Last year there just wasn’t enough hours in the day to spend any real time on the vegetable growing side of things. With a day job as well as the livestock and other land management tasks taking up all of my time, it was a tough but ultimately the best decision. In the end I …
I’ll probably change my mind when summer gets here but at the moment this is definitely my favourite time of year. The first swallow arrived yesterday – only 5 days later than last year – which I’m definitely taking as a good sign even though it was only one bird so far. There is so much happening right now with …
A week of fine, dry weather which coincided with taking time off from the day job – what are the chances of that happening? This stroke of luck meant that I was able to get cracking with many jobs in the hope that preparations could be made so things don’t get out of hand like …
I’m constantly reminding myself of the good fortune in having a selection of fairly good outbuildings at my disposal. They’re generally weatherproof most of the time with power and light available so they’re perfectly usable for my needs. The problem I’ve had is that the original potting shed had collected more and more junk since we …
Continue reading ‘Final preparations before planting begins’ »
Last weekend saw some long-overdue clearing up of the raised beds and perhaps not a moment too soon as the current long-term weather forecast seems to show there will be no late spring cold snap this year. After some minor setbacks last spring with plants being slow to get started due to the usual over-eagerness to …
After some poor early results the new raised beds are looking a little more respectable these days. There has been a surprisingly low success rate with some of the seeds I’ve planted which has meant some extra later planting to fill in the gaps. This is a little annoying but I enjoy sowing seeds so …
Looking back now it seems quite some time since the return of the lapwings and curlews followed around mid-April by the swallows that nest in our barn. Seed Sowing Now that we’ve reached the first week of May I look at the results of my early seed sowing with a slight air of disappointment. A …
I realise that it’s been some time since the last blog update. This is despite a temporary and unplanned change in my employment status which, as it happens, came at a very good time with so much to do. Luckily right now it’s a blustery, showery Sunday afternoon so I can happily come inside for …
Rhubarb Forcing Both rhubarb varieties seem to be doing well – the Stockbridge Arrow is lagging slightly behind the Champagne but that may help to spread out the (limited) harvest. I don’t want to force these excessively in case the plants suffer as a result so I won’t be picking too much from each plant. …
I couldn’t help myself this morning, I spotted on Twitter that there was a one day 30% off promo code (TWITTER30) with SeedParade.co.uk (@SeedParade) so I figured I might as well give them a try this year. I’ve not used them before but they seem to have a fairly good selection (although no seed potatoes). The deal …