Cultivating plants: Field beans (and peas)

I did some gardening last week, but the only plant I really tackled was a buddleia, which I cut back. That's a bit boring for a blog post, so I'm cheating slightly and telling you about some of what I sowed yesterday.

In the past I've grown the old favourite variety of broad beans, Aquadulce. I get nice healthy-looking plants, but since living here, haven't had many beans in the pods. Plenty of pods, just a bit short of actual beans. It's probably a lack of insects*, but all the same, I thought I'd try a different variety this year. The beans I've chosen are not strictly broad beans, but the other cultivated variety of vicia faba (I see where the American name - fava beans - comes from now), known as field beans, specifically, Wizard field beans from the Real Seed Catalogue. These have smaller beans than normal broad beans, but in theory there should be lots of them.

My procedure for sowing beans and peas goes like this:

1. Clear the bed. This involves surveying the plants that are already growing there and deciding whether I want any of them somewhere else, then moving those that I want and sending the rest to the compost heap. This takes a lot longer than simply composting the lot.
2. Usually in parallel with step 1, remove some of the stones. This isn't really necessary, but I don't particularly want stones in the veg beds whereas I do want stones on the driveway and paths, so I move stones.
3. We're getting onto actual gardening now... run the hand fork or trowel along the bed to make a shallow drill.
4. Spread a thin layer of wood ash in the drill. This serves the dual purpose of making the soil more alkaline (an alternative to lime) and adding potassium, both of which are good for beans.
5. Mainly because I suspect that neat ash might be a bit harsh for baby beans, add a layer of garden compost to cover the ash.
6. Add beans! These are spaced at about nine inches apart (as per instructions on the packet).
7. (Oh no, we're not finished yet) place a holly leaf over each bean. This was my dad's idea for protecting the seeds from hungry mice, and seems to be effective. It also helps deter a small cat who sees a freshly sown bed as the ideal place to relieve herself. The downside is that it's time consuming and often painful. Since I don't bury the seeds very deeply, the holly is an ongoing danger when weeding.
8. Cover the holly with the soil that was pushed aside when making the drill. This takes care.
9. Finally, water.

Pea and bean seeds getting their holly leaf protection

This is a pretty slow process, but notwithstanding poorly-setting beans, I seem to do quite well with legumes, so I'm sticking to this way of doing it. This is a very unscientific approach - I could be trying various approaches and taking careful notes to see which works best - but I don't want to risk my crops trying a method that might not work as well.

I sowed two rows of beans in bed B1, near where the gas tank used to be, then a double row of peas plus a few more along the edge in the other half of the bed. These are also from the Real Seed Catalogue and are called, Oskar. Since I grow a lot of peas, I find it tedious putting up supports for them all, so I've chosen a couple of dwarf varieties this year. These will only be a couple of feet tall, and are an early variety.

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* According to a discussion on Daughter of the Soil's blog, it may be that the bees have found are shortcut; they might be chewing into the base of the flower and bypassing the pollen entirely. Sneaky bees!

Other garden tasks this week

• Clearing and cleaning the greenhouse
• Making space for a new compost heap
• Pruning one of the buddleias
• Weeding - always weeding

Also harvesting this week
Brocolli
Leeks
Unexpected potatoes
Sorrel
Celandine
Ground elder
Nettle tips

Also eating
Chips
Bullace fruit leather

Also drinking
Beech leaf wine
Hopped ale
Dandelion wine
Blackcurrant cordial
Half-brewed heather ale

Cultivated plants challenge summary page here.

And there it was, gone!

Just three days after I posted a letter asking for our old gas tank to be removed, a truck with a crane turned up on the driveway...

I'd like to say this was remarkable efficiency on the part of Flogas, but in fact it was a coincidence. They'd sent someone out to inspect the old tank last autumn, the result of which was a decision to replace it. Naturally, they didn't tell me this, just turned up with the new tank. As luck would have it, this was less than a week after the gas had run out and I'd disconnected the old tank with a hacksaw. I persuaded the nice men to take away the old tank without leaving a new one behind.

How they managed to get three tanks on the back of their truck is a whole nother story...

New gas supply

The gauge on our huge gas tank has been in the red for a while, and when it suddenly dropped to zero we knew we wouldn't get much more out of it. This is a good thing, because we want rid of it. We no longer use gas for our central heating, just the cooker and one fire, and the tank is an ugly great thing taking up valuable space. We have a plan for replacing it with a much smaller bottle, and a couple of weeks ago, I implemented the first step of that plan, making a base for the bottle to stand on.

