Autumn is well and truly here

We have just been away on holiday for 18 days and the difference in the garden is amazing! The very last thing I did before leaving was to cut all the grass and pick up all the leaves that had fallen, take a look at it now.

There was hardly an inch of the ( large ) front lawn that wasn't totally covered in a thick blanket o leaves, up to now I have shifted around 20 wheelbarrow loads with the same amount yet to pick up.
Of course the upside to it is that I have a huge amount o beautiful leaf mulch for the fruit garden, I am putting it in a thick layer all around the blackcurrant and raspberry bushes.

At the back of the house there are even more leaves from our huge chestnut tree, in some places it is over 6 inches thick, all of this will be going on top of my "Back to Eden" garden.

What a difference a week makes

We have just come back from a week's holiday in Florida, at £389 for the flight, car hire and Hotel it was a real bargain. It's a pity that there seem to be no bargains like that to be had from France so we had to go from Gatwick.
However the total cost including a Ryanair flight from Dinard to Stansted, a coach to London Victoria and the Gatwick express train to the airport plus a night at the Premier inn at Gatwick plus the holiday in Florida complete still came to just on £500 each about  the same cost as I could have got just a return flight from France!

We had a really relaxing holiday over there although probably to many American Breakfasts for the waistline.

Apart from going to the cinema a couple of times and a couple of visits to a Van Heusen Factory outlet store for some very reasonable and good quality clothes we spent most of the time around the pool, swimming and soaking up the sunshine. All in all a great week.

When we got home I couldn't believe how much every thing in the garden had grown, the grass looked as if it hadn't been cut in a Month and 5 new rows of potatoes had sprung up. Also while we were away the deer that we seen to have in abundance around here had helped themselves to most of the new growth on the roses! In fact they were devastated!

Garden update

I'm feeling a little bit better about our garden produce today. As I said in the previous post the potatoes are suffering from blight with the leaves starting to go black.
Although I would have liked to have left them in the ground longer to get a bit bigger I decided that I would be better off digging them up now on the assumption that If they have blight they are unlikely to grow anymore and perhaps it could affect the potatoes themselves.

As you can see I have a healthy amount of potatoes coming out and to the left the leeks and T
turnips are doing OK as well.
I shall learn from all of this and next year will perhaps stick to putting in crops that I know have done well this year plus I hope to get a load of horse manure onto the ground before winter.

Produce, or lack of it

I have to say I am somewhat disappointed in my gardening efforts this first year over here, we seem to have a whole host of things that are preventing us from being self sufficient. The one thing I am determined to do is to learn from it and try different things and ways next year.

First of all I got sucked in by the beautiful warm/hot weather we had in early March, around 22/23c some days. I started on the garden far too soon, I shall take more notice of my French neighbours next year and delay starting anything much before late April.

Our peas, broad beans, parsnips, garlic etc are not even Worth mentioning!

Another thing I have come to realise is that the row of big fir trees I am lopping off have sucked all the goodness out of the ground, I desperately need to get some manure on the ground in the Autumn and try and get some goodness into it.

A problem that I am going to have more difficulty with though is the deer, last night they grazed off the tops of nearly all of the strawberry plants and half of next year's growth of the raspberry's.

On the plus side, although I haven't got Mandy's  problem of trying to keep up with the harvest, we are at last starting to take produce from the garden most days. The turnips are doing very well and are being picked every day whilst young and lovely to eat, we have started to eat carrots and should have enough to keep us going throughout the summer and maybe the Autumn. Although the potatoes are now starting to be affected by blight, due to the lousy weather I suspect,  I dug the first of them today and they are looking not to bad.

An update at last!

It's been quite a while since I've updated on here so I'm busy looking for excuses, of course I could easily blame it it on a lovely 2 week visit by my brother Roger, and my sister in law Margaret, but as he will probably read this I shall blame it on the weather instead!

In addition I can blame the weather on the progress in the garden, in truth that is part of it coupled I think with the tall fir trees sucking all the goodness out of the ground for years. I have to say I am more than a little disappointed in it particually given the amount of effort I've put into it this year. I shall put it all down to experience though and will try to get some manure from somewhere in the Autumn to turn in to improve things for next year. The broad beans have been a total washout and the peas are not much better. Some of the root vegetables may come on but I'm not hoping for too much now.

