Garden Bears' World - An Evening in the Garden

Hanley Bear is still too sad about the outcome of yesterday's Stoke City game to write a guest blog about his day in the workshop with Grizzly, so here is one from me, Sonning.

We had two very warm days earlier this week, when it was too hot in the garden for furry creatures like us, at least until after the sun had gone down.  So we waited until the evening to explore the garden.

Hanley's priority was to check that 'his' runner bean plant was still the tallest which, at that stage, it was.  And it was the first one with a flower.  However, it has now been overtaken by two of the Chomper Beans!

Growing on the other side of the path are the brassicas - kale and cabbages - which Polar has surrounded with nets to try to keep the butterflies and pigeons off, although it makes getting at them to do weeding very awkward. 

Hanley suggested us bears could crawl under the netting to do the weeding, which Polar said would be very helpful.

The vegetable garden at home is full of lots of tasty things to eat.  The broad beans are ready for picking now and we have been enjoying fresh, crunchy lettuce for weeks and weeks.   

Endon Bear has been helping Polar take cuttings for a new herb garden in the plot next to the cold frame, where there are onions and lettuces growing this year. 

He climbed up to show us where the loganberries grow.  They are rather sharp to eat fresh, which means the birds leave them alone, but we picked some for jam-making and nibbled a few of the very ripest ones.

As we came back up the path from the vegetable garden, we could see the lights on in Grizzly's workshop, where the model railway is.  Grizzly built it himself, with a little bit of help from Polar, Polar's dad and a nice man called Eric, who used to live next-door and had been a coal miner. 

There is a big wisteria near the greenhouse which the smaller bears love to climb, although I am not as nimble as them and find the branches rather smooth to hold on to.  Hanley and Endon encourage me to be brave, but I don't like to climb too high.

And anyway, I had spotted something interesting on the ground - wild strawberries!  As soon as I told the small bears, they were sliding down the wisteria trunk and running up the path to join me.

We were hungry bears after doing our running and climbing, so we ate a few straight away, then picked all the ripe ones we could find, in case Polar wanted them for making jam.

Even though it was getting quite dark, we found the ripe strawberries easily, because we could smell them, like wild bears do.  There are lots of nice smells in the garden in the evening at this time of year, especially the roses, honeysuckle, lavender and a shrub called Philadelphus.

Polar thanked us for the loganberries and said we could eat the little strawberries while we waited to see if there would be any bats flying that evening.  And there were but, unfortunately, it was too dark for Polar to get any pictures of them, so I can't show them to you.

Garden Bears' World - Allotment Update with Endon Bear

Good morning, everyone!  It's Endon Bear here, with an update on how everything is growing on Grizzly and Polar's allotment in North Staffordshire.

As you can see, the second early potatoes have now fully recovered from the setback they had when we had the late frost in May, although we think they might still be harvested later than usual this year.  They have no flowers yet.

The onions are now big enough that we can see their tops poking out of the soil, but it's not yet time to fold the leaves over or ease them out of the ground.  They will enjoy the wet weather we're due to have this coming week and hopefully get even bigger, but then we need some more dry weather to ripen them so they store well. 

The squashes and pumpkins, and the courgettes, would probably be happier with more hot and sunny weather too, as long as Polar and Grizzly keep them well-watered.  There are baby fruits on the courgettes so we might be picking the first ones to eat very soon.

Polar lifted the early garlic in the garden yesterday and the allotment garlic is almost ready for harvest as well.  We are going to have an awful lot!  We hope Polar can swap some for delicious Tiffin and Chai samosas from our friend Mrs Shug at Stoke Market.

And here are the runner bean plants, grown from our friend Chomper's seed beans - they are already a long way up their sticks and making lots of flowers.  They will be happy to have lots of rain as they drink a lot of water, although we want sunshine so the bees can pollinate the flowers, or there won't be any beans to eat.

From the top of the bean frame, I could see Grizzly digging over the last empty bed.  Polar lifted me down and showed me some potatoes they were going to plant in there, even though it is very late for starting taters.

'They are an experiment,' she explained.  'I'm not even sure what variety they are - they seem to be a hybrid between Sarpo Mira and either one of the reds or the Pink Fir Apple.  I think they grew from seeds one of our plants made a few years ago as they were growing in a bed where I hadn't planted any potatoes last year.  They kept for ages and made good roast potatoes, so we are going to plant a few we saved and see how they grow.'

How exciting!  I love garden experiments.  If they grow well and are good potatoes again, we'll have to give them a name.  Perhaps we could call them after a famous bear?

While we waited for Grizzly to finish digging his plot over, we checked the greenhouse and topped up the water reservoirs for the peppers and tomatoes - all plants us bears grew from tiny seeds back in March.  Look how big they are now!

