Fork It
In January I usually reflect on the successes and failures of the previous year and unfortunately 2012 had far more of the latter.
It was a very poor year for top fruit and the quantities of our Discovery apples were much diminished, while as for the Spartans, they were so small that a friend visiting us in September commented that he didn’t remember us having so many plum trees!
The potatoes got blight, so had to be dug up earlier than planned, to stop the blight spores getting into the soil. This resulted in a lower yield and smaller tubers and was disappointing as I had chosen varieties that had some resistance to it. I presume that the weather conditions were perfect for blight as we got it in the greenhouse for the first time and it affected the tomatoes. I was very careful with watering so that I didn’t wash the blight spores into the soil, but I will still think carefully which tomato varieties to grow this year.
The courgettes loved all the rain and romped away into so many marrow-sized monsters that I ended up leaving a dozen of them out on a table on the road with a note saying “help yourself”! Broad beans also did well, but the best thing was the sweet corn. After a few disappointing years, this year’s crop was fantastic and we enjoyed eating them smothered with butter, having been cut only 20 minutes earlier – you can’t get fresher than that!
However, I associate 2012 with furry invasions – mice, rabbits, squirrels – we had the lot! We noticed that a row of salad seedlings, started early in the greenhouse last spring, were being nibbled and Rod our gardener suggested he put down a mouse trap and bait it with chocolate. The only chocolate I had to hand was Green & Black’s – those mice have expensive tastes! – but it did the trick and eventually we got all the culprits. Apparently 2012 was a “good year” for mice, but the upside to this was that it was also a good year for little owls which eat them. I often heard one’s querulous call in our garden and was thrilled to see her (I always think of little owls as “her” as their Latin name is Athene noctua) perched on a tree one summer evening.
I don’t think little owls eat rabbits as they continued to run amok in the garden. We now have the trusty Darren on the case with his ferrets and terriers, although I fear that it is a war we shall never win. Finally squirrels proved that “squirrel-proof” may be just an ambitious marketing claim when it comes to bird feeders, as they worked out how to get at ours. I moved the seed dispenser to a place where they couldn’t climb down onto it or jump up to it and invested in a new nut feeder with closer bars, so they couldn’t squeeze through and also wired the top down after they learned how to flick it open. I am now awaiting their next move!
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