Strawberry news

  Last night a fox got into the Strawbrary by climbing over Kelly's shed and scratching in through the netting.  George, predictably, went berserk.  He couldn't get through his usual corner at first because there was a trellis in the way, so he just nutted his way through the trellis!

Give it up for canine skullmanship!

  I hear it was a hell of a fight, though I myself slept through it.  George came away unharmed while the fox was apparently quite injured, so I guess that fox won't be back in our garden any time soon.  I'll be making modifications to the Strawbrary over the next few days.  Sadly, a couple of plants didn't survive the fight.  

Meanwhile, strawberries!

Repotting, reseeding and Georgeproofing

Mike got sick again.  Mature leaves turned red, new leaves turned black.  Bit of a disaster really, and fearing fungus I decided that a windowsill was no place for a tree.  I moved him to an outdoor pot and as I took him out of the existing pot I was met with an almighty reek.  The compost in his pot was rotting around the roots!  Aaaargh!  So I scraped as much away as I dared and binned it.  I took off some diseased roots, patted the rootball dry with a towel and applied mycorrhizal fungus.  He's been potted in fresh compost in a bigger pot with a bed of stones and a topdressing of further stones.  I've pruned all affected leaves and moved Mike out front, where he looks thoroughly forlorn.

I've mentioned previously that George is in the habit of climbing into the Strawbrary while he barks into the dark.  Well, I think I've got him foiled:

If he gets through a trellis with a bush behind it then he's some kind of Houdini dog!

Lastly then, the lawn has been reseeded.  This is it now, and fingers crossed it'll be thicker than thick in a month's time.  

Feels like for the past few days I've done little but grafting, eating and sleeping.  With emphasis on the eating and sleeping.  I've even set Skyrim aside!  Tonight then I'm going to get squared away and make some time for me.  I'll knock together a Baileys hot chocolate, colonise the couch and put a game on.  I haven't played Dragon Age in a while...

Alliums, Blackcurrants and Cuteness

Got another three sacks of that organic, peat-free compost that I like (and it's great that it's 3 big sacks for £12), and I've planted up the second bed.  This one's the allium bed.  I've planted, from the left:
Leeks (Musselburgh), Onions (Ailsa Craig), Garlic (buggered if I know).

 The allium bed is shallower than the potato bed for now as I had to top up the potato bed with half a sack of compost because somebody has been digging up my spuds.  And my lawn.  Somebody who's going the right way towards being a furry hat with earflaps.

The lawn's greened up a treat; but in a week or two I'm gonna feel the need, the need for a reseed.

Now George likes to climb into the Strawbrary via a rip he's made in the netting at the back, so that he can get as close as possible to the cat that lives a few doors Eastward and over the back before barking furiously.  This is a behaviour we've tried to discourage in various ways, of course, but still he rips the netting as fast as I can fix it.  So today I've planted a big blackcurrant plant in that corner, and I'll be putting a trellis over it just as soon as the stain has dried.  That'll go some way toward excluding George and keeping my strawberries from being trampled any further.

Lastly then, because I did indeed promise cuteness:

George, of course... ;p

Busy weekend, pt. 1

Today I've finished preparing all but one set of the panels for the raised beds.  They'll go up tomorrow.

I've built a worktop for the shed from part of an old wardrobe.

I've begun decorating the shed.

I've nailed up some trellis.

My strawberries are beginning to flower for the Spring.  We'll have home-grown strawbs this Summer.

Grass, tools and evolution

I planted the lawn today.

  George now has no back garden for at least a week, maybe a fortnight.  I used aerator shoes to drive the seed in deep, like two inches deep.  Some's only an inch deep, having been raked in.  Some's at the surface, squashed in with my boots.  With any luck, a storm coming out of nowhere won't be as devastating a thing this year as it was last year.  We may end up with a half-decent lawn this Summer!  

  As thanks for putting the lawn in, I got given a lovely new edger.  I've never owned an edger before.  This one's a thing of beauty: dark hardwood handle, sturdy, quality lathework, and with a bright stainless steel blade.  I think I'm in love.  Can't wait to put in a proper border with it.  

Lastly then, the strawberries I planted last year are greening up and back on the grow.  More specifically: half of them are.  The other half are either dead or dormant.  Thankfully the surviving half are from all four cultivars planted.  This is a good thing because the weird second Winter we just had is not great for plants.  The limey London soil is definitely not great for fruiting plants (my strawbs are in compost, but there's soil beneath and the alkali is capable of creeping up).  

Those which survived are hardier to frost and more tolerant of the edaphic conditions than those which died.  

This is the basis of evolution.  Evolution depends upon life in the midst of death.  Those which survive go on to pass on those very genes which helped them survive.  This adapts the species to the prevailing conditions.  The surviving strawberries will propagate new plants - both vegetatively and sexually - until the Strawbrary is full.  Those new plants will be adapted to fit the prevailing conditions of my garden.  After a few more generations they'll have thoroughly evolved to fit the niche of "strawberry plant in Joey's Strawbrary", after which they'll need to evolve again before they'll be able to thrive half as well in any garden but mine.

Life plods on, as ever it has.

Rosie and Jim Go Outside

Finishing revisiting childhood in 3... 2... 1...

I'm back.

So we've got some new additions to the garden this morning.  Rosie and Jim are from Rubus 3 and they've taken up residence on the roof of the Strawbrary.

Bill is vaguely interested in the mysterious floating plant pot.  George is convinced that it's here to kill us all!  Meanwhile, the experiment's own page now comes up top on Google when you search for The Rubus Experiments, which is pretty awesome.

