Monthly Archives: March 2015

Fruit trees, Planting out

Tree-ly Delightful

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With the school term ended, I had a mission today. To not only sow sunflowers for the Psychology Sunflower challenge but to also sink two additional fruit trees. These were a doyenne du Comice pear tree, and a Moorpark Apricot tree. I am still expecting a Czar plum tree.

The Moor Park Apricot, is an experiment, the same way at the Rochester peach tree. But the pear and plum are to help support the two other pear and plum trees. The plum tree has flowered and fruited before, but not since. The Pear tree however, has flowered but never fruited. I am not sure of any of my plot neighbours having a pear tree, so that is important as having another pear tree helps pollination. There are huge great big plum trees-been there a good fifty years-further down the allotment site.

In all honesty, I have been wondering how far bumble bees can fly from one flower to another. Do they fly in feet, metres, miles? In time there will be flowers to help them fly around easily.

The full list of fruit trees on the plot is as follows:

  • Worcester Pearmain
  • Rochester peach
  • Moor Park Apricot
  • Falstaff apple
  • Braeburn apple
  • Victoria plum
  • Doyenne du Comice pear
  • Concord pear
  • Sylvia Cherry
  • Czar plum-still expected
Psychology Sunflower Challenge

#PsychologySunflowerChallenge 2015 is a go!

Sowing sunflowers
Sowing sunflowers

And we are off. Today I have sown sunflowers to kick off the Psychology Sunflower challenge 2015. I have sown two varieties, sunburst and Giant Sunflowers.

You can see the previous post here where I put it all into context.

The top two rows of the tray above are sunflowers seeds. The other three rows contain assorted flowers that will sunk along side. All of which, will contribute to entertaining bumble bees and help pollinate crops.

The key for this challenge is Sunflowers.

I am challenging my fellow teachers and school support staff, regardless of subject area and age range, to grow sunflowers. Something of a natural experiment, if you like. The details above, are taken from the latest article of The ATP Magazine. Later this year, I am hoping to carry out a workshop at The ATP conference that looks at gardening and well being.

These do tend to grow quickly, and get big quickly at that. So these will need to be potted up as and when. They will also need to be hardened off and exposed to the elements before being placed into their final positions.

Soft fruit

Blueberry budding

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darrow_blueberry

There are three blueberries in pots on the plot. What you see above is the Darrow variety, the others are blue jay and bluecrop. The blue crop was the youngest, I think, as well as the smallest. I’m surprised that there are quite few buds on this already. My concern had been that the frost would nip at them, but they do seem to be fairly robust.

All three are in large pots, that have been filled with ericacaeous-how ever you spell it-compost. I did water them in with rain water when they were first potted in. Luckily we have had some rain since to keep them watered.

project othello, Soft fruit

Raspberries getting a wriggle on

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There are a number of different raspberry varieties that are on the plot. We have:

  • tulameen
  • glen cova
  • malling jewel
  • autumn bliss
  • polka
  • fall gold

Most are part of the all season collection that were planted last year. However, the autumn bliss, polka and fall gold are the varieties that specifically fruit as the autumn draws in. The all season collection was sunk last year, with the autumn bliss and polka varieties sunk last summer. The autumn bliss were the surprise quick croppers in autumn, having been rescued from a garden centre, and the polka were actually kindly donated by a friend and colleague.  The autumn bliss canes were cut down as suggested, so we shall see how these develop.

Pottering around today, I was looking to see if there was any sign of life in the large number of raspberry canes. Lo and Behold, the fall gold are showing green buds. This is somewhat surprising as the canes were only sunk recently. In comparison, the earlier planted canes of the all season collection are somewhat behind. They have rooted, there is resistance if you try and tug at the canes. However, the buds are only just forming at the knobbly bits of the canes.

overwintering alliums

Garlic update March 2015

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It’s been a long time since I wrote about the garlic that was planted during the autumn last year. You can find that post here where I planted it.

