Progress (and setbacks) with raised beds at Valanec Uhel (February 2012)

Last season produced excellent potato, red onion, shallot, leek, parsnip, strawberry, pea and bean crops. The fèves proved tiresome to prepare, and tended to fall over in the wind, but the coco de paimpol were fine, and much appreciated. The rhubarb flourished, the tomatoes in the greenhouse were mixed (Berao was the best variety), the asparagus bed grew mightily (so we look forward to our first crop in April). But for some unknown reason, all cucurbitaceae struggled (indeed all 10 of my precocious melon plants died one by one), the carrots succumbed to carrot fly (at last!), the chicory came and then went without trace, the celeriac was stunted and incredibly slow to develop, and the chou rave proved inedible. It has to be said that last summer’s weather was most unusual, with total drought for 3 months followed by high humidity and no sun, before a decent autumn.

Lessons learned with the raised bed system

Pierrette and Odette hard at work 10 Feb 2012

Currently I am cleaning out the pathways and replacing the decomposed material with new linen straw. The chickens are having a field day scraping for food, before I come along and put the scrapings onto the beds as compost.

I see too that moles have been at work, digging into the bottom of the beds from the pathways. I suspect this is not a serious problem, since the beds are between 2 and 3 feet high. Their activities will be down at ground level, but it does make something of a mess. Some people lay a fine chicken wire across the base of the bed before filling it, and if one wanted to be a perfectionist this would certainly help. But it obviously cannot be done post hoc.

The pine log construction, perfected last year, has stood the test of time, and actually weathered better than my initial plank and polystyrene efforts.

Nicely weathered pine logs

But you have to allow for the normal shrinkage and expansion of the wood, and therefore make the joints big and robust. Winter has taken its toll on the earliest beds.

Vertical panels needing reinforcement

By scraping away earth in the pathways, before laying the straw, I unintentionally weakened the support the earth provided at the base of some of the polystyrene side panels. As a result the soil, which has sunk a little in the beds, has started to prise open the panels at the bottom.

This didn’t occur on my largest / tallest bed, where I built a frame with two horizontal planks. But a couple of slightly lower beds have seen the panels sagging outwards, and will need repair.

Too much pressure for light timber

It is time to start developing a new strawberry bed. The first is now 3 years old. Professional growers change their plants every year, but my friend Jean-Jacques, for many years in the trade, tells me 3 or 4 years is about right for us amateurs. Some rotation between beds will help contain infections that may develop in the soil. I brought the cijosé out of the greenhouse in November to overwinter on one of the beds and react to the cold; they will return to a renovated watering system in the greenhouse in the early Spring.

As usual,the pumpkins and their family climbed everywhere. In fact they were so prolific in one area that they took over a patch of potatoes and I never got round to harvesting these. I know one is supposed to prune them, but my experiments with the melons were anything but a success. I think I need to set aside a patch of wilder garden where the pumpkins can spread (within reason – two years ago 1 found I ended up mowing round them and this stopped excessive expansion quite radically). This year I have in mind a spot where the pumpkins might try to get into the hens’ enclosure, and the hens will certainly prune them for me.

Eureka!!

First of many - we hope ...

Hens in the Hen House – at last!

An earlier post shows the initial stages in building a coop from recycled pine logs, slates, and windows. Work ground to something of a halt between November and January – we had much rain, and Xmas to contend with. But by mid-January, the slating was done, and the coop built and painted and generally made ready with windows, a ladder, a perch, nest boxes and a galvanised poo tray.

Henhouse exterior - January 2012

All that was missing was some hens! My idea was to wait until April, when the days lengthen and temperatures rise. I started prospecting for white Sussex hens (it seemed appropriate, having grown up in Worthing – and I felt they look better than the ubiquitous brown fowl found locally).

But I had underestimated the conspiratorial capabilities of my wife and several friends! A simple birthday lunch to “try out” a local restaurant turned into a joyous celebration and a present, amongst other things, of two laying Sussex whites.

Happy Birthday banner

All is revealed ...

Arriving back home

David, Jean-Pierre, and newly baptised Pierrette & Odette

They’ve now had 10 days to find their feet in their new surroundings. No sign of eggs yet, but they are pooping for France and seem very much at home in what some consider to be a palatial henhouse. In fact it is just a 2 m2 box with two recycled windows, an awning and a small run. If I’m working nearby I let them out into the potager, and they find their way back to roost at the end of the afternoon. In due course I hope to extend the fencing so they can wander more securely during the day.

We’ve given them names – Pierrette and Odette – at the cost of seeing them as pets rather than little machines for transforming scraps into food and compost and roast meat. Does anyone have a solution for such sentimentality? Or is it just human nature?

First meal

Planning an “educational” hen house

I recall as a small child being intrigued by the hens at the bottom of my Uncle Jack’s garden in Romford. And now that the vegetable garden is in full swing, thoughts have turned to the idea of keeping a few chickens to eat the scraps, provide a regular supply of eggs and the occasional bird for the oven.