I have made another start on cutting down some more of the fir trees, it is a bit of a long winded job as I have to move the scaffold pretty much every tree and the clearing away and cutting off all the branches and twigs etc takes the biggest amount of time.

It has been over a month now since I submitted French tax returns and I have had no communication from them, I would like to think that I have filled them all out correctly and the longer it goes without hearing the more chance there is I think. Wish me luck!

After waiting what seems an age, we had a phone call this week to say that the workmen would be arriving the next day to install the wood burner we ordered at the beginning of May. They arrived at 9am and were cleared up and gone 3 hours later, I was very impressed. During that time they had to sheet off the room for dust bore a hole through the concrete capping slab on top of the chimney, bore another hole through the ceiling in the lounge fit a chimney pot and cap install a flue liner assemble and install the wood-burner including fitting an internal flue to the ceiling height, fitting a collar at the top and plaster boarding and skimming where the flue went through the ceiling and clearing away all in 3 hours for 2 men. I was most impressed and can thoughrally recommend the company

Cheminees Lencot, 

ZA Du Launay,

 29600 St Martin Des Champs 

Tel 0298 620191 

www.cheminees-lencot.com

All I have to do now is to keep enough logs cut and split to see us through the winter!

Potager progress

I though I would share a few photos of the vegetable garden, things have been pretty slow getting going here in Brittany and I think in retrospect that I was far to keen to get stuff into the ground and growing. I have talked to a number of people in this area and it seems like It's not worth starting planting until late April. So next year I shall take notice.

However things are moving at last and the potatoes at least are looking pretty good, just had a few of them touched by the frost, I've planted 7 rows of them mostly Charlotte so I'm hopeful for a good crop.

The broad beans that we started off in pots indoors and planted out in March have been overtaken by the beans that I planted directly into the ground soon after so that's a mistake that I won't make again in the future.

In addition, I have also planted out turnips, peas, garlic, carrots, shallots and broccoli which are all up now and beetroot, parsnip and cabbage.

Slow progress in the "Potager"

This is our first real planting season in the vegetable garden since we arrived last August and we are a little disappointed in that we seem to have what I call a cold garden. There are some tall trees in our neighbough's rear garden that restrict the sunshine for a few hours each day so consequently the frost that we have been having lately hangs around longer.
Of course this will change as we get further into Spring with the sun higher in the sky.

However, I have been busy and have put in loads of potatoes, onions, shallots, beetroot, turnip, parsnips, cabbage, carrots, asparagus, garlic and broad beans. At least the broad beans are starting to look OK

I have probably put in too many at one time ( 5 rows ) and will be putting more in later spaced out by a few weeks but I am sure if we have too many I can find some friends who would enjoy them.

I did get a head start with the fruit garden in the Autumn and the raspberries most of which were just sticks! are now coming on quite well and the rhubarb has got going at last.

It is also encouraging to see that all of the fruit trees we put in are starting to blossom.

I also got round to mowing the rear lawn for the first time this year, like everyone else in Brittany it seems we have a lot of moss in it! 

One job I have had to put on the "back burner" for a while is the cutting of my trees. There has been a pigeon building a nest in them for weeks and after watching it carefully selecting sticks and flying in and out hundreds of times I haven't the heart to disturb it . There will be plenty of time later on although I do what to get it all done this year as the difference in light and sunshine to the decking area is incredible.

Spring is here

I love this time of the year with all the Months of Spring and Summer ahead of us. The weather is still quite changeable with colder showery days but already there are some days when the sun is out and the temperature is beginning to reach the high teens.

We have birds busy building nests both at the front and rear of the house, at the back we have a pigeon who totally ignores me even at close quarters as she selects twigs for her nest and then has to make a complicated flying maneuver to get between the branches of a fir tree to build it in.
At the front we have a magpie building a huge nest right at the very top of a tall tree. It's fascinating to watch it carefully selecting the right twig then having to make it's way right up though the tree to the top without dropping it which it does often!

