Red, Ripe and Ridiculously Juicy...

Whilst most of the north of the country is recovering from the effects of the horrendous flooding that has risked the future of crops for many of our individual producing twitter friends we have been basking in the relative temperate climate with enough sun in the past week to ripen the first abundant crops of cherries and raspberries.
It's now squirrel alert time as we are well aware that the little grey bush tailed rat that frequents our street will be along to stock up on cherries if she thinks she can.  We are on watch during the day to keep her away, much helped this year by the arrival of 2 barking dogs with our new temporary neighbours who have moved in next door to bring the house into the 21st century ready for the rental market.

Tomatos are setting their second trusses so feeding routine is weekly now, beans are beginning to grab the bottom of the canes and will climb fast in the coming 10 days.  The lychee plants are growing well, on their third set of leaves and becoming much more robust in the stems, its always so interesting growing something completely new and watching how it develops.  Seeing the similarities and differences between it and other plants we grow.
Of course alongside all of this the garden is full to bursting with salad, radishes, beets, spring onions, shallots and spinach, in fact not sure i can remember the last time we went to the shops.
Our produce labels have arrived and the printing for business cards and adverts is underway this week giving our home-made quality foods a top level professional finish.  Finally in this quick round up we have started outlining the structure of our latest book based on our experience of the urban smallholding and self sufficient semi detached home but with a twist...

We have returned from the Alpine sunshine...

Time for a much needed update following our galavant around France in a super duper camper van.  Thanks VM to mum for looking after our place while we were away, she does a super job of looking after the cats, chickens, bantams and the long long list of garden chores as well as her annual job of making all our tubs and hanging baskets burst with colour with her home grown bedding plants...you see its in the genes.!
We have returned from the Alpine sunshine to hear the summer vacated the GB Isle for the two weeks with us.  So there was not much call for watering, but grass had grown like crazy, the wind had ruffled the roses beyond tidy and the fruit is splitting all over the place.
Now slow and steady is best when you have a to do list as long as your arm, so we have spent the past 4 days getting things back in order and moving on towards summer proper now it seems to have come back from it's break too.
First up, the roses needed tying in to stop the tops breaking over, likewise the grape vines which are advancing all over the south facing trellises.  The corn netting needed lifting as they are getting tall and the radishes have been thinned out.  We lost our cucumbers to the snails or slugs which is pretty unusual as our chooks deal with most of these but there must be one or two which have got behind the netting and had a good munch in our absence.
In the greenhouse we have planted out some more heritage tomatos and some chillies now the winter beetroot have all gone and sowed some ornamental grass seeds to see if we can propagate those which we have never tried before and they will be great in our garden room display for next spring.  Also we have taken stem cuttings of sage, rosemary and lavenders ready for bringing on next spring and harvested our early onions.
Finally we moved the water feature down nearer the garden room which makes an amazing soothing trickling addition to that environment.  We had built it all from recycled products 2 years ago down the far end near the bee hive for them to have constant access to fresh water, but now they have had to go we felt it was time that we gained more benefit of its relaxing properties.
News on the secret stories is good on both counts, 6 of the 9 lychee stones have germinated and are now showing first silky shiny purple leaves and the gorgeous Midnight is being a superb first mum still sitting tight on her clutch of 3 eggs under the watchful eye of the proud father Dr Horacio Abbchamp I.

Sad news was seeing the end of our urban bees.

Jub I Lee as Will I Am would have it said has left us with mixed feelings. Positive encouragement that by the age of 86 we too may be able to stand for over 4 hours in the cold and rain, then go to a late night party and follow it up next day looking fresh as a daisy when off to the formal lunch and yet a tinge of anger at the news reports of the £12million spent on the pageant when jobless and apprentice staff were left without shelter or dignity having been bussed in from Bristol to perform the role of stewards for no pay at all in the desperate hope that they might be employed for further abusive behaviour during the forthcoming Olympics...angry indeed that this government continues to feather its own nest and that of its fat cat chums at the expense of the hard working Brits.  Ok Ok stepping down now and just lugging the soapbox into the garage for rest of the day...so what did we get up to over the Jubilee extended break?

We continued our foray into freegle-land and picked up a stock of unwanted flooring planks and put them to good use making new raised beds as well as renewing some older edging.

