It’s shaping up to have been a pretty good year at The Secret Acre, despite the very dry weather.
Where crops simply failed in last year’s unseasonable rain, at least the gardener has the chance to water things, especially, if like us, you live in a well-managed area like Severn Tent Water, which rarely needs a hosepipe ban.
So most things are back to growing reasonably well, even if the fruits are a bit undersized from the lack of rain.
Continue reading
As I write this, the UK is being battered by the second named storm this winter. Already ground sodden all last spring has returned almost instantaneously. It never really went away.
The year has basically been too cold and too wet. In record breaking amounts thanks to climate change, and the moving, possibly collapsing Gulf Stream.
England has suffered its second worst harvest on record because of the weather. If you think the damage from growing number of storms and floods in bad, just wait until we hit global food shortages.
Continue reading
It’s been a difficult year for plants and wildlife suffering the stuck weather systems of climate change. A worry for the extremes to come.
Continue reading
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.
Continue reading
As the September harvest with its late summer sunshine gave away to increasingly damp and cool autumnal weather, we gathered in the last of the crops at The Secret Acre and started clearing down the veg beds.
Here are a few pictures from October and early November’s gradual decent into autumn.
Continue reading
Here’s our quick pictorial look at some of September’s harvest season action at The Secret Acre.
As is so often the case now under climate change, awful August gave way to warmer days again in September, as soon as the school had gone back (September was second warmest on record for the UK), before autumn could return again properly in October.
In the garden, flowers, fruit and veg all continued in abundance as we moved into this harvest festival and apple pressing season.
Continue reading
After a slow spring start, and flaming June, July saw the traditional arrival of glut on the Secret Acre veg patch.
Here are some picture from July as cabbages, onions, garlic, field beans, sugar snap peas, cauliflower, fennel, courgettes, tomatoes, purple French beans, apples from our very early Beauty of Bath variety, and more, all arrived in a bountiful rush.
Meanwhile, our newly created asparagus bed seems to be settling in, while gliders from the nearby airfield silently ploughed their way through the summer skies over the gardener’s head.
Continue reading
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.
Continue reading
Last month saw some of our final summer harvest pickings as the decent into autumn gathered pace.
It’s been a long lockdown summer in the garden.
From the early broad beans, onions and garlic, through the traditional gluts, and welcome summer helpers.
Here’s another pictorial roundup of the final action. Continue reading
The arrival of spring has heralded the completion of some of this year’s winter jobs at The Secret Acre ready for the growing season ahead.
Long term followers of our blog will know that saving the overgrown greenhouse from oblivion was pretty much the very first job, a three day long battle, which we urgently undertook when moving into the property.
Although the subsequent reglazing then went on to take several years longer than anticipated! Continue reading
The Secret Acre 