cruel summer…

40 years since that Bananarama track was released – where does the time go?

It’s been raining and cool for most of July and the outlook for the next fortnight looks like more of the same. Bad news for the squashes – we’ll be lucky to get a pumpkin for Hallowe’en. Garlic and onions haven’t bulked up particularly, and whilst the dwarf french beans set well, they don’t taste very ‘beany’ – possibly due to lack of sugars rather than the variety. The early sown peas cropped well but the later sowings didn’t amount to much.

The produce in the polytunnel has performed pretty well, (tomatoes; cucumbers; peppers; Mediterranean herbs) – can’t complain there, but in the orchard, quite a few of the apple trees are exhibiting biennial bearing. No quinces at all. The stone fruit are looking good – lots of apricots, plums, gages and damsons. The cob nut harvest is looking fine – we may have something to sell through our village grocer; we have a tiny almond crop. The raspberry canes need an overhaul, but the blackberries should give us a decent yield.

Given the cool weather I can succession sow salads; rocket and leafy herbs now. This year’s jellies will be based on rowan and crab apple crops.

Some you win… quite a lot you don’t.

Reading this week: Improbable Destinies by Jonathan Lesos

grasslands…

There are about 160 species of grasses in Britain and Ireland. Until the other day, the green stuff was ‘grass’. I couldn’t identify any particular species. However, having attended a brief walk, laid on as part of the Hay Meadow Festival, I can now put the common name to a dozen or so grasses. One can do an id from just vegetative features, but as a beginner, I found that a combination of floriferous and vegetative elements makes the identification easier. Terms to get to grips with when looking at the flowerhead are pannicle; spikelet; glume; palea; lemma and awn. Vegetative elements include the stem; node; leaf blade; leaf sheath; ligule and base. Over on Youtube there are numerous, very good, videos on identification and I’ve placed an order for a second hand copy of Grasses by C E Hubbard.

This year, other than a few access pathways, the lovely OH stopped cutting the orchard and verges before the start of May. Armed with my newly acquired knowledge, I stepped out to see what we have on the holding. In no time at all, I picked out quite a few different grasses.

We are slowly knocking back some areas of the coarser grasses, by collecting and spreading yellow rattle seed, but as a diversity of grassland habitat is invaluable to invertebrates, we will be ensuring that we retain as many species as we can, whilst enabling more to appear.

Reading this week: Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything by Robert M. Hazen