Poorly chicken

[Beantree]

We have about 50 well established bean plants now, but no flowers yet. I may have miscalculated the cropping time because cold mornings are slowing the growth rate, but it was just an experiment.

After 4 years of composting the beds at the rate of 200L a year (a guess) they are still clumpy heavy clay. Tried one small bed with a 40Lbag of very cheap compost in Spring and it's the best bed by far. The tomatoes came out with the best root system I've yet seen. So we've taken a gamble and bought 20 bags of the stuff and will treat all the beds. At €46 for 800L it's not a big investment and I know we will still need the nutrients put in the soil from our compost, but this should break the beds up, aid moisture retention and make root crops much easier to dig out.

With the price of vegetables here now I think we'll have to grow as much as possible. We've already run out of potatoes!

[Daphne]

Well that was an experiment that worked out well, I guess you'll up the quantities next year.  I made the mistake of putting expensive, but very effective, guano on my beds maybe 2 weeks ago and the sun has shone nearly every day since.  I know it works, but boy does it stink!

We have had a bit of rain and I am surprised to see the kale has come right back and is ready for cutting, its meant to be an annual I thought?  I have to get out and buy some cabbage plants, but I could sow some seed today as a week of wet is forecast.  We are drowning in parsley, I am seriously surprised it coped with our very hot summers, its a better grower for me than thyme.

Even if you don't get any beans before Xmas, you may well get earlies in the Spring, if the plants survive.  I see the few odd tiny potatoes I stuck in the compost heap in June have thrown up strong green tops, I may even have a few for Xmas if I am lucky.

I gave into my love of tulips and allowed my Mum to bulb me a load of bulbs.  They don't do well here, but every year I hope for better.

[Beantree]

Still not sure about these beans. We have some little beans showing (about 1cm) but I haven't seen any pollinators so I expect them all to just go yellow and drop off? Perhaps late crops should only be ones that don't need pollinators?

Bought another 10 bags of the cheap compost but, after 30mm of rain, the ground is still too hard to dig into. Until last night it has been dry for three weeks, so perhaps it will soak in a bit?

Official figures released yesterday say that the average price of fresh fruit and veg here has risen 20% in a month. Other food has gone up 12%. It's a pity we are so much at the mercy of the £ to € exchange rate, which is really bad at the moment.

With the potential for some serious water shortages here next year we are planning on just 4 tomato plants and only early potatoes, which shouldn't need watering and can be fleeced against the early frosts. Having said that earlier this year the frost was so hard the fleece didn't work and they all burned and that was followed by the first of 5 heatwaves that stopped some of the plants from developing, but the crop that came out two weeks late as a result was still pretty good so worth repeating. Agata does make for good chips, which is surprising for an early variety, although they don't store well.

[mullethunter]

We’re going to be struggling for water here too next summer unless we have a really wet winter. The major reservoirs in Cornwall / West Devon are all at or around 20% full. That said I’m still fed up that it feels like it’s been raining non stop for the past two weeks and this morning was the first time the sun has put in an appearance for days. No pleasing some people!!!

We had a decent crop of apples. The pears were really big but I can’t get them to ripen - they just go from rock hard to rotten 🤷‍♀️

Netting my brassica’s with a finer mesh has worked out really well. I had lovely summer cabbages (first time growing cabbages as I thought they took up too much space but I’ll definitely be doing them again), and I’ve now got sprouts looking good, cavalo Nero that I’ve been picking for months and is still going from just 5 plants, and a few really strong looking sprouting broccoli plants. The trade off (there always is one) is that the sprouting broccoli massively overshadowed my parsnips so I’m not expecting much from them. Shame as I’ve not had to buy any the last 3 years because they’ve done so well.

[Daphne]

I have been confined indoors for a fortnight with illness, but I have ventured out now.  Apparently it also rained non-stop whilst I was inside but its brought pesky snails to eat my cabbage plugs, for the first time ever.  They have gone for the walking stick variety (at 1" high, suitable only for the Borrowers) and when I went to replace them all stockists have sold out of all cabbages, except hearting varieties which I don't much like - so I think everyone is going to have a very thrifty winter!  I had to buy a couple of broccoli and sprout plants instead, no idea if they will work.  I still have a few strawberries and yards of parsley, but my kale is being eaten by caterpillars or snails.  I see the spinach has grown back (its brilliant) but I long for the day I get to eat a parsnip!  I was supposed to be in the UK last week, and may now come back before Xmas, root veg will be a real treat.  