On Friday evening, I went to light the cooker and no gas came out. My immediate response was to dig out the camping stove to cook dinner, but it was definitely time to move onto the next stage of the plan. Unfortunately, I wasn't entirely sure what that was. The gas bottle has a regulator attached, and I'd checked that this supplies the same pressure as the one on the big tank. Good - no need to buy a regulator, then. However, the output of this device is a nozzle suitable for a rubber hose, whereas the gas goes into my house through a large copper pipe. I wasn't at all sure whether it would be possible to marry these two up, and internet searches were not encouraging.

I called a friend. Luckily, my friend Jasper knows about things like this, and assured me that not only is it possible to join rubber piping to copper, but there's an adapter specifically for the purpose that should be quite easily available. I headed into town - the first shop I went to didn't sell gas fittings, but recommended another shop, which did. Unfortunately I'd failed to check the size of the copper pipe in question, and it turned out to be much larger than standard, so I had to go out again this morning to buy an adapter. Since these all came with compression fittings (as opposed to solder) I felt reasonably confident in tackling the job myself. I haven't soldered before and have no intention of starting by pointing a blow torch at a gas pipe!

With advice and loan of tools from Jasper (I did try cutting a bit of pipe with a hacksaw. This is a bad idea.) and more advice from the internet, I connected up the various bits of plumbing until I had a gas bottle connected to my house.

The gas bottle came free with a second hand cooker.
We had to pay for the gas in it.

Here's a closer view of the connection:

Several bits, connected together

It would have been easier without the old stuff in the way, but I'm not sure whether that belongs to the gas supplier, and is therefore part of the plumbing that I'm absolutely not allowed to touch.

At this point, the rain got heavier, so I went indoors to test from there.

Not the prettiest gas fire, but a more visible demonstration than the oven.

Hooray, it works! I had no idea whether my plumbing was leaking, at this stage, but if it was I was just losing gas fairly harmlessly outdoors. When the rain eased a bit, I went out with soapy water to check.

Ah, yes, that is blowing bubbles there.

Once I'd worked out which joint was leaking, I realised that it was the only one of a different type, i.e. the seal on this one is made by the screw thread itself. That'll need a bit of Jasper's PTFE tape, then (I have some, but not gas pipe grade). This was irritating, because I should have spotted it before I put it together, and it meant pulling the rubber hose off the regulator to unscrew the fitting. Still, it wasn't too big a job. I did it, and it seems to be fine now. The one remaining task is to write to the supplier asking them to remove the big tank. They're going to want money for that job.

Cultivating Plants: Lavender

At our last house, we had a magnificent lavender bush. I could just about reach from one side of it to the other and it took the best part of a day to tidy it up once a year. Before we moved here, in the autumn of 2010, I took a dozen or so heel cuttings, which means pulling a stalk away from the main stem with a little bit of the base, or heel still attached to it. I pushed these stalks into pots of gritty soil, brought them to Wales, and left them sitting in the conservatory, mostly neglected, over winter.

Somewhat to my surprise, by the following spring these twigs had acquired roots, and I planted them out. Not all survived, but I had a few in pots, in reserve, so the dead ones were replaced. I now have six lavender plants along the pathway, three on either side, and one on the terrace.

Lavender (Lavandula augustifolia) half buried on the edge of the terrace

This week I have been trimming off the dead flower stalks and generally tidying up the plants. I've cut the longest stalks back to encourage a bushier, sturdier growth (does this sound like I know what I'm talking about?) and removed some of the thinnest stalks entirely. Hopefully my seven lavender bushes will thrive, and I'll be able to take more cuttings from them. I'd like more lavender bushes under my fruit trees, and a few more along the edge of the terrace. I don't make much use of these plants, but they're decorative, beloved of bees, and I love the smell, too.

Other garden tasks this week

• Ripping up a few more brambles
• Clearing moss off a path
• A bit of weeding, including clearing around the cherry tree then adding ash and compost.
• Clearing one of the raised beds; evening primroses went to the kitchen, buttercups, feverfew and bittercress went to the terrace, foxgloves went next to the driveway, in the hope that their roots will help stabilise the ground on the downhill side, stones went into a bucket, and the rest went on the compost heap.

Also harvesting this week
Leeks
Parsnips
Evening primrose roots
Brocolli
Navelwort
Heather, for ale

Also eating
Brown birch boletes (from dried)
Blackberry vinegar
Honeysuckle ale
Knotweed chutney

Also drinking
Blackberry wine
Fir cone vodka (pretty good with tonic water, it turns out)
Hopped ale
Beech leaf wine
Blackcurrant cordial

Cultivated plants challenge summary page here.

