A whole load of firsts

First Cauliflower

I actually saw this for the first time this evening and I have been checking my caulis for the last few weeks and missed them, good job Nanny Southwellski and I are off to the opticians tomorrow.

Do you know who I bumped into the last time I was at the opticians?  Everyone!

We had a very special visitor to the garden on Sunday, in fact we had special visitors all weekend and I had a very able trainee poultry manager in Ed Waldren the son of some good friends who, despite allegedly not liking chickens at all spent much of his time here in the chicken run.

In fact the eggs didn't even settle in the straw before they were delivered to the kitchen.  Good job Ed!

Ed was accompanied by his younger brother Archie who ran the dogs ragged all weekend and his parents Sal and Alan and we really enjoyed them being here. 

Our other special guests were Norga and Carlos, distant relatives on Nanny Southwellski's side of the family.  They came all the way from Bolivia just to visit the garden, oh, and go to some meetings in London and Norway while they were here. 

Carlos was the Bolivian Ambassador to the UK and is now involved in a global youth project encouraging young people into business.  Now other than Ed and Archie, guests just don't get any more important than that.

French Breakfast Radishes

The other firsts include my French Breakfast radishes which are soooooooo much milder than the burn your mouth vindaloo style radishes we had earlier in the year.

I couldn't give them away!

Peppers, no really!

I'm a Cucumber, not a cactus!

In the poly tunnel it's all happening too, we have cucumbers and peppers starting to appear and the tomatoes I planted in the tunnel some 4 weeks after planting out the outdoor ones have overtaken them already.


Now I am sure there was another first today, now what was it?

Only kidding, Coco took her first proper steps today and as soon as someone shows me how to upload a video from my mobile I will put it on here!  We are all so proud of her, now to get her name down for a paper round!

Some like it hot!

Radishes

And that is exactly what these radishes are - HOT! As a child I remember sowing radishes in between the rows of cabbages and other crops that were slow growing and would eat them as soon as they had any hint of red on them.  Never gave the idea of using the leaves in salads any thought at all.

These little beauties are about 125mm long, that's 5 inches in real terms and all different shapes and sizes.  I'd like to see you package these in a neat little box Mr Tesco!

We've had a bit of help around the garden the past few days, in the shape of young Jack, the 17 year old son of a friend. He's been digging up Leylandii stumps, strimming and generally clearing the place for us and a great help its been too.  He's learnt invaluable lessons as well, such as turn the switch on the strimmer to 'ON' before trying to start it and don't let the strimmer get too close to the raspberry canes!

Nanny Southwellski bought me a new camera as an early birthday present, you may recall my old one got buried and never worked again.

Well, it's been out in the garden with me all day today and very busy its been too.

I was giving Coco a swing when I saw what I thought was a leaf in