catching up with myself

 One of the neighbours called round on Monday, when I was at work, and spoke to the Systems Administrator to ask if we'd heard about the lettuce farm's planning application.  The copy of the letter she gave us was rather unnerving, since the application is for permission to erect polytunnels 6.4m high and up to 360m long, covering five fields, and construct two agricultural reservoirs, and the letter talked about how the development would 'dramatically change the present countryside landscape and impact on the local wildlife, volume of highway traffic as well as devaluing local properties'.  I was out on Monday evening, and the SA didn't look up details of the application in my absence.  I told myself that the farmer had been pretty sensible about community relations so far, and with the whole farm to choose from probably wouldn't try and stick the tunnels immediately next to houses, but it niggled at me at odd moments yesterday as a vague, overhanging threat.  This morning the SA looked up the full details on the web, and the proposed site of the tunnels is on the far side of the farm, well away from houses, while the planned reservoirs are due to be on the site of previous worked-out gravel extractions.

The news came as a relief.  Even though my rational mind thought that the developments were unlikely to take in the next door field, anxiety still lurked.  It's tricky living in the countryside.  You know that you don't own the view, and that fields are a working environment in which farmers have to make a living, but you still don't want rows of plastic tunnels over six metres high just over the hedge from your garden, just as you understand that farmers in the eastern counties need to store more winter rain for summer use, but don't want to listen to the noise of diggers and especially those wretched reversing bleepers for the year it takes them to excavate the reservoir.  The planning application has to make the commercial case for the development, and so we discovered that the farm plans to invest £9 million, and that the development will create six full time jobs.  That's £1.5 million capital spend per job created, so I think we can conclude that horticultural food production is not going to lead the UK out of its present unemployment problems.  The tunnels are intended to grow some kind of salad leaf used in supermarket bags of mixed leaves, which is currently imported to the UK, so the project will help the balance of trade, if it goes ahead.  Remember, the next time you buy a bag of mixed leaves or a supermarket lettuce, that the fields of north Essex are disappearing under fleece and polythene tunnels so that you can get one of your five a day.

Meanwhile I made some progress with my (rather long) list of things to do.  A fellow beekeeper is producing a leaflet for our stand at the Tendring Show (it is a lovely show.  Do come) and had circulated draft versions for constructive comment.  I fired off my first set of comments ages ago, and was disconcerted on getting back from work on Sunday to find myself being chased for comments on the next version when I'd only been sitting on it for a week, given the show isn't until the middle of July.  What with work, and Monday night's concert, and the Chelsea Flower Show, I had to confess that there was no way I was going to even look at it until today.  I sat down after breakfast to go through it, and was greatly relieved to send off my latest list of constructive comments and be able to tick Beekeeper's leaflet off my list of things to do.

Then I was able to have a look at the bees, since it has finally warmed up.  They like the warm weather, and all four colonies were in a benign and docile mood, while a problem a couple have been having with a fungal infection of their larvae, called chalk brood, was much reduced.  I was hoping that warmer and drier weather would do the trick, once the bees could fly freely instead of being stuck on top of each other in the hives.  One colony that was so slow to get going earlier in the year that I initially thought they must have gone queenless has increased greatly since the last inspection, and was starting to show signs of swarming.  I added a super (extra box) to give them more space, removed the incipient new queens, and crossed my fingers.  The tiny swarm I collected last year that made it through the winter, in defiance of what the text books say about the minimum colony size for successful overwintering, is building up as well.  I'm not sure what the other two colonies are doing, after my unsuccessful attempts at swarm control, but the bees seemed contented and purposeful, so I shall leave them to get on with it.  They have millions of years of evolution behind them in how to be a bee, whereas I have 13 year's experience in how to manage a bee, so when in doubt I take the view that they know better than I do.

Then I made it through my monthly Pilates lesson without disgracing myself.  By next month things should be less frantic, and we might progress to some new exercises and challenges, which would make it more interesting for both of us.  My life recently has felt like the proverbial paddling swan, legs going frantically even if the surface seems serene, though in truth it is probably more like a small dog doing the doggy paddle, little legs churning while the whole dog looks pretty worried.

Addendum  The Telegraph reports that the Shard doesn't make it into the world's top ten tall buildings, even at full height.  It would need to be another 460 feet tall.  Oh well.

rainy day on the lettuce farm

The Systems Administrator has received another appeal from our alma mater to join the college network, which promotes career networking between old members and keen young graduates.  They didn't bother to write to me.  It must have reached their database that I've dropped out.  Pity, as I should like the chance to network with Robin Lane Fox.  He could put in a word for me to inherit his gardening column in the Weekend FT when he retires.

