Runner bean cloche trial

These runner beans were sown in early May under a standard polythene cloche through a maize mulch, 4 weeks earlier than we normal.
The cloche has protected the young plants from the cold weather, but the slugs have taken their toll of the leaves but I think they should grow out of the damage.

The experiment does seem to be a success, we have runner bean plants established several weeks earlier than usual, but we will have to use some control methods for slugs. Luckily there is the new organic slug control pellets, Ferramol which I think could be laid under the mulch before planting.
Next year we hope to plant the seeds in early April and get germination before the beginning of May which should advance the crop by 3 or 4 weeks.

Green Manure

We have been using green manures as the main form of fertility input for three years now, below you see the plot of sweet clover which was sowed last year, It could reach up to 2m high in its second year but we've mown it down in preparation for cultivation and subsequent planting

We don,t plough here so we deep tine then rotary cultivate two or three times to incorporate all the materials and to prevent re-growth.

The main green manure we use is a humus builder which includes Clover red and white, cocksfoot grass, chicory and ryegrass. The growth last year was very good in the wet summer and so produced good root growth for the humus levels. The main problem with this mix has been the re-growth particularly of chicory see ,http://hopesayglebefarm.blogspot.com/2008/05/yet-more-wet-weather-slows-progress.html
we are waiting to see what crop growth we get now we have planted in last years green manure area before deciding which green manure crop we use this year.

Queen cell raising started

Today we did our first graft to produce queen cells, we use plastic queen cups attached to a wooden frame into which we graft our one day larvae from our chosen breeder colony.


We use a chinese grafting tool which is easy to use, the tip slips under the larva, then lifted from the donor frame and deposited in the bottom of the artificial queen cup by pushing the plunger on the other end of the tool which pushes the grub off into the cup


We put our grafts into queenless colonies which act as starter finisher hives. The cells will be removed after 7 days to use in swarm control and making increase.

Checking colonies on the OSR site

Hives on the new OSR site, further away from neighbours.
We checked the 23 colonies left on the Herefordshire oil seed rape site. All the colonies have been split and as a result are not yet showing signs of swarming. All colonies had a minimum of four frames of brood, some had as many as eight and each has two supers, some with three.
We use full depth supers which are interchangeable with brood frames, this means that we are able to put brood frames above the queen excluder and empty frames in the brood box. The advantage is, we can increase space in the brood chamber and have "queen free" brood frames and bees above the queen excluder which can be used to make nucleus hives for queen mating and increase.

We moved the three colonies left at the old site and had time to pick up enough frames of brood and bees to make two queenless colonies ready for cell raising next week.

Planting continues and spring growth

Planting is still going ahead, we have just finished the main crop onions (about 3weeks late) with the leeks and shallots still to go in on the allium part of the rotation.
As seen below some of the courgettes, marrows and squash have gone in, this is earlier than we would normally plant but the forecast seems promising so we have taken a chance on there being no late frost.

Now that the warm weather has been with us for a couple of weeks there has been some rapid growth with some crops, Jerusalem Artichokes for example have gone from nothing to this in one week. The grass is making similar rapid growth.


The broad beans are flowering, these were planted in september last year, after a period of poor growth seem to have made a reasonable recovery. That part of the south bank does have low fertility so for future years we will be growing green manure to improve growth rates.

Planting in the poly tunnel

The First batch of Aubergines were planted today, they have been grown in 3" pots in our grow room under lights for 4 weeks then hardened off in a conservatory. As they are starting to flower we decided to put them in.
We have found that a long growing season is important to get a reasonable from Aubergine as is high fertility
They are planted through a woven plastic sheet, Phormax this suppresses the weed growth but still allows water to penetrate. It has the additional advantage of being reusable, this sheet is in its fourth year.
Last year we bought some white Phormax thinking that the additional reflected light would improve growth rates. In fact the growth was half of plants grown through black and because light could penetrate there was a large amount of weed growth under the cover. That sheet is now laid between the tunnels to reflect light back into the tunnel.



Tha apples are in full flower now, about 2 to 3 weeks later than recent average, the advantage of a late flowering season is that the blooms are less likely to succumb to late frosts.

Planting continues

Beetroot and chard in trays just prior to planting out, just to the left you can see newly planted lettuce


More onions planted also beetroot and summer purple. Nicky put the last of the tunnel lettuce out yesterday. The Aubergine and Peppers are now being moved from the growing room to a conservatory.

Fennel has been planted in the tunnel and is now established and starting to grow away