed to carry the squash home.

The brussel sprouts are ready about two months too early and are growing to cabbage proportions. The chillies are fiery red and doubling up as a source of entertainment for Dave (I’ve spared you the chilli earrings and comedy mouth shots).

And my one and only aubergine is a weeble.

Feeling Fruity

Fruit, fruit, glorious fruit. The old damson tree is laden with fruit this autumn. I eye them greedy on a daily basis waiting to pluck them at their peak of fruity loveliness. I dream of having oozy dark damson jam for breakfast again. After last seasons bumper crop of sloes there are none this year, but with plenty of damsons on offer we’ll be steeping a batch of damson gin for a Christmas snifter or two. The apples are also thriving after years of neglect, so the freezer will be packed with stewed apple for those emergency crumbles when Squaddie Dad comes to stay and, heaven forbid, I’ve forgotten about pudding.

 

We’re big fans of braised red cabbage, so this year I ditched some slug magnet savoys to make way for the red drumhead cabbage. I’ve been watching the dusty purple leaves curl in tightly as the heads swell. I’ve scattered eggshells and slug pellets galore to protect these braising beauties. Then lo and behold, I turn my back for a day and my prize drumhead cracks wide open, unable to hold herself in for a moment longer. Quick as a flash I whipped her out of the ground and into the kitchen before any sodding slug could squelch its way inside. Hmmm, yummy with a juicy pork chop.

   

This time last year I was searching for recipes to use up my sorry looking basketfuls of green tomatoes, but no such problems this year. The tomatoes went into ripening overdrive a couple of weeks ago and are still going strong – one batch of roasted tomato sauce is already in the freezer, and tomorrow it’s time for the passata. Cherry tomatoes have been a success story – we tried “Minibel” this year (not to be confused with Ba-ba-ba ba-babybel) – so I’m going to test my new found confidence in the kitchen and attempt to turn the trug load sitting on the kitchen counter into jars of slow roasted tomatoes in olive oil.

With the dip in temperature as the autumn weather approaches, the conveyor belt of courgettes and cucumbers is finally slowing down. None of the glut has gone to waste though, as the pigs scoff those that are too far gone and large enough to house a family of mice and their aunts, uncles and cousins, and the rest have magically (after much chopping and a fair few minutes of slaving over the vinegary fumes of a hot maslin pan) become jars of relish. Dave has already blown my cover and blurted out the secret plan to sell my wares to the unwary tourists of Covent Garden. My poor little jars looked a little lonely on the shelf, but as of today I have reinforcements ready to keep them company, and each jar has its own little mob cap. The shop launches this Saturday - get there early to avoid disappointment!

 

Toms galore

The furry whirling dervish that is Teri the pup is taking a wee nap, so I have time for a little work around the property. Taking on a small puppy is no mean feat, especially in the area of toilet training. Pups like to “eliminate” after drinking, eating, sleeping and playing, and you have a 60 second window to catch her before she decides to do her business.

We currently have a routine where the alarm goes at 6.30 am and one of us gets up to try to catch the morning rituals. If neither of us are feeling up to it, a sleepy game of paper, scissors, rock decides who goes down. After this the early bird is allowed to go back to bed, and at 7.30 the one left in bed has to go and let the pup out again and feed the rest of the animals.

With the pup asleep, Phil slipped off to Lampeter to get some more books from the library and a plethora of jam jar sundries. She has been a busy bee over the last few days as we have been given a small display in a shop in Covent Garden to sell our wares and promote the holiday business. The shop is called Tribe and is being set up by our friend “Chelsea” Ali. It is the brain child of her employer entrepreneur Serge Bueno and is about promoting new businesses.

As you can see we’ve only sent a few jars of preserves, but the next batch is on it’s way and will be there before the opening later in September.

With Phil out I sneaked out up to the poly tunnel to harvest a load of tomatoes.

I plan to roast them with olive oil, basil and seasoning before turning into yummy passata to freeze for consumption during the dark winter months.

Well Teri has resurfaced so I must take her………….bugger!

Welcome home, Trinny!

After major surgery and several weeks in intensive care Trinny was released from tractor hospital. She’s still not fully fit, with little leaks here and there, but Doctor John says she’s good to go. And go she did, with Dave putting her to work straight away. No period of convalescence for poor old Trinny – the foot high grass needed seeing to!

But Dave is not a cruel man, so Trinny was rewarded with a good wash, probably her first in 30 years. Now Dave can see through the windscreen maybe the grass will be cut in straight lines.

Note to self, tomatoes respond to chastisement. After my whispered words we’ve had a mass ripening. Sweet, red and juicy ….

… and that’s just the tomatoes!

The Tomato Whisperer

Prince Charles talks to his plants (allegedly). I’ve started chatting with the tomatoes. It’s a one way conversation, and I’m not sure if chastising counts as the kind of talking that Prince Charles had in mind, but the tomatoes are being very naughty and I felt that a stern talking to was in order. Sunlight hours are few and far between and the tomatoes should be making the most of this precious time to ripen their existing fruit and should not putting out new shoots left right and centre. The urge to grow is greater than the urge to fruit. Snip off a shoot, turn your back for a moment and 10 new baby shoots sprout in its place. So I’ve told the tomatoes to reassess their priorities and concentrate efforts on chameleon like changes cascading down the vine from green, to yellow, through orange to a sweet tasting red. Throw in a handful of ripening blueberries and I’ve got an edible rainbow!

 

All I have to do now is perfect my sun dancing techniques and maybe this year we’ll have pots of roasted tomato sauce in the freezer instead of jars of green tomato chutney in the pantry.

In contrast, the aubergines need tlc not scolding, just a few gentle words of encouragement whispered into the folds of their pale purple petals. Please, pretty please, develop into deep purple blobs of aubergine loveliness. I refused to be defeated by last year’s attack of blossom end rot. I know it’s possible to grow aubergines in the UK as I’ve seen the fruits of someone else’s labours on sale in the Co-op supermarket. Much to my annoyance each aubergine was individually wrapped in its own plastic cocoon, so buying one was not an option. No aubergine, no sun, means no bbq’d aubergine slices. But there’s hope yet for my Black Beauty’s. A Christmas bbq perhaps?

Strange how a polytunnel in Wales struggles to recreate the Mediterranean climate for an aubergine and yet appears to provide the perfect environment in which to grow the alien babies of my prolific butternut squash.

 

If the squash grows much more there’ll be a localised total eclipse occurring in West Wales. Polytunnel in May…

… polytunnel in July……              

Spot the difference! That serious amount of leaf in the middle is a single butternut squash plant. Maybe I accidentally purchased a packet of giant mutant ninja squash.

Meanwhile, back in the house, there’s a chilli jungle growing in the porch.

Every jungle has its spiders and ours is no exception. We have Sammy the Spider, who must be at least 3 inches across, probably 6 inches if you pulled him by opposing legs and flattened him out. As Sammy keeps the fly population at bay and protects the chillies from other crawly pests we’ve decided to grant him a stay of execution, although given his size I’m not sure that even the super-charged sucking machine that is our new hoover could handle him. Besides, neither one of us is brave enough to get up close and personal with Sammy. If he reaches Shelob sized proportions and develops a taste for chilli with his flies, we’ll have to send in Nessa and Stevie, have Charlie in reserve if reinforcements are needed, with us huddled at the rear like cowardly hobbits!