Barum's Old Fruit and Vegetable Page

This was one of the hottest summers on record, the seep hose was kept running for 1hour/day from May to October - more than ever before.

The Veg patch had a very poor year:- Carrots and Parsnips failed to germinate; Runner Beans dried up as soon as they had formed; Surprisingly, the Sweetcorn was poor, not helped by a passing beast (badger, fox or monkjack) using the clump for a bed one night.

The first year we opened to the public.

We built an Arch for the peas, and a Tower for runner beans, both from willow. Obtaining the willow was a bit different from our experience in 1996 Near the House. This form of structure had suddenly become all the rage. We trotted down to the Somerset Levels with an empty car, rolled into the Willow Farm in March and opened the boot. They looked at us strangely, and asked whether we had ordered the willow last Autumn. However, after much grovelling and explaining that I only needed enough for an arch and a bean tower, so they offered us some offshoots - £20!

I decided to swap a path with a bed to create an additional bed for the veg patch. The bed was about 90cm wide and separated the path from the garden border hedge. The bed had become a growing space for suckers from the plants in the hedge.

The path was dug up and quarried to 2 spits (60cm) deep, forming a long deep trench.

The soil from the border bed was riddled and transferred into the trench - creating the new bed.

Then the quarried rock was dumped to form the new path. It was topped with local quarry gravel.

The job took about 3 months, and accelerated the need for a hernia op!

The Undergardener continued to produce marvellous veg for the Kitchen Department (an idle department - the Head Cook prefers to spend as much time as possible in the garden, and as little as possible in Her proper place).

Nothing recorded - failure.

Vegetable production got into top gear, with great success: the Sweet corn grew 2m high, and we found that onions planted in the Autumn produced a better crop as it was harvested before being clobbered by mildew.

The Veg Patch, having been used as the bonfire base, providing a rich source of Potassium (an element that is leached very quickly out of this soil). I started with plants familiar to me, but found the following differences:

• Plants began to droop after 2 weeks without rain (seep hose to the rescue).
• Runner beans were not killed off by the frost - rather they just give up producing fruit towards the end of September.
• Onions did very well, but suffered from mildew - the veg patch is very well protected from wind.
• Brassicas form reasonable heads -but only after developing a 30cm trunk.
• Garlic does very well, it can be planted in the autumn, and has never failed to survive the winter.
• Sweet corn is very reliable.
• Root-crops give good yields in the light warm soil.

The Fruit cage was planted out with a Victoria Plum and 3 types of Raspberry ('Glen Clova' (early), 'Malling Admiral' (mid season) and 'Autumn Bliss' (late)).

The area was cleared by breaking up the fruit cage, piling the chicken wire into a trailer and taking it to the dump. This exposed an open area that was used as the bonfire site to get rid of all the "prunings" being generated in the rest of the garden.

The area was divided into 6 individual beds each about 1.2 m by 6m. I had started using this method at the previous garden, where I had noticed that as seeds are sown, paths are formed between the rows as one walks between the rows - so why not make these paths permanent.

Each bed was edged with concrete path edging slabs.

The soil on the paths was transferred onto the beds, to increased the depth of the soil by some 10cm (every millimetre is important here).  Another 10cm was achieved by adding a load of compost - from a man that hawks it round the streets from a local mushroom farm.

The paths were surfaced with the remnants of an internal house wall, crushed with a big hammer (used the son as a slave for this task).

We then built a small 'Fruit Cage'.  This was instantly claimed for the Vegetable Patch, just in case greedy eyes found a use for it.

This year we bought the garden (the house came free). The obvious place for the veg patch was an area about 5m square. This was covered by a collapsed fruit cage. The only fruit was some raspberries and wild blackberries (brambles with huge thorns). It was just possible to force a route to this area.