Summer Time & harvest time

The summer has been very busy at work. I have had very little time for anything else. Despite the weather at the moment it has been a very dry summer. I also have several big Willows growing in the hedge and it roots have been found in Bed A. The trees have sucked all the water out of the bed. The crops in that bed have done very poorly. We did get some nice peas but not as many as we should have.

The spuds have done well enough. I did go to the trouble of watering them now and then. The nice thing is that we not see any sign of blight this year. When the spuds were dug up and the soil being so dry, the spuds came up clean, not needing washing. The crop has been better than fair. I dug up a two rows of spuds today and despite all the rain we have had over the past few weeks the soil an inch down is still bone dry.

The Calebrese did really well. I got a second and third cropping before digging them up this weekend. The freezer is full for the winter. We had a fair crop of French climbing beans. The freezer is bulging with them.

We have a small crop of Pears from the tree at home. They are a bit small but Pears after only a couple years is encouraging. My neighbour gave me access to their Pear tree. It has given us a big crop of really nice Pears. H made several jars of smashing Pear jam.

The bees have come good. One hive lost its Queen but the other two are on double brood boxes. This makes them very strong. I have had a decent crop of Honey. because all the Rape round the hive means the honey solidifies in the combs. I have damaged the super frames trying to extract the honey. In order to extract the honey I took to extracting the honey much earlier in the year and before the honey solidified. It has worked well. The farmer tell me they have sown Rape this autumn, so it is likely I will have adopt the same strategy next year.

The poo runs have continued throughout the summer so I have fair supply for winter digging. The wind has given the netting a beating so I have a repair job to do.

Hazel's blog

H has started a blog covering her walking the Dales Way. The link to the blog is on the listing on the right of this blog.

A bit of rain

I managed to get to the lottie for an hour today. There have been heavy showers over the past few days. It has not made a great deal of difference to the soil. We still need some more rain. I dug up the Broccoli and Lettuce that had bolted. I chopped the plants up as I put them in the big compo bin. I watered the peas and beans. They are looking very poorly.

I had a trip to the bees as well. Hive B is fantastic. It has big brood pattern. Brood at all stages and evidence of successional laying. I put on an extra supper. The two that are on are only part filled. I will just leave that hive alone to create stores for the winter. Hives A & C show signs of day old eggs. I did not see the Queens which is a bit worrying. I think hive C has a laying worker but there are lot of bees. I think Hive A may have had a queen which has now swarmed again or not. It is hard to tell. There are not many bees though. I will have to find the queens in those two boxes. I have to think about combining the two hives to make one good colony to see out the winter.

Weeding and talking

The evening was so nice and the Calebrase won't stand much longer so H and I went to the lottie. H harvested the Calebrase whilst I did did a job over at the new plots. When I came back H was chatting with our lottie neighbour whilst they weed their respective plots. It's a trait amongst lottie friends - weeding and talking. There was also a tray full of Calebrase and a few Lettuce sitting on the front of the plot. H had a bin full of weeds and was still pulling them out by the hand full. I emptied the bin into one of the compost bins and gave the empty one back. H set about weeding the Leeks and Onions patch. I got busy digging up another row of spuds. After that I tidied up the french beans. A few leaders were not running up the canes properly. To finish with I watered the peas and squashes.

The weekend before last.

This summer is flying by without me. I have been up to the bees each weekend. Hives A and C are giving me trouble. They are queenless at the moment. I hope that will resolve itself by my next visit. if not I have a plan B, pun intended. Last weekend I took my honey extractor up to the apiary. It was quite nice extracting honey in a field with the warm sun on me. Then I was able to put the wet supers back on the hive straight away. I might do that again. It felt quite efficient. The bloke combining the wheat field across the River Mease from the apiary stopped. We had a shouted conversation across the river and over the sound of the combine harvester at tick over.

The allotment is struggling in this prolonged dry weather. I don't have enough time to water as often as I should. The good thing is that the hoeing I did and the dry weather is keeping the weeds down. I have started harvesting the potatoes. They come out of the ground nice and clean. The dry soil just falls of them. My Sprouting Brocolli has bolted and and I am up to my armpits in Calebrese. The Caulis and sprouts have been hit with whitefly.

The new allotments should be finished at the weekend. That will be a load off me once that is signed off. Steve, Pete and I had an impromptu work party to set up the path edgings on one of the new plots. Pete was especially chuffed to get out his power tools. His circular saw made short work of trimming down the pegs.

Work has been a pain, I even had to work a weekend recently! It is easing up again. It is the lottie bbq in a month. That will mark the turning of the year.

I still have a load of stuff to plant out from the greenhouse. I must trying and do that this weekend. I said the same thing last weekend and the weekend before that!

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.