What matters is Dad’s rhubarb survived

We have built steps alongside my raised vegetable beds and painted the timber black. There was a grass sloping path going up there before which I thought would be easy to maintain ... just mow and go! But it didn’t really work, it is hard work to mow on a slope; I could just about do it by going downhill, letting gravity assist but I still had to haul the mower backwards up to do the next strip and there was always the danger if by chance I accidentally let go, the mower would end up in the river! And all the edges to trim .... of course those got left to grow long and I would only cut them once a month, it looked a mess. 

We did think about putting mowing edge strips in which would’ve solved the edge trimming problems but we decided to rid ourselves of both problems by making steps in the same timber as the beds. MTM did the carpentry but I helped holding the steps level in place whilst he screwed coachbolts in. So there we have it, one of my bad ideas remedied with barrow loads of limestone mixed with stones collected from my flower beds to make a hardcore base, rammed solid with a heavy lump hammer and buckets of gravel as top dressing. 

So, it’s been a while since I wrote about my vegetable plot, nearly two years, I expect you want to know why I haven’t been photographing neat rows of veg and trugs full of produce, don’t you? (You may as well say “yes” seeing as I’m going to tell you anyway). 

Raised beds drain quite freely and need more watering. I have a large water butt handily close, collecting water from the roof which I thought would be enough to cope with any dry periods. I planted a load of seed potatoes and had an early enthusiastic rush of seed sowing in the Spring of 2017. The water butt emptied remarkably quickly, the outside tap is a long way off and carrying watering cans wasted too much time. I had to keep relocating my hosepipe and trailing it across everywhere was also a pain. I needed another hosepipe, one was duly obtained but the fittings were wrong, they kept coming off - why isn’t there just one system for this kind of thing? This was all before I had my own car and so I had to rely on MTM conveying me to buy the right ones. By the time the hosepipe was laid under the decking so it was out of the way and we had the correct fittings the veg plot had been abandoned to itself, I got a few potatoes which chastised my lack of care by developing scab they peeled OK and we ate them but everything else ran early to seed and I didn’t sow any more due to the watering problems. The only plants I attended to were the rhubarb and strawberries transplanted  from my dad’s garden as I would hate to lose those.

We did have quite a lot of strawberries that year, I didn’t take enough photographs .... they got eaten VERY quick! I was leaving the rhubarb to get well established before harvesting. The received wisdom is to leave it for a year.

Ok, so that explains no produce in 2017, what about this year then? I have MUCH better excuses this year! There is a sycamore tree growing in the hedge along the boundary between us and a field next door. It doesn’t shade the plot as it faces South-West, the sun gets through in the afternoon in slanted rays. We trimmed off the lower branches when we put the beds in but thought we could leave those higher up.

Again, I had a frenzy of seed sowing in Spring 2018 and everything was coming through nicely. Then one day I went out and noticed all the seedlings, my beloved rhubarb and some of the strawberries were covered in a shiny substance that looked a bit like snail trails but it was all over and slightly sticky. The tree’s branches were infested with aphids which were raining down honeydew on everything underneath. I tried to wash it off using my very handy hose, it was easy to get off the tough rhubarb leaves but I had to be more gentle with everything else and of course it was only going to happen more. In a few days time, the honeydew I hadn’t got off had turned to sooty mould and the seedlings didn’t amount to much. I am very cross with the bird life for not keeping the aphids in check, much easier to help yourselves to my bird table is it?! No more sunflower seeds or peanuts for you!

A heavy shower got rid of the aphids onto the vegetable plot itself, they were everywhere and to be fair on the birds, they did help themselves once the aphids were on the ground. I cleared away was what left of my sowings and then the weather got hot didn’t it? Very hot in fact. Too hot for me to be outside but hey, this heatwave won’t last, I will sow some more seeds when the weather cools down .... and of course it didn’t cool down for weeks and weeks. I limited my time outdoors, I hate being active in the heat. I just about kept up with weeding in the flower beds on the ornamental side of the garden where I had invested in some shrubs and perennials.

So, summer passes, the heat stays. It finally cools and there’s still time to grow some quick maturing crops so I get the seed packets out again. They germinate, I diligently hoe and water them. Finally, I will get some produce! But then another disaster strikes. There are sheep in the field opposite and next to us, they’re fenced off so they can’t get into our garden .... or can they? There is a kind of gateway wire fence across the river where the farmer’s land meets ours. It spans across the top of the river and normally the water is high enough so that the gap between the bottom of the wire is too small for sheep to pass under it. With the river being so low due to the drought, this was no longer the case and two enterprising sheep got under and into the vegetable garden which is not fenced off on our side. We only have a fence in the ornamental section to stop Bongo going into the river, he is excluded from the veg plot with an internal fence and a gate. What the sheep didn’t eat got trampled under their cute cloven feet.

The thing I’m grateful for is that rhubarb leaves obviously don’t taste very nice, in fact I think the leaves are poisonous, apart from a few missing mouthfuls, they left it alone. As luck would have it, the strawberry plants still had the wire cloches that MTM made over them to stop the birds eating the fruit else I’m quite certain they would have been eaten as well. I’m so glad I didn’t lose them I have now planted some runners in the ornamental section as an insurance protection against it happening again. 

We’ll see what happens next year!