I finished off the final few bits to the decking area and formed a flower bed around it and put in some roses and also a black grapevine that I'm hoping to train up over the pergola.

I've now moved onto the garden in a serious way, I think we are in a bit of a cold spot so It's obviously not going to be an "early" garden but I'm getting excited about all the fruit and veg we are going to grow in the future.

Talking about getting excited, I really must be turning into a farmer, I never thought I'd get excited about buying a plough but I am! I put an advert on a local Brittany forum asking If anyone had one for sale and yesterday had a reply.
So today I am the proud owner of a plough.

"We plough the fields and scatter
The good seed on the land"


I have quite a large area that I would like to extend the garden into but without ploughing it I really think it would have beyond me to do. I've never used a plough so If my furrows are not quite straight "cest la vie"!


I have already rotavated quite a large area of ground and have so far sown carrot seeds, put in a row of onion sets and yesterday put in the first row of early potatoes.

Back Home

Well this last few weeks have seen us doing an awful lot of travelling, Our daughter Anna, lives exactly half way round the world from us so visiting her is a major event. We started off with an 8 hour drive to the tunnel and stopped overnight in Folkstone before setting off from Heathrow, the first leg of the journey is (just) an 11hr flight to LA we spent some time in Santa Barbara before continuing our journey, another 13hr flight to Auckland a 2 hr wait and the an hour's flight to Wellington arriving refreshed (sic) at 8am in the morning, during which we passed the date-zone so lost a complete day!

We had a lovely time catching up with Anna, James and the 3 boys ( Joe,Leo and Blake ) while we were there we all hired a beach house a couple of hours drive north from Wellington.
The house backed right up to the sand dunes with a short walk to the sea......Lovely!

 A nice seat directly behind the house on the sand dunes overlooking the sea

 

Miles and miles of deserted wide clean beaches, the beach is actually designated as a road with a 30mph limit and many vehicles use it to tow boats or just to gain access.




There was a lovely decking area around the house and an outside Pizza oven with a good supply of wood which we made good use of. A nice place to spend a few hours each day with some cold beer and wine!

The time there went all to quickly and we were back on a plane or another 1 hr flight to Auckland another 3 hr wait and another 13 hr flight to Hong Kong, In actual fact we stayed this time the other side of the water in Kowloon for a couple of nights which made a nice break before yet another long flight 13hrs 40mins back to Heathrow!
All in all a lovely holiday and one to remember.

Back home now with all the spring and summer to look forward to. The garden is the first priority so I've spent a bit of time this week rotavating quite a reasonable sized area beside the fruit beds ready for vegetables.

From this end it looks quite a big area which in reality it is as against the area of grass I have cut down in readiness for turning over in the next few weeks but looking from the other end I wonder what I've taken on!

 I've also knocked up a compost area out of some of the trees I've been taking down so all in all I'm quite pleased with my work since we have got home

I am now also making the first tentative steps to forming quite a large decking and seating area at the rear of the house, this should make a very nice entertaining area and I would very much like to get it completed in March so that we have the full use of it during this coming Spring and Summer. 

Watch this space!

Foraging

I was walking around the bottom end of a small meadow on the other side of our stream when I noticed a couple of small crab apples on the ground, when I picked them up I realised that there were quite a few there covered with the leaves that had fallen.
In the end I picked up about half a bucket full. Although they were pretty small we don't like for anything to go to waste so Avril had a go at making some Crab Apple Jelly. It was absolutely gorgeous! and something I had never tasted before

 
For anyone interested in giving it a go here are the details.

• Wash the apples
• Cut off any bad skin
• put in to large pan
• barely cover with water
• cover and simmer until soft
• Strain through a piece of muslin
• Measure out 1 cup of juice to 3/4 cup of sugar
• dissolve juice and sugar slowly
• Then bring to rapid boil
• keep testing small amount in a saucer until setting
• Pour into warm sterilized jars and seal
• Store in cool place

The roses, azalea, carnation in the picture were all from our garden today.