Really silly gadget

This is just very appealing...click on the pond to leave food pellets for the fish.

Life goes on

The first sweet corn. Well, not quite the first, we had a couple of baby cobs in our tempura the other night but this is the first to be eaten from the cob and it was delicious. The variety was Double Standard from Realseeds and although the plants had a poor start I think we're going to have a few good meals from them. I also made a later planting of Golden Bantam which are growing strongly but the weather needs to stay good so that they will actually seed.



Like garden bloggers all over the northern hemisphere I'm going to moan and wail about late blight. In fact we've been tremendously lucky, the cold winter, dry weather and a certain amount of spraying with bouillie bordelaise, the infamous Bordeaux mixture of copper and lime which is barely permissible in organic gardening has kept symptoms at bay until now. The potato plants are all but finished anyway so on those I'll simply remove the foliage and harvest over the next few weeks. The tomatoes are still growing though, in fact, they'd started to make new growth in the last couple of weeks and were sporting a lot of flowers. All that has had to come off, they would probably not have ripened the fruit before the end of the summer anyway, and I've given them one last spray. Some of the varieties have yet to ripen a single fruit and I do so want to know how they taste.

The Latah is in full harvest now, so it's not a matter of tomato write off as in other years but it's still going to be a close run thing for the Purple Ukraine, Salt Spring Sunrise and the Scotland Yellow.



This silly bird, a European Kestrel, followed a swallow home and got trapped inside the swallow room. We've had several young kestrels practising their hunting over the farm in the last week but I didn't think they would be so silly as to go into a building. They are extremely beautiful and to be so close to a wild raptor was wonderful.

Holiday over

Well, that's it. The long summer break with Paul has been and gone and now it's just me and the cats for a few weeks more.

Summer Photo Call

Paul has been taking a lot of magnificent pictures around the farm.



This is a female broad bodied chaser, one of the many dragonflies that live around here.



The kestrel perches on the very top of the pear tree, and this is about as close as we ever get to her. She and at least two buzzards hunt across our fields. We've also seen a sparrow hawk a few times.



A Wall Brown butterfly, once plentiful, now much rarer.



The gaudy caterpillar of the Swallowtail butterfly, living on my carrot plants. We are so pleased to see these, mainly because we saw no adults to lay the eggs and because we've never had Swallowtails here before that we knew about. Continental Swallowtails aren't as fussy about their food as the British subspecies and will happily feed on carrot or parsley in the garden.



The Sooty Copper is quite a rarity, entirely new to us so we were pleased to make the identification. They are pretty little butterflies.



I think this last photo is amazing although Paul would point out that it's only pretty good, real telescopes doing a much better job. We were outside looking for shooting stars during the Perseid showers last night and Paul took a picture of a very bright planet just rising. We weren't even quite sure what it was at that point, but the moons (and a quick check on a sky map) identified it as Jupiter with the four most prominent moons, the ones first seen by Galileo, clearly visible. This is strangely thrilling, bringing astronomy home in a way I've rarely experienced it.

There are lots more really fantastic pictures on Paul's flickr stream so do take a look. Please remember that copyright is still reserved under a Creative Commons licence and if you'd like to use any of his pictures please let him know. Thanks.

Kitten Diary #9

Just a few pics of Raven chasing a piece of grass...

Eat your Lupins

This worked for Radix so I'm going to give it a try here!

I've become entranced at the thought of growing some 'edible' lupin seeds. But for some reason I can't find many suppliers of seed for cultivation, which is surprising really since they are becoming recognised as a potentially valuable new/old crop.

Can anyone direct me to commercial sources for obtaining seeds of Lupinus albus, Lupinus angustifolius, Lupinus hirsutus or Lupinus mutabilis, ideally already selected for low toxicity and high yields? Or even send me some samples? I know Chiltern Seeds are offering some but there's no indication of the provenance and I was hoping to jump straight into the sort best suited for consumption.

By the way, just in case anyone reading is wondering about the edibility of their garden lupins, please don't try them. They will make you feel quite sick.

This and that

Not really sure what to write about tonight.



It could be that I picked the first of the tomatoes on the 1st August. Sooner and better than last year but not that much earlier given the much better weather conditions. These are Latah, bought from Realseeds, taste quite nice but not exceptional. I'm looking forward to the Purple Ukraine and the Scotland Yellow which both have lots of green fruit that's nearly ripe.



The Whangaparoa Crown are making lots of babies, this is the biggest one. Looks like it might be a successful year for them.



I pulled the onions. Despite the downy mildew they're not too bad, enough for a few months at least. We're also digging the spuds and feeling extremely pleased with them. Big tubers, little or no blight or disease.



Finally spotted a Tortoiseshell butterfly, yumming up the flowers of the catmint. More butterfly pictures in my flickr set here which shows some that are new for this year and examples from previous years.



Kittens, exhausted after a long run. They are having a wonderful summer and are thoroughly charming, if murderous, little friends.

Looking forward to visitors next month, incentive to get a load of stuff done! Can't be bad.