Sad news was seeing the end of our urban bees.  We have had a hive in the garden of our semi for 3 years now and had great success with honey production as well as gaining hours of insight into bee behaviours by having constant sight of them which most beekeepers would not have as they generally have an apiary of allotment site which is not right outside their back door.  However our ethos at streetgrowers is founded in responsible growing and food production and the essence of responsible must apply to all impacts we have on the environment.  2 years ago the bees swarmed onto the rose arch in the middle of our garden, from where we gathered them into a box and passed them onto another beekeeper who has happily homed them in an allotment in Beckenham.  We re-queened the colony and they continued a happy healthy honey producing time whilst giving us high pollination rates on all our fruit and veg.  Last week the crazy spring weather caused a high number of colonies to swarm and one of those was ours again. There was as far as we could see no rhyme or reason to them swarming, we had only inspected them 2 days before and there was no sign of anything other than a happy queen and busy colony growth and production of stores, yet they went for it at 2pm on the sunniest Sunday afternoon when most of the adjoining gardens were bursting with families including children having BBQs and summer get togethers.  We smoked as hard as possible as soon as we saw them start to swirl above the hive and with the lack of wind and surprisingly without a single neighbour noticing a thing they bunched onto the top branches of a pear tree in our next door neighbours garden...currently an unused garden.  With a swift call to a beekeeper friend or two we had a swarm catcher with a very long pole on the way and imminent disaster was averted.  But it could have been so different had they chosen to bunch on the safety net of the trampoline in the graden 2 doors down, or on the apple tree of the garden backing onto us where the couple were enjoying drinks on their patio with a group of friends...

So have we been over cautious in letting them go, given we have not received a single complaint about their presence? Well I think responsible growing has to include making tough decisions for yourself and not waiting to have decisions forced upon you.  The remains of the colony have headed up to Harlow to enjoy a more rural existence and we will place our pollination fortunes in the hairy legs of the bees homed at the Woodlands trust farm 200 yards up the road.

This weeks growing update:
We have planted out our runner beans and constructed the A-frame for them to grow up, potted on the rest of the tomatos for outdoor growing into larger pots, planted out the cauliflowers and cucumbers as well as butternut and pumpkin plants which are all at 2nd leaf stage.
We have spotted our first grapes and will be taking care to support their branches as they grow, and keep the birds off them, maybe we might take in a viticulture course soon too...hmmm.

Secret news on the lychee plants is we seem to have managed to germinate 4 out of the 9 stones, no photos yet as they are still very shy.

Finally headlines from the coop: Midnight has been sitting on 2 eggs and seems to be taking the job very seriously indeed whilst the cockerel, Dr Horacio and other hen, Lady are keeping a close eye on her and becoming very protective even when we offer her food and water so we wait til they are wandering the garden first.

In secret news ...

Growing update... In response to comments received we will include updates in our blog about the planting and garden tasks that we do each week to help some of our readers and offer ideas, after all you can grow veggies even in the smallest spaces so everyone should be having a go.
This week has been a busy one, getting business accounts sorted out, signing on with local wholesalers for packaging and other items we use and keeping up with the ever changing climate that has meant a rapid growth of pot grown veg during the sunshine and protecting them again once planted out and the heavy rain hits.  Have met some great new people on the twitter community and making contact with them re farmers markets and also got some exciting plans to meet and chat with a local school about their farm and exciting learning plans.
We also had a new experience this week using Freegle, what was Freecycle, to pass on some excess supply of tomato plants.  We offered 20 in 2 batches of 10, had a massive response from people who had lost their own to their chickens, some who had not managed to germinate any this year due to ill health and many others from schools and community groups across the Borough. How heartening that so many people are a) keen to grow their own and b) watching sites like that for offers.  Anyway we decided to split the lots into 5 smaller lots and pick names out of a hat and met some really lovely happy friendly people who came to collect their prizes and each had a little chat and a story to tell as well.   Brilliant experience, you should all give it a go next time you head to the bin or the tip...think Freegle first there is bound to be a group in your area.
In secret news ... we think we might have germinated some lychee seeds...tell no one and more on that next time.
This weeks growing update:
We planted tomato plants in the greenhouse, 3 baby plum and 3 Alicante, we prefer to plant them direct into the ground in there, no grow-bag or pots and much safer on watering regularity. Courgettes have been planted out in the veggie bed. Checked the onions which are swelling nicely but storks still thick and strong so not ready yet. Constant watering of the corn and they have had a growth spurt, about 18" tall now. Prepared a new bed which we regained from under the Bantam coop (we have relocated them in the water-butt shuffle!) for shallots which were gratefully donated by a good friend and now it is time to pot on the leeks that have germinated in the greenhouse and some chilli plants that have been waiting a week too long to spread their roots.