englishrosefrenchgarden's Blog

Well the last 5 days have been sunny and dry (with the exception of a huge thunderstorm on Saturday morning), so I finally feel that we are getting back on track.

Today I have planted some more winter carrots, parsnips and salsify. I am hoping its not too late, but the veg beds have been so sodden for the whole of April, that this has been my first chance.

The Lin Seed that we planted between the spuds has appeared, so hopefully this year that will flower in time to deter the Colorado Beetle that attempt to decimate our potato crop.

And finally along with lots of weeding, I have planted a bed of wild flowers and sunflowers to provide some beautiful colour and cut flowers for the summer.

So onwards to this week, it will be half and half sunshine and showers, so I am hoping to get the beans into the ground, as I have held off until our last “risk of frost” day passes (20th May) before getting them in.

Tomorrow I will add a photo showing progress

Well a break in the weather (horrah) and we have spent 7 hours in the garden today desperately trying to re-coup what 27 days of rain has washed away (or aided the weeds to grow).

My focus this morning was transferring the peppers from pots into the poly-tunnel floor. The peppers were planted into heated propagators in early January, they grew well, and have stalled a little with all this miserable weather, but are big enough to be planted on now :

The tomatoes, melons and squash are coming on well too :

I won’t be planting these out for a while as our last “risk of frost” day is May 21st.

And as for the rest of the garden, weeds were everywhere, which was slightly dis-hearting as we were so organised before the wet spell arrived! So my dad has spent his day, rotovating the beds (again!) :

The weather is due to be dry tomorrow, but rain again for the weekend – oh well, at least some work was achieved today!

So, so much rain.

Nothing growing, can’t get out into the garden to plant, spuds still not in as the ground is saturated….

Plants in the poly-tunnel are stalled and I am using the greenhouse heater just to keep them ticking over…

This is not starting out as a very good year, the forecast is still saying another 10 days of more rain, oh when will it stop???

Normal weather here in France for the end of April, beginning of May is sunshine and very high 20′s, I don’t think we have made it past 10 degrees for weeks.

Perhaps I should trade in the wellies for webbed feet !

Well its been a few weeks since my last blog, the weather here in France has been lovely, but we’ve now had 10 days of fairly persistent rain, and more forecast for next week, so I thought I would do a stint in front of the laptop.

Now it is apparent which plants did not survive the BIG freeze this winter, the laurel in the front garden is suffering from “rusty” leaves, but seems to have coped, the rosemary & several small privet style bushes have died and the worst disaster is our 4m (12foot) bay tree, which seems to have completely perished :

It has surprised me because being so big, it has obviously survived many winters previously, and our first winter 8 years ago had lows of minus 18, but I can only assume that the sustained negative figures for 3 weeks just killed it. I am going to give it a heavy prune this week in the hope that it recovers, but I am not optimistic. As you drive round and about our region, I have seen many bay trees in the same state

On a more positive note, everything else is growing.

I now have sweet peppers, tomatoes, charantais melons, and sunflowers growing in the poly-tunnel. Looking at this week’s forecast we are going to have some negative overnight temperatures so Charles has put the greenhouse heater together, and my dad has hung up some tarpaulins to reduce our poly-tunnel by half so that the seedlings have a warm, snug area  and will hopefully survive any low temperatures.

The main veggie patches now have 30 three meter rows of onion sets coming along well, along with 5 rows of early carrots. The plan this week is a bit of weeding (when does it stop) and to plant into pots courgettes, squash and cucumbers – according to my lunar planting guide, this week is the prime time for them to planted!

Really pleased to receive notification of my seed voucher – going to enjoy having a browse.

A friend told me about “herb celery” which is great for stews and stocks. I think I will try an find some unusual seeds with this voucher.

Our local DIY store had raspberries on special offer this week, so I have picked up two varieties – Sumo and Juna. They were only 3,50€ for 5 plants so I now have a nice raspberry bed with 10 bought plants and 4 given to me by a friend.

My dad rotovated a small strip at the top of the veggie patch for them, and all I need to do now is to put some supporting stakes in as they grow.

Another handy purchase this weekend was a potting tray :

I used to have one when we lived in the UK but somehow it didn’t make it to France in the big move, so fortunately our local “buy everything” store had this one for just 12€.

