A View From Inside T’Greenhouse; Hard And Far Right Flags….Innit?

A Proper Yawk Up
© Colin Cross, Going Postal 2026[/caption]

If there’s one certain way to ensure that the long awaited “summer” doesn’t last anywhere near as long as one might hope it would, it’s to make a conscious decision to mitigate against the chance of excessive heat causing damage to the plants in the greenhouse. By the middle of the week commencing 22/06 (the day before my reader got first sight of my last bi-weekly missive) temperatures inside the house, even with full vent on and both doors open to allow any cross breeze offering cooling relief (there was no breeze) had reached 45C. Although the capsicum didn’t seem to mind too much, everything else was starting to look a little droopy. The B&M department, acting on a little subtle prodding from the head of digging, weeding and potting on, set about utilising the frost protection fleeces as “shade sails” which managed to reduce the temperature slightly, whilst, and probably more importantly, blocking out much of the harshness of  the midday sun. It was a start, but there was more innovation to come.

In something of a break from tradition, I decided, rather than taking the easy route of letting nature take its course (the rough gardeners preferred option) that I’d do some research (Duck AI) into how to try and ensure we got the best out of the three squash plants in terms of fruit production (odd to think that all gourds are fruits). Apparently the best way to stimulate flower growth is to remove the majority of the large earlier produced leaves, which block light from the plants, thereby slowing the process of photosynthesis. Following the instruction, as you can see, we await the results. Whether or no I continue to use t’interweb to educate myself in such matters is another thing completely. To be perfectly honest I’d even forgotten that the word photosynthesis existed, never mind what it’s capable of doing!

I must have mentioned this in the past, but this particular strain of tomato (there are two such plants) is grown from seed that I brought back from a holiday in Greece back in 2019. I’ve always nurtured the belief that they’d acclimatise over time and become an “English” tomato. They are susceptible to blossom end rot, so I try to knock flower heads off as soon as I can after the fruit’s formed. Another thing they’re prone to is “doubling up, which takes some explaining, but I’ve posted a picture of an example of this in the past. Two become one, you might say. Come August, all things being equal, there’ll be another example of the phenomenon. A nice tomato, very fleshy, naturally sweet and low on seed.

Plenty of peppers are now starting to form and all the plants that have fruited seem to be healthy. The feeding and watering regime is a new innovation for this season and peculiar to itself. I give them “plain” water once a week, the other two times they get a drink are on Monday mornings, when they get a couple of pints of nettle/seaweed solution and on Thursdays when the get a lesser dose than the tomatoes of the organic tomato feed. It seems to be doing the job and, so long as I can remember and I’m still capable, I’ll try to follow a broadly similar regime going forward. Everything else gets nettle on a Monday, in varying amounts, but I’m far from sure that it’s the right thing for the strawberries, which, after some early optimism, have been poor this year so far. I suppose I should look it up.

Not the greatest picture, nor have I really captured Burts’ best side, but the broad beans (first time in their new spot) seem to be doing okay and, after far too long, a couple of the eighteen or more climbing beans that I’ve planted are showing signs of life (though after the recent wind and rain I’m not too optimistic. Not quite a formulated plan yet, but I may move the climbing beans back inside next year (I’ve given up on runners), get some borlotti seed, as I’ve had some success with them in the past, and put the butternut squash in this bed, as they may well do okay outside. If we go to growing spuds in bags (another half formed idea) then there’ll be room for more broad beans alongside the peas. If things don’t change, then they’ll stay the same, as the old saying goes (if it even is an old saying).

Carrying on from the shading of the central area of the greenhouse and having installed a rudimentary sprinkler system over the outside growing area, and having several of the old aluminium pipes with attached sprinklers still to hand, the B&M department (here they can be seen applying finishing touches) decided to see if we could get something similar going in the greenhouse. Up until now I’ve mostly given the plants a “refresh” using the shower setting on the hose gun, but it’s always been far from the most effective way of doing the job, both in terms of water used and getting it in the right areas. Following a couple of trial runs to ensure optimum siting for best coverage the pipe was fixed into place on Thursday the 25th of June. It does a grand job, but we’ve only needed to use it once, because the sun disappeared from the sky on the 28th and we’ve hardly seen it since. If I didn’t have the shades to blame for the poor weather, then I’d always have the sprinkle, as back up.

