Ickle Peas

Saturday I went up to see the bees. The queen cell in Hive A has emerged but there are no sign of eggs but that is to be expected. Hopefully next week. The bees in the middle hive "B" have been busy. The honey filled Brood box has been emptied, well nearly, and the queen has laid at least a third of the frames. Hive C is a pain. The queen is missing but why? There is so much honey I have put the bee escapes in to empty two of the supers. I am going to try to recover them, extract the honey and replace them on the hive during the week. I could keep my smoker going but even without smoke the bees were ok to handle. Hive "C" was a bit shirty but not that bad. I only got stung once.

I had a lot on my mind today. H and I went to the lottie about 5pm. Whilst H harvested petit pois [ickle peas] I weeded the top end of Bed3. Despite the rain the soil was fairly dry, dry enough not stick to my boots. It broke up nicely under the fork. It took little time to clear the bed of weeds. I dumped the weeds into the nearest black compo bin. The compo bin had been filled twice during the season. The bin had only about a foot of nice compost in the bottom of the bin so had plenty of room for the new batch of weeds. The bed is ready for the brassicas that are growing on in the greenhouse.

One of the white grape vines has given up the ghost. It never recovered after being hit by a late frost. I need to find a replacement. However one of the red grape vines [Hamburg] is going mad but the other not. The red grapes are at the end of the plot and whites down the side. Whilst H podded the peas, sitting on the bench at the top end of the plot, I finished the weeding and set about digging up the remainder of the first row of spuds. As soon as you turn up the Robins arrive to sit on the fence and await the soil to be disturbed and then they are in amongst the freshly turned soil. The evening was quite still and warm. Just to H's liking. H marvelled at the Robins who are getting quite tame now. There were lot of other birds about. We seem to have a small rodent running about the plot. Mouse sized but without a tail. He dashed through the cabbages and the wind netting. Close inspection of the netting showed a small hole he had made previously made for just such an escape. The main crop spuds [Cara] and in flower. Lets hope we get more rain to bulk up the tubers. Jobs done and feeling a bit pecking we went home.

We had a lovely tea of spuds and peas from the lottie and a nice bit of Lamb complemented with H home made redcurrant jelly.

Gooseberry Saw Fly

The weekend seemed last forever. It was the allotment society meeting on Friday. Even without Steve I still did get home until after midnight. Not surprisingly I did not get an early start on Saturday morning although the Blackbirds had other ideas. I had a slow breakfast and read my book for a while. I took a watering can to the greenhouse and gave everything a dowsing. I decided to go for a spin on my push bike. I had to fettle the steering head bearings as they were slack. They probably worked loose from the relentless pounding the bike has had on the roads. I used a Internet site called RunKeeper to plan a route. Click HERE for their website. I settled on a 18 mile route. I was not sure I could do it but I set off at an easy pace. When I arrived in Snarestone I stopped for a few minutes to look at the allotments. They were very neat and well ordered. I stopped in Swepstone, under a tree on the green, for a proper rest and bite to eat and a drink. I had a look at their allotments. They are quite big and look a bit random. Back at home I got got Degsy ready for the next day. I went up to the lottie to take some measurements. Then I had to take Miss L to Loughborough for a night out.

Sunday was bright and sunny as was the day before. Miss L was still out, H was out walking. I decided that I had to make a start on the downstairs loo. I got all the gear together and cleared out the room. I had reserved timber from the previous stud walling. I made a frame to fit the whole in the wall and fitted it. Then I cut plasterboard to size for either side of the frame. Next it was the job of taping over the joints. It is a tedious job be necessary. I filled the holes and defects in the walls. The last job was to plaster the big holes in the walls where other things had been fitted of where the fan had been. I had to leave the front door open to get air to circulate the plastered areas to dry them.

No more cycling today. I went over to see the bees. The field I have to drive over has been cut for hayledge. It smelled lovely - warm cut grass. I got my smoker going and wander up the meadow to the bees. They were flying well. Not surprising really as it hot as hell all day and even now it was 25 degrees centigrade. The artificial swarm has worked. The old queen on the new site is laying. The old hive has a sealed queen cells so I should have a queen by next week. The middle hive is charging on and has no queen cell. This one is performing amazingly. I put on a brood box with eleven frames of foundation last week. This week it nearly all frame are drawn out and filled with honey. Now to persuade the bees to empty the honey into the supers so the queen can laying in the brood chamber. The other two hives are piling in honey. I think I am going to have to extract some frames to make room for yet more honey.

On returning home H and I popped up to the lottie to harvest goodies. The Gooseberries have not been attacked by Gooseberry saw fly so we have a nice crop of sweet, yes sweet Gooseberries. H picked Peas and I pulled up a Lettuce. The H picked a few stalks of Chard. The best job was harvesting the first of the spuds. We dug up a few plants and left the remainder to grow on. Whilst H worked on I took several trips to the water trough to fill the cans to water t the spuds. The main crop and second earlies are in flower so now is the time to water them.

H had been up earlier in the week and weeded the Asparagus bed and the bottom end of Bed1. The Hollyhocks are looking good. Tall and pale pink and white. Almost every flower has a bee in it. We had a chat with the few people that were there then Degsy took us home. We had the freshly harvested veg for dinner.