The rain had started in earnest by lunchtime.  The Met Office forecast said it would, and the rain radar backed them up.  We watched it pass Chelmsford, and continue eastwards.  In the field next to us they are still picking lettuces in the rain.  A tractor crawls at very slow speed across the field, towing a trailer on the back of which are big plastic trays.  The pickers follow behind, harvesting lettuce and filling the trays.  Full trays go up into the covered part of the trailer and down come fresh trays.  The pickers wear their choice of waterproof clothing and stay outside.  They play loud pop music off the back of the trailer as they go, which used to be an eastern European station but today sounds English.  At one point the tractor sputtered into silence, and I could hear laughter and ebulliant cries in Lithuanian through the hedge.  The music, and indeed the tractor, would be pretty annoying if they were there all the time, but they don't stay by our garden for long.  If I were disposed to be grumpy about it I should consider how I would like to be picking lettuces all day in the rain.

The gravel garden is looking cheerful in a dishevelled way.  The bulbs have finished, but their place has been taken by field poppies.  These started off as pastel selections, and are steadily reverting back to the red ones, a very clean, deep shade which is completely beautiful.  There are a few pinks and lilacs left, one of which happily placed itself immediately next to the Phlomis italica.  This is a lamb-soft, grey leafed dwarf shrub with soft pink flowers.  It was badly hit by the winter and half of it killed, but the missing half has regrown from ground level.  I ought to look up how to propagate it and make some more, as it is doing well, and besides being charming in itself is a good foil for louder plants.

Various lavenders are coming out, but I don't know the names of most of them.  I'm not good at identifying or remembering different sorts of lavender.  I don't know why, but I read catalogues and plant labels and books, and the information wanders into my head and drifts straight out again.  I think it is because lavenders are short-lived and I allow them to seed themselves.  I am not even sure whether I actually planted my two fattest plants, or if they are seedlings.  The lavenders make a nice underplanting for the Genista aetnensis, or Mount Etna broom, which is just opening.  This will eventually make a big, airy shrub, practically a small tree.  Beth Chatto uses them trained up as trees on only a couple of main stems, but mine desperately wants to be shrubby.  I cut out as many branches as I dared last year after flowering, to try to start lifting the canopy and concentrate the plant's energies into fewer stems, but it seems as bushy as ever.  The twigs are very slender, a pleasant shade of middling olive green, utterly devoid of leaves, and the whole plant is light and airy.  The flowers are bright yellow, but so small and dainty that the overall effect is not brash.  They are typical of the pea family, with an upper petal, which on Genista aetnensis is the size of a little finger nail, held upright above a delicate keel and two slim petals hanging downwards.  The twig I have picked smells fragrant when held to my nose, a sharp smell that reminds me of spring, more daffodils and violets than roses and honeysuckle.

I don't think the broom really goes with the pink flowered Dierama by the pond, but never mind.  I like Dierama, and don't have the space to do rigorously colour-themed areas.  The shortest one has flowers of a salmon hue, and I think is D. igneum.  The others are D. pulcherrimum and D. dracomontanum, but only one is flowering at the moment, I think D. dracomontanum which is the smaller of the two.  The flowers are a purplish pink.  Dierama germinate fairly readily from seed and you will find a good choice in the seed catalogues, or you can keep an eye out for seedlings, if you share my insouciance about precisely which species you are growing.

For years there were blue Nigella damascena, or love-in-the-mist, but there are very few this year.  Maybe I managed to weed the gravel at the wrong time, but I presume the hard winter hit them.  I'll get a packet of seed next spring to top the numbers up.  Garden magazines keep giving me packets of mixed colours, but I want the pure blue, so never even open the mixed ones.

