FEATURE: The Fruits of Our Labour

Yes, we know you must all be asking yourselves, 'but how are the squash actually doing?' Well this entry is devoted to the swelling squash fruit, (very) slowly developing in our rather shady garden. Every morning at the crack of dawn (9am) Har (of Harbill) rushes outside, pastry brush in hand, desperate to catch any opening squash flowers.

So far, we have one sexy spaghetti squash...

Sporting a Jedwood haircut

... a delightful looking harlequin squash..

.. and what is currently known as our 'prize winning courgette' (it is one inch long).

And we have a mutant squash. Last year, we collected the seeds from one of our acorn squashes and saved them. These seeds have been planted and the plants are currently by far the most prolific in producing fruit. Yet the fruit do not look like anything we have ever seen on a squash before. We suspect that the female acorn squash was pollinated by the male from a moonbeam squash that we also grew last year. Therefore:

..may perhaps equal:

NEWSFLASH: First flowers appear in wild flower garden

Harbill have no idea what this flower is. Any suggestions gratefully received

Or this

We have not yet introduced our wild flower garden to our faithful blog followers. This is because for a while now, despite all efforts to create a small meadow, this area has resembled nothing more than a weedy patch of mud... until today. Today, two of the weeds FLOWERED!!!!!!!! A plethora of packets of wild flower seeds have been scattered across this area and it seems that they are finally coming good. The exciting bit is that we don't know what any of the flowers are.



As if this wasn't enough excitement for us, we now have a new bay tree:

And a new blueberry tree, the picture shows where the blueberries will appear. We may even get enough to put on one day's breakfast cereal (if the birds don't get to them first)..

Ignoring Monty Don's advice this week on Gardeners' World (which we watch every Friday evening without fail) not to risk planting out squash plants yet, we have planted out our squash plants. In fact, only a few remain hardening off in the cold frames. So, we now have 12 courgette plants, 3 harlequin squash, 2 turks turban, 3 spaghetti squash, 2 proper acorn squash, 2 acorn hybrids (more about this soon) and one atlantic pumpkin.

The intention is that they will climb up the trellis

But we are saving our most fascinating news for last: we are now the proud owners of a new cloche. Made by yours truly.

Please don't tell too many people or we will be inundated with orders

NEWS: Love Your Lawn Week

Last week, according to Joanna Lumley, was national "Love Your Lawn" week.

On Saturday, Harbill decided to commemorate this event by digging up more of what remains of their lawn and adding another raised bed.

You won't be surprised to hear, this bed has already been earmarked for some of the remaining 27 squash and courgette plants that have not yet been planted out.

Meanwhile, in the neighbouring bed, see how neat our lettuces are...

 

From top: radishes, garlic, little gem lettuce, and two rows of lolla rossa lettuce

We have noticed that the lolla rossa on the left are not as red as those on the right, this seems to be due to the cloche covering those on the left which has recently been bravely removed. We will report back which are tastier.

 The curcabit flowering saga continues... We now have flowers on our F1 Bohemia cucumber but it produces female only flowers. So does this mean that the flowers need help fertilising or not? Much internet-based research has been done and we have decided not, but we won't be able to keep the seeds. Any comments/suggestions gratefully received.

 

 And what could be better way to conclude a busy weekend in the garden than with a (very) large slice of Schwarzwaldkuchen?

Black Forest Gateau - made as a contribution to a Eurovision party

FEATURE: I thought I saw a puddy tat

This angelic look is most misleading

 Any one of our 4 followers who isn't interested in cats is advised to return later for the next entry because this one is all about Muffin.

Muffin has been venturing outside for four days now. So far she has: pushed a baby blackbird out of its nest, squashed the broad bean plants, trampled all over freshly planted beetroot seeds, attempted to climb the runner beans and chased all the bees away from our flowers ensuring no fertilisation occurs. Oh yes, and on day one, confirming the cliche, she climbed our tallest tree.

