An Ardeche tool

Well the exciting news is one can garden right up till just before six pm before it’s really really dark.   The not so exciting news is I have broken my favourite garden fork.   That’s Ardeche granite for you.   I was levering a dead peach tree out of the ground, found a rock, refused to yield and then heard a snap.

Poor fork. It has been a faithful tool. Given to me by my father in law in fact. A gift from way back when I had my first allotment and started gardening in earnest.

And earlier – just to make sure I really earned a long soak in the bath – I dug out two compost bins behind the potting shed.

If there was a local blacksmith, I could try and get the prong soldered on.   But I fear it might not work.

Anyway, I had managed to do stirling work before the tool failure (and even used its three prongs quite succesfully afterwards).   I’m tree planting right now.   In went the peach Red Haven which I bought from Cochet.  Â  And also two of my fruit bushes (black currant and jostaberry) that I struck from a cutting two years ago.

They were in the orchard opposite the (now) six fruit trees.   But the deer were treating them as dessert each time they plodded up the terrace.   So I knew they had to move.

First off, I had to look after the rest of the trees in the orchard.   Down I went to the first terrace and up came two barrow loads of lovely year old horse manure. Great compost, especially as it’s so light.

I pulled off the deer protective fencing, unearthed the mulch mats, filled up each tree surround with more mulch and naughtily, some slow release fertilizer,  and then put the weed proof fabric back in place.

They look happy and tidy now, and my halo is shining brightly.   Then it was on for another quick distraction.   For a long time now I’ve been trying to think of something to ‘decorate’ this orchard.   Mowing it is fine if tedious, and it beats my attempt to have a pretty path through a meadow as I did the first year.   It was a jungle and very, very messy.   So I thought of doing wildflower squares instead. I have pegged out a long oblong shape parallel to the trees and will ponder if this is the solution.   Either I could just leave this patch to sprout whatever wildflowers are extant in the soil.   Or dig up the lawn and plug plant flowers instead.

I do have an awful lot of germinated cornflowers in the potting shed. Way too many for the bank above the pool as so many of the little seeds I broadcast in October already germinated up there.

I shall let the pressure of other things decide.   It’s too cold now (minus 5C in the potting shed today at lunchtime) but soon I will be deep in seed sowing production and preparing the vegetable beds for the huge crops.   Too busy for a fussy meadow in the orchard? We shall see.

Next up was to take the orchard fruit bushes and put them up with the rest on the terrace close to the house.   It was a case of will I, wont I? Will I finally get around to weeding the entire area around these many fruit bushes and put down a good chipped mulch?  I think I shall.   The soil is soft (once it defrosts) and it will be so much easier to look after if the mulch is deep enough and I can keep things weed free. The annoying bit is that it’s so devilishly hard to mow or strim around the fruit bushes when everything is in full flow as the bushes are a bit close together.   And I don’t want to risk losing so much as a jostaberry to an errant strimmer blade; so things tend to stay messy.