The Ranch –
May has been and gone – my favourite month. Hot, hot, hot and heady. Now we have a burst of squally rainy weather and the water tanks are filling up again.
The success of any organic gardening enterprise is proportional to the amount of organic material fed to the soil. I get the muckings-out* from a medium sized pony which I mulch directly onto the beds once a year – i.e. no dig. All gardening wisdom says that manure should be rotted down before being applied* – they’re all wrong – it works superbly well as it is – within a couple of months, there are worms a couple of inches below the surface. I augment it with a sprinkling of volcanic ash to supply extra nutrients.
I have a total of SIX incomplete brick compost bins. They just need fronts and lids. All my beds are now mulched and I’ve run out of room for the horse muck, so I need to get them operational.
*The manure is wood-chip. If it was straw-based, it probably would need rotting down for a couple of years.
Phil and Alex have filled in two more walls of the greenhouse, using discarded double-glazed units and leftover bits of polycarbonate. Phil has sold a few more plants via social media. We’ve got herbs, tomatoes, chillies, brassicas, onions, leeks + loads of rhubarb. The ravaged brassica bed has recovered and I’ve built a another cage for a second (with fold-down legs so it can be stored flat).
We now have kale, broccoli, chives, salad leaves and water cress. I need to learn to cook with it all.
We film a couple of scenes for a potential Lockdown with Sage vid. There’s the obligatory tractor clip and a popping up behind the rye shot. The mullet wig and pipe return. I am so incredibly childish.
Last week I had an episode of high bee drama – I heard a low buzzing hum and when I looked up, there were bees everywhere within a large radius of the hive.
I watched where they were heading – they were just in the hedge opposite – a massive swarm at least half a metre squared. Fortunately, I still had a nucleus box (referred to in bee-keeping circles as the nuc box).
I donned my bee suit (which reminds me of donning PPE) and trimmed the surrounding branches – the nuc was all ready, next to the existing hive. The hardest bit was cutting through an inch thick hawthorn trunk with one hand whilst trying to support the weight of the tree and the swarm with the other.
In the end, it was a messy business – after knocking the bees from the tree into the nuc box, I had to go back several times to gather up residual little swarms from other branches. It worked though (the essential thing is to get the queen into the box, and the rest will follow).
I had a look the day after and it’s a really strong colony. Bees are fascinating. Before leaving with her swarm, the queen lays between 5 & 10 queen cells. The first to hatch will kill all the others.
A day out in the Yorkshire dales visiting some of my dad’s old haunts breaks up the lockdown isolation.
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