Polar says tomatoes mustn't dry out but they also don't like to be too soggy, so we just give them enough water to last until we come back to the allotment in a couple of days. 

Like Mr Monty on Gardener's World, we do 'Feeding Friday' and give all the greenhouse plants some liquid fertiliser once a week.  We are hoping to make our own from comfrey next year, when we have transplanted some from the garden to our wildflower plot.

I was sad to see that there was still nothing growing there except a few strands of grass.  Polar said we could collect some poppy seeds in the garden and sow them, and transplant some foxgloves as well, if our seed balls didn't grow. 

'Don't give up yet, little bear!' she said.  'You never know what will come up after the rain.'

Polar said we could plant some Phycaelia there for the bees, if her seed-saving experiment worked.  Polar grows it as a green manure and usually digs it in before it flowers, but this year she and Grizzly left one patch to flower and set seed.  Most of the dead plants went onto the compost heap but she has saved some seed heads and is drying them off in the greenhouse.

I had a little nap in the sunshine while Polar and Grizzly planted the hybrid potatoes, then it was time to come home for lunch.  Before I went back to the other bears on Bear Hunt window duty, Polar said I could have a run around what she used to call the Herb Garden, as she has tidied up the rope-top edging and finally put in the corner posts.  

Polar was growing herbs and roses there but says the roses prefer richer soil then most of the herbs, so she is going to make a new herb garden in the vegetable patch where it is sunny and the ground is sandy, and plant more flowers and bulbs with the roses.

I thought this big Allium Christophii flower head was amazing - it looks like a firework!  Polar says it is a good one to grow here as it isn't too tall so doesn't get battered down when it is windy. 

She lifted me up to see the roses too.  The one in the picture is called Ferdinand Picard.  I think it is my favourite, as I like the stripy petals.

Then we picked the first few loganberries, which Polar added to some frozen apple to make crumble for tea.  There are lots more ripening, so we might make jam soon.

Happy gardening, everyone!

Match Report

Ay up, everyone!  It's Hanley Bear here and it's time for another visit to Grizzly's railway workshop and, for the first time in ages, there was a real, live football match on the radio!

Grizzly is working on a new section of track that won't link to the rest, because it will be for displaying some of his BR Southern Region units.  He's making what will look like a railway fly-over to sit them on, and the Midland Region trains for the Stoke layout will run underneath.  Endon was curious to see what he was doing.

Can anyone guess what the big ceramic thing with the metal plate on top in the corner is? It might have been made in Stoke-on-Trent but we don't have them on the railways around here.  (I'll tell you in my next post.)

Grizzly likes to run full-length main-line trains and has some of his favourites from all the different British Railways regions on shelves at the back of the workshop. 

Last week, I showed you the big station canopy he built, based on the one at Stoke.  Here it is again.

And here is the station building Grizzly has been working on, also based on Stoke-on-Trent station, although Grizzly's station had to be away from the canopy as there wasn't room for it right alongside it, so he's been building an awning to link the two instead.

It will look very realistic when there are lots of little people on the platforms and trains running through, and when there is a street scene outside the station with little cars and buses.

When it was nearly three o'clock, we put the radio on for the match.  Stoke City were away to Reading.  Although the village of Sonning where he was found is near Reading, Sonning promised to cheer for Stoke, because he is my pal.

It would have been nice to have one of Mrs Kay's famous oatcakes to eat, like we sometimes did before going to a game at the Bet365 Stadium.  

The small people who live in Grizzly's model world can get oatcakes but, because they didn't have oatcake boats in the 1950s, they have to go to a little shop, which we have called 'Mrs Mundy's Oatcakes' after Mrs Kay!

Soon the match was underway and, after only a few minutes, Reading took the lead.  I went "Booooo!" and Sonning gave me a hug, because I was upset.  Stoke are still close to the bottom of the table and can't afford to lose any games, or we might get relegated to League One.

(For non-UK pals, the English football league calls its top division The Premiership, its second division The Championship and then you have League One and League Two).

By half-time, although we did our best there had been no more goals, so we were still losing.  Polar brought us special bear-sized fruit scones with jam to cheer us up and we tucked it eagerly.

Soon, all the scones had gone and the match had started again.

Mr Tyrese Campbell and Mr James McClean both went close, but we still hadn't scored by the time 90 minutes were up, and then there were only four minutes of injury time.

And then it happened - a goal from Mr Nick Powell!  "Yaaayyy!"  At least we had got a point, but we need lots more points to be safe, so us bears will have our paws and claws crossed for an even better result in our next game.

See you back at Grizzly's railway for Stoke v Middlesborough on 27th June.