Sunny outlook
You can almost hear the sigh of relief from every farmer in the county. The daytime weather prospects for this week look as though they will finally be given an opportunity to gather in the wheat harvest. I can see there being a few hours of overtime this week for the men of the soil, with the headlights on the tractors and combines illuminating the night-time arable landscape
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What a relief!
March 8th
What a great week it was; such a relief after months of grey and wet to see the sun and not to sink in mud up to the ankles. This weather window has enabled me to catch up no end with some of the jobs that should have been done weeks ago. I have managed to rotovate or dig most of the main growing areas, and I have spread muck on some of them. I am by no means up to date, but am getting there. Today I dug trenches for the Asparagus that I am going up to Norfolk to dig tomorrow.
It’s not all good news because the fine days have been followed by cold nights, and the very cold one on Saturday did for some of my tender Aubergine and Pepper seedlings in the greenhouse. It was my own fault because although I had covered everything with fleece when I left on Saturday afternoon, I forgot to turn on the heater, so consequently the minus 4 that registered on the max/min thermometer in the greenhouse was enough to cause irreparable damage. However, it is still early enough to sow again, albeit resulting in a later crop.
Yesterday afternoon Jennifer and I planted 8 new Apple and Pear trees against the west facing wall. The trees are maidens (1 year old) which I will be training as espaliers. All are heritage varieties originating in the eastern counties; ‘Duchess of Bedford’, ‘Queen’, ‘Lane’s Prince Albert’, ‘Peasgood’s Nonsuch’, ‘Harling Hero’, ‘St Edmunds Russet’, ‘Norfolk Beefing’, and one pear, ‘Warden’, a culinary type that is recorded as far back as the 13th century. When planting the trees, sheltered from the wind in full sun, it was so warm that I was working in a T-shirt, yet in the shade of the north facing wall the frost did not thaw all day.
Once again there is very little change to this week’s list, but next week I am hopeful of getting some cauliflowers. Soon after that I think that I will start cutting some of the ‘Spring Hero’ cabbages in the polytunnel as spring greens; if I leave them all to heart-up they will all come at once and will probably not hold very well when the temperature in the tunnel becomes consistently high. Sorry about last week’s mushrooms, they were not as good as usual; hopefully they will be back on form this week. There are Savoy, Red, and January King Cabbages, and the Kale is green this week. My purple sprouting broccoli is still not showing any inclination to produce spears; it has been frozen so many times this winter that I think that it has just given up.
On the last Sunday of this month the gardens of Langham Hall will be open for charity under the NGS. There will not be that much to see in my part of the walled garden, but elsewhere there should be plenty of bulbs to see, and hopefully some nice fresh green shoots on many of the trees and shrubs. It coincides with Sue Wooster launching the Bellflower Nursery in the other half of the walled garden. Not only that, because on the same day at Wyken I will have a stall at the Farmers Market which is running alongside the annual spring plant fair run by the Stanton Woodland Group. Because the two locations are so close you could easily combine a visit to both. I will have herb plants for sale back at Langham.
I’m off out tonight so I will leave it there; don’t forget to let me know if you would like any Asparagus crowns for £1.50 each.
Regards
Phil
| French beans - purple | £1.80 250g |
| Green pepper | £0.60 each |
| Langham Honey - clear | £3.50 1lb jar |
| Leeks - New season | £1.50 500g |
| Plums - Victoria | £1.00 500g |
| Sweetcorn - New | £0.90 each |
| Tomatoes - small & sweet | £1.40 300g |