Unfortunately no fireman was on hand to rescue her

It is not proving easy to get Muffin back into the house, in fact, a large amount of Harbill's gardening time is currently being taken up with trying to catch Muffin (we have not yet installed a cat-flap). She is ingenious at finding new hiding places.

"These sticks and leaves shield me completely from horrid Harbill trying to make me go into boring house"

Each of these exciting days in her new adventure playground finishes in the same way. Yes, she seems to now have her own chair and woe betide any member of the Harbill household or guests who try to sit on it.

NEWS: It's a boy!!!!!!

Our first male flower produced by a spaghetti squash

We returned back from a weekend in Cornwall to find that, not only had it rained (yessssssss) but even more thrillingly, two of our spaghetti squash have produced male flowers. Unfortunately all the female flowers had closed up (apparently they only open for one morning of one day - the poor men have to get in there fast..) but today, our Harlequin female opened up. So, out came the pastry brush and artificial fertilisation commenced.. The seeds will be no good because it would be a crossbreed but at least we might get some fruit.

Our blue ceanothus (purchased this year) is however attracting a plethora of bees, which should help, although if our kitten Muffin has her own way, all bees will be hunted, caught and eaten for supper.

Time for a bit of boasting: we have two different types of broad beans growing the the garden which were planted in three batches. The Witkiem Manita, were planted on 5th March and the Aguadulce (as recommended by Carol Klein in her book) on 13th March and the 2nd April, and the Witkiem Manita are flowering!

Witkiem-Manita

The Aguadulce are a hardier variety and seem to be totally unscathed by slugs, snails, birds, frost and any other horrible things that try to destroy veg before we can eat it. One of us read somewhere (in a really good book called wikipedia?) that broad beans used to be produced as horse food because they are so easy to grow - perhaps this could be why we are having so much success. We don't care, they are delicious.

Agualdulce. The trellis is there in preparation for our one million squash plants

And finally, who says you need flowers for cutting? Our shrubs work just as well..

Red broom

NEWS: After the last frost

Well, most of our veg has survived what we hope is the last frost so the blog can continue. First let's introduce the garden (inserted is the har half of harbill's arty shot of the garden taken from the upstairs window):

We have a raised veg bed split into four. Starting from the back left we have already planted:
jerusalem artichokes (Fuseau)
beetroot (Detroit 2)
carrots (Purple Haze, Atlas, Autumn King)
lettuce (mixed leaves)
broad beans (Witkiem Manita)
spring onions (White Lisbon)
2 of each variety of courgette, in the back cold frame (Rugosa Friulana, Romanesco and Firenze F1)
kohlrabi (Purple Delicacy)
borlotti beans (Lingua di Fuoco 2)
runner beans (white lady)
edemame green soya beans (Elena)

In the front bed we have:
garlic (Blanco)
lettuce (Lolla Rosa and Little Gem)
broad beans (Aguadulce)

Still to come out from the cold frames and upstairs in our south facing spare room/seedling nursery are: various squashes (turks turban, harlequin, spaghetti, acorn, marnia di chioggia),
cucumber (Bohemia F1) plus second and third batches of a number of veg already out.

Can you spot our kitten Muffin, desperate to get outside???

Now for the problems:
- Some of the spaghetti squash (planted far too early by an excited Harbill at the beginning of March) are flowering but with female flowers only. We have no males to fertilise them.

Look at the runner beans and courgettes after last night's frost, despite a fleece covering and a straw bedding:

Dead runner bean

Damaged courgette

But let's end today's blog on a few success stories:
Our borlotti beans, planted too early, fought off the frost bravely and are standing proud.

And the spaghetti squash, despite its stubborn production of females only, survived its coldest night so far.

Plant out after the last frost

This is something we have not done. Currently, in our vegetable bed sit 6 courgette plants, runner beans (already taken a beating from the wind), borlotti beans and one spaghetti squash (which has already produced a female flower and has no male flowers to fertilise it). And tonight, 3rd May, the temperature is predicted to fall to 3 degrees. A valuable lesson in gardening is about to be learned.

Here is the veg patch. Will it still look like this tomorrow?