Pest control

The weather over the bank holiday weekend has been great for the garden, bright sunny days with a few overnight showers mixed in. I can really see the difference with the veg I've already planted out.

However already I am encountering problems with pests. I had thought this might happen, with the unusually mild winter, even up here, there has been plenty of talk of an onslaught of slugs and aphids this year.

I had thought the ducks would be the perfect solution to this, they'll happily hunt around all day eating what they can along the way. The downside to this is radishes and lettuces have also been on their menu at my expense. An easy enough solution to this has been to cover over the raised beds with some chicken wire, this will protect the plants until they are big enough to survive losing a leaf or two. 

The courgettes I again perhaps over eagerly planted out on Friday have held up surprisingly well. I think I had a bit too much sun on my head Friday afternoon and in the moment decided it was good idea to plant out three courgette plants in mid April. A gamble you might think but two are thriving even following a light frost the same night; The third isn't doing so well and will more than likely have to come out. A mix up in labels when transferring all the plants from the windowsills to the polytunnel makes me think that the struggling plant may be a different variety than the other two. With three different varieties already sown this year it could even be a combination of all of them. I'm no too worried about that though I'll know which they are once they begin to fruit and for future reference this information could prove useful.

What I think are slugs have had bit of a nibble at these already, checking with a torch over the next couple of evenings should narrow down the culprits. They should be strong enough now to not be hindered by this, there's a couple of backups in the polytunnel should these fail anyway. If they work then I'm ahead and if they fail I'm still on schedule to plant some more out next month.

Interestingly their has been a massive difference in my two sowings of broad beans. I planted the first beans direct into the ground around two weeks earlier than others sown inside in cardboard tubes (the first batch sown in February were demolished by wind and hail so I'm already on my second attempt with these). The directly sown beans have had a bit of a rough time and are looking rather sorry for themselves. The indoor sown beans on the other hand have continued to thrive since planting out, looking bigger stronger and well ahead of the earlier direct sowings.

This week I have also discovered that a hedgehog has taken up residence in the log shed. Perhaps it has been hibernating there all winter and has now emerged into the spring sunshine. I did contemplate putting out food but it seems perfectly happy snuffling around in the evenings so I'll leave it for now. It's a welcome sight and one I haven't seen for a number of years, the move to the countryside really has reopened my eyes to the fantastic amount and diversity of nature we have in the British Isles.

As previously mentioned there are mice occasionally in the garden, these are all candidates for the competition on on my veg patch. I'll be keeping a close eye on all the goings on the narrow down who's eating what and most of all in the end what I get to eat.

Speaking from previous experience this will, as all growers know, be an ongoing battle through out the summer. I may deploy some strategically placed beer traps through out the garden should it carry on. The trick is always to sow more than you expect to grow and not to get too disheartened when something fails; There is always something that can go in in place of a poor crop, diversity and successional sowing are going to be key for me this year.

The Polytunnel

With the being fantastic weather this past weekend nearly all of my time was spent in the garden. My main job was to erect the polytunnel that I had bought last week.

I had to make a bit of a compromise on where I originally wanted it to go, the shed that I thought could be easily moved turned out to be fixed to a concrete base leaving me no choice but to level the piece of land beside it. This took most of a day shifting earth, cutting back bushes and rebuilding stone retaining walls. Not particularly what I had in mind when I first purchased the polytunnel but an essential process in making sure it was in the best spot available to me. It will now get full sun the majority of the day, this only being obscured early on by two rowan trees further up the garden.

Once the site was prepared the polytunnel went up fairly quickly. The poles, nuts and bolts were all relatively self explanatory with the base slotting into the generous trenches I had dug out in order to secure the frame.

I was glad help was at hand to get the cover over the frame as this was probably the most tricky part. Once on, the bottom flaps were buried along with the base pole in the previously dug trenches; Inside the sheet was secured with Velcro straps ensuring that the sheet was pulled completely tight all over which also added to the rigidity of the frame.

In the tunnel I have built a raised bed on one side where I will grow tomatoes, pepper, courgettes and probably lots of other things I haven't even thought of yet. On the other side I have a table which will be used for sowing seed trays and potting.

As you can see from the photo the ducks should do a good job of keeping the tunnel pest free.

Having had my head stuck in gardening magazines and websites over the past few months I now realise we are a couple of weeks behind the UK in general with regards to temperature. This is due to the altitude and being so exposed on the mountains. The polytunnel is going to enable me to get a bit ahead of the game and look after any tender, young seedlings before plunging them into the great outdoors. It's also going to enable me to grow some more exotic plants and it'll give me somewhere to work on the rainy days.

On first impressions I am delighted with the investment and I'm sure they'll be plenty more updates from the polytunnel.

Investment

Last week I took a bit of a spur of the moment decision and bought a polytunnel. I had been thinking about getting one for some time to give me more space to grow a greater variety of plants, but never really thought I’d end up with one.

I am now left with the problem of where to site it. The length of my garden is south facing with a fairly tall hedge running along the southern edge. This means one side of the garden gets almost all the day sun but the side closest to hedge gets very little. So it goes without saying that it needs to be on the sunny side, one flaw with that is there is already a garden shed, an oil tank and an existing stone built flower bed (now veg patch) in the way. So either the shed or the flower bed needs to go.

It seems a bit contradictory to move a suitable veg patch just to put a polytunnel on and use as an indoor veg patch so my preference would be to move the shed. Easier said than done, however I will be at least attempting to empty it out and drag it a few metres further down the garden before I even consider a plan B.

Being a sizeable investment the idea is to make some money back by increasing the amount of seedlings I sow and selling them on as young plants at local car boot sales and markets. Another new venture, but an important one to balance the books. After all if growing my own vegetables is more expensive than just buying them then how am I supposed to convince anyone else to jump on the grow your own bandwagon? A little investment at the start will pay off later down the line and should enable me to not only grow more, but to grow a wider variety over a longer period of time.