The cat is sleeping quietly in one of the armchairs.  Fortunately he seems inclined to rest most of the time, but can now put some weight on his bad leg when he does walk around the room.  He has been very good, except for one odd episode a couple of evenings ago when he suddenly went mad, and tried to climb out of the window.

a tale of two vegetables

I spent the morning planting asparagus crowns.  After making some price comparisons a while back I ordered these from Mr Fothergill, and was expecting them to be despatched in April, so was taken aback when they arrived last Friday, just before my long weekend working at the plant centre.  The instructions said that if you couldn't plant them immediately they should be removed from their packaging (a plastic bag.  They would get rather sweaty) but not allowed to dry out.  I wrapped them in damp newpaper and put them in a bucket in the study, as we're not lighting a fire in there at the moment and it's cool.  I tipped some extra water into the roll of newspaper over the weekend, and they looked fine this morning.  I think asparagus roots are quite tenacious of life, based on the fact that our existing plants are doing well now, despite having been accidentally dug up in their youth.

The current asparagus bed is my second attempt at growing it.  The first time was not a success.  The books said that asparagus required good drainage and normal soil, so I added a bit of fertiliser to the bed and planted a pack of crowns.  This was a long time ago, and I'd not yet grasped quite how far short of 'normal' the soil in the top part of the garden is.  The asparagus made straw-thin spears and struggled miserably.  I decided to bite the bullet and start again, in a different bed, with masses of added home-made compost.  I bought some pot grown plants from work, thinking I'd gain a bit of time that way, plus they were going cheap.  A while later my other half, on giving up full-time commuting, proclaimed a desire to grow vegatables.  I thought this was a splendid idea, since I like eating vegetables and much prefer growing ornamentals.  One day I wandered out to the veg patch, and the asparagus seemed to have disappeared.  I enquired what had happened to it. 'Oh, was that asparagus?  I thought it was the roots of beans or something and dug it up'.  I retrieved the (slightly dessicated) rootballs from the compost heap and found a couple that had rolled under a hedge, and replanted them.  Three years on the emerging spears equal the thickness of at least the second-best grade of locally grown asparagus at the farm shop, and I think we might cut some this season.  At last.  I'm only buying more plants to fill up that bed, instead of using part of it for something else, so that we can have more asparagus.  A surfeit, after years of famine.

Lettuce production in the next-door field is going at full clatter.  They planted up most of it last week, and the last bit today.  The young lettuce plants come in trays.  From the one commercial horticulture module I did at Writtle I'm sure that these are bought in from a specialist grower, and that our friendly neighbouring lettuce farmer doesn't sow them himself.  The trays are stacked on the back of a trailer towed behind a tractor, and two girls slide the lettuces onto a chute, and a mechanism at the bottom somehow plants each one the right way up and firms it in.  I'd really like to see that close up as I can't imagine how it works.  The lettuce farm did hold an open day a few years ago, but we were on holiday at the time.  Two young men walk behind the trailer and sort out any lettuces that the machine has not planted properly.  The crop at this time of the year is immediately covered in fleece, which comes folded, on a large roll about 1.5m wide, that two people can carry between them.  Once unrolled it is unfolded, and is about 10m wide.  The farm workers get the edges straight and hold the fleece down with spadefuls of earth at intervals, then a small tractor with a plough blade drives round the edge of the fleece, turning soil onto it to secure it.  It must be tricky getting the fleece spread out on windy days.

the lettuce farm stirs

Another sign that the growing season is approaching is the increased activity on the neighbouring lettuce farm.  There are no signs of actual lettuces yet, but it is a bit early for those, even under fleece.  The farm staff have been checking and mending the rabbit fences, banging in any wobbly posts with one of those hollow cylindrical metal wackers with a solid end and a handle on each side.  You put the cylinder over the top of the post, and lift and thump it down.  It makes a dolorous ringing sound like a King Kong size woodpecker.  We just use a sledgehammer at home, but I suppose the chance of a fatal accident is probably less with the cylindrical wacker.  Any bits of netting that have come loose from the top wire are being clipped on again, and holes in the netting criss-crossed with wire in a metallic darn.  Rabbits are devils.  I must have another go at our wire alongside the wood, as they are getting in somewhere.  The farm staff have also mended all the farm potholes today, using bags of ready mixed bituminous stuff.

The farm workers are mostly Eastern Europeans, Lithuanians or Latvians to judge from their car number plates.  They are unfailingly polite, pulling the farm vehicles over to let the residents' cars pass, and work astonishingly hard come driving rain or heatwave.  They live in mobile homes hidden away in the middle of the farm.  There was such a hoo-hah when the farmer applied for planning permission for the caravans some years back, you'd have thought the locals were expecting the Eastern Europeans to break into every house in the village, molest all the women and roast family pets on sticks.  In fact they keep themselves very much to themselves.  I presume they are saving whatever they earn for when they go home.