On the topic of cost of living, which I know is terrible for everyone, we haven't faced massive hikes in gas (nobody has mains round here, its all bottled) or electricity (Portugal has a high rate of renewables, plus the Govt has subsidised the cost) but the price of wood pellets has tripled.  This is particularly galling for us as the major industry around us (literally) is wood, and there are 3 pellet factories within 30 mins drive of here.  Apparently most pellets come from Russia, and more people have bought pellet burners to try to avoid gas/electric prices.  Luckily we have a woodburner as well, so that is what we will be using this winter!

The olive crop is terrible in many places, including for us, although we may try to scrape together a couple of sacks to get 10l or so to save a bit of cash.  All the apples were blown off the tree about a month ago, and my pears seem to be a prehistoric variety which never ripens.  There is a pudding called 'drunken pears' (ie poached in wine and spices) which might make them edible.  The only bright light on my growing horizon is the fact that our first ever white wine (which to a harsh critic tastes like a cross between cider and wine, imaginatively called wider by me) is quite drinkable (I love cider) and our white jeropiga (poor man's port) is delicious.  We will be taking it to the local festivities this weekend which celebrate the chestnut - they are roasted outside in giant oil drums and eaten with homemade jeropiga.

My broad beans are starting to poke through, but they won't grow strongly till the new year.  I don't know what to advise Beantree, I think the shortening days may mean you don't get a crop to ripen, but I guess all you can do is wait and see.

 

[mullethunter]

I made pear and ginger Eve’s pudding with one of my not quite ripe pears and it was delicious 😋 

[Beantree]

We had a variety of pear called 'Conference' I think? It never ripened in the English climate and i was told it suited cooking only. However we have a dwarf tree here and they look exactly the same, but they do ripen eventually if you take them off the tree before the hornets, wasps and ants get to them.

Sorry you haven't been well @Daphne and as a result have lost some crops.

Wood pellets here are either out-of-stock or 2 ½ times the price last season. Lots of people have scrapped their oil boilers over Summer and spent big money on a pellet boiler (even with grant aid) to save money only to find that, whilst oil is up 60%, the expected savings with wood have now vanished. It may even be more expensive? We have looked at them, but only the very expensive ones don't need cleaning out every week. The cheapest needs the ash removing every day! We'll keep the oil boiler until it breaks. You are not allowed to replace them here now and there are not that many spares available. Fortunately the Dutch who had the system installed spent extra on the stainless steel version, so even though it is 22 years old it should still be sound.

[Beantree]

The 'never to be repeated' saga of the French beans continues. So the beans didn't turn yellow and drop off;  something must have pollinated them. But now they are being eaten, as are all the new flowers. Can only think of a vole or lizard; no sign of slugs or snails. Might have 6 ready to pick, which won't make much of a serving!

Despite all the rain we have had (40mm yesterday) we are still on 'critical' for water levels. Becoming increasingly likely we won't be growing anything much next year.

[mullethunter]

Very frustrating about the beans.

We have the same issue with water in Cornwall. We have no public supply aquifers, all our water is from above ground reservoirs. The main reservoir in Cornwall is approximately 15% full now, and it’s predicted that if we have an average amount of rain this winter we will still be in water supply drought next March. The stupid thing is that even though private customers are subject to a hosepipe ban and being asked to use as little water as possible, this doesn’t apply to businesses so holiday homes can still refill their hot tubs every week 😡

[Daphne]

Bad luck on the beans, make sure you savour every mouthful!  I am an optimist on all our behalfs about next year, I don't think I can mentally not grow anything at all.  You could plant things which mature before say June? And herbs/chilis over summer even if all else fails?  

My SIL told me that my espalette chilis should be dried and ground up into a powder to spread over food.  I have just been harvesting them 'normally' and saving a few for seed.  As its so mild I still have a lot of red chilis on the plant which I will try to overwinter and maybe do as she suggests next year.

Just a note on pellet burners, Beantree.  2 years ago ours cost 900 euro with various discounts (including ex-display), I think the full price was something like 1200 euro.  Although the cost of pellets would put me off buying one at this minute, I can confirm that actually it is super efficient at converting the pellets to energy (95% or something) and the amount of ash is miniscule - perhaps a teacup every fortnight.

