KW-03 Fruit trees and bumblebees

And Germany is a very strange place

There’s one very easy way to make a gardener happy. Ask to see their collection of old gardening books. We all have them, and while you can dip into them any time and always pick up a new, or forgotten, drop of gardening wisdom, they’re mostly there for the enjoyment of having them on the shelf.

I finally got one of the piggies all lind up. This week, Brunhilda has been “emotional”. And she learned how to break out of the electric fence. She piles earth up against it with her snout until it falls over, covered in dirt. Then, they can just stroll over it. I think all the dirt-piling has also broken the electrics box. I’m at a bit of a tether-end and don’t know what to do.

Every winter, we’ll look at them, and maybe flick through the pages of a few of the older ones for the beautiful hand-drawn illustrations and to be inspired for the next spring. If we can’t actually be in the garden, at least we can be in a gardening book.

I have a good shelf full, and although some of them might be more than a little dated (I have one which recommends DDT for just about possible garden malady), they bring me much joy.

This week, I got down all the ones with substantial chapters on fruit. I was trying to see what I was missing. Every year I dig another two soft fruit beds (they take a LOT of effort, and two a year is plenty), but I was running out of ideas of what to put in them. Sure, I could stop, but I’ve always planned on having 10, and the space they are in will finally look complete with these last two. I decided on cranberries and maybe some of the less well known blackberry / raspberry crosses - boysenberries, loganberries and tummelberries sound nice. I already have a tayberry bush. What old, rare or special soft fruits do you know of that I might have forgotten?

And I had a thought. It’s a thought I don’t think anyone has really contemplated in Western Europe before. It’s hardly been cold at all this winter. I mean, it’s been pretty constantly dreich (as the Scots mighty say), and it’s all a bit unpleasant, but it’s not winter cold. I’ve been worried that the fruit trees might blossom, and then a cold snap might kill the flowers before they have pollinated, and knock out all of the tree fruits for the year. This would be bad. But, I remembered, apples also need a certain amount of chill hours - hours spent below a certain temperature. If they don’t get this dormancy, then they don’t make apples.

So I did a bit of research, and it turns out that most varieties need between 500 and 1000 chill hours, and a chill hour means an hour spent at less than 7 Celsius. So that’s between about 20 and 40 days. Ok, so we’re fine for now. But, in none of my English or Germany fruity gardenny books did it mention chill hours. It’s just not a thing that we need to think about.

I hope it stays that way.

Germany is going to make “containering” - bin diving legal. It’s about time too. I’ve been cycling up to these containers pretty regularly on Sundays for years. I can always get about 20 kilos of perfectly good veggies from here. Most of them go to the piggies as treats, but I definitely keep some for myself as well.

In world news, 100 protesters at the Lüzerath open-pit lignite mine were joined by 1000 police in riot gear. They held on until 35,000 people turned up to join them in the action. Bloody brilliant. I would have thought that “keep it in the ground” might be a bit easier to achieve in the country with the strongest Green Party, who are actually in government. But no, apparently the power of the exploiting companies is too strong even for that. It’s great to be cheered by the massive turn out of people, but if this is the end of the Green Party in Germany, that’s a bad day for our future.

And COP-28 has appointed the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company as chairperson. If last year’s COP was the nail in the coffin of joined-up political action on climate change, this was the year when they shoved that coffin into the gas-powered flames of the crematorium.

Maybe, it’s time to think differently.

But, for now, dear pirates, much love

your

Pirate Ben

xoxo

ps. If you like what I am doing, please consider sharing it to your social networks. There are over 400 of you now our little club, and we get maybe 1 or 2 shares a week. Maybe you can be one of them this week? 😊

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