Veggies, or a lack of...

Do you know what the most successful thing to come out of our veg plot was last year? Raspberries... yes, not even a vegetable! We had courgette plants eaten by slugs, sweetcorn that got to about half height then turned black, and leeks that looked more like spring onions. We also had a very poor germination rate for peas and beans both attempting to start them inside and then planted straight out. Generally not our finest year.

All of that caused us to take a step back and think about what we're working with. When we converted this area of the garden the soil was in a very poor state. We dug in a lot of compost initially and have done so a little more each year, but the reality is that the ground is probably in need of some T.L.C. 

So this year we're planting no vegetables at all. We're leaving the area fallow, though instead of leaving a nice empty space to fill with weeds we've planted green manure. A couple of cycles of that followed by a healthy dose of compost or manure and fingers crossed we'll have a better success rate with whatever we decide to grow next.

While that ticks over we'll be enjoying a regular box of fresh, seasonal vegetables from a local farmer instead, and looking forward to a good harvest of fruit from our various trees. 

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Sewing the Seeds

Do you remember back in January how we wrote a post about getting on top of the garden? We'd ticked off lots of little jobs and were looking forward to what came next. Well what came next was - you guessed it - the bathroom, and we've not really been in the garden since. Our fairly sorted patio now has a toilet and sink sitting on it, and the old bath is still in the middle of the lawn!

Seed sewing time is upon us though, and regardless of the state of outside we're being hopeful and getting ourselves set up for another year of vegetable growing. We're using our conservatory as a greenhouse once more as this has worked well in the past. This year we've set up a simple set of shelves to rack up all our seedlings on, and over Easter we set about planting some veg.

So far we've sown these:

Broad Beans
Courgettes
Leeks
Peas
Pumpkins
Runner Beans
Salad Leaves
Squashes
Sweetcorn
Swiss Chard

It all sounds quite exciting when its laid out like that. We always try and grow those things that are nicest fresh, and that we eat lots of over the summer months, but this year we've expanded the list by trying to utilise every bit of space we've got, and also to pop in a few autumn and winter veggies too. Sounds like a plan to me....

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Hello Garden, it's been a while

Last year wasn't the best time for our garden. We gave it very little attention, all told. Our free weekends were mostly spent walking the hills around our Welsh home, and then we promptly upped and left for the whole Autumn. December seemed to run away with us, and now it's 2015 and it's a mess!

We've managed to put in a couple of Sunday afternoons work recently and already things are feeling better. We've been digging over what was left of our veggie patch, removing the remains of last years sunflowers, beans and spuds. Tidying up the edges and having empty beds full of freshly dug earth has made the world of difference to this area. The hens still have free reign in here too and and are enjoying digging over the freshly turned earth for us. Unfortunately we've also caught them helping themselves to the freshest tenderest parts of the purple sprouting which might be why we're not seeing any signs of shoots on that yet.

The fourth in our set of beds is still awash with little weeds and the dead remains of last years annuals - but the bulbs don't seem to care and are happily pushing through anyway.

Joe spliced in some new hazel sticks to the archway currently supporting our apple trees. Once they're big enough the two trees should be self supporting, but for now we needed to repair the damage done by high winds over the last few months, causing all of the top cross pieces to snap.

Talking of high winds, last winter we had many friends lose fence panels and kindly donate them to our wood burner cause (us included). Unfortunately they've spent the last year sitting on our patio waiting to be sorted but that's finally done and is no longer the eyesore it once was. We now have a good pile of wood ready for burning, a small pile that needs splitting into smaller pieces, and a bonfire pile of bits that are too thin to be worth the effort. We can now see most of the patio again! (Trust me in saying that this is an improvement - I don't have a "before" photo to demonstrate this).

Joe also set to our established fruit trees with some freshly sharpened secateurs, giving them a winter prune. The bird feeders have had a wash and are now back in position with fresh seed.

That sounds like a lot all listed out like that, but its only been a few hours work! Things are looking much tidier and while there are still quite a few jobs on the list it feels like we're now in a place to plan what we want to do with the space this year...

Feeling blown about...

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December in the Chicken Coop

We might have been away from home for months, but our three girls have been getting on with life very much as before. They seemed a little surprised to see us when we got back, but a few rattles on the crucial corn tin and they came over to check out what was going on as usual.

With nothing much growing at the moment they've got free reign on the vegetable patch as well as the rest of the garden, hopefully helping with a bit of fertilisation until we're ready to get the veggies growing again next year.

Its always hard to spend much time with the hens at this time of year as we're at work from dawn til dusk, and they're asleep from dusk til dawn - but popping out each morning to see how they're getting on has certainly been one of the nicer parts of getting back into our routine this week.

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