I am in Normandy at the moment, and have been to 2 markets - in Brittany and Normandy.  I understand the apple crop is really good this year, and I have been eating some old fashioned varieties of absolutely delicious, quite tart, fruit, direct from growers (although I can't remember their names at all).  Its really taken me back to how apples used to be - and when I was growing up apples were my favourite fruit and one of my favourite foods.

[Beantree]

The beans were delicious @Daphne, but only a couple of mouthfuls each. Went to pick another handful only to discover they had all been eaten overnight, so they were all taken out.

Still digging in the compost. The ground went from too hard to too wet in a week and only now is dry enough to continue. Treating one bed at a time and then putting membrane on to stop the weeds growing over Winter. Saved a lot of time weeding last year.

Pellets are still in very short supply and still expensive. In the meantime fuel oil has dropped from €1.75/ litre (when we bought it) to €1.35/ litre. What is really annoying is we haven't used any of it until now (been burning last years' pruning), so if we held off buying until the last minute we could have saved a lot.

[Daphne]

Its always the way isn't it.  I don't know about France but here there is a policy of changing fuel prices it seems every other week or so, I think its to do with Govt subsidies, but the price goes between 1.90 and 1.60 so it can make a difference but we never know what its going to be so its always pot luck.

OH is going to have to strim the garden, the weeds/grass have gone beserk with all the rain as have the leafy greens which I left in from last year.  Conversely anything grown this year is still very small, I can see we'll be eating cabbage but not until March.  I have also had very poor germination on the broad beans.  I don't know if its because of the weather or the seed (normally I buy it in UK but this year they are from Portugal).  Its not the end of the world, I will resow when I can face it and they will easily catch up.  I think the only good thing I can really report is that the mass of bulbs (at least the small ones like muscari and iris) I planted seem to have come up, it can't have been because of the cold so it must be the wet. I know I can't eat them, but I can hopefully admire the blooms if they get that far.

[Daphne]

Forgot to say on pellets, whilst they are up to 11-12 euro/bag here, we found some at 9 euro/bag in Spain, so have bought some to hoard!  Its still over twice the price of last year, but it feels better to have some sort of backstop.  

[Ursula123]

We’ve been paying €10.27 for an 18kg bag of pellets.

 

[Daphne]

In the current climate, that's not bad because our sacks are only 15kg as are the Spanish ones.  I'm coming back to the UK next week, just in time for a cold snap I understand! Its so miserable here, even the cats are curled up looking hyper bored as we move about doing chores to keep warm.  You couldn't do any gardening in this wet, even with good drainage the ground is sodden.

[Daphne]

I'm not sure which thread mentioned your wild boar Beantree, but they visited us a few nights ago. The damage is minor, mostly just turned over ground, but they have spread my compost heap about, it must have provided good entertainment.  I see I have some new potatoes, and basically they have arranged the heap into something resembling a new veg bed, without me having to lift a finger!

[Beantree]

There was a report on TV about wild boar in Rome @Daphne.  There is estimated to be 23,000 in the city and they are causing chaos. I suppose the problem is they can't be shot and trapping them is going to take ages, but the government is determined to resolve the problem. We are in the process of building proper compost bays, at great expense I must add (treated wood), so I hope the wild boar don't visit and wreck them.

Wood pellets are still in very short supply, so I was surprised to see a pallet of them in the local supermarket which wasn't going down much over a month. Found the price label that had recently been added and it explains why; €13 for 15Kg!

Still digging in compost. Have just one more bed to do but that's 1200 litres when finished which should hold 600 litres of water, if the label is correct. It may not be enough though, as we've had hardly any more rain so the ground is still just soaking it up and we are therefore still on 'critical' for water supplies. But as it happens the veg plot is in an 'agricultural' section, so we think that entitles us to water it perhaps?

[Daphne]

Yes, it might do, best try to investigate quietly, you never can be sure of who is watching you do something wrong, even if it is inadvertant.  We have had so much rain for the past 2 months that the house is suffering.  Its getting through the render and some of the internal walls are developing damp patches.   However, better its very wet than very dry, all the rivers look more healthy and I presume the underground water deposits are well topped up.

