Flowers in the fields

During lock down we have spent much longer than usual walking on our own land. In normal times, we take the dog out several times a week to different places. Not necessarily far from home, but it is nice to get out and about a bit. At the moment we are not allowed to exercise more than 1km from home. We appreciate how fortunate we are having all this space!

Purple flowers - we are not v good at plant id ;)

A bigger purple flower

Daisy

Buttercups. These are pretty in the fields, but a nightmare in the garden as they just won’t DIE and keep spreading maddly.

Burnt tip orchid (looked this one up as it is the first we have seen. Pretty!

Speedwell (maybe!)

... and something a little closer to home, roses and violets

Hop Harvest

The hops have been in a few years and all but one have failed to make it. These are the fuggles. The poor things don't do great, probably because they get swamped with weeds every year.

We are planning on making an IPA using them shortly.

In the background you can see more plants I am trying to root from cuttings. They are likely to die too as we have brown fingers ;)

Potager and weather

The weather has be APPALLING for WEEKS. I can't remember the last day we had without rain. There have been only a few in the last couple of weeks where it has been sunny even part of the day.
Our strawberries have been lining up for a bumper crop (not huge, but best ever) but quite a few of them are going mouldy before they ripen even. Boooooo. We have had quite a few though

Poppy guarding the netted strawberries.

Cloud cloud cloud

Lots of raspberries coming on, just hope there is sun soon, to make them sweet

Cherries ripening on one of the trees (big one below the house, we didn't plant it). The birds get most of them, but the few we get are tasty. This year they could do with a bit more sun for flavour.

Rhubarb very healthy

Finally planted the potatoes

Found quite a few that had grown from ones we left behind last year

We planted broad beans before the winter, not a giant harvest but v tasty with lamb (they are prepared by slow frying onion then adding spinach and sour cream along with the cooked broad beans)

Pulling the apple tree upright

Our favourite apple tree fell over in the Autumn under the weight of the apples.
Doug chopped the branches off a little while ago. We tried to push it upright by hand, but it was too wedged in place. So we got the mini digger and pulled it up with that.

This is after we had got it a tiny tiny bit more upright by hand. But not really good enough!

Only time will tell whether it will stay upright and whether it will survive the loss of branches and the twisting on it's roots.

Big litte apple tree fell down

We have two big apple trees that were here when we moved in. They both seem to fruit well every other year, one has big apples and the other has smaller ones.
There are also a number of other trees, none of which fruit so well, one is a russet and has nice apples though. It has quite a few apples this year too.
We also planted a number (4 maybe?) of apple trees a few years ago. None of them have really started fruiting yet.
Anyway the big tree with the small apples fell over under the weight of fruit it is having this year which is a BIG shame.
We are hoping to save it somewhat, by letting the apples ripen (a week or two yet till they are fully ripe) and then cutting off a huge amount of its branches so we can lighten it enough that we can push it back upright and stake it in place. It might work and we feel is worth a try.

Strimming, strimming, strimming

At this time of year, there is a never ending need to strim stuff, as the brambles and nettles are springing into life along with the various other weeds.
Doug has just done the area where the hops should hopefully grow. This is their third? forth? year and we are hoping they will spring to life a bit better than previous years. The weeds tend to overpower them, so it was good to get an early start on keeping them under control, hopefully we can keep it up and give them a chance this year.

Fruit trees and pruning

We planted a number of trees probably 3 years ago. We have been very bad since then and neglected to prune them. I finally got round to it and it wasn't very easy. Partially because they had grown all wrong and more because I have no idea what I am doing - beyond a bit of advice from the internet.

Partially what prompted me in to it was that the Brambley got blown over ages ago in a wind storm and I finally got round to inspecting it to see if it was still alive. It was!

It is now upright again and has had a rather drastic pruning to make up for the several years without. Kill or cure I suppose.

This is a cherry tree which has also got a bit out of control but seems quite happy for it. I gave it a bit less of a drastic trim

The protection we put round them to save them from the sheep hasn't turned out very well really. They get bracken and long grass inside which I think creates too damp and atmosphere round the trunk and on this tree (Red Falstaff I think) it has rotted through the trunk

You can see once I removed the protection that there is a bit of trunk left. Perhaps it can recover, I am hoping one of the little branches might start to grow up the way and take over from the original trunk. Unlikely perhaps...

I had some difficulty understanding how I should prune the trees and have ended up doing some with three branches at the same height as they seemed to have grown like that. Hopefully they can grow in to a goblet (vase?) shape. A couple I did central leader kind of anyway. It was a bit difficult having let them get so out of control. I tend to get panicked and prune too much.
Interestingly (kind of) I just read that Brambley's need pruning in a different way to lots of other apple trees because they bear fruit on the tips of branches. Must remember that!

Finishing off the bush

When we moved in this hedge was about the same height as Doug. A couple of years ago some friends came and take out the part of it in front of the main house so it wasn't bothering us that much. Now it is about three times that height - and ugly with it! The remaining bit of it interfered with our view from the temporary accommodation - and is endangering the internet line.

There are a lot of brambles tangled in with it which are VICIOUS. Doug is covered in scratches now.

But worth it - look at the view from the sofa!