Another motivation is the pure interest involved: it appears there is more to a chicken than meets the eye. Their social hierarchies, biological cycles, “language” and habits are worth observing in themselves. One is struck by the attachment people develop to individual named birds, to the point of being unable to kill them personally (it appears we have a slaughterhouse nearby that takes care of that side of things). And I remember as a child the great pleasure of endless (and probably one-sided) conversations with them through the wire netting!

The web is full of advice about building hen houses, and I also visited the extensive chicken run of a friend in Lanvoy, and friends started lending me books on the subject. Before long I had identified some basic principles for this new project:

foxes – we often see Mr Fox crossing the nearby fields, and everyone has stories of how he got their hens. So it must be absolutely impossible for foxes and other vermin to bury beneath the walls or fences.

Update on the raised beds at Valanec Uhel (June 2011)

From very small beginnings, the vegetable garden at Valanec Uhel has grown from three concrete cold frames in 2004, followed by 3 wooden constructions in 2009 – built to solve pressing problems growing strawberries and carrots – to a total of about 19 beds today filling most of the space available.

Raised beds on 5 June 2011 at "open day"

The potager has 57 m² of earth under intensive cultivation, set within a total area of approximately 100 m² (or 150 m² counting the lawn and work areas round about). The paths therefore take up almost half of the main area. This may be smaller than the very low raised beds “on the White House lawn” (102 m²), and cannot compete with the Obamas’ 900 kg of yield, but they do have more mouths to feed and immeasurably more manpower (judging by a recent video). At the other end of the scale I have read in Anne-Marie Nageleisen’s guide to the “potager en carrés” (p.8, Ulmer, 2010) that two people can be self-sufficient in vegetables from 12 m² of raised beds. That sounds like a real challenge! 

Potager open to public on 5 June 2011

As part of an initiative by our local pressure group for sustainable development, Hanvec 21, and as part of the national event Bienvenu dans mon jardin (organised by the association Jardiniers de France), the experimental raised bed potager will be open to visitors from 10am to 6pm on Sunday 5 June 2011.

A map of how to find us, showing three other gardens open at the same time in the commune of Hanvec, is to be found here.

Latest news: the event attracted 238 registered visitors (others may have got in unrecorded!). The potager looked great (pictures by Jean-Pierre), and endless questions and suggestions …

Unusual Potato Experiment

Some uneaten potatoes from last year started germinating, uncontrollably, in our cellar last month (the temperature is constantly above 8 degrees, and therefore encourages sprouting – too warm for storing potatoes in fact). The growth of a forest of whitish blue stems, as the potatoes sprouted upwards hunting for light, was impressive and just a bit spooky.

The compost heap seemed to be their obvious destination. But we have all seen the way that bits of potato start growing in the compost heap, and out of curiosity I decided to see if the waste potatoes could be turned to good use. I laid them out gently over a bed of soil, and sprinkled a few tractor bucketfuls of a growing medium over them (compost / semi-rotted leaf mold/soil from the nearby heap at the bottom of the potager).

What will happen? Potatoes are pretty resilient vegetables, in my experience, and some might well manage to produce edible tubers. As they grow, and presumably send up stems and leaves, I’ll sprinkle more leaf mold onto them to encourage proper growth. If nothing comes of it, the whole lot can be turned over and left to compost.

And I’ve started my own version of a potato tower in the vicinity. It uses the same principle. It’s a recycled drum-shaped sieve that never worked as intended. I’ll progressively add leaf mold as the stems develop. With luck there’ll be a whole lot of new potatoes next May or June.

What is this?

Answer: close up of a tree trunk taken in Yosemete National Park, 25 April 2007.

Chablis

No, I’m not getting into wine production, although Chablis would certainly be a good place to start, and I’ve certainly thought of trying vines on our Southern slope.

A chablis is an area of trees and branches felled by the wind. In our case, the culprit was not the wind but me and my chainsaw with expert guidance and help from my friend Jean-Paul and use of his cable and my tractor.

I managed to fell five enormous branches of ash in front of the house, though they did screen the electricity pole. Ash grows at the rate of about 3 metres per annum, so new branches will soon fill the gap.

We tackled twenty ash and oak trees at the eastern end of the potager. The idea is to improve the amount of morning light when the sun gets higher in the spring and summer. That will involve felling more trees on the other side of the lane, but their owner tells me he’ll make a start before the sap begins to rise.

It took us a day and half to get it all down, but who knows how long the clearing up operation will last!  Ash makes excellent firewood, and we should be self-sufficient for another few years after this operation.

Seven Year Itch ?

Amaryllis worse for wear after a week of rain

This sad looking Hippeastrum – commonly known as Amaryllis – has suffered from a week of rain and wind in late August. However, for it to be flowering at all is something of a mystery. We were given some bulbs seven years ago, by Catherine, yoga teacher extraordinaire at the time. We had assumed they’d been eaten by mice, for they never showed any sign of life. And then suddently, voilà ! Maybe the very cold winter put an end to this bulb’s dormancy.