Polytunnel on its way

My polytunnel arrived (via postman, I have no idea how she managed to fit it into her little van). It took a while before HB was able to mow the "lawn" - the field I was intending to set up my newest pride and joy.

This is my field, youngest is pointing the area my polytunnel is about to be. Believe or not, there is a veg plot behind all of that weed.

First went the ground cover (as the field has been an actual field before) and then we spent a couple of hours to set up the frame. Which was suprisingly easy task, if you forget horseflies and torching heat of the sun (a rarity these days). On the background is my old greenhouse, on the front is a pile of horse manure.

 My cold frames. This picture was taken in the early July, peas are blossoming and pumpkin/courgette is just started it's growth spurt (and I still haven't found time to put wood chips around the frames... shame on me).

 Site managers.

Now the frame has been anchored to the ground with bended rebar bars. Once the rain stops we'll be putting the membrane over the frame (it will be August by then I guess, according to wheather forecast). I'm not hoping to get anything growing in there this summer, I just want it to be ready before winter so I can build beds in there to be ready before spring.

I thought I wouldn't have to cover my veg plot against frost until mid august. I was wrong, week ago my pumpkins got frost bite, because I didn't bother to go and cover them with fleece. So the next couple of night I bothered, so damage was fortunately limited to those few leaves. And again two nights ago I had to cover everything again! It is JULY and I have to worry about frost!

So far I have been collecting spinach, herbs and some swiss chard. All radishes have been eaten, some of them bolted. I sowed some more radishes, but they bolted right away, which is shame, because they were nice in salad. All the frowers in my pumpkins (pumpkins and courgette) have been male this far. A week ago I digged my potato bags and managed to get enough spuds for a supper. Yesterday I did it again. I'm not pulling potato plants up, I just dig around in the bag trying to find big enough potatoes. I hope they will continue to grow so I can harvest them again later. Never tried growing potatoes in bags before so I don't know if this works.

All set in the garden

I have outdone myself this year! The greenhouse is already fully planted, raised beds are full, and only missing items from my plot are pickling cucumbers - first seeds didn't germinate so now it's round two.

The greenhouse got some new polycarbonate panels last summer to replace some broken glass panels. It makes all the difference when there isn't a football sized holes in the roof...
In April I stripped off every last remnants of previous summer's plants. I got the suprise pile of horse manure in September, so I put a nice thick layer of it to the bottom of the benches. As a top soil I used compost (cheapest one available but I have used it several years with good results).
In the first week of May I managed to sow some seeds, radishes, salad, peas, marigolds and chards.

All through May my greenhouse was acting as a nursery. I kept my sweet corn plants there, as well as courgettes, pumpkins, peas, New Zealand spinach and beans. Runner beans didn't germinate this year, I have no idea why they hate me. Last time I was lucky with runner beans was propably 15 years ago when my oldest had grown some in the kindergarden! Next year will be a new spring again...

When weather permitted planting to the plot i got more room in the greenhouse and finally was able to plant those plants inteded in there. 5 watermelons (I don't except to get any melons, but I 'll keep trying occasionally with them), 3 tomatoes, 7 peppers (I think they are sweet peppers, not chillis because the leaves are quite wide, those 10 plants were from my mother's leftovers). A couple of "jungle cucumbers" - I have no idea what they really are because the seed package was in German, I had three plants last summer. Even thought I had them planted really late, I got few mini cucumbers, the were very mild but still nice tasting, hint of melon ot kiwi or gooseberry? and some Caucasian spinach (if only I had known the same plant is also available as Scandinavian spinach which is very hardy and might even be perennial here). Greenhouse looks nice and neat, I even put some woodchips on the middle to greate mud-free path.

Ha! Made some googling, those mini cucumbers are cucamelons.

HB tilled my plot in the mid May - ground is clay so it was way too wet before that, and to be honest, snow falling from the sky didn't encourage any gardening. But it got tilled, and because I knew I couldn't fix it right away, I covered it with thick ground cover membrane to prevent weeds growing (which they did anyway, but not so much as usually - hey, I'm learning!). But now there is a few rows of potato, 50 spuds maybe? and those 15 in bags I planted earlier.
Beets, carrots, peas, bull beans, sweet corn, beans, courgettes and pumpkins. That's it. Oh I forgot sunflowers! Almost 50 plants of red and yellow sunflowers, I really hope I can get some flower this summer, at least the plants are looking good at the moment. And cucumbers, if they finally decide to sprout...

And finally there is my cold frames, or raised beds. I build two frames with our dog before he died, and it was a bit bittersweet moment to start planting vegetables to them, he wasn't by my side anymore. A couple of courgettes (or pumpkins, I lost some of the labels when kittens tried to destroy my seedlings), brassicas, peas, radishes. Some herbs (parsley, thyme and coriander) and carrots. At first i was going to plant mint there too, but I thought everything starts to smell and taste like spearmint so I planted that next to my two other mint plants, which survived winter.

So everything was ready on sunday evening, and then on monday afternoon it started to rain. Perfect timing!

Bye my Love

We lost our precious dog last night. He had a stroke and died in my arms. He was way too young, only eight, but as a big dog (after all he was a giant) life is short. I'm missing my baby, but I know this too shall pass.

My beautiful monster.

And the sky is mourning with us, it has been snowing during the day, and harsh winds from north chill us to the bone.

Oh it's May already?

Oh dear, I propably didn't notice May because all of that snow. I mean really? It was lousy winter, hardly any snow (this was the first Christmas ever we didn't have any snow in our garden) and NOW it is snowing!