Cultivating plants: Willow

This is another plant for the terrace, but not ground cover, obviously. When I first planted up the terrace, I included some plants lower down to help support the sides, namely willow and buddleia. Unfortunately, there was a dry spell shortly after planting, I failed to water these plants enough (at all? I can't remember) and most of the willow cuttings died.

Last summer, I noticed a couple of saplings coming up in places where I don't want trees, and my friend Gill identified them as willow.

A just-visible willow (salix something) sapling growing by the woodstore

These will do to replace some of the willow cuttings that died. I don't know what kind they are - probably goat willow (salix caprea) which doesn't root from cuttings as easily at the other species, but if I'm lucky it'll be something else, or a hybrid with something else, and will take like wildfire. I pulled up both saplings - the ground's so wet at the moment that it doesn't take much to pull up the roots of just about anything - and took a few cuttings from each. All of these - rooted pieces as well as cuttings - went around the terrace. There were six, maybe seven pieces altogether. They didn't look much when I put them in, but with luck they'll take, and then I can take more cuttings from them next year and eventually willow reinforcement holding the terrace up. It hasn't collapsed yet...

Other garden tasks this week

• Continuing to move soil and plants to the terrace.
• Clearing space and making a stone and tile platform for a new gas bottle, to replace the big gas tank, which is almost empty. This included moving a couple of acquilegia plants.
  
  
  Gas bottle sitting on its new platform. I have since lifted this and added more stones underneath, but it's still lower than the surrounding soil. Oh well, it'll have to do.
• Cutting back the elder tree and taking some cuttings. Hopefully the old tree will regrow from the stump to produce flowers and fruit that I can actually reach.
• Bramble reduction, and cutting back a hazel tree, both on the steep bit by the oak tree. There are many more brambles still to reduce.

Also harvesting this week
Brocolli
Bay leaves
Rosemary
Leeks
Ground elder
Bittercress
Sorrel

Also eating
Potatoes (last of)
French beans (from dried)
Ceps (last of), birch boletes and blusher mushrooms, all from dried
Honeysuckle ale (as gravy)

Also drinking
Beech leaf wine
Oak leaf wine
Honeysuckle ale
Blackcurrant cordial

Cultivated plants challenge summary page here.

Cultivating plants: Sagina subulata

I'm using the Latin name for this plant because the common name, Irish Moss, is doubly confusing. Firstly, it's not a moss and secondly, there's a seaweed that's also known as Irish Moss. I am not attempting to cultivate seaweed, though we have enough water at the moment. In fact, we've had so much weather this week...

Too much weather

... that it was only the prospect of writing this blog post that made me get of my backside and get out into the garden for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon. Excellent! That is the point of the blogging challenge.

I've written about this plant before, amongst others, in the context of ground cover for the terrace. Well, sorry to be boring, but I'm doing the same again. About a year ago, I wrote about feeding the terrace - adding a thick layer of mulch to top up the level - and at that time I was waiting anxiously to see which plants would survive the treatment. Suffice to say, I now know how to kill buttercups. I spent last summer with a brown terrace.

The terrace has continued to sink down so this year I've fed it again, but this time I'm topping it with a thin layer of soil and replanting. I haven't got very far with this job, and I'm not sure how thoroughly it will get done, but I have made a start.

Replanting the terrace

The scrubby-looking plants in the middle are Sagina sabulata. There are some buttercups to the right and in the foreground, there's Germander speedwell. It's a well-established plant with long runners that I've tried to pull up through the mulch and soil as I've applied it. Hopefully all three will spread over the surface of the terrace, with or without the top layer of soil.

Other garden tasks this week
While I was outside I finished weeding the second asparagus bed (of three and a bit) and spread some seaweed over it, plus some compost from the heap. This should have been done in the autumn, but better late than never.

Also harvesting this week
Leeks
Parsnips
Ground elder
Celery

Also eating
Potatoes
Hazelnuts

Also drinking
Dandelion wine
Oak leaf wine
Beech leaf wine
Hopped ale

Cultivated plants challenge summary page here.

Alternative radiators

The stormy weather led to a power cut here last night and for most of today. Whilst feeling smug that we didn't have damp down the fire (water from stove to tank doesn't require a pump, designed this way in case of power cuts), I had to concede that the heat wasn't circulating from the tank around the house very effectively without the pump. However, the hot water doesn't depend on electricity, as it's just mains water running through a coil in the hot tank. Therefore we could spread the heat around by putting hot water into lidded pots to make temporary radiators.

Cooking pot pressed into service as a radiator

An extra layer of clothing helped, too.

