Main Garden

Today’s colour is BLUE !

Just picked our first crop off our early blueberry bush.  200g doesn’t sound a lot but I have been grazing on the bush every time I visit our potager and there are plenty of fruits left on, waiting for a little more sunshine!

A few years ago, I was given three blueberry bushes as a birthday gift off my parents – early, mid and late summer varieties.  We built 3 raised beds full of acidic soil  and planted the blueberries along with a goji  berry and lingonberry.  This year the blueberries are totally coming into their own.

Unfortunately the lingonberry didn’t survive – I think it was just too exposed for it and the goji berry is trying to take over the garden – it will need a major hacking back this autumn to contain it!

The mid and late summer blueberry bushes are heavy with unripe fruit, although a few of the berries on the mid variety are starting to change colour!

mmmm I see blueberry muffins and pancakes with blueberry sauce on the menu at Chez Bellebouche !

The day started out dark and gloomy with a thick fog hanging ominously in the air but … by 10:30 it had lifted to reveal a glorious day.

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In late 2004, after we’d signed up for this place but a little before we actually owned it, I decided that a little training in the agricultural arts was appropriate. In the November of that year I invested a little time and spent a day with the National Trust at Styal Country Park in Cheshire for a days tutelage in Hedge Laying. That day lingers long in the memory as I also got an important lesson in tool maintenance/sharpening and how to work with olde-worlde bill hooks and the like.

You’re not going to master this in a day -that undoubtedly takes a lifetime – but you can pick the rudimentary skills up with no bother. The proof of the pudding is in trying it out for real… and on your own hedge!

Fast forward to January 2006 and I decided the time was right to have a go at our own hedge. Time flies when you’re having fun and all that and three years on now it’s time to revisit.

All I can say is Wow! The sections that I’d laid had all, universally survived the cutting of the pleachers. Not a lot of new growth from the bases below where I’d laid the trees but consistently large, vigourous new vertical growth along the length of the laid down branch that was ripe for further laying.

So, I set-to, clearing out masses of unwanted growh and laying down the new growth into the densest, most unpenetrable countryside hedge.

The main section of blackthorn at the end of the garden is now totally stock-proof. We could happily remove the wire fencing from the adjacent field and the livestock (currently six non-pregnant breeding sheep) would never make it through to my Asparagus bed (1 ,2) !

The hedge had sprouted a number of runners in some places… with some roots speading a good 3M into the lawn – I’ve dug these up and removed them cleanly. I was able to rescue about a dozen small shrubs that might transplant so they’ve been moved too and we’ll see if they take.

Next update? February 2012.