And the final buy for the weekend were these “mini-vegetable” seeds :

I quite liked the idea of very small veg, apparently the peppers will be 5cm when ripe, and the tomatoes only 17g each. The plants also need less space to grow, which will be handy too.

This week has been delightful in the garden, we have had a high of 20 degrees, but today the rain has arrived, so time for a little blogging!

The start of the week found us pruning and trimming the fruit trees in the garden, the two year old apples, pears, peach, plums and cherries all had a good prune, cutting back their new growth by half. Our four year old apple and pear, had a nice tidy and our very ancient apple needed a heavy prune. We have been pruning it every year since our arrival in France, but because of its age and size, we have not been too drastic in any one year. This year we have trimmed out the heart of the tree and taking out a lot of crossing branches. As several branches broke with the weight of the apples last year, we hope that it will benefit from this heavier prune.

Xavier and I have been weeding around the patio, he has enjoyed searching for worms and only one tulip bulb was pulled up which is pretty good I think

And to finish the week I have managed to edge the veggie beds and my dad has rotovated them all. So we are now set for planting!

And even though the weather has been appalling today, Charles (my hubby) has spent the morning designing and bolting together some old gazebo poles into a new tomato shelter. I have decided to use the poly tunnel this year for peppers and herbs, so the tomatoes will be out in the main vegetable garden with the shelter. So if the summer is wet they will have protection against blight, and if it is hot, the plastic roof will help the tomatoes to ripen.

A busy old week

We have spent this morning making Frelon (Hornet) traps for our garden. The Frelons here in France are very common, along now with Asian Frelons which are currently moving their way across France. They give a very nasty sting, which all of us, including Xavier at only 18 months, have experienced. My dad is highly allergic and when stung, swells up and has to take a lot of medication to counter-act the venom.

As a result we try to get rid of as many as possible. They come out of hibernation in mid-February to mid-April, they like the little crevasses in our barn walls etc. So we have made traps to entice them and hopefully this will mean there are fewer when the summer arrives.

Step one :

Cut old pop bottles in half, and invert the top into the bottom and tape together :

Step two :

Make a mixture of red wine, creme de cassis and biere brune (beer – I think an ale type) :

Step three :

Pour the mixture into the bottles and attached wire/string to hang them :

Step four :

Place them in key areas around the garden to attract the frelons when they emerge (remember to keep them topped up if the weather is hot and the mixture starts to evaporate). We have put ours around our large hanger barn & terrace, and in our apple tree which always attracts them :

Well the extremely cold weather in the last few weeks has caused the last dozen of our butternut squash to suffer. Five made it through the cold, but the rest didn’t do so well.

They all have a little frost damage or areas where they are starting to rot, so today we chopped up a load to go in the oven with red peppers for soup :

And the rest have been chopped to be frozen and taken out of the freezer when we want roast squash or to make curries & soups :

Although to be fair the weather has been reasonable this week, but the things that have frozen have still stayed frozen. We think that we may be changing the water butt this spring, as it has frozen and I am not sure the plastic will survive the melt :

Well at last I have managed to get out into the garden, the snow has almost disappeared and the temperatures have improved to a balmy 8 degrees.

I had tried to plant some more peppers into the heated propagators last week, although it was minus 10 the sun was shining beautifully, so I thought I would give it a try. Unfortunately, after wrapping up well and getting everything out I then discovered that my sack of potting compost was frozen solid, even though it was in our attached barn! I shouldn’t have been surprised as even tins of spaghetti and bottles of squash frozen in there – it has been cold

So today’s temperatures have tempted me out, I decided to plant more peppers and Xavier in his wisdom (2 and 3/4 yrs old) decided that he needed to plant sunflowers ! A little early, but once he had the idea in his head there was no stopping him!

Here are some pictures of the peppers planted in January (just forming there second set of leaves) and the new pots in today :

Dad has spent the afternoon with the chainsaw. Some work men from EDF and France Telecom came last week and cut down lots of branches around the village, that were close to electricity lines/telephone lines. They did a hefty trim of some of our trees, so dad has moved them under our terrace at the back of the hanger barn and spent time trimming the larger pieces to dry for the wood burner and sorting the little bits for a bonfire to have in the next few weeks.

So at last we got out of the house, not for long, but it feels a lot better than being stuck indoors looking at a cold, white landscape!