Lots of waste to be burnt

Aidan visited

He was here a week, but it went by in a flash!
He did some useful things (no slackers on the farm) such as dig up the remaining potatoes and remove the wood chip mulch off the paths in the potager, making way for new.
We went for a nice walk at Payolle with some friends and their dogs. The weather was lovely and all dogs were exhausted by the end.

We went skiing a few times, lucky timing with the weather as it was perfect conditions with fresh snow and sun plus being very quiet as school holidays haven't quite started yet.

Cutting down a tree

Doug has cut down some very small trees, some of the hedge in front of the house, and cut up various fallen trees. Having planted some new fruit trees we have a number of old trees we need to take down plus we need to start cutting wood for the winter after next so we tackled a larger tree.
My mum might not approve (gender stereotyping or something...), but I am afraid of the chainsaw, and Doug is scared to let me use it too as I can be a bit accident prone so Doug does the cutting and I provide the required tools (wedges etc) at the appropriate time. Plus watching (from a safe distance) and warning if the tree is starting to fall before it should or whatever. V stressful. It all went smoothly though and it fell where Doug intended. We may tackle slightly larger than this, but don't plan to do enormous trees without professional help. Dangerous business - all the locals seem to chop trees down willy nilly, only the odd one gets squished.
There are some behind the house we need to cut before they get too big and another which may touch the electricity cables if it gets much bigger.

Tree planting

We finished planting our nee trees today. Yesterday we did four apples, today a peach, a plum and two cherries (a cooking and an eating one).

Fruit tree arrival

We ordered a Bramley apple tree from the UK, also a couple for friends and 3 other apple trees, 2 cherries, a peach and a plum.
You can't get Bramley apples in France, they cook with eating apples. Baked apple, crumble and apple pie just aren't the same without Bramley's so we really miss them. The French also seem to like apples that are less sharp and crisp than we like, we also ordered some other trees. Then as there was still room in the box we ordered the other trees too. Of course we can get those here but it worked out a bit cheaper anyway.
They are mostly just sticks at the moment, or sticks with a few little branches. They need to get growing if they are going to have any fruit.
We have been super keen and got the 4 apples planted already. Luckily the ground is quite soft at the moment as that is a lot of hole digging.

The orchard lawnmowers looking on

Surprisingly small box for ten trees

Planting a Bramley twig in the ground

Produce from the garden

Stuff in the potager is growing well, although due to the earlier cold weather and the slugs eating a lot of stuff it is behind where it should be. Quite a lot of things really aren't an impressive size.

We have had some to eat, but not much. If we were relying on it for all our veg we would be starving! 

We have had mange toute, peas, suger snap peas, broad beans, courgette flowers, onions, onion flowers, shallots and courgettes - but only a couple of each. We have had more new potatoes and should eat more soon as they are getting a bit big.

I had not eaten courgette flowers before, they are very tasty raw or cooked. We are learning lots of things about gardening. For example I didn't know courgettes have male and female flowers. You can see the tiny courgette to be on the bottom of the female flowers - the flower opens and the courgette will grow (in some cases it has to be fertilised)

These courgettes are going to be yellow - the flower hasn't opened yet

The male flowers look the same but don't have the tiny courgette

Someone told us that the male flowers could just be removed (and eaten) but I decided to look that up on the internet as it seemed a bit funny that the plant has them but doesn't need them. Apparently a lot of variety (often - or perhaps always I am not sure - F1 hybrids) don't need fertilising but some still do. 

As far as I can tell these ones in the picture need the male flowers (they are Buckingham) but the other ones we have (Early Gem F1) don't. But I can't claim to understand everything about it!

F1 Hybrids are interesting to read about too. We have bought a number of seeds F1 seeds without really knowing what they are - it seems that in some cases they can be a good thing, but not always worth it.

Most of our onions have gone to seed too, so I consulted with the internet again. Last year we planted the onions from little onion seedlings and they did well, this year we used sets (which are partially grown but dormant onion bulbs) and they went to seed. Apparently it more common for sets to go to seed than onion seedlings because onions seed in their second year and the sets are made by growing the onions late in one year then letting them go dormant over the winter then starting them growing the next. We should have chopped the flowers off as soon as they formed, but we did not. The flowers are quite tasty fried in batter.

I am sure we have learnt lots of other riveting things too!

Grass control

You might have noticed in the photo behind the bbq that the grass is getting a bit out of control. While Aidan was here we put him to work mowing the lawn - no slackers you know. He wasn't very impressed with our manual lawn mower, but it looked much better when he finished. Doug did a lot of strimming with the petrol strimmer and I did various things with shears, the scythe and the battery powered strimmer.

Thanks Aidan!

All weather gardening

We have had very varied weather here. Some days have been lovely and sunny, but there has also been SO much rain. Nearby Lourdes has been dramatically flooded, and several bits of road between Lourdes and Barège (part of the ski resort) have been washed clean away!

We haven't had anything like such dramatic effects from all the rain, although a small tree has slid down the bank behind the house and is resting on the roof. No damage done.
When it is sunny it is a bit too hot for gardening so we decided to brave the rain and get a number of things in to the potager.

Doug directing where the hops should go

The strawberries (others from seed are still tiny)

Doug rode past bareback on Owen while I was planting courgettes out!

We have had some lovely sunny days too and done a bit of gardening and moving sheep etc on them.