Thyme and Space

  I picked up some Thyme yesterday.  By this point I've run out of space in the herb nursery so I'm keeping the thyme on my bedroom windowsill.  They'll go out in Spring in a trough beneath the landing window.  From the centre radiating outwards I have:

1x Common Thyme (Thymus vulgaris)
2x Red Creeping Thyme (Thymus serpyllum)
2x Lilac Thyme (Thymus lilac thyme, apparently)

  I give it a week before my room starts to smell like a roast.  That windowsill gets full Sun so they should grow like stink.  They'll be pretty when they're in full flower too.  I'm growing most of my herbs in the garden or in pots on windowsills but I'd be mad to pass up fitting windowboxes.  I'm gonna check out that Thymus lilac thyme, because that does not sound like a thing.  Even if the name of a new species isn't Latin per se, it does at least need to be Latinised - possibly by bolting an us on the end of it - lest some important botanist somewhere go berserk and shit a kidney.

  While I was out I picked up a suet feeder and some mealworm suet blocks.  Robins do love their mealworms.  I've hung that on the same nail as a clay birdhouse that I dug up last week and have since repurposed as my fat cake feeder.  Hanging them from the back wall rather than from a tree should make it harder for squirrels to get at it.  Maybe I'll bring the ladder out at some point and move the feeders up higher onto the pipework.

  Pinky and Perky have recovered beautifully in the 26 days they've been sat in the herb nursery.  So much so that today I put them outside in the Strawbrary.  I actually didn't rate them.  Everyone says Alpine strawberries have a kick but these tasted very watered down to me.  Maybe because nursing involves a fair bit of water in the initial stages, I don't know.  I put them in the outer bit rather than the inner bit so that wildlife can get at the berries.  They'll still cross-pollinate with the others so hopefully I'll end up one day with big, juicy Cambridge strawberries that crop over an extended period like Alpines do.  We live in hope.  

  Pinky's on the right, Perky's on the left.  I had to get more straw to mulch these two, so most of the remainder from the new bag has gone into the Strawbrary, while a good few handfuls have gone onto the roof for birds to take for nesting, perhaps save them from picking it off my plants.  I'll get some copper tape for the edges eventually, but of course there's a million other things to do.  

  Lastly then, a plea for sanity, a plea that people learn from my fail.  The ends of fingers have no muscle, no meat to speak of; just skin, fat, two tendon-ends and a bone.  It doesn't take much for something to go deep.  Please, when storing tools in a place where they cannot readily be seen - such as the bottom of a toolbox, drawer or bucket - ensure that all knives and saws are sheathed.

That could've been nasty.  Thankfully it caught the pinky on my swearing hand - so-called because the ring finger and the pinky are both dull and half-palsied - and even then it only got down to the fat.  I've since checked my toolbox incredibly thoroughly, as infections such as tetanus can be picked up from cuts by muddy tools.  My jab's in date again from last year, so it's all good.

Right, I'm off.  That porridge ain't going to eat itself.  Bye xx

Strawberry Topping

So George and I went to the garden centre.  I returned with a sackful of bark, and he was sitting atop some garden supplies.

Strawberries are hardy plants, but they fare better over Winter if they're bedded in all snug and warm.  Many people - myself included - have presumed that they're called strawberries because you mulch them in straw.  Language Geek reckons that's bunk, and that straw is an evolution of strew, from the way strawberries lie about.  Here's my strawbs so far:

I added bark mulch first, straw mulch second:

And Bill was very curious about all the new barley straw in the garden:

This week I've been revisiting Ashes by pianist CN Lester.  A dark album, but then it is the Autumn now.  I'm also reading Arbroath, to feed my inner misanthrope it's daily dose of human stupidity.  

I'll be weeding the arable side again over the weekend, ready for the first lot of veg at the end of January.  They'll have to be enclosed, that cloche to the frost.  I've not done with the puns yet, because I got a new thingamabob for disposing of weeds and kitchen waste.  It's not the genuine process of peat formation, it's a mere composter...  No more puns - Ed.

330L, £13 new from Townmead Road Depot, bargain!

BRING ON THE WINTER!

The Strawbrary!

HERE IT IS!

  I've finished putting those last touches on my strawbrary, gotten it nicely pet-proofed, and now it's painted and planted.  I've put in a couple hundred litres of organic, peat-free compost.  I can't stress enough the importance of peat-free compost.  Compost is dead organic matter which has rotted in a composter.  Peat is, for lack of a better term, "wild compost".  It's broadly similar, but has formed naturally in bogs over a very long time.  Peat makes cheap filler for compost because it's easier (and thus cheaper) to dig peat out of the ground than it is to make all your compost in a composter.  Unique habitats and species exist around the peat bogs and are being endangered by the gardening business.  Peat-free is definitely the greener option.  

Turns out Squires do their organic composts at £5.99 for 50L, peated or unpeated.  3 for 2 on the unpeated, £13 for 3 on the peated, so it was a quid cheaper for 150L of peat-free.  Result!  I can't count on that deal forever, however, so I'm gonna keep a close eye on Homebase as well, even though Homebase is almost three times as far from my house as Squires.  

  I've put in 11 plants so far: 4 Pegasus, 4 Cambridge Favourite, and 3 Rhapsody.  I've got room in there for another dozen strawberry plants, plus a niche in the front corner for planting marigolds (to keep pests away).  I may set some Clematis climbing the uprights, as the blue flowers might make this classic example of my antiaesthetic carpentry actually look pretty.  Who knows.  Any of my readership of five had any trouble with Clematis, please let me know.  

Here, have some more photos.

Next week I'll be building a corner arbour.  Until then xx :)