KW-19 Back to school

and counting the greens

Happy Beltane to all. Or Walpurgisnacht if you prefer it Germanic. The two festivals are approximately the same sort of thing in that they both happen on the 1st of May, and they are both about welcoming the start of Summer, and there are fires and much merriment until very late into the night. But one of them is a celebration of the fairy folk, and the other is about burning witches. Well, I have rather a soft spot for both the spirits of the rivers and the forests, and also the crones who commune with them, so I have a rather strong preference for the former over the latter, but they are also both definitely about community and the marking of time, and I’m properly down for both of those, so let us celebrate the seasons and enjoy the brimming sense of life and being alive that they both bring.

The human eye distinguishes more shades of green than any other, and is universally recognised as the colour of fertility, nature, health and hope. There are at least 60 varieties of tree at the barracks (not counting fruit and nut trees). I believe I have counted 15 on this picture alone, and every single one of the over 300 shades of green.

Throughout April, in the garden, we are mostly trying to resist the temptation to get too ahead of ourselves. There is plenty of time, and starting things before all danger of frost has passed is mostly a false head-start. And then we wake up on the first of May, and all of a sudden we are behind in all things. Officially, traditionally, the last frosts are at the second week of May, and although it can get properly warm during the day - we had 25C (77F) yesterday - most mornings have woken up to a very light frozen mist on the mown grass.

That was until this week. And now, it really does seem that the negative degrees might have given up for a few months, and the whole of the potager needs to be tended and worked on a filled with the seeds and shoots and roots and saplings of tens of thousands of plants to nurture us until summer next year.

So far, I have sown quite a few rows of roots, but I think that was the case last week as well. The leeks are looking awesome, but far too small to photograph. I start leeks off inside, as early as anything else, and then transplant them when they look like a single, green, human hair on a Van de Graaff generator. They will now stay exactly where they are for the next 12 months, if they don’t get eaten by winter wabbits.

I put out 24 cabbage family seedlings, the first of the pumpkins, and planted the bean poles. I’ve mowed just about the entire barracks, again. All bar the orchard, which is on the dance card for today. Talking of the orchard, it is looking like the pear trees are going to be the stars of the year, and the peaches (frost bewilling). That would be lovely.

Here come the beans. Beans do benefit from a bit a of a head start, but they won’t really do much for you until it warms up anyway. These have been hiding out under bubble wrap and blankets in the polytunnel. I sow them thick because they aren’t going to be staying in the pots for long before being transplanted out - maybe each pot will fill up two poles. This is just the first sowning. There are two more trays like this, and the soya, the kidney beans, and the dwarf french beans will all be directly sown in the next couple of weeks.

So, we have planting, watering, sowing, mowing and writing. The writing is almost starting to get a little scary. The good people at the publishers are very keen to be getting on with the considerable amount of work, involving a very large number of people, which is not the “words”. I’m still in charge of the words, and they want things like lists of illustrations as well. I had an idea for the style of illustrations, a bit new, bit novel, never before seen in a gardening book (it’s not a gardening book!), that the good folks over at DK really seem to like, and the good lady in charge of putting layout together, and commissioning artists and the like is really running with. I’ll be so excited to show you in the fullness of time!

But, without the words, they are kinda shooting in the dark. And that’s on me.

So I’m working on a new sort of a timetable. I do about 45 minutes of something gardenny, and then I come inside and sit at the computer for about 45 minutes. I didn’t decide the timings, I just do some stuff until I have had enough of it, and every time, that seems to work out to be about 45 minutes. Strangely. Yoga, garden, pigs, dig, mow, write write write. In chunks of three times a quarter of an hour. I became aware of this tempo a long time before I realised that I’m working on school time. Classroom programming is 45 minutes of concerted, concentrated effort, then a context change, rinse and repeat. I wonder, do I find this programme useful because I was conditioned to it for a dozen years as a child, or is the school day actaully a genius distillation of efficiency and achievement?

I guess we will never know.

And finally:

Too much compost?

I might have gotten too good at making compost! I know. Heresy, right? There is definitely no such thing as too much compost. The ground can always be improved, and there is no upper limit to how many carbons we should be pulling out of the air and saving as delicious, nutritious composts. But here is my problem for this year: I have still not planted all of the seed potatoes because there is a pile of compost in the way - maybe 18 wheelbarrows full. I have not fully emptied the big compost heap because I’m not totally sure where to put it. I have covered the pumpkin patch 10cm deep in semi-rotted stable manure. Where I have planted the bean poles for the runner beans, I have mulched the paths between them with compost. And I haven’t sent the pigs to their summer field yet because I haven’t finished mucking out their summer house from last year, and as soon as I do that, I'm going to have to clean their winter house, and this year I was especially generous with their bedding through the cold months, so there is going to be considerably more of that crap than usual!

I still don’t think there is the possibility of “too much” compost, but if there is, we just hit it!

And damn. I am cutting this one fine today. I was miserably uninspired all weekend. Fortunately, I seem to have started Monday off in a much more creative mood. This bodes well for the week.

Have a lovely week, one and all, and take some time out of your day to go and be nice to someone,

Much pirately love

Your Loving Pirate Ben

xoxo