Tag: spring

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Deer damage and alien life

In a short burst of mild, sunny weather this morning I rammed on my wellies and headed out on to the croft. It’s well overdue time to prepare the raised beds for the seasons growing, and I’ve been waiting for a break in the storms for weeks.

The deer have been terrible this winter. They’ve eaten everything that was left in the beds, which I stupidly didn’t net for protection. Actually, the nets wouldn’t have survived the storms anyway.

Roll on next year when we will have time to deer fence the croft. I think it’s the only way.

These are the remains of a couple of my perennial Taunton Deane kale plants. There’s basically nothing left of them, and I think that the damage is so severe that they won’t re-grow. The deer have even eaten rhubarb, spiky artichoke leaves and garlic, all things that they’re not supposed to like! It’s soul destroying after such a productive year of cropping from them.

However, despite the deer damage there are tentative, wonderful signs of spring.

The mint has started to re-grow.

The berry cuttings are starting to break into bud.

We have the first signs of rhubarb leaves pushing up through the soil like wrinkled red aliens.

I managed to weed a couple of the raised beds and get some red onion sets in before my back started to complain and I decided to beat a tactical retreat. I must remember to take it slowly at the beginning of the season, otherwise I’ll seize up after a whole winter of inactivity. And cake.

Gardening is a marathon, not a sprint. but it felt so good to be out there again.

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Snipe in the grass

It was late in the evening and the light was slowly fading from the croft. We were packing up a few things by the house site and were on our way back to the caravan when suddenly an eerie, reverberating noise split the peace of the night.

We couldn’t see what had made the sound, nor could we identify it. It came again. We could still see nothing.

Did we have aliens on the hillside in the grass?

The sound reminded me of the noise made by one of those long, plastic tubes that we whirled around our heads for fun as children in the Seventies. A high pitched, reverberating, whining rattle. Quite bizarre.

An Internet search soon found the noise. It was the sound of a Snipe. The male of the species apparently reverberates its tail feathers as it performs its courtship ritual in the spring, making this incredible noise.

https://www.xeno-canto.org/595646

We have Snipe! I’m ridiculously excited by the discovery for me of a new bird on the croft. How wonderful.

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Lambing snows

The islanders call late snows in April Lambing Snows. They’re usually the last gasp of winter and come suddenly, just when the lambs are being born in the fields.

We went from bright, warm days to plummeting temperatures within 24 hours. The wind veered suddenly to the North and before we knew it, there were snow blizzards upon us, sweeping rapidly down the Sound in ominous curtains of grey.

Luckily the only thing in the outdoor raised beds were garlic, onions and perpetual leeks. Listening to local advice I’d held off planting out anything tender, and don’t plan to until May. It seems that this advice was very sound!

Temperatures fell to minus 5 degrees centigrade overnight, and barely struggled to hit 2 degrees during the day. The wind was bitingly cold.

Nothing for it but to hunker down indoors..

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Spring storms & wild garlic

The weather on the island has taken a turn for the worse since the Spring Equinox.

As if to laugh at our feeble attempts to plant, a prolonged few days of stormage has reminded us that Winter hasn’t done with us yet.

A neighbour brought us a huge bag of wild garlic picked from local woodlands, which was most welcome. I chopped the fragrant leaves through salad and reserved the plants that still had their bulbs and roots attached so that we could plant them on the croft.

Husband dug them into a damp, grassy bank above the stream under dappled shade. Hopefully they’ll take and we’ll have the start of our own wild garlic patch before too long.

Just as he finished the planting, the heavens opened. We’ve now had a solid 48 hours of hail, rain and high winds, and it’s not abating any time soon.

Our tiny burn went from a gentle trickle of water to this rushing torrent within hours…

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The Mandrake Babies

There’s something so intriguing and otherworldly about growing beans.

Best friend in France sent me a pack of organic borlotti beans, (not from France, from a UK seed company) and I popped some into seed compost five days ago in the growing room in the caravan, not hoping for much, to be honest.

They germinated within two days, splitting the soil and unfurling huge, robust stems. It was seriously like watching a triffid grow. I could almost see them get bigger by the hour.

After four days all of them had leaves. They’re sitting there now, waving their stems about, looking a bit menacing… 😊

I think I’ve hatched mandrake babies by mistake. Someone get me some ear defenders..

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Seedily Yours

I may be getting ahead of myself a bit here, as we don’t have any vegetable beds dug yet, but I couldn’t resist buying a few seeds to start things off next spring.

I had to do it. I was starting to get worried about reports that the pandemic was causing seed companies to run out, and that there wouldn’t be any left if I ordered too late. So over a cup of tea and a few rainy afternoons I pulled together a seed order, and they arrived last week.

It’s such a lovely feeling when the post arrives and you open the parcel. The fat little paper seed packets fall out, sparklingly full of promise!

Many of these things need a few years to establish before they can be cropped, so it made sense to start next year even if we are busy with the house build.

I just need to find a few days in the Spring to get my husband to help build windbreaks, plant protective hedging, make a couple of raised beds and get the soil prepared. I’ve worked out the most sheltered spot for the raised beds and a planting plan.

Most of these seeds aren’t sown directly into the soil until April/May or even later, so there is time.

I’m also looking at cold frames for a bit of protection for some of the young plants, although wherever possible I will plant into the beds directly. I don’t have a greenhouse or polytunnel yet and there will be no room in the caravan for lots of trays of seedlings.

I’m going to try to grow beetroot, onions, carrots, kale, salad leaves, cabbage, potatoes, rainbow chard, and winter squash (I know this one might be a challenge, but it’s worth a try). I also want to have a berry bed, and grow rhubarb, so am looking for varieties and crowns that will work well in our extreme climate.

I’m going to start with just a few berry bushes and vegetables and increase the variety next year once the house is finished and we can start to spend more time on the croft itself. It’s going to be a busy year of experimentation, working out what grows well here.

Once we start growing things I think the process of rooting ourselves to this land will finally have begun properly.

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Spring!

It may be cold and blustery, but Spring is popping up in little pockets.

This is an old fence post on the croft that seems to be showing a new lease of life!