Thursday's square lashing

I have neglected the garden a bit. Whilst I was away for a long weekend, I had asked Matt to water it for me. He managed this (nearly twice a day). He also decided that it needed feeding. He did this with a copious combination of fish blood and bone (which I have learnt is a combination of the blood of fish and the bones of fish, not fish plus blood and bones from elsewhere) and chicken manure pellets (as well as the tomato feed water that I had requested). Now, I am not a gardening expert but when I examined the plants the fact that there was a thick layer of these fertilisers all around them, along with flies all over the garden and the revolting smell (which would be passable on a farm but not in an urban garden), something seemed amiss. It was possibly the horticultural equivalent of giving a small child too many brightly coloured sweets.

So I did the most obvious thing that came to mind and set to in removing the vast majority. This filled two standard bins. In it were lots of earwigs and maggotty things - also rather dubious, I'm suspicious that it's the larvae of flies. In a slightly grumpy manner I requested that Matt should deal with this. He has apparently emptied it into a black sack but beyond that I'm not sure where it's gone. I really must find out more about the whole nitrogen/phosphorous/potassium content thing with the fertilisers and then maybe we can take a more scientific approach to feeding. I've remembered that nitrogen makes leaves (I have plenty of those especially on the squash plants), potassium makes fruits (which is mostly what I'm after now) and phosphorous makes roots (I don't know if I need any more).

This evening the garden seems both more fragrant (I can actually smell the lavender rather than chicken poo) and less fly infested. Matt is still sure that the Wormery is an excessive source of flies but I'm not sure this is such a problem. The after work task was to improve the support for my beans and mange tout peas. I had constructed a rather amateur frame for them a few weeks ago but they (both the frames and the plants) were flopping all over the place so I needed a better solution. That better solution was inspired by seeing my mum and dad's garden (they are experts), and the frame that they had erected for their tomatoes (my tomatoes are not needing that sort of support yet). 

So I carefully extracted the existing support network and formed it into the new one. This also required me to do a bit bamboo cane cutting which I have found can be done very easily with some secateurs. I went for a more standard grid formation and I fixed the horizontals and the verticals with green string. I never really used to understand the rationale for green string. To do this fixing I utilised the skill of square lashing. Well, something akin to square lashing - I'm sure it wasn't Girl Guide regulation square lashing but then I wasn't trying to make a washing up stand. Once in situ I tied the plants onto the frames too. 

The peas are doing well and I got a good harvest from them tonight. The beans are looking a little sorry for themselves so I'll have to give them a bit more attention. The other job for this evening was harvesting the beetroot. I have looked in four books but none tell me how I can tell if they're ready for harvest and I can't remember when I planted them. Matt pulled one up and it didn't appear to have a beetroot so I might just leave them a bit longer. 

I actually quite enjoyed my square lashing; tomorrow I'm going to make some frames for the tomatoes. Perhaps it will encourage them.

Sunday's worm transplant

We returned well laden from a trip to Lucy’s and Pete’s) (Matt’s sister and her husband) in the Cotswolds. The un-seasonable midsummer weather that didn’t deter us from midsummer gatherings which included:

1. 1kg goosegogs from Lucy and Pete’s garden (I think that Pete is mainly responsible for the garden)
2. 18 eggs from Pete’s mum Lorna
3. 2kg of cherries that I forgotten that we’d bought from a food market at a conservation charity's property 
4. 4 tomato plants (also from Pete’s garden)
5. 1 bag of worm dense compost from Pete’s compost bin

(keep an eye out on Slack Lasagne for updates on items 1, 2 and 3)

Maturing bright lights chard

We also nearly came home with some with rhubarb until I pointed out to Pete that what he thought was rhubarb was actually swiss chard variety rhubarb red. I was slightly embarrassed in pointing this out given Pete’s agricultural credentials but since I am having success with my swiss chard variety bright lights and there would be little space in our courtyard garden for more of this type of crop.

We had purchased a wormery online back in March but as yet had been insufficiently organised to acquire the worms that were needed to power it. The system is that you set up your wormery and then order the worms by mail order once their home is prepared. We saved up peelings etc on a number of occasions over the last few months and never got around to ordering said worms so ended up discarding the waste in the normal way when we couldn’t stand the smell any more.

This weekend I was on a mission since the company we had purchased the wormery from was Cotswold based and I had a plan to collect some worms in person. So I left an answerphone message on Saturday morning with my request. For the rest of Saturday I was very excited every time that my phone (or indeed anyone else’s’ since I have a popular ring tone) rang. But come the afternoon I was so desperate for a nap that I turned it off for an hour. When I awoke I had an answerphone message myself and my dreams of worms were shattered. Apparently the worms are dispatched from Yorkshire.

Fortunately Pete came to the rescue and told us all about how his compost bin was full of worms. I was a bit wary because I know that you’re supposed to use a special type of worm.

A camera shy worm

So I did a quick search of the interweb search for an image of an appropriate worm. I shared this with Pete who assured me that his were the right type of worm. It’s a shame that there’s not some home worm DNA sequencing test to check their pedigree but I was happy to give it a go.

Worm extraction

So on Sunday morning Matt, my husband, helped Pete extract some worm rich compost and package it; we all hoped they would survive the 130 mile trip southwest-wards. Matt and I stopped off for a bit of cheeky department store shopping on the way home so the worms’ welfare was in even more peril.

It was with great anticipation that I unpacked the worms from their sack into the wormery. The first test of the enterprise had been passed as the worms had travelled apparently unscathed. Now all that remains to be seen is whether they are the right sort of worm and start making lots of lovely worm juice for us.

Initiating the wormery

House design makes the
wormery look nice in the garden

The wormery after a feeding

While I was in the garden I harvested our first home grown salad of baby spinach and rocket, to go with our toasted sandwiches. It was a good job that I investigated the rocket as it had become water-logged. It wasn’t until last week when I planted some strawberries that I knew anything about making holes in the lining of hanging baskets. So today I urgently tipped off the water from the rocket basket (this has made me think about growing watercress next year) and pricked a load of holes in it with an extended craft knife (this was the only thing I could find that was pokey enough to get through the hanging basket). Hopefully I have averted potential rocket failure – from this perspective at least – I did have to launch a number of snails over the garden wall and I fear that these may be my greatest challenge.