And we say, it’s all right.
Despite the Climate Change driven drought, summer abundance arrived at The Secret Acre.
It all made for a busy July and August, along with the usual influx of willing helpers at the start of the school holidays.
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Here’s a quick pictorial catch up of how it’s going on The Secret Acre Veg Patch after our unexpected slow start to the year.
Overall, things have caught up pretty well considering our chaotic spring, and garlic, field beans, salads, strawberries and red currents are all ready to start to harvest.
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Despite our usual New Year optimism for the gardening year ahead, an unexpected combination of care duties, hospital treatment and Covid, meant that we are having a very slow start to our spring at The Secret Acre.
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It seems to us that more and more August is becoming the start of autumn in the UK under climate change. Certainly our green roof seems to think so!
In the last few years, summer heat seems to have started too early in spring, with an awful August (in time for the school holidays!) before the sun often returns again in September before a final slide into full autumn.
Nonetheless, July’s veg patch bounty continued to accelerate in August, aided by our usual school holiday influx of visitors, put to work on the growing harvest.
Here’s a few of our pics from our August at The Secret Acre.
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Here’s a quick pictorial look at some of the June’s garden action at The Secret Acre.
After a slow start, due to the weird Spring weather, June finally delivered some warm sunshine allowing the garden to burst into life.
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A lot of people made a lot of banana bread during lockdown. We made red wine and cheese. But apparently, four-time Formula 1 World Champion Sebastian Vettel completed an internship in organic farming. He is not alone of course, 1979 World Champion, Jody Scheckter, owns Laverstoke Park, a biodynamic farm in Hampshire. Continue reading
Our harvesting continued apace in July and as we headed into August, traditionally the month of gluts on the veg patch.
The start of the school summer holidays also marks the traditional influx of child labour thanks to visiting friends. Continue reading
The start of this month was Imbolc, the traditional Gaelic festival marking the beginning of spring.
It is about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, as the very first hopeful signs that life will start to return from winters grip start to emerge.
Back in May I opined about how on top of all things veg we seemed to be this year, warning that it surely couldn’t last.
And that hiccup arrived almost immediately in the form of a prolonged spell of unexpected parental care, now all fine fortunately, but leaving Emma to cope solo on the veg patch.
So the harvest we have enjoyed is all down to her hard work. Here’s a pictorial roundup of some of the action. Continue reading
The strange feeling of ‘veg bed competence’ we had at the start of May has somehow survived through to end of the month.
Surely it can’t last!
The greenhouse seedlings (pictured left) rapidly turned into a veritable garden nursery vision of plug plants demanding to be planted out against the risks of any late frosts. Continue reading
The Secret Acre 