The varieties are:

  • Early Purple wight
  • Lautrec Wight
  • Elephant garlic
  • Provence Wight

Generally, I will plug it in, and then pretty much leave it alone. Such is the beauty of planting garlic, other than feeding during the spring and weeding from time to time, I have observed that not much else is needed. In the past, I have grew it both in open ground and also in raised beds. In my experience, planting and growing in raised beds has produced a bigger and better crop compared to growing in the open ground.

So far so good, I will  have to feed these in the coming weeks. At this moment, the need to weed isn’t too bad. There is nice green foliage that has some way to go before it is shows that the bulbs are mature. The full maturity is indicated when the foliage becomes raffia like and pale, it also keels over in some cases.

Experimental Chillies and be;;s, tomatoes

potting up the plants: Chillies and toms

After what has been an intense week, things are getting back to normal. I have found myself some compost, and got around to potting things up.  The tomatoes were looking as though they were ready to bend and break, so needed to be potted up as matter of urgency. So putting down some newspaper-i did it before my mum instructed me to, and I even hoovered up after-I set about potting up.

I’m not very good at potting up, as you may have garnered. I even managed to decapitate one of the true black brandywine seedlings. To be fair it had already started to keel over a the soil point in having grown leggy. There was no hope for it anyway. Therefore, potting up is something of a delicate operation. I had to concentrate, so pops got a bit worried when I was walking around wearing a scowl and looking rather unhappy. That would be my concentration face.

The tomatoes were planted deep into new pots, right up to or close to their baby leaves. There are still another dozen or so baby tomatoes that are still at their baby leaf stage. But these were starting to send out their second or third set of proper leaves. They still have some time yet before they are move. I daresay that they will probably be potted up once more before they get planted into the poly.

Then, then we have the chillies. You  have heard a fair bit of them lately. But they too needed potting up to varying levels. They are all incredibly leafy, and healthy looking. I did have a mild panic when earlier this week, a couple of the specimens were a bit wrinkly and dehydrated. So had to have a lot of water poured into their gravel tray. I rather like my chilli babies, and will be heartbroken if they keel over. Most of them now look a little more respectable having graduated from their yogurt pots and into the 7 cm pots. The habaneros were also potted up, they are sending out leaf pairs three and four, even though they are smaller in size compared to the rest of their cohort. I think that is trend for habaneros, as the other varieties are growing at a much speedier rate. I also had not realised quite how many Hungarian Hot wax chillies I had sown. There a number of Aji Limo, together with few cayenne babies.

Books

World Book Day 2015… well, yesterday

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Driving along to work, you don’t expect the princess from Brave walking to her school.

That was how World Book day 2015 started for. As early as it was, I was most definitely not hallucinating.

I have been fortunate enough to have access to books and libraries from being a school kid. Not exactly something that was encouraged at home, but not frowned upon neither. My earliest memories of reading at school involved Captain Pugwash. I remember quite distinctly, having borrowed five famous five books by Enid Blyton. These were read, generally, when I was feeling a bit under the weather. Even now. that is the association that I have.  There was proper book consciousness if you like, at the time I went from primary to secondary school.

‘Kidnapped’ by R.L.Stevensonson will forever be associated with the Scottish headteacher at Primary school. Her idiolect and vernacular, actually, were spot on for the text and it’s almost gothic imagery.  ‘Goosbumps’ by R.L.Stein also featured heavily. Being a fan of history, Horrible Histories would have to feature as well. If it had not  been for the local libraries, I do think I would have been a bit stuck. Especially, as I one year I wanted to read the full version, and not the abridged version of Victoria Holt’s ‘India Fan’ and hunted it down.  I went through a phase of reading books from Reader’s Digest, for some reason.

Roald Dahl was always going to feature heavily. Matilda, I read at school. The BFG, as well. Probably most of what is in the treasury. There was the movie explosion of Babe, Dick King Smith became popular with ‘The Sheep Pig’. There was something special, about our English Lessons!  The BFG appeared again at A-level, and I had to compare it with ‘Alice in wonderland.’ Two texts, with a lot in common. A lot, which at years 7-11, you don’t necessarily see or then understand. Lord of the flies at GSCE, was something of an eye opener. As was reading ‘The handmaiden’s tale,’ which i read in conjuction with ‘ a girl with a pearl earring’, one summer.