This has forced me to delay my gardening. I can't sow anything to the plot yet. Even the greenhouse is way too cold to get anything grow in there. At least inside the house is warm, so my little pots of corn, watermelons and pumpkins receive all the attention for now. And I mean all the attention, we got two kittens just before Christmas (a girl and her brother) and they just love to chew my plantings. Salad I bought a couple of weeks ago and planted on pot? Eaten. Kale I also potted. Eaten and shredded. Parsely? What parsely? That pile of dirt on the floor? Didn't taste good, not eaten. A good thing I get tomato and pepper plants from my mother, she has plenty of them, she had some pouches of old seeds and thought they are not going to germinate. Suprise, they did.

If I'm lucky I can sow some kale, broccoli (purple sprouting for the first time) and spinach soon. And chard. Doesn't sound very promising, but can't help it. Too near the Arctic circle and arctic winds.

What daylight?

It's so dark. In the morning kids use flashlight to get to school, I have hunted the whole house for reflectors - in spring there is always dozens of them, and in autunm you just can't find more than three - and we need four.

I might have to start sewing them again, I have nice amount of M3 reflective fabric (the same that is used on hi-vis clothing), but I also would need some space to cut and sew, and the space is always amiss in our house...

Kids get home when there is still light, but at 5pm when I drive home,  if not pitch dark, but already need of full headlights on my car. Yesterday I got home, and D told me there's something on the field. Couldn't see a thing, so I guessed it was a deer or something. This morning I took dog for a walk and realized there was a pile of horse manure! Well, that was unexpected. Nice suprise though, Now maybe my carrots and beets will grow better next summer!

I have to wait until weekend to actually see the pile. I suppose my father delivered it, he has a tractor and carriage and here is a couple of horses in our village, he has fetched some to himself earlier this autunm.

Strange things happen in the dark.

Winter is coming

Today has been a bleary day. Mist in the early morning, fog in the morning and clouds all through the day. No rain thoug, a week late, at least. This is September, it is supposed to rain! No frost today either, we had it last week, thank you. Not on my garden nor on my veg plot, thanks for that, I still have an odd cucumber and beanstalk there.

All marks of autumn is here. Threes have shedded half of their leaves, rest are golden (or brown, there is some fungal disease which is drying the leaves, it shouldn't have lasting effect).

I have been foragin food all summer and early autumn. Berries, veggies and mushrooms. Some more mushrooms, and then some. I pick chanterelles in my dreams, and I find maggot filled porcinos in my nightmares. When I close my eyes during daytime, I see black trumpets...
Berries have been freezed, rendered into cordial (by my mother), dried (by my sister) or cooked to jams and marmalades. I also made few jars of liqueur (1 part berries, 1 part sugar 1 part vodka; you can use brown sugar but I just use the cheapest available granulated sugar). Blueberries, raspberries, black-, red- and whitecurrants (red and white from our only but mosty absent neighbour). I also tried this with some rowan berries, but I forgot to freese them beforehand, so I think they may not come up the way I want... Time will see.

Mushrooms have been dried, pickled and freezed. No liqueur here.

Bullbeans and green beans are blanced (bullbeans peeled, I'm glad I have teenagers to do that).

Potatoes last till end of this month, then I have to forage my parents cellar. Carrots are barely there, they just don't like clay. Beetroots are almost as miserable as carrots, and I have no idea why. Maybe it was too cold?

Wood has been chopped and stacked to dry, they should do till next summer.

What I do need is a wood burner. A new one. I have one already in our extension, but it burnt out last winter (I got it for free from my colleague, and it was already a bit worn, we replaced some cast iron pieces with fire bricks, but now the top plate broke and it really must not be used without it). It is old, and although I can get spare parts for it, I would prefer a brand new burner (for it is going to stay there the next decade or something before I can replace it with decent brick fireplace). We have few other fireplaces, nice and sturdy wood-burning stove in our old kitchen and a fireplace in the livingroom.

We do have a central heating, but because of the long renevation process, it is electric at the moment, so burning some wood makes my energy bills cheaper. We don't need to buy wood, but of course, we bought the forest few years ago. You can count that on the energy bills if you like.

But I haven't started knitting socks yet.

This is me

This is me.
Fat and ugly, tired and fed up.
But who cares? Just me, and that's enough.

This is my blog. I write it as a diary to remember, to sort out my thoughts, to vent my frustration. This is my safe haven. 

I'm middle-aged well-educated mother of six-minus-two (I'll come to that later, maybe), have a spouse and a house in the middle of nowhere. Actually, not. If it is really really dark and there are no leaves on the threes, I might get a glimpse of light from our neighbour, about 400m (quarter a mile) away. If it's not very windy, I might go by the edge of the field and shout really really loudly - and someone might hear me across the field. I work in public service, so I really shouldn't be shouting really really loudly.

We are renovating and building an extension to our house. The house was semi-ok, but with only two bedrooms and one loo it really was way too small for our family. We have already built the extension, it's (mostly) well insulated, wheather-proof and partly livable. We still don't have another loo (but we do have an outhouse with state-of-the-art composting seat!), no new kitchen or decent bath, but at least all children have a room of their own (or as our two youngers prefer, a room for them, they don't like to sleep alone).

I have a vegetable patch, a potato patch, few bushes of black currants and one miserable twig of damson. We have a forest. A bit smaller than Winnie the Pooh's Hundred Acre Wood. But it's ours.

And you know - winter is coming.