Early Summer Bits and Bobs.

[Monika]

I have never had an email from anybody about who has posted, other than PMs but that is a different matter.

[Westi]

Blimey Geoff - I have never even seen this! Must have though & ticked it right when I joined - for once!

[Stephen]

I don't receive mails (thank goodness)

[Stephen]

Meanwhile a few things are doing well.
These are old bushes, they were well established when we took on the plot in 2006 and are still very vigorous (slightly too vigorous to be honest!)

[oldherbaceous]

That reminds me, I must get my net out for Codger, so he can cover his Red Currants....

[Stephen]

Cutting fine OH! Mine are reddening already.

[Primrose]

Talking abiut redcurrants, I've found if you can protect them from the birds it,s worth leaving them on the bushes until they,ve become a really deep red colour otherwise they're so sour as to be really unpleasant. Anybody else have the same problem?.
Of all the soft fruit find redcurrants the most difficult to use imaginatively for this reason, and annoyingly I have double the amount of fruit from these bushes as anything else !

[retropants]

Dear Primrose, red currant jelly is wonderful, it's a good sub for cranberry sauce, or for jam tarts.

[Breq]

Primrose: Scandinavians use redcurrants in all manner of muffins, cakes, and tarts. Have a browse on the interwebby for some ideas. Although we love the jelly as a savory accompaniment, too! If I find I have more than I can freeze, use, or share, I take off the netting and let the blackbirds have the remains.

I find most people don’t let fruits get ripe enough; someone told me it had to do with growing up on supermarket fruits that are never sold at their best. For instance, I never pick my gooseberries in June - too hard and sour. I wait until they are really ripe and they are gorgeous. This makes many gooseberry skeptics change their minds.

[Compo]

Been busy with a good size tunnel for my sprouts and purple sprouting etc.....although not a lot of cabbage whites around so far.

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[Stephen]

That's substantial Compo.
I use MDPE blue water pipe to support netting over the currants and gooseberries but and improvising/experiementing with temporary tunnels for the brassicas, I won't keep the same position for them.

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[peter]

Interesting couple of days.
Added the hay from the cowslip patch / car park to my compost bin on Sunday afternoon. 6'x6' slotted concrete 1' gravel boards in slotted concrete posts 4' tall.
Stood against one side with barrow to my left adding bundles, spreading and pressing it down. Base of the heap is hedge and shrub trimmings, no bonfires allowed now, hear a fair bit of buzzing.
Look around me for a bee swarm, nothing in sight, finish the job and look down to grasp the barrow handles.

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Hard to see on picture, but I'm stood straddling the flight path and alighting board of a honey bee nest.
There's a bee in flight in front of the post heading up to the entrance - gap between the bottom and middle gravel boards by the post.

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Get a beekeeper sorted for Monday afternoon and two arrive around half three. They carefully excavate and snip with secateurs, scoop out bees and a nice bit of comb - baguette slice shape & size - and place in a transport box.
We all stand around and wait for the unscooped and flying bees to follow the queen into the box

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The little dears decided the collection box wasn't up to their expectations after being dug out of the compost and decamped back to the compost.
Re-evicted from deeper in the dry twigs covered with a thatch of lawn mowings that had kept all the rain out, hey opted to depart for the top of an eight foot vigorous dog rose.
One stepladder and a change of transport box later they were removed from the dog rose and seemed to accept the standin plastic box, wood and ply not des-res enough I guess.

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By now it was seven in the evening, so we all went home for tea.
Regrouping at 9pm the box was full of bees with only a few stragglers lurking around the compost bay.
They've now left for a modern des-res with Andy of the local Bee Keepers Association for a village home.

From the state of the comb and eggs therein Andy reckoned they'd set up on Monday or Tuesday, I'd had the dogs leads tied to a big log a yard away on rhe previous Sunday while working on the plot, sun and shade plus out of other tenants way.

[Clive.]

Interesting fun with the bees.!!... We had a honey bees going in to the house wall cavity via two air bricks and also a hole in mortar last weekend. By observation they were not going in with any pollen load so I have gone with the idea that they were in there looting.?? They were buzzing loudly, could hear them under the dining room windowsill.! Tumbling about and squabbling madly at the entry points. This went on for 2 or 3 days and then gone.....I hope. Nothing against them but not in the house wall cavity, please....

I am aware that there was honey bee activity in the wall in a previous year, accessing from top, so I am wondering if this was a looting exercise of anything left in there.? Time tallies with swarming time of year but wondering if the heat on the wall had lead to them sniffing out some easy bounty.??

C.

[Stephen]

Well done. A good outcome, I suppose the central heating of a compost heap creates a des-res!

I guess you have already restacked the compost.

[Geoff]

Did anybody grow the courgette Coucourzelle that was free with KG a few years ago? Labelled "Packed in year ending Feb 2016". They must have been lurking in my seed box ever since but this year I have put a couple in the cold greenhouse and they have gone mad. Perhaps it is typical of an open seeded variety but the plants aren't identical, one has soft plain leaves and the other is normal harsh leaves with white marks. Quite a bit a fruit buried under all that foliage.

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