Shoots and leaves...
The whims and woes, highs and lows, of trying to grow fruit and veg in Nordic latitudes.
Peter and Tom are busy making a new shed for Tom's smithy project. It will also be used for storing machinery in the winter and maybe for sheep next year. It's versatile. Meanwhile I am entertaining Scruffy (who is being an angel) and have started cleaning out the sauna. Peter fixed the oven which was in need of some TLC and I swept out the floor and we've decided to paint it, orange. Or maybe grey. We haven't voted yet. We took Peter out for lunch at KW in Karis (located in the old cinema) as it's his birthday and he's worth it! Really nice lunch, a kind of open sandwich/bruschetta thing with lots of trimmings and then strawberries and ice-cream. In the polytunnel we have hundreds of butternut squash and pumpkins that have set on the plants. Yippeee! The watering system is working well now: it still has to be turned on and off manually but we can water almost the whole tunnel with two sprinklers in the centre of the tunnel. The growbags have to be watered manually and so do the cucumbers, lettuce etc which are in raised beds. We have picked and eaten the first cucumbers and also about one kilo of tomatoes with a lot more to follow. In the garden the first beetroot are big enough to pull (bigger than golf balls, smaller than tennis balls). The french beans are flowering. The strawberries we very disappointing this year. This evening before I watered the garden I put chicken poop fertilizer over almost everything (except the carrots because they are in a plastic tunnel but will do them another day) and except the blueberries which, apparently, prefer ericaceous feed. And, I planted a climbing rose against the front (south-facing) wall of the cabin. It's from our local nursery "Tahvoset" and it's a pale pink rose called "New Dawn" Tahvoset is virtually our next-door neighbour so I am fairly confident that the rose will survive the winter. It is labelled zone I-III which is OK as we are in zone Ib - ie one of the warmest zones in Finland. All plants sold in Finland show the hardiness according to the zones which go from I-VIII, zone VIII being in northern Lapland. To do list: - fertilize the carrots, the fruit bushes (and the saskatoons - pull up some earth around the jerusalem artichokes - pick some more strawberries - buy some ericaceous feed for the blueberries (do not use chicken poop or manure)
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