Revenge of the weevil

Weevils are voracious feeders on many narrow and broad leaved trees, shrubs, strawberries and bramble fruits. The adults will do serious damage to the leaves while the larvae will feed on the roots and bore into the crowns. This guy somehow managed to land on my shoulder when I was watering some strawberry plants I have in hanging baskets. I thought keeping them off the ground would limit access to pests. Imagine my surprise when I looked over my shoulder to see this guy trying to whisper something in my ear ! I called him Kenneth as he was a bit of a daredevil but he had a definite link with the dark side. I guess you could call him Evil-Ken-Weevil !!



Rest in peace Kenneth.


Some time later while trying to unstuckify a set of extension ladders I banged my elbow. Damn hard too. It swelled up quite badly and I couldn't help thinking about karma and was the weevil going to have the last laugh on me. Speaking of karma I shudder to think what will happen when the slug karma kicks in, I squished seventeen of the blighters last night around my rhubarb and another eight this morning before breakfast !!



Not the greatest photo but Mrs Foxylock got a weakness and had to sit down upon seeing the bulge ..... on my elbow that is, careful now !! Anyway bless her she's a wee bit squeamish. It reminds me of the time I cut open the palm of my hand and she rushed me to the sink to help clean it up, as the flow of blood quickly reddened the sink my beloved nurse took a funny turn and ended up sitting on the bed with her head between her knees !! And then she goes through the whole childbirth thing without so much as a dizzy spell, but that's another story.

Primulas ???

I love primulas, they bring a splash of early colour to the garden when most others dare not show their heads above ground. I'm impressed by their showiness and hardiness, the fact that they are easy to care for and easy to grow are also a major bonus. So it was with an expectant air of confidence that I received my packet of seeds and wasted no time in sowing them, all 35 of them in fact, no need for caution here as this would be a resounding success.



I followed the sowing instructions diligently ...... well O.K. I read the sowing instructions diligently ...... alright, alright I read the sowing instructions .... sort of !! Look, I put them in modules, covered with compost, watered and waited .... and waited .... diligently. Nothing happened the days became weeks that became months and still nothing. I'm impatient at the best of times in fact when it comes to virtues I think I must have been missing the day they were handing them out ! I moved the tray to my cold frame and low and behold two tiny seedlings began to emerge ( cue the alleluia music ) Did I nurture them seedlings I sang to them, caressed them, made promises I knew I could not keep. I gave them a pot of their own.



It was around this time I began to notice quite a discernible difference between the two seedlings but passed it off as nothing. This was a dereliction I would soon regret. Yes I can see you now as you read this the penny begins to drop " Surely not " you think " This cannot be " but you wring your hands in glee the glow from the computer screen lighting up the fiendish smile that now spreads across your face bringing the warmth of my failure to your toes !! You should take a moment to enjoy this feeling because in all honesty there will probably be more to come, my friends I shall not bear grudges and will share in the titters for I have managed to grow a thistle and a rogue parsnip seed !!



Upon reading the instructions some months later, I learned that one should not cover the seed as this inhibits germination. On a more positive note it seems that I may be flush with strawberries this year.... flush ... oh forget it.

Earthing up time.

The spuds have been flying up but the recent blast of icy air has threatened to send this progress tumbling backwards. Gardeners the length and breadth of the country have been racing to ward off the ill effects of frost damage. Luckily I have earthed up on time this year and have no casualties to report ..... yet !!



I still think growing potatoes in a raised bed is a semi ludicrous idea as the earthing up is bothersome due to a simple lack of space. But I do it anyway, Why ? These are the appropriately named " Homeguard " growing reasonably well here, I hope to be eating baby potatoes from these quite soon.



Here we have " Duke of york " and " British queens ", both are doing quite well. You may have noticed the soil difference, this is because it's in a patch of ground borrowed in the uncles garden. I much prefer this method of growing the spud but you need plenty of room, something the uncle has an abundance of ! He made the land available on the condition that I would plant his spuds for him, a small price to pay.



By his reckoning there has been a garden here for nearly two hundred years ! Near perfect conditions prevail here, black crumbly soil, south facing on a gentle slope with shelter all round. Things get planted here about a month before anywhere else. Anyway that's the earlies taken care of, the maincrop you can see on the right of the photo should be ready for earthing up sometime next week. More then......

Blue skies and apple blossoms.

I find it difficult to walk past this tree every day without pausing to appreciate it's true beauty and indeed the wonderment of mother nature herself. Every time the wife looks out the kitchen window I seem to be in the same spot, staring upwards with a look on my face reminiscent of a guy who has just seen his first pair of boobs ! It's no wonder I get so little done around the place.



For those interested the tree is called " John Downie " It's a flowering crab. And for the record the fruits are not too bad to taste, I must experiment with making some crab apple jam ..... sometime in the next few decades. I had found a use for the fruit which I thought was pure genius .... playing fetch with my trusty German Shepherd. However it all came to a messy end when the dog developed quite the affinity for these little apples and his binges would end in a lengthy dose of the scutters !! The shovel was always handed to me. I wasn't quite sure was it to clean up the pooh or bury the damn dog ! Anyway, long story short he still lives and so does the tree but just you wait until September .......

Bedtime.

