Leek Planting and Garlic Lifting - Jobs for June

 

June is a really busy time (yes I know I say that every month) but it is partly psychological because there are two big tasks - planting out leeks and lifting garlic. In reality, lifting the garlic is a pretty quick job; it is the careful laying out and drying that takes the time.

Leek planting time can be any time from late May. My leeklings are rarely big enough to go out before mid-June, although this year they look pretty good so I'm planning on the first cool day of the month, hopefuly after some rain. I usually spread the job over two days because it is hard on the old back! 

Repeat sowing continues - lettuces, radishes, turnips, beetroot, dwarf beans, possibly peas (depending on the weather), radicchio and perpetual spinach. I'll also be sowing January King cabbage, Florence fennel.

This is a month of management and also starting to harvest. Everything needs protection against slugs, snails and the weather, with the risk of blistering heat and torrential rain or hail storms, possibly all on the same day! A quick tidy up tying in clematis, dead-heading roses can easily swallow a morning.

The broad beans are nearly finished, their end hastened by galloping chocolate spot, a destructive fungal infection. I may have to rethink my broad bean strategy for next year. In the cleared space, I will add more garden compost and start planting out brassicas for the winter and next spring.

Feeding - weekly feeding with comfrey tea starts in June. Although the potassium levels are higher than those of nitrogen in comfrey aiding flowering and fruit productions over leaf and general growth, the nitrogen levels are still high enough to be of benefit. See here for an earlier post on making comfrey tea.

The tomatoes will need to be regularly pruned, removing the side shoots on the indeterminate varieties so they can be managed as a single cordon on a string. The 'armpits' can be rooted and planted up to boost stock if desired, see here. June is also the time to start thinking about tomato blight; although early season blight in tomatoes can be managed by removing infected leaves and stems, it will impact on fruiting. I had early season blight for much of the summer last year but still had a reasonable harvest. But we did have to buy tinned tomatoes from about March, something I really resent doing! Late season blight doesn't happen much later, but is much more virulent and will wipe out the plants in a matter of days. You can protect against this by growing under some form of cover; my tomato frame has a Perspex roof, my neighbour's has a roof and sides that he can roll down.

The secret is to keep moisture off the plant's leaves, and the air circulating. Alternatively you can spray with a fungicide like Bordeaux mixture, a mix of copper sulphate and slaked lime. It is permitted in organic production and I use it reluctantly; just how much copper do we want to ingest or add to the soil and water courses?

And taking time to watch the wildlife we share the garden with is at the very top of the to do list!

Grubs in the Compost - Rose Chafers (Cétoine dorée)

I often see questions on forums aimed at English speakers now gardening in France about larvae they've found in pots or compost. I can understand why gardeners, especially those who have come from areas like the UK plagued by vine weevils, panic when they find enormous fat grubs in the pots of their prized plants. We've become so attuned to thinking that anything living in the controlled environment of our container-grown plants must be a threat (and vine weevils certainly are) it is understandable that we squash first and ask second. After all, these beasts are eating the roots of the plants, aren't they?

Well, no actually, in many cases they are not. The fat grub most commonly found in pots or compost heaps in my garden and many others are in fact the larvae of the rose chafer beetle. The grub is large, larger than that of the vine weevil, although the appearance is superficially similar. The rose chafer is an altogether chubbier chap and can curl right up. The smaller vine weevil tends to be more of a comma shape.
Should we worry about vine weevils? Absolutely, they eat the roots of plants in pots and that inevitably kills them. At night hunt for the adults on the foliage of your potted plants, especially the ones that have had the tell-tale notches taken out of them. The adults are deftly squashed underfoot. When repotting look for the grubs in pots and again dispose of them.

But the rose chafer grub does not eat your plant's roots but rather the compost they are living in. So yes, eventually the plant will suffer, so if you find them in a pot relocate them to the compost heap where they will work away making the stuff you will eventually put on your garden finer and more nutrient rich! And if you find them already in the compost heap, welcome them: they are turning your garden waste into compost for you.

Finally, enjoy this stunning green beetle as it bumbles around in flowers in the sunshine!

