Taking the plunge and covering the polytunnel

 Old cover off.

 Trench being dug to get old buried cover out and to put new cover in

Worried about the wind. This is a huge piece of polythene, so we needed it to be dead calm.

We waited three hours until there was a lull in the breeze, and then we went for it!

Cover on, corners and sides weighted down with soil in trench, we then started the pleating around the door frame at each end. This is hard work as the cover needs to be pulled as taut as possible

By the end of the day we had the cover secured, the battens fixed in place to hold the ends down and the soil backfilled in the trench enough to keep everything secure

A lot of work for just the two of us, but very satisfying

:)

Clearing out the polytunnel

I've just spent a day clearing out the polytunnel, in advance of the Great Recovering which will happen in the next week (weather permitting)

I took the opportunity to have a good clear out of 22 years of accumulated plant pots, and other gardening s related stuff

Any one local to me want some, or all of these? Plant pots large and small, multi cell trays large and small, seed trays, gravel trays, a bit dusty and most of them have been used, but are all in vgc.

I Will NOT send them to be landfilled or incinerated!

Busy in the garden

Algy the Serama. I love him, I do :)  He follows me around and sits at my feet :)

Moving the raised beds and making new ones - hard work but the end result will make Veg  Kingdom easier for me to manage I hope! Compostman did a lot of hard work to make 6 new,  2 x 3 m raised beds for me to plant up. Good job I make a lot of compost as that is a LOT of  space to fill!

Seramas settled into their new outside home for the fine weather.

I am making another new raised bed outside Veg World - so that will add another 3 x 2 m raised bed to the existing two 3 x 2 m beds in the outside growing area. Just need to fence it off from the marauding chickens!

Speaking of which ...Sweetie

Henny and Blackberry.

 Pearl.

Early April in the garden - making good use of my @GabrielAsh11 cold frame

 

Tomato plants growing well in the @GabrielAsh11 cold frame

Good for the strawberry plants as well !

Full to bursting with plants :)

it was a cool but sunny day here today

I am so busy in the garden and polytunnel at the moment I have not time to even blog a lot! I am so sorry if I have missed comments or not replied but it *is* a very busy time of the year :)  

 

Making hay while the sun shines

 Hot and sunny weather continues so...time to cut the long grass! This is what the hay /flower meadow patch looked like in full bloom back in June.

The flowers have finished and the grass is ready to cut, so Compostman got busy. He has been repairing our Allen Scythe, so to check it was working correctly before he took it into the woodland bramble patch he cut down the now finished wildflower/hay patch in the garden. Sorry but I didn't get to photo it "before".

 Sad to see it go but there is more growing elsewhere to take its place

Elsewhere in the garden, the Princes Trust roses are blooming lovely :)
 

Same I can't say the same for the veg patch which is in need of water and has suffered from my absence :(.

...although the marjoram bed is blooming lovely as well and the insects LOVE it.

I have a lot of hay to deal with - some to use in the chicken house and lots to compost. I am NOT going to use it for Juniper the Guinea Pig though as last time I did that the hay gave the piggles horrible mites which took ages to clear up.  She can eat the fresh grass :) Sadly she is all alone now as Fudge died a few weeks ago.

As for me, I am recovering and nearly well again. Thank you all for your continued good wishes, it means a lot to know you are thinking of me :) I am off to try something new tonight - will let you know more next week (maybe)

xxx

(edited to make it clearer that the hay meadow/flower patch was well and truly finished and NOT still like the top photo! )

Lammas greetings - .

So, the end of July and tomorrow is Lammas Day . The garden is in full production now and I am bringing in loads of assorted vegetables and fruits for us to enjoy.

Unfortunately the Rivers Early plum tree split under the sheer weight of plums ( again) it has done this before and we really can't think how to prevent it - the branches are not really suitable to prop up - I think a severe prune is needed.

My pumpkins are doing very well - this is Jack o lantern - should get some huge pumpkins off these plants - I have five of these and five Butternut Squash plants and all are setting fruit very well.