Shakespeare does count, with it’s little penguin classics that appeared throughout the school years. From Julius Caeser, the scottish play-you know the one-Richard the second was the A-level text that I still enjoy til now. Part of the A level course was to compare and contrast two books. I did at first try ‘Grapes of Wrath’. Only the dustbowl, and constant ‘Rose of Sharon’ made it difficult to read. So I tried ‘Brave new world’, by Aldous Huxley. This was a good book, and would have been compared with Eutopia, which I think is by Thomas More. I didn’t get as far as More, he wasn’t calling to me. On the back of Brave new world, I also read ‘The Clockwork Orange’. I primarily wanted to see what the fuss was all about. It is graphic, there are horrible sections. But as a book, a piece of narrative. I thought it was a job well done. I even felt something for Alex, by the end of it. Talking of an Alex, I failed with ‘The Beach’.  Also read ‘1984’, thought that was another good classic. Not a fan of Bronte novel though. For my 16th birthday, I was brought the entire ‘Chronicles of Narnina’  and this lead me to read ‘the screw tape letters’ whilst doing A-Level RS. The latter was also serialised, I think, on Radio 4 about then.

I must have collected hundreds of books, clogging up rooms. Time came that these were sent off to new homes. Such as the clutch of Terry Prachett discworld novels that I found weren’t my cup of tea. Things that have stayed, are the Shakespeare, the entire range of Harry Potter, most of Sansom, that I have in Hard back. Kept still, are all of the Tudor Court Novels by Phillipa Gregory. I can’t not mention ‘The time traveler’s wide’, and ‘We need to talk about Kevin.’

Again, i appeared to have collected lots and lots. Plus, I decided to look at an e-reader. The positive being that i wouldn’t have to clog up spaces. Last summer, I spent time reading  the Bond novels , i still have two remaining. Eighteen months into Sue Grafton, I haven’t got over half way with that either. The cousin’s war series by Phillipa Gregory, no longer holds sway with me. I am still stuck, painfully, in the middle of ‘wolf hall’ and ‘Bring up the bodies’. The use of pronouns and punctuation does my fruit in. Must have deleted once already, and just want to finish how it goes. I know the story, i know it well. But the fuss does seem a bit over egged to me.

There are even gardening books, that I have, believe it or not. I bought one, so I could have a good start. Don’t worry, this are kept safe. Have even collected preserving book as well.

Reading books is nice enough, a wonderful way of exercising your imagination. The time you spend reading, changes as you get older. It becomes increasingly more difficult to shoe horn time in. The one thing that is strikingly clear though.

 

Never underestimate the power of a good book.

Experimental Chillies and be;;s, tomatoes

Chillies and toms: To be potted on

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Due to a very close family bereavement, the last week has been somewhat non horticultural. Haven’t been able to wander down to the plot to have a look. I did however, have to do some emergency potting up last week, and the task remains to pot up the rest. There was an emergency pot up of cayenne and the five aji limos. I think I have a serrano baby to pot up as well, so will have to get some MPC and start potting up. As you can see, some of them and lolling to one side as though they were a little bit drunk. The non-habanero chillies are flourishing, whereas the habaneros are still quite tiny, and very slow growing. The plan remains to have all of these in pots in the polytunnel.

The potting up process will also need to happen to the tomatoes. These are looking rather tall and leggy, and would benefit from a deep seat in larger pots. The tomatoes are going slower than the chillies, simply because I am being mean. I haven’t put them into direct warmth and heat, but will shortly when I run out of window sill space, so they haven’t had a sprint to start. Once potted up, I will perhaps move them to a brighter and warmer position. I have held off sowing more tomatoes, and I am pampering these somewhat and hoping that they survive.