A much bigger challenge

My blogging challenge for this year is to do and write about some gardening each week, and I'm not expecting it to be a particularly difficult challenge. That said, the weather is keeping me indoors at the moment - the wind is making it dangerous to go out - so I'm not sure what I'm going to write about this week. Anyway, there's a much bigger challenge ahead of me: It would seem that now is the time to learn Welsh.

We've lived here for over three years, now, and there's a limit to how long you can keep saying, Yes, I am going to learn, before you actually have to do something about it. Our friends next door have signed up to Welsh lessons and another friend, who is Welsh, has started a new class in which he talks about local history in both Welsh and English. This seems to be excellent practice for those who know a bit of Welsh, but at the first one I felt totally out of my depth. Rather than chickening out, which is tempting but shameful, I need to pull my finger out and learn at least a few words, so I can catch some of what he's saying in Welsh and not feel totally at sea. First, I need to stop panicking whenever someone speaks Welsh to me.

To this end, I've found a couple of teach-yourself courses to have a go at. I went to the local library and searched until I found one that doesn't insist on just listening without having anything written down - it's so much easier to hear the breaks between words if you can see them written down as well - and includes some instruction in grammar, instead of insisting that it's unnecessary. The library courses were all for the southern version of Welsh, from which I conclude that this is the appropriate form round here, bang in the middle. Then I was talking to someone at a wedding on Saturday, and she said that we're in the north here. Help! I resorted to Google and, unsurprisingly, the question has been asked before. One answer was particularly helpful: I live in the North and their accent/language sounds very much like the South Wales accent to us. ... Having said this someone from, say, Carmarthen, might think it sounds more like the North. That at least explains why I'm getting conflicting information - the young woman at the wedding was from Carmarthen. I'll take my cue from the library and learn the southern version.

The second course I've found is provided by the BBC. Called the Big Welsh Challenge, this course claims to teach Welsh in 12 months. This sounds optimistic to me, but I'll give it a go. It has nice little videos with subtitles available in both Welsh and English, and plenty of supporting materials. Now all I have to do is commit the time and effort to working through these courses. Maybe one day, when people are talking Welsh around me, I'll be able to follow what they're saying. Who knows, I might even be able to join in!

Cultivating plants: Roses

Considering the time of year, I was surprised to find I had a choice of plants to feature this week. With a bit of brighter weather, I did some moving around of plants - various plants. However, the roses in question have not been moved, but strung up.

There was a pyracantha growing against the wall in what I've now labelled Veg patch A. You can see it in the second photo of this post. It didn't contribute much to the garden, apart from providing a hiding place for bindweed roots. I decided to get rid of it, to increase potato-growing space, so earlier this week I did just that. The task was made slightly more difficult by the presence of roses growing through it. This wouldn't matter if I wanted to take them all out, but I like roses so I was cutting one thorny plant into small pieces while trying not to get scratched by another thorny plant that I had to avoid cutting.

Once I'd got rid of the pyracantha, I was left with great long rose stalks waving about trying to catch me if I went near them. Fixing them to the wall seemed like a good idea if I wanted to regain that growing space. I went out and bought some rings for screwing into the wall, then came home and had a good look at what I had, and realised I didn't need any fixings. I already had two sturdy posts, one holding up a handrail and another that must have been put in for the purpose of holding up plants. They're a bit further apart than I'd ideally want, but much easier than putting up new fixings. I simply tied a few strands of indestructible string between them and wound the roses round them.

The strings are most visible but I assure you, there are roses there too.

I'm not sure what variety these roses are, as I've never really noticed them in amongst the pyracantha. They might be wild dog roses - I'd be quite happy with that - or they might be something more cultivated. I'll have to wait and see.

Other gardening this week
Apart from the above-mentioned removal of the pyracantha, I have been mostly clearing leaves from paths this week. I've also done a bit of work on the terrace, moving soil and plants there. The trouble with freshly sifted soil is that it's very attractive to a cat. Not all the plants I put in are still there.

Also harvesting this week
Parsnips
Leeks
Hairy bittercress
Sorrel
Rosemary

Also eating
Potatoes
Crab apple jelly, both plain and with rosemary
Rosehip vinegar
Fir cone vinegar
Xmas pudding
Crab apple and rosehip toffees
Hazelnuts
Honeysuckle ale (in stew)
Sloes pretending to be olives

Also drinking
Beech leaf wine
Oak leaf wine
Blackberry wine

Cultivated plants challenge summary page here.