I am picking lots of chard and spinach and today I gathered onions, the first leeks, turnips, beetroot and courgettes - but the salads, caulis and calebrese all seem to be bolting. I guess it has just been too hot for them, even though I watered them every night. I am ppicking the brassica leaves so we will still get to eat something off them :-)

And of course I am picking tomatoes every day, and now the aubergine and pepper plants have ripe fruits to pick. Today we also harvested the last of the broad beans. Which means we are eating lots of lovely fresh produce at every meal.

Off to bake a loaf of lammas bread and walk in the wood in the dusk :)

St Patrick Day and a seedy Sunday update

Happy St Patrick's Day to you all! I am a quarter Irish, half Welsh and the other quarter is a mixture of English, Irish, Scottish and a tiny bit of Spainish ( a long way back but still a bit interesting)

As the English bit is from Cornwall, mostly,  I think I count as mainly Celtic? I look like a Celt, anyway and I always think of myself as Welsh/Irish

Anyway it gives me a reason to celebrate both St David and St Patrick's days :-)


My seeds are growing well - these are the tomato seedlings which I planted a few weeks ago, there are more, smaller ones in the heated propagators which were planted last week.

This is the Halloon I planted at the end of Febuary - it is like a spicy version of cress. Very tasty with Egg mayo on wholemeal bread!

 I stayed inside most of today and kept warm as my face is still very painful from the Sinusitis, but Compostman spent  a lot of time outside working to fix the Allen Scythe. He wants to use it to cut down some of the brush and overgrowth around where the pool used to be. As it has not been used for a couple of years it needed a bit of tlc.

The hens enjoyed hanging around near him, "just in case" anything he did produced some food. They like to stay near us and love being inside the barn/lean to.

Compostgirl is at a Guides Camp weekend near Cirencester - I hope she is having a good time! The weather yesterday (Sat) was pretty dreadful in the afternoon, apparently.

what is growing at the moment in the garden

Seeing as so many of you mentioned my Snowdrops, I thought I would take you on a little walk around the garden and show you what is growing at the moment...

 Snowdrops along the edge of the gravel

Cassi Cat sniffing the flowers

Out on the front road and more snowdrops along our verge

Back inside our garden and I heard buzzing...and spotted this lovely bumble bee on the honeysuckle.

She was moving purposefully from flower to flower, getting valuable nectar to fill her tummy and give her energy

Leaving the bee behind, here is an old cider mill, again surrounded by Snowdrops

Corner of the garden looking out of our front boundary hedge onto the lane. More Snowdrops, and lots of Daffodils popping up now. And a Primrose in the bottom right corner.

A splendid Hellebore under a tree

 Turning away from the lane now and heading across the garden towards the veg plot and wood.

The remains of a Silver Birch carries some interesting fungi.

 More Snowdrops - it has been a really good year for them I think.

I hope you all enjoyed the look around my garden.

Mowing and growing.

I never thought I would say this at this time of year but...but we cut the grass the other day.

We have never cut the grass in Feb, before. Normally it is far too cold and wet and the grass is not growing. But this year , although the veg plot soil is still too wet to dig the ground with the grass on has dried out ( maybe due to the grass sucking up the water as it grew?) and I looked at it on Sunday and thought " that needs mowing"

So we wrapped up warm and did just that.

After a bit my back really began to ache, so Compostman took over while I put some of the grass into the compost bins and the newly empty HotBin.

It means the bulbs will be more easily seen, at least! And I have lots of lovely grass to get my compost bins nice and hot :-)

Snow!

Well, they were right! Lots of snow fell on Friday  on us, (well lots for here in the UK, at least)


We are having to keep the bird feeders stocked up - not much else for the poor things to eat at the moment.

Cassi Cat seems unbothered by the snow and came out with me as usual.

Very pretty, very cold.

Looking down into the wood - very Narnia - like.

You can see our roof is well insulated! No snow melt.

Disgusted hens - they refused to come out of the run.

Cassi looking in at the hens

Pretty.