I can’t be 100% certain that these are San Marzano, mainly because I didn’t bother to label them at planting and I have two other plum varieties (don’t ask their names) on the go, but if they are they seem to be fairing a little better than they did last year, when they struggled to ripen before deciding that they’d had enough and began to “wrinkle”. I was disappointed and blamed the seed, which I’d bought in, but the leaves look much healthier this time around and I fancy we might have a decent crop, whatever breed they are. the “nipple” hints at Marzano, but I suppose I’ll know soon enough. Maybe they just needed a season to acclimatise.

There were no surprises when I took up the first potato top. The weather, which has been changeable, to say the least, has been far too wet for over longish spells to give me much hope of a decent crop of nicely shaped spuds with decent soft skins. To be fair they taste okay, but they aren’t lending themselves to “eating with the eyes”. I don’t remember (it’s my age) but I believe these to be Rocket. I’ve since lifted a couple of tops of Charlotte and although they haven’t cropped brilliantly, they were in better condition than this first feed. If Global Warming’s to blame, rather than just the vagaries of weather patterns oop here in’t northern hinterlands, then net zero can’t come quick enough!

Several attempts attempted and several failures later, I’d all but given up on being able to get a new vine going (it’s for the son of a friend who lives in Norway) but on cutting back the leaves of the squash plants I came across these two baby vines which must have self seeded, the squashes having been planted underneath the older of the two vines. I carefully dug them up, making sure to get all of the root and potted them in a mix of compost and sandy soil, with a few pebbles in the bottom for drainage. A week on and, as of today, the larger one of the two seems to be doing well and adapting to it’s new home. The chap in Norway has a heated greenhouse of the highest quality and is successfully growing tomatoes and peppers, so the next time he comes over by ferry he’ll have this to take back with him. I doubt he’d get away with taking it on a plane!

It was only a couple of weeks ago that “left wing” people, some of them politicians, charities (Hate Not Hope call the people behind the group”hardened and extreme far right activists”) “community spokespersons” and media “personalities”, were getting on their high horses about the displaying of the Flag Of St George by a group called “Raise The Colours”. The group, which had formed (according to the blurb) to promote “Anglocentric patriotism and national pride”, following a sustained period of anti-white/English racism emanating from pockets of government (both central and regional) and a growing sense of injustice that had been exacerbated by “two tier policing” and a Judiciary minded to treat “white” people more harshly than some others when it came to sentencing. I don’t think I need to provide examples, because they’re all too common.

The people objecting, most of them busybodies and “woke” apparatchiks with far too much time on their hands, claimed that displaying the flag, far from being an example of national pride, might be deemed as both offensive and threatening to some of our more recently arrived and hence less patriotic neighbours. As those of a certain persuasion often do, their irrational claims soon descended into outright hysteria and, almost before we knew it, the “raising of the English Flag” (St. George was Armenian, doncha know) was claimed to be motivated by everything from “hard and far-right Nazism” to “Islamophobia”, “Trans hate”, “white supremacy” and even plain old common or garden “racism”. Some councils, acting on the demands of panty wetting, pearl clutching talking heads even went so far as to make it as difficult as possible to display a flag of any kind, but especially the two flags most beloved of our nation, without permission.

Now the Flag of St. George is everywhere. You see it hanging from balconies in our towns and cities, adorning walls in tiny northern villages, painted on the faces of both children and adults, printed on millions of shirts, worn as a cape by thousands of happy and optimistic people and emblazoned on our tellybox screens for all to see. Why? because it’s FIFA World Cup Time and this flag, which only a short time ago was a symbol of hatred, bigotry and societal division is now, somewhat ironically, the sign of national pride it always was. Pride in our diverse football team, pride in it’s equally diverse support base (although, I have to admit the support base IS mostly hideously white) and, by extension, pride in our country as a whole.

The strange thing is that once the football’s over, whether we win the World Cup or not (we’ve hardly had a better opportunity) those of us who want to see a fair system of governance, where the borders are properly managed, where foreign criminals are deported and where illegal immigrants who clearly aren’t refugees aren’t given an easy route to citizenship, where the law is applied equally to all and where those who’ve contributed to society aren’t pushed to the back of the queue at the expense of those clearly gaming the system will, if we dare to display our national flag for a day or two longer than a council jobsworth deems acceptable, become “hard and far right Nazis” again. It’s a funny old world, and no mistake.
 

© Colin Cross 2026