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.

Tidying up the garden

It has been so wet and dull here recently :( I loathe days when there is no sunshine, I don't mind rain but gloom makes me gloomy.

 














So I decided to get outside and have a bit of a tidy up.

This bit of path is flooding so Compostman  lifted the slab and dug out a gravel filled soakaway underneath it. We also cut back all the dead plants and swept up the path.














 The lean to was in a right mess, full of all sorts of clutter. I cleaned out the double hutch and re instated Juniper the guinea pig in there for the winter as it is insulated and has a cosy cover to keep her warm. The Seramas were in there originally, but now live in the polytunnel

 I also put things away, threw things away and did a lot of recycling to make the lean to a tidy, workable space again as we do work in it out of the rain a lot.

 Much better!

 Then it was onto the chickens, I cleaned out the big girls house and put down more wood chips in the Mega Hen Pen. I also cleaned out their drinkers and feeders and topped them up with fresh food and water. I also gathered the eggs  - thank you girls :)

The Seramas live in the polytunnel now; I did have them free ranging in there in the day and shut in the Broody Arc at night but it is a bit small so I decided to move the smaller hen run and Eglu into the polytunnel so they would have a more spacious run and  the Eglu to sleep in to keep warm. Juniper also has her run in the polytunnel and so can have a run around undercover.

But first, I had to make some space!

Algy the Serama cockerel always wants to see what we are up to, he is such a friendly little chap :)

As you can see in an earlier photo the big girls are laying well but the littlees had not provided any eggs for a few days and here is why!

Someone has been creeping into this tangle of old plant to lay :)

Much tidier and now the Seramas not only have a warmer house to sleep in but a much bigger run.

I felt much happier after doing all this work :)

Getting very busy in the garden (!)

We have had a week without rain recently and the ground finally has began to dry out - it could still become very wet very fast if we get any more rain, but for now both Compostman and I decided we could get digging.

We only have leeks, parsnips, spinach and various kales left in the ground in the veg patch and it all looks a bit sad at the moment - it has been just too wet to do anything as even tidying up would involve compacting the very wet soil. So we didn't.

 But today the sun shone, the birds sang and it was glorious to be outside :)

 After lifting last years onion plastic and doing some weeding in the raised beds we got cracking barrowing leaf mould over from by the compost area to enrich the beds.

 Compostman laid out the onion plastic on the new onion bed - I had previously enriched this area with compost and lots of wood ash, before he laid down the plastic and pegged it out.

Then he planted onion sets one per hole in the plastic. I meanwhile planted potatoes in the two raised beds. One had Maris Peer and the other Vanessa - both organic seed  potatoes of course. I believe it is "traditional" to plant potatoes on Easter Day, although I can't see why as Easter can be very early or very late to be planting them?

 We stopped and had a cup of tea while sitting on the bench at the top of the wood and admired the view down into the wood,

And across into the garden and orchard.


I have lots of other veg plants growing in the polytunnel but even so it feels good to get stuff planted in the ground :)

More garden work.

More work in the garden - this time Compostman used the JCB to grub out 3 large tree stumps which have been getting in the way of scything the long grass and wildflower area by the apple trees.

This area by the garage used to be a lovely flower bed many years ago but has become infested with bindweed. As we have a greenhouse waiting to be erected there ( waiting since 2004!) we have decided to do away with the flower bed and have the greenhouse there instead. It is nice and handy for power, water etc .

I am going to dig up as many of the mature plants as I can, pick out the bindweed roots and put the plant in a large pot and see what happens. When we have decided what is going where I will plant them out but for now they can over winter in the polytunnel in pots. We have saved lots of bulbs as well.

I have also been washing pots and trays and generally having a bit of a tidy up. The major tidy up of the composting area has yet to start, though...

As you may have gathered from my recent posts, we are having a major re think of our garden and how it works. Many areas are overgrown, or infested with bindweed, other areas have over mature shrubs which need major pruning - so we are going to have a bit of a redesign to make it more easy to manage.

Hopefully it will look more beautiful, after!