[Beantree]

Wet stone walls seem to take an age to dry @Daphne. Our South wall was wet with an overflowing gutter a few years ago and it still feels damp. Have you a dehumidifier to keep the air dry inside? Problem here is the mud mix they used to bind the stones is very soft, expands and spreads when wet and shrinks when dry. As a result the wall has moved a few mm with cracks inside, so pointing it has become top priority. Our neighbour had a few tiles slip on the barn which weren't repaired so rainwater went into the wall which then collapsed a year later.

Went out to a reservoir this morning; a friend recommended the views which were incredible. A vast expanse of water surrounded by woodland with the Pyrenees mountains in the distance. But what really struck me was how low the water level was. Perhaps 10 metres below maximum, so I'd say just ⅓ full. Reading the information board it was constructed by Napoleon 3rd to solve the Summer water shortage in our area by taking runoff from the mountains, but I suppose usage is so much higher now it can't cope. Looks like the water crisis will run into next year and we'll be lucky to get anything from the tap, so certainly nothing to water the veg with.

[mullethunter]

The main water supply reservoir for Cornwall is still less than 40% full

[Daphne]

I don't know how France or UK can combat these problems, its climate change up close isn't it?  

We do have a dehumidifer and are using it in the bedroom.  We collect a large amount of water every day.  We have double glazing and there is a lot of condensation, its only the past week I have been able to open the windows during the day to let sun in, rather than rain.   Most of the damp patches are beneath windows where the stone walls are about 6-8" thick, rather than the 2ft of the main walls.

Everything is slow in the garden, even the mint is sulking.

[Beantree]

Went to the garden centre the other side of the river; first time the river has been a shade of blue because normally it's muddy. There is a weir by the bridge and the flow was just a trickle. Been here 5 years and have never seen the river so still. Having a small bonfire today before some rain arrives on Sunday. The ash is sieved out tomorrow and spread around the place as required.

I managed 30 days of pointing last year @Daphne and managed to do all the areas under the four front windows which, as yours, are only 8-9" thick. The main walls are about 2ft the same, but some of the stones are undercut with washed out mortar by 4-6" and are full of cavities between the stones (I drilled into one), so we are hoping that when the walls are fully pointed the house will be warmer in Winter and cooler in Summer. But done properly the gaps need filling in stages, so it will be a very long job. Quite relaxing though and nice to do something that will be in place for decades.

[mullethunter]

The week of really cold weather just before Christmas seemed to shock lots of things in the garden.

For the first time since I’ve lived in this house (7 years) all the fuschia’s have died right back. It’s not that we haven’t had those temperatures before but I think the fact that it was quite early in the winter and so sudden.

The snowdrops which are always flowing at Christmas are only just now showing their faces, and for the first year since we’ve been here there were no daffodils out in December - in fact there still aren’t - not even close.

On the plus side - my autumn sown sweet peas are doing well and were completely unfazed by -5, and I sowed some onion seeds yesterday 😀

[Beantree]

We took some Fuschia cuttings from a hedgerow in Ireland; they grow wild on the Southwest coast and look lovely. Managed to propagate about six which were then planted out. First frost and only one survived, so I thought they couldn't stand any frost?

We had -5C here as well @mullethunter and had to fleece the Aloe's which are only OK down to -4C.

Because we have membrane over all the bed we aren't collecting enough weeds to match the amount of chicken poo collected which we mix at 4:1 by weight roughly. So the excess is now being spread on some weed patches around the fields which contain a densely leaved ground hugging variety that kills off everything else. Then a sprinkling of wood ash on top. Having had some rain I walked past some patches and noticed that the moss had died completely in those areas. Question though is it due to the ash or the poo? Have just put only ash on a moss patch, so should know which component works after the rain tomorrow.

[Beantree]

The moss is killed by a combination of both chicken poo and ash; neither has much effect on its own.

So off we go on another season. I was 2 weeks late buying the seed potatoes (distracted by loft work), so Desiree had gone and we went back to Sputa, but had to buy a 10Kg because the 5Kg had gone. Not really a problem because the tubers are much bigger. Everything has gone up this year, potatoes about 15% and onions have doubled!

Still haven't had sufficient rain to ensure there will be enough water (33% or 240mm short on the year), but we've decided to chance it because of the cost of veg in the shops now. Sticking to simple stuff again and hoping it doesn't get too hot for them to germinate. The Agata are going in today; 90 days before cropping. The Sputa haven't chitted yet, which is annoying because the sooner they go in the better (120 days to crop) so the onions will go in afterwards.