Chicken Supreme

It's been an interesting two or three weeks. I've been into hospital and had my hernia repair and am on the road to recovery. Unfortunately I can't lift much for the time being which leads to some odd looks in shops when Denise is humping the heavy stuff around.

The garlic we planted is coming on well. I was a bit worried the sharp frost in the middle of last week would kill off the shoots but they seem to have taken it in their stride. We planted the raspberry canes yesterday but today saw the arrival of Florence, Cindy and Mary. we collected them from the 'Little Hen Rescue Centre' near Norwich and by the time we were home Cindy had laid an egg. They seem to be settling in well despite Florence managing to escape during transfer to her new house and spending an hour wandering around the garden. Why she would want to avoid such expensive luxury accommodation is beyond me.

I'm alive

I'm alive. I expect most of you knew that really, but I haven't posted for ages.

We spent some time in the garden this afternoon because the sun actually decided to shine at last. Denise dug another piece of the garden over to use for vegetables while I built our new chicken coop(Pictures attached). Yes we've decided to get some chickens, we're becoming more like Tom & Barbara every day. As well as hopefully getting lots of eggs I'm told that their droppings are good for the garden.

We're going to order our seeds, onion sets and potatoes tonight so we'll be able to put them in in much better time this year. Having said that I'm due for a hernia operation next Saturday so hopefully that won't interfere too much. I've been postponed twice already hopefully it will go ahead this time.

We already planted some garlic. The instructions suggested not planting in waterlogged soil so we planted them appropriately but it rained for about five days solid after that. Maybe they'll be OK. Looking forward to our first asparagus spears this year, it was difficult watching them grow and going to seed last year, but that's what we have to do.

Food, Glorious Food

It’s been a great month. We’ve had masses of French Beans and Mange-tout. Just how many more recipes can we find for green beans?
There has also been a good supply of radishes and spring onions, but the tomatoes are slow to ripen. The freezer is bursting at the seams with runner beans.
Yesterday I harvested all the onions and they are laid out to dry. It’s a good job we put them under cover because it rained half the night.
It’s been an absolute joy to see the vegetable plot full of greenery and the crops growing since we had some decent amounts of rain. If the potatoes, carrots and parsnips are developing as well underground as they are above ground we should be having plenty of those as well. The leeks are doing well and with any luck when they are added to all of the other root vegetables we should be able to enjoy one of Denise’s fantastic vegetable soups in the winter, but this time made from our own crops.

The chicken project is on hold until my hernia is sorted. It must have been all that digging!

I'm singing in the rain

These are the notes I wrote about three weeks ago, but busyness, holidays and a short illness have got in the way of posting. I'll will update again soon, but suffice to say the garden is looking good.

Last night it rained like billy-o and what a blessing that was, but we can’t have picked a much worse year to start our vegetable garden. It must have been one of the hottest, driest summers for ages. We seem to have spent an interminable amount of time just watering everything to keep it alive.

Despite that things have gone pretty well. We’ve had our first salad from the garden (well most of it). We’ve had lots of French beans already, but the runner beans and peas seem a bit behind. We can’t see what’s going on with carrots and parsnips but there seems to be plenty of growth so hopefully things are going well underground. We did have a bit of a scrab about around one of the potato plants and found a few to make a salad, but the rest can wait until later because they are supposed to be main crop. The onions still look good and I can hardly wait to get at them. Tomatoes are coming along well I think, and radishes and spring onions have provided us with a few additions to salads. It’s a different story for the lettuces though because the slugs, snails or whatever it is that eats them is getting far more than we do.

We are seriously considering having two or three chickens. I know they’re not vegetables, but they will provide us with fresh eggs. You may have to call us Tom & Barbara soon!

Hello, hello, good to be back

No, I hadn't forgotten the blog. We've been away on holiday in the South of France, which was wonderful. Our daughter and son-in-law kept the garden well watered for us while we were away.

You can really see the difference when you come back after a fortnight away. The potato patch is like a forest. The runner beans are close to the top of their wigwams, so I believe I have to start pinching the tops out soon. Parsnips and french beans are doing really well, and the carrots, peas and lettuces which I planted shortly before we went away are coming through. Onions are mostly doing very well. The only things that appear to be struggling a bit are the spring onions which are still very tiny, and the leeks which are still thinner than I expected as well as not too many of them having germinated. Some of the radishes were ready to eat as you'll see from the attached pictures. We've had a few in salads yesterday and today and they were very tasty. I expect I should be putting in some more radishes, spring onions and lettuces, indeed I probably should have done so already but with so much going on it's been hard to keep on top of it all.

I'm sure next year with the experience gained and with less groundwork to do things will progress in a more organised way.

We're almost there

What a weekend. The new shed is up. We ordered a skip in the week and spent most of Friday evening and Saturday morning breaking up old paving slabs and putting them in it along with the remains of the old shed, sundry pieces of brick and lumps of wood and anything else that wasn’t moving!
We also dug a bit more of the vegetable bed and got some peas in and a couple of small rows of chrysanthemums so we can have cut flowers in the summer and autumn. Still need to plant carrots and lettuces and should put in some more radishes and spring onions, but we’ve mostly managed everything. We’re pretty pleased with our efforts, and it should be a lot easier next year without all the garden re-arranging.
We dug around the outside of the new shed and removed as much Japanese Anenome root as we could. It seems a shame to get rid of them because they are lovely, but they are very invasive. I’m sure they will try to grow again, but I will declare war on them with contact poison as they come up. Re-planted the area with some summer bedding and planted some nasturtium seeds. They’ll brighten up the area and the leaves are excellent on salads.
We earthed up the potatoes again. They seem to have gone berserk, hopefully the end product will be good. Everything else we’ve planted seems to be doing quite well, but there’s still no sign of the parsnips. Some of the radishes should ready to eat soon. We’ll be able to have a ceremonial eating of the first fruits (vegs?).
Lawn has been cut, vegetable beds weeded apart from the two thin lines where the parsnips should come up. I don’t know what a parsnip seedling looks like so everything that’s nearby will have to stay until I’m sure one way or the other. The perennial border looks good despite having very little time spent on it. We do have half a dozen new plants to put in it but I’m not sure that will happen before we go on holiday.
We’ve bought a new plastic compost bin to replace the rotten wooden one. It needs to go where the old one was, so that’s going to require a bit of spadework.
Late on Sunday afternoon after we’d stood back and admired the look of the garden we thought we ought to give everything a good watering in. Having done that the heavens opened and we had the majority of June’s rainfall in a couple of hours.

Busy weekend........

..... but not much gardening.

It's been hectic. Ton of topsoil delivered Friday. Moved most of it on Friday evening and have earthed up the potatoes and spread the rest around. I expect we will eventually need at least another ton.

7 mile walk on Saturday followed by lunch, with 'Blisters', the church walking group . Came back and bought some canes to make a wigwam for the beans.

Sunday, church followed by putting up two wigwams for the beans and two for sweet peas which I planted seeds for at the same time. Denise has planted a few herbs. we went to the gym after that. The dwarf French beans that the grand-daughters helped plant are coming through now. No sign of the parsnips yet.

Monday morning was spent with us demolishing the old shed and taking most of it to the dump in preparation for the man coming to put up our new shed on Thursday. Our other shed is now so full of stuff you can barely move in it. Good job my bike is at the shop having a service. Looks like we're going to need a skip to get rid of the rubbish from the garden. There's still masses of digging and planting to do. If it doesn't happen soon then some stuff won't get planted. Did I mention we need a new compost bin?