Tying In Cordons

My Cordons (see here, here and here for how I planted them) are looking good this year. They've already put on quite a bit of growth and many have apples on so I'm quite please for their second year.

 They haven't taken much work to look after, so far, weeding around them takes a bit of time (I've been mulching with straw as well which helps) but you only have to prune them once, in the summer, and thin the fruit if they crop to heavy.

The other job is to tie them back in. I just use string to tie them in so that it rots away and doesn't strangle the trees as they grow. These means that I have to tie them back in to the bamboo canes every year. It doesn't take long, even with 27 trees, and gives me a good opportunity to make sure each tree is doing alright.

Anyone else have cordon fruit trees growing?

Sowing Swedes

Or to Americans Rutabaga, which I think I almost prefer! 

There's not many things we can sow this late and get a good crop but I always sow my swedes in June to hopefully follow on from something else.

 The trouble with them is they come from that ultra high maintenance group - Brassicas. The footballers wives of the vegetable world. 

You can't do enough for them! They need plenty of well rotted manure, careful sowing away from pests, slug protection, netting from birds, netting from cabbage white butterfly, collars to stop the root fly, the list goes on. 

Cabbages and purple sprouting in the ground

Your winter plot looks pretty bare without brassicas though! And I do love the humble old swede. Mashed with butter on the side of your roast or mixed in with your stew after you've been working outside in the cold all day it takes some beating! The girls seem to love it as well so I'm planning on putting plenty in this year. 

Does everyone else have this love hate relationship with all the brassicas (not just swedes?)?

Chive Rust

A little gutted the other night as I discovered rust on my chives. This has come on suddenly and spread through the whole boarder of chives that surround my herb bed, the week of wet weather hasn't helped I guess. 

Rust spread through the whole patch

The chives are no more!

Evalyn loves picking the flowers when we're in the garden together and the bees go mad for them, but I've too many other alliums growing to risk leaving them in. I'm not looking forward to seeing her reaction when she sees they've all gone!
 I don't want it to spread to my garlic, onions, leeks and shallots so I pulled them all out and put them in my burning barrel. The chives are no more, it's a shame as they made a pretty boarder around the herbs and everyone said how nice they looked.
Anyone else have experience with rust on their chives or other alliums? Am I doomed to loose my onions as well due to them?

Scythe Over Strimmer?

The road to self sufficiency is built on a slippery slope.
You start looking at everything a little differently after a while. And when trying to start my strimmer I thought there must be another way and took a step back. 

I don't do huge amounts of strimming here, but I do like to knock back the clumps of nettles and docks on the edges of the fields rather than using sprays if I can help it. to replace it I'd still have to buy a fairly professional machine if I was to get another one (one that would start and work every time), as it's far more than what the average person needs in their garden. That's more money than I can justify. What's the self sufficient alternative? 

A Scythe!

£10 - bargain?

Spurred on by both Sunnybrook Farm and Vera at Snippets From Labartere, who use a scythe frequently, I decided to give it a go. I got mum to look out for one at a flea market and she came back with this little beauty for £10.

Handles are completely adjustable to wherever you want them

It's an Elwell one so I know it's good quality (I've a few old axes of the same make and the steel is top notch and holds an edge great), its got fully adjustable handles and the blade has four settings depending on your height.

Elwell stamped on the blade, so its a good old make.

The blade has four slots for adjustment depending on your hight.

The blade needs a lot of work to get it back cutting well, but for the moment it knocks down a patch of nettles in the same time as a strimmer does. 

Patch of nettles before...

And after!

The only difference is I can do this at 10 o'clock at night and not upset the neighbours! It uses no fuel, oil or strimming wire, hasn't got an engine to start or keep running, I can wear my shorts and I don't need goggles or ear muffs. A lot going for it at the moment!
Although when I think about sharpening it I do keep thinking back to my geeky teenage years and the Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man - 
"thinking he might fight back against the New Death, Death (Bill Door) sharpens a scythe blade. First on a grindstone, then on an oilstone, then on a steel. It was too blunt. Miss Flitworth supplied, from her rag bag, satin, then silk, finest white silk, never worn (from her wedding dress). It was still blunt. Then it was sharpened on cobweb. Then on the breeze at dawn. Finally, on the light of the new day"
Anyone else secretly turning into a Luddite? Sometimes things designed to save us time cost us more in the long run.

Cocktail Kiwi

I promise this is the last part of my order from Suttons (you can see what else I ordered here and here)! 

I've wanted to grow a kiwi fruit for a long time but I've never had anywhere to grow it against and my mothers kiwi has never fruited (or even flowered) so that has put me off as well.

As usual a well packaged plant and a good size as well

 Then I read on the internet about the "cocktail" kiwi (or kiwi fruit "Issai"), from Siberia, hardy down to minus 35 and a mature plant can produce over 1000 fruits in a year, they're the size of grapes, with no fur and dry to make kiwi sweets. Sounds like my kind of plant! I just needed somewhere to plant it.

Our "beautiful" shed that we inherited when we brought the place. Although it does face south west...

 I kept thinking about where I could grow a climber like this but struggled to find somewhere that wasn't on my plans to be knocked down or moved. I then decided to stop thinking so long term, sometimes you can be thinking too far into the future and not utilise what you've got now. The old tin sheds in our front yard are going to come down at some point, but not before I've built the extension and a barn, so that means they're going to be about for at least five years and they're blinking ugly as you drive up to our house!

Hopefully the kiwi will soon fill this trellis

 I found some old trellis up the field at my dads and wired it to the shed, dug a good sized hole and filled it with soil and compost before planting the kiwi and training it up the timbers.

Already some little fruits on it.

Kiwis grow quite fast so hopefully it will begin to cover this old shed and produce some fruit in the meantime, there's already some little fruits on the plant. I've got a little more trellis for the other side as well, so there I'm going to plant a clematis for a bit of colour.

Anyone else keep thinking long term and not using what they've got now because of it?

Also anyone else grow kiwis and have much success? Any tips?