The gift of a few hours to myself today was gratefully received and I took on the long promised task of constructing a raised bed for my crop of winter cabbages. My January kings are doing well in pots at the moment but I hope to have them settled in their new abode by the middle of next month at the latest. Being a winter cabbage these plants are very hardy but they need to be well established to see out the winter and also the plague of pests that will advance in summer.

Aahhh yes to the bed .... not literally !! This bed I made from construction grade 9x2, Two lengths were used costing about a tenner each. Now these beds can be made with anything from recycled scaffold planks to bricks but I use these guys due to ease of supply. I simply cut two lengths, twelve feet long and two more, four feet long and nailed them together at the corners. Make sure it's square ( by measuring the diagonals, that's corner to corner ) and Bob's your auntie !



Lugging it down to the end of the lawn was the hardest part of this task, maybe I should have put it together in situ.... aahh well, too late now. Nearly there, fill with topsoil.



A quick wallop of a rake and away we go, ready for a bit of manure to be dug in and then the planting shall commence. I prefer raised beds for the simple reason of being able to garden in the wet, you're not destroying the soil structure because the bed is never walked on. It's easier on the back and the soil is usually warmer which is an aid to germination and growing. The beds must be well watered in dry weather as they tend to dry out faster but in my opinion this is a small price to pay.



Only five more beds to make !

Now where did I put that pillow ?

The onion experiment.

This year as a little experiment I have planted onions in a number of different ways. The first method is the old reliable of planting from sets, the variety used is the stalwart " Sturon ", secondly I have sown seeds singularly in modules and thirdly I used a method known as multi-blocking where a number of seeds are placed in each module and let to grow on with the bulbs gently pushing each other out of the way as they swell. For these last two methods I used the old favourite "Ailsa craig " and all onions have now been planted, with the last few going in a little later than expected this weekend. The only thing to do now is keep watered and concentrate on weed control as these guys hate competition. A happy onion will become a big onion.

There are pros and cons for each method, onion sets are very easy to grow and relatively foolproof ( something which always seems to attract me !! ) however they are relatively expensive, I paid eight euro for around three hundred and fifty this year. The seed by comparison is much cheaper, it cost me one euro twenty cent for approximately two hundred and fifty seeds ! If germination rates are high that will provide a significant saving. The multi-blocking technique is a fantastic labour saving method because when planting time comes you are essentially planting up to five onions at a time, five times faster. This method can be used for : Beet, broccoli, cabbage, corn, cucumber, leek, melon, bulbing onion, spring onion, peas, spinach and turnip. I'm growing some of my spring onions in this manner and also some in the traditional straight line method, I shall keep you updated on the results.



I planted out some of the Autumn leeks also this weekend, this variety " Autumn mammoth 2, Hannibal " promises an excellent yield from August onwards. You know what they say about promises though ! I sowed the winter variety " Musselborough " in some toilet roll inserts and am hoping to plant them in the bed the early potatoes are now occupying. An amazing thing about leeks is that even after digging them up they continue to grow albeit very slowly. This slow growth diminishes the quality of the stems so fresh is best.



All this talk of onions reminds me of a funny incident that happened way back in the days of the boom. I was slating the roof of a new house which overlooked the next door neighbours fairly substantial cottage garden. I had no knowledge then of vegetables or what it took to grow them so the value of all that lay before my eyes was entirely lost on me. However the wizened old gardener responsible for this creation took it upon himself to educate us .... whether we liked it or not. Every morning we were greeted to shouts of " Look at my onions lads " or " Come down here and I'll show you this " as he pointed at something that really didn't interest us. The man was a persistent old character though and one day partly through curiosity and mostly because the opportunity to evade work had presented itself my slating partner decided to go down for a nose.

The look of glee on his face when he returned with a carrier bag crammed full of the finest of veg that money simply cannot buy .... sickened me. What sickened me more was when he came in the morning after and regaled me with tales of the gourmet dinner his wife had cooked, while simultaneously trying to articulate the wholesome goodness of the prize veggies he had blagged the previous day. The bag of chips I called dinner that night were still repeating on me. The day wore on. My nerves were becoming frayed.

Like clockwork the gardener appeared and the banter began again, they were now friends having shared food, although not at the same table it was somewhat of a shared experience. An experience that was about to take a turn for the humorous, well from my point of view anyway.

The old man headed up through his garden with a large bucket and a rope in his hand. Suddenly he stopped and heaved on a huge iron lid, with a groan of old age he straightened his back, cast the lid to one side and immediately began lowering the bucket into the void. With a manly tug on the rope the bucket flew upwards and landed at his feet with a splosh, the deftness of his movement confirmed a well rehearsed routine. " Jesus is that toilet paper ?" The mysterious contents of the bucket had now been revealed. " Looks like someones septic tank is a bit full " I smirked as the horror of what was happening unveiled in front of my full bellied friends eyes. A casual glance in our direction and the old man set to work .... watering his veggies with the content of the second chamber of his septic tank !! My once boastful friend now looked to be in need of medical attention as he fished for the mobile phone to cancel that nights much anticipated stew.

If there were a moral to be applied to this story, I wonder what could it be ? Something about not rubbing peoples noses in it, or not accepting gifts from strangers. Na ah for me it's " You are what you eat "