Final Days of the Confinement

Part of my gardening routine is to take a walk first thing in the morning, checking on progress in the veg plot and the new beds, looking to see what jobs need doing and, camera in hand, just enjoying the quiet of the garden. The aquilegia continue to do their thing, endlessly crossing to produce a range of pinks, whites and blues.

As we come out of strict Covid-19 confinement this morning it is of course lashing with rain, making any meaningful gardening either at home or for clients quite impossible. Instead, here are some photos from the first ten days in May, the last ten days of the lock down.

Both the nigella and violets happily seed themselves around. The violets in particular have taken up residence in the gravel drive, taking advantage of only being driven over once a week for the last two months!

Another virulent self-seeder is the bronze fennel, although at least it is playing the game and mostly replicating itself through the herb garden. As usual it is home to caterpillars of the common swallowtail butterfly.

They are initially quite hard to spot, the red/brown colouration allowing them to blend in with the bronze foliage. But they soon turn to this stunning striped green!

We have a large area of wild flower meadow; I dream of finding orchids in there one day, but the ragged robin is establishing itself well, especially liking the damper areas where the springs appear during wet weather.

But it isn't all about nature, we have to eat, too. The young peach tree has set fruit for the first tme this year...

... And the pear crop looks promising. too.

One of the butterflies we see quite frequently is the Southern White Admiral.

This one must have only just emerged it was so glossy and almost velvety. Beautiful!

And we still await the patter of tiny green lizard feet!

Comfrey Leaf Experiment

I use comfrey tea a lot for my fruiting and flowering vegetables, giving them a weekly hit of nitrogen (to promote leaf growth) and potassium to aid flowering and fruiting. See this post about making comfrey tea. 

This year I am going to experiment with simply dumping some chopped up comfrey leaves in the bottom of some of the planting holes instead of using a liquid fed during the summer. I am interested to see if the slower but continuous release of nutrients from the rotting leaves is more efficient than the once a week hit from the feed. The decaying plant material may also keep the soil in those areas more moist and water retentive.

I grow six plants each of Roma, San Marzano (both for bottling) and Prince Borghese (for sun-drying) in three rows, so it will be easy enough to treat half one way and half the other. The soil and growing conditions will be largely the same - depending on where the mole decides to tunnel - so if the results are markedly different it should be clear. And if the leaf-in-the-hole plants are starting to lag behind, they can just be inculded in the round of weekly feeds.

Tomato planting will probably begin in the next ten days or so, although some of the plants are still a bit small, and I'll post the results at the end of the summer. And if I find that decaying comfrey leaves are a vole repellent I will be on to a winner!

Happy gardening!

Jobs For May

May is usually a super-busy month in the garden: all the tender vegetables will need to be planted out as and when the conditions allow. Timing is key; the longer they have in the ground the better the harvest is likely to be. This is especially the case for some of the chillies. Last year my two Krishna Jolokia plants only started to set fruit in late October just as the first frosts wiped out the plants. But we must be patient, if the ground hasn't warmed up enough yet, or the weather is too cold, or if the plants are still too small or haven't be hardened off properly then we will have to wait until the  time is right.

The Blow-away greenhouse - stage 2 between the house and the garden.

'Organic' Deer Fencing

Caught on the Trail Cam eating an apple tree.

We are surrounded by kilometres of forest so inevitably we get roe deer in the garden. The only sure way to keep them out is to fully fence the garden, or at least fence the bits we want to keep them out of. 

Earth Day 22nd April

Today will possibly be the strangest of Earth Days here in France, and in much of the rest of the World, too. Lockdown to reduce the spread of the new Coronavirus Covid-19 will stop us visiting any natural places beyond a km from home and with events cancelled, Earth Day here at Le Sarramea will be spent pottering in the garden. But first I'm marking the day with some photos taken during the last week.

The blue honeywort has been as spectacular as ever, humming with bees and other pollinators and self seeding all over the place. I'm having to ruthlessly remove seedlings as the plants can become pretty big and I'm worried they'll crowd out the lower growing sun lovers like the thyme plants.

The fedge, a cross between a hedge and a fence, made by planting and then bending goat willow stems, is starting to take shape. The lower branches are removed, leaving a hedge at the top, giving a light and airy division between the cultivated border and meadow beyond.