New Challenge: Garden Plants

As I got to the end of my foraging year, I started wondering what to do next. That challenge focused my attention on foraging to a greater degree than I expected. Whilst I'll certainly continue foraging, I could do with shifting the focus onto something else. The first year we were here, I put a lot of effort into the garden and got reasonably good returns from it - enough to reassure me that this new lifestyle is realistic. The second year, it rained a lot and I gave up. The third year, I pushed myself to do some, even if not very much, so the giving up wouldn't stick. I sowed too few peas, and no carrots or onions at all, but I got good crops of potatoes, parsnips and leeks (still going strong now). I've learnt a few things over those three years, and I now feel at home on my bit of land. I'd like to make an effort to improve my gardening this year.

I've been trying to think of a blogging challenge that will support this and I'm not sure if what I've come up with will do it, but this is what I'm going to try: Last year, I ate and told you about a different wild food each week. This year, the focus is on gardening, so I'll tell you about a different cultivated plant each week. I've focused mainly on vegetables in my garden so far and I'd like to extend that to flowers, so this challenge won't be restricted to food plants, not least because I don't think I'm cultivating 52 food plants! I won't allow the same plant twice but I will allow different varieties of the same plant, though I'll try to avoid any that are too similar. The activity last year was eating; this year it will be some gardening activity relating to that plant. I could be sowing seeds, planting out (or just moving plants around), cutting back, harvesting... there may be other activities I can't think of right now. This is how I'm defining cultivated: Any plant that I do something to in order to encourage its growth in my garden, that's a cultivated plant.

For my foraging challenge, I was very open about what kinds of foods could be included; not just plants but seaweed and mushrooms ended up in the list. For this year's challenge, I'm restricting the scope to plants just because I think it's unlikely that I'll be cultivating anything that isn't a plant. This does of course include trees and bushes as well as smaller plants.

Here's a tour of the garden as it is at the moment. For the purpose of crop rotation, my vegetable beds are divided into three sections, which I've labelled A, B, and C. I would have four, but I grow so many potatoes that they take up one-third of the available space, so it has to be three. Two of these are large beds but the other (labelled B) consists of one medium sized bed and six small ones. Apart from potatoes, my rotation groups are, Legumes, and Other.

Starting downstairs, here's the large bed nearest the house, which I'm calling A.

This will have potatoes in it this year.

Backing up, we can see the first three of the smaller beds, B1-B3. I hope to get rid of that LPG tank quite soon and replace it with a much smaller one, nearer the house. About a week ago the gauge on it dropped suddenly from 15% to zero, so we now have no idea how much gas we have left.

These will probably have a different variety of bean in each, or possibly peas. The heap of stuff in the far bed was supposed to be a bonfire, but I couldn't get it to light. The near bed on the left still has some celery in it. It's very small, but tasty.

Turning round to face away from the house, we see the next three small beds, B4-B6.

There are still plenty of leeks in the far bed, and parsnips in the middle bed, though you can't see them. I've yet to get anything useful out of the bed on the left, or the strip at the far end. Perhaps I'll try flowers there this year. The other two will contain more beans-or-peas.

Going out of the gate and round the garden fence, there are some steep bits. These are also part of the garden, but not terraced and cultivated.

There used to be a leylandii hedge running uphill along that fence line. You can see the remains of it scattered across the hillside. I have plans for a replacement.

Back within the garden fence now, at the upper level looking back towards the driveway, here is the other large veg patch, C.

There's a plum tree and a lavender bush in the foreground, and some more flowers along the edge by the path, but most of this will be for Other veg - brassicas, squash, leeks, parsnips, etc.

Turning towards the house again, we come to the final B bed, the medium sized one.

Currently home to broccoli, this will probably be filled with peas. Along by the fence at the top there are asparagus plants.

Next to the greenhouse there's an odd bit that I haven't yet made good use of, partly because the heather and shrubs harbour many weeds amongst their roots.

I had planned to use part of this for a herb garden. I managed to get sage, oregano and a bit of thyme established, but the slugs and the cat between them saw off everything else. I'm not sure what I'll do with it this year.

Next, of course, is the greenhouse itself.

Many plants will start off in here, then make way for tomatoes. I now have the heated propagator back in there, after it spent a week being a cat bed heater for next door's cat.

Looking back along the path, there's my flower border to the left.

It's a mess. Moving swiftly on...

Turning back again and continuing past the greenhouse, we get to the conservatory. This is huge, but not as light as you'd think, so I'm not sure it's much good for gardening.

On that chest of drawers to the left I have potatoes chitting.

Finally, beyond the conservatory and up a flight of stairs, we get to my favourite place for sitting out, the terrace.

As you can see, it's currently rather brown.

I've set up a summary page here which will collect together links to all the weekly posts. As well as the featured plant, I'll write about what else I've been doing in the garden each week. I enjoy keeping track of what I'm harvesting as well as the preserved food and drink I'm consuming, so I'll keep the Also section of the weekly posts going.