Garden Bears' World - More Autumn Gardening

 Hello everyone!  It's time for Garden Bears' World and to catch up with things in the garden and the allotment.

Last weekend, I helped Polar plant tulip bulbs in some big pots, which will brighten up our patio next spring.  The tulips won't flower until April but there are some miniature irises on top of them that should flower much earlier.

Our garlic has rooted now, which is why the cloves are starting to poke out of the soil.  When I first saw them, I thought a mouse was digging them out!  Polar says that we will plant them on the allotment very soon, apart from the ones for her friends.

Before we left the greenhouse, I checked on the rose, fig and dogwood (Cornus) cuttings we took a few weeks ago, to make sure none of them had gone rotten.  We won't know whether they have rooted until the spring but, if they do, it will be very exciting as we will be able to share them with our friends.

 

The veg patch is looking a little bit empty since the big beans came down but you can see there are still nasturtiums growing.  These have very pretty, bee-friendly flowers and you can eat the flowers and the leaves, either in salads or cooked like spinach.  They are nice stirred through pasta, like rocket, and have a similar spicy/peppery taste.  

Here are all the patio pots we put the tulips in, with some heuchera plants on top, to make them look cheerful through the winter.  We didn't have quite enough of them, so we put a golden feverfew plant in one.

I've also been to the allotment with Grizzly and Polar, where I picked the very last tomatoes that were growing in the little greenhouse.

It was time to take the beans down there too, so as Grizzly took the frame apart and Polar cut the plants up to go on the compost heap, I collected all the big pods to dry in the greenhouse, so we can give magic Chomper beans to our allotment friends.  When they have dried some more, we shell the beans out and put them in jars, and store them in a dark spot in the shed.

Before we came home, Polar cut some cauliflowers for us to have with our dinners over the weekend.  You can see how much these had grown since I checked them the week before!

The waste leaves went on the compost heap again, but there is plenty of room for more - and two more sections, so the compost can be turned and turned again to help it rot down.  We won't do that until the spring in case there are hedgehogs or other creatures hibernating under them.  Polar has found toads in the heaps at home in the past! 

I hope to be back on the allotment soon, to help plant the garlic and help prepare the ground for next year, and there are still lots of garden jobs to share with you, but goodbye from Garden Bears World for now.

Garden Bears' World - Autumn on the Allotment

 Hello everyone!  It's time for Garden Bears' World and this week, we are looking at the allotment and all the produce we are still picking in autumn.  This post shares some pictures we took a couple of weeks ago , but there will be an update soon!

Because the weather has been mild most of the time, the 'green manure' Polar sowed on some of the beds is growing well.  This is a plant called Phycelia which helps to cover the ground and keep nutrients close to the surface, and will be dug in when spring comes.

Polar and Grizzly grew some good squashes this year.  You saw some of them when we carved them for Halloween.  Polar is bringing home the rest of the little orange Potimarron ones, but the bigger Queensland Blue are stored on a shelf in the allotment shed for now, where they are dry and frost-free until they are needed for cooking.

We also grew some very good cauliflowers this year.  These are not quite ready in these pictures but look for them again in my next post.

These pretty Romanesco ones taste scrummy but also look very classy when served with Sunday dinner.  Polar cuts them in half down the middle to cook them and she and Grizzly have half each - minus what we are allowed to nibble!

When our human guardians harvest cabbages and cauliflowers, there are lots of scruffy outer leaves, which are not fit to eat, and these go on the compost heap to rot down with horse manure and non-perennial weeds.  The compost they make is then dug back into the ground to help grow more next year.  You can see that the slugs have been busy chomping the outside leaves, but the inside ones are fine. 

Look how well the wild flowers are growing in our little bear garden now!  We are all so pleased, because we love bees so much and want them to have lots of nectar all through the year.  I think we will have some lovely foxgloves and honesty flowering next spring and, hopefully, daffodils coming through before that.  Polar says she has the seeds and we can grow some giant sunflowers there in the summer too.

I'll be back at the allotment soon to show you what has happened since this visit.  Goodbye for now from me, Endon Bear, and Garden Bears' World.

Autumn Walks - Birchenwood Country Park

 Last week, we went on another short trip out with Polar and Grizzly, so we could all enjoy a walk together on a sunny day.  Although the Country Park we visited is only a couple of miles from where we live (and even closer to where Uppie is moored), Polar and Grizzly had never been there before, so nor had we.

This is the Birchenwood Country Park on the outskirts of Kidsgrove in North Staffordshire.  It's another site that used to be very industrial as there was once a colliery and iron works there, but you would never know it now.

We stayed in our Bear Bag as Polar and Grizzly made their way along a footpath across open ground between birch woods - which we guess it might have been before the colliery was there.  

Across some fields, we could see the little spire of Newchapel church, where the grave of the famous canal engineer James Brindley is.  We bears have never been to visit, although Hanley did go to a pub called The Grapes, which is just across the road, with Grizzly one evening.

Grizzly had a flask of hot chocolate in his pack, so we sat on a stile and shared it with our human guardians.

'You've muddled your hats up, little bears!' said Polar.  'Hanley's wearing a hat that belongs to Endon, Endon is wearing Sonning's warm hat and Sonning isn't wearing a hat at all!'

This was because we had got ready to go out in a hurry.  Hanley had left his Stoke City hat and scarf in the Bear Basket (he sleeps with them under his pillow - or even wearing them sometimes) and complained that his ears were cold, so Endon kindly loaned him his hat, and I gave mine to Endon for being kind.

Even though it is November, it was warm enough that I didn't get too cold without a hat.  There were even a few flowers and insects about.

Our path led down to a cycle track that runs along the route of the old Stoke-on-Trent Loop Line, a railway which ran from Kidsgrove down through the three most northerly towns of Stoke-on-Trent, all of which once had their own stations.  If it had been kept open a little while longer, it might have made a very good tram route.  

There were some super climbing trees there, so Polar lifted us out so we could scramble about on the mossy trunks and branches. 

In some places, we walked through quite a deep cutting.  There was even a little tunnel under a road, where Polar and Grizzly decided to turn around and head back to the car, following the railway path all the way.

We were allowed to do some more exploring before we came home.  Endon climbed another tree, while Hanley went to study a concrete wall which helped to support the railway cutting.

There were other paths leading away from the railway path, so we hope we will be able to come again to see where they go, especially as we found there was a big lake very near where we had parked.

We bears think there is something very special about the country parks we have visited this autumn.  They show that, even though humans can be very good at breaking things, they can also work with nature to put them right again, which is a happy thought.

Garden Bears' World - Garlic and Garbage!

 Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Garden Bears' World with me, Endon Bear.

As you can see, Polar and Grizzly have taken down the huge runner bean plants we grew from our friend Chomper's magic beans, but Polar has saved some seed pods so we will have some to grow and share next year.

We will probably start them off in loo-roll middles, like these.  These aren't for runner beans, though - they are for sweet peas!  We are a little bit late with an autumn sowing, but have saved half of the pack so we can start again in the spring if these fail, or for some later flowers if these do well.

I have put two little seeds in each tube, then covered them over with compost and firmed it down, so the little seeds are tucked in very cosy.

Finally, I put some plastic covers over the top, to keep them warm and to stop any little mice - who sometimes come into the greenhouses in the winter - from digging them out and nibbling them!

Polar and I were going to plant some garlic in the garden, until we saw what was happening to our leeks.  They have been attacked by a pest called allium leaf miner, which is a little fly that lays its eggs in leek plants.  Polar says we will have to dig them up and burn them!

'And we had better grow our garlic on the allotment,' she said.  'There are no allium family plants growing there now, so hopefully no leaf miners over-wintering nearby.'

'If we start it in modules, we can make sure it's rooted before we plant it out,' I suggested.  'Although we mustn't keep it in the greenhouse all winter, because it needs some cold weather to grow properly.'

We have four different varieties to grow this year, to see which is best.  Most of the cloves were from Solent White, which is a soft-neck variety with medium-sized cloves.  The others are all hard-neck types, which have fewer, bigger cloves per bulb.

As you can see, if it all grows we will have lots of garlic, although some of the plants are for Polar's friends to grow in their garden.

When we came in from our garden, I had an idea about the leeks, so went to talk to Hanley Bear.

'Polar says we have to burn them,' I told him.  'But I wondered if we could safely compost them, in the hot bin.'

The hot bin is a new garden gadget Polar bought this year, for making super-fast and super clean compost.  It is a very big polystyrene box which you gradually fill with a mixture of kitchen scraps, cardboard or paper and a few woodchips.  If you keep the mix right and add more regularly, it gets much hotter than a normal compost heap and will kill weed seeds, bugs and fungus.

We bears have put Hanley in charge of it, because he likes science projects.

Hanley went to check the temperature in the bin.  Although it was a cool day, the thermometer in the lid of the bin said the air inside it was at 20 degrees Centigrade.

'We have to check the temperature inside the compost,' Hanley explained.  'If it's up to 40 degrees, we can put anything organic in for composting!'

Polar helped him into the bin, holding his other thermometer, which has a spike on the bottom.  He pushed it into the compost, then climbed out and closed the lid.

A few minutes later, he checked it again.  'It's hot,' he said.  'It was nearly 30 degrees and I could feel the heat through the pads on my back paws!  But it's not hot enough to definitely kill the fly larvae.'

So Polar will have to make a small bonfire after all.  She says we might be able to grow leeks in the garden in future if we start them early, in the greenhouse, and plant them out after April but harvest them before October, so we miss the little flies' breeding cycle.  We hope so, because we like leeks.

And we can still eat any good ones that are left!