Polytunnel

We bought a polytunnel a couple of weeks ago, and I thought "Hey, dead easy to put up.... nothing to it..."
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Ha!
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The first part of the job is to hammer scaffolding tubes into the ground. These are essentially the "foundations" of the polytunnel. Each length of scaffolding acts a sleeve for the main hoops of tubing which make up the "skeleton" of the tunnel.
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Now I'm while fairly robustly built, I'm a bit puny when it comes to wielding a sledgehammer. It took me a full afternoon to get the tubes into the ground at just the right angle to take the hoops. Each hoop is made of of two parts, fitting together with a male/female joint. If the tubes are in the ground at the wrong angle, even slightly, the two halves of the hoops either don't come together at all, or they spring apart with a joyous sproinggggg!!!! noise and you have to start again.
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Next job; get the ground sheet down. Easy enough, but I discover at this point that the supplier has been very economical with the ground pegs. The sheet is down as I place it there, but the first high wind and it'll be "I don't think we're in Kansas any more Toto....". Memo to self: purchase more grounds pegs.
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And today's job: the doors.One either end (i.e. so that when there's a high wind, we can open both ends and avoid the Kansas scenario).
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Of course, when fitting doors, it is a usual assumption that one is fitting the frame and door to a, more or less, "square" structure. i.e. One consisting of right angles, uprights beside which a plumb bob is parallel and horizontal lines which will not embarrass a spirit level.A word to the unwary: bashing scaffolding tubes into the ground is not an exact science. A degree or so out of true is enough to bugger things up completely. A job that I thought would take about an hour for me and another guy - he's six foot two, got a reach like an orang utan and is good with a drill and screwdriver - in fact took all afternoon to sort out just one door, not two. I'd thought we would have the plastic canopy in place by the end of the afternoon.
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Sigh....
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Still a task that was difficult the first time should be easy for the second. It's one of those jobs where there's a way of doing it, and number two should take about an hour. Then my multitudinous seedlings can get some shelter.
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Watch this space......

Cider Apples

We bought a polytunnel last week. Putting it together is hard work. The job starts with hammering in three foot sections of scaffolding into the ground to take the "uprights". I'm a bit undermuscled to handle a sledgehammer, but with my mother's help got it done eventually. So I've got the supports down and the ground sheet, but Sod's Law says that as soon as I'm ready to put up the plastic sheet cover, we get a week of the windiest days for months......

Then, I met a very nice chap in the pub a few days ago. In fact it was my mum who got chatting to him, but it turned out that he is a botanist and specialises, right now anyway, in cider orchards. He's been really helpful. He's provided me with four small cider apples (variety Harry Masters) and gave me a tour of some commercial cider orchards and the associated factory.

He's also donated several strawberry plants, some shade netting for the polytunnel and a bakers bread tray (I've been trying to get hold of some). He also knows a strawberry grower, who after his strawberries have exhausted their compost, has to dispose of it. The compost is no good for strawberries, but is fine for anything else. He's also offered to try to get someone he knows to help us get the caterpillar and the earthmover working.

He's a great chap and full of useful advice. I really hope that we can keep his friendship.

On a change of subject, we have jackdaws nesting in one of the chimneys, so we won't be using the range for a few months. And yesterday i spotted a pair of goldfinches in the garden. I think they were eating dandelion seeds.

Field Mushooms - St George's Mushroom

Hey!! We've got mushrooms in the meadows... one of the best there is: St Georges Mushroom. I spotted them this morning walking the dogs. I saw some areas of darker grass against the background and went to investigate. I found four beautiful "fairy rings" about a meter across.

I'll pick a few to eat, but also I'll move a few to likely areas for them to spore successfully, such as the giant heap of straw and horse manure at one end of the field.

The meadows are looking really beautiful now. I had thought when I first moved here that I'd inherited a "grass desert" from the previous owner, but in fact this just isn't so. As I watch what is growing as Spring moves on, I am finding more diversity all the time.

The meadow contains, apart from the actual grass, buttercups, cuckoo flower (or milkmaids as we called them when I was a kid) and a lot of red clover. Also, the blackthorn hedges have self seeded like mad. As I walk through the grass by the hedgerow, I'm wading through a sea of sicx inch high blackthorn. If humans vacted this site for more than a couple of years, or it didn't get grazed, the hedgerow would take over the field..... just another example of the fact that we live in a country design by nature for the forest.

Buzzard Wars

I was walking through the fields a couple of mornings ago when I saw two of the buzzards overhead. Nothing unusual in that. I see as many as six sometimes all soaring and circling together.

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However, this time there were only two and they were flying oddly. At first I thought they were struggling to find thermals and gain height. It was cool and misty with no visible sun, so thermals would have been hard to find.

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Then I realised that in fact, one of the buzzards was attacking the other and trying to drive it off.

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It was utterly fascinating to watch. It's amazing just how much it resembles a dogfight between to old World War I bi-planes; each trying to gain the advantage over the other. Each was trying to get to the rear of it's opponent and attack from the back, but off course each was trying to stop the other doing the same. A fantasy ballet in the air......

Seeds

I've been working my way through seed and plant catalogues - always a fun task - and it's the first time I've ever had the space to be able to seriously consider being able to grow everything that takes my fancy.

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Earlier this week my order to the Organic catalog went off. And now I'm working my way through the Agroforestry catalogue. It's like Christmas.

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Slightly more daunting is the fact that a lot of this stuff will arrive bare rooted from November to February when we have Christmas weather. Planting them won't be fun, and I'll definitely need help. Still, that goes with the territory.

Planting Fruit Bushes.

Fianlly got down to some serious planting today.... fruit bushes; gooseberries, blackcurrants, loganberries and blackberries. There's some raspberries as well to go in, but my back was packing up by then and I decided to leave those for another day.

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It was seriously hard work. The soil here is very heavy clay and although it's rained quite heavily a couple of times over the last week, the soil is still pretty dry... to the point that it is beginning to show drying cracks. And this isn't the degraded areas I'm talking about. This is the well worked area that the previous farmer used for growing dahlias on.

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So there's two choices; dig it dry - backbreaking, or hose it down for a couple of minutes and dig it wet - easier, but after five minutes, half the contents of the garden were stuck to my boots and I was walking like something out of the Addams Family.

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Having said all that, I got quite a bit done.

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It has become clear that trying to first mulch the whole area with cardboard etc, then plant through the cardboard is just not practical. The area is simply too big and what appear to be vast amounts of cardboard disappear into the plot with little progress made.

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So I'm taking the easier route.

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Where each plant is to grow, I'm clearing the area of weeds for a couple of feet around the spot - we're quite lucky in having very few perennial or invasive weeds in that area - and the weeds complete with topsoil attached I'm dumping twenty yards away in another area that is supposed to be lawn but is in fact simply bare subsoil (i.e. solid clay). I then plant the fruit bush and thickly mulch it with newspaper (Times Sunday Supplements - only the best at this establishment). The whole area I then drench with the hosepipe.

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Hopefully then end result of all this should be a weed free basis for my forest garden and an area which become established as lawn.

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The lawn itself is actually very useful as an endless source of mulch. i can only use so much in the compost heap of course, but there are plenty of areas where iI can just dump it as organic matter onto rock, clay, subsoil and all kinds of rubbish. Over time the worms can work their magic and we can reclaim some rather badly abused bits of land for something either useful or beautiful.

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There's really something very satisfying in finding a use for everything......

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On a change of note, it's been another glorious April day, and I am very encouraged by the number of ladybirds I am seeing. It bodes well for my local predator population. When the aphids arrive they should have a bad time of it.

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Also encouraging is the number of rooks and jackdaws I see patrolling the fields. I'm not sure what exactly they are after... worms? leatherjackets? but I don't think they would be bothering if there was nothing for them to eat. I suppose this is the up-side of taking over a run-down farm. The previous owner just hadn't been doing many of the things that modern agriculture normally requires. In consequence, erosion and lack of top soil aside, the place is, ecologiccally speaking, not in too bad a shape.

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I'm beginning to think of erecting a polytunnel. To buy all the plants I want will cost a fortune. but I'm perfectly happy to grow from seed and take a year or so longer. But we're talking a lot of seeds here. And a lot of seed trays/pots etc.

Swallows and bumblebees

Today is 10th April. The swallows arrived the day before yesterday. I can recall that around ten years ago I used to see the swallows for the first time around the 20th, but I lived up North then in Lancashire, so I'm going to try to keep track of the date. If I can remember to, I'll diarise it each year.
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I'd noticed over the last couple of weeks that there's a healthy looking bumblebee population around here. Now I've realised why.... they're all hugely interested in a mass of little holes in the pointing on the back wall of the house. These are not just cracks in the plaster, but small round holes perhaps a centimetre diameter. They have a round, well-used look about them.
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I have a dilemma here. I want both bumblebees and sound pointing. I think I'll compromise by researching bumblebees nesting times... perhaps I can renew the pointing in the Autumn. Meanwhile, perhaps I can construct one (or more) of those insect winter nests that get built out of lots of different sized tubes tied together.
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I also notice that as we get the warm April sunshine, ladybirds are appearing in masses on the stems of last year's nettles. That shouldn't be a problem. It can't be beyond the wit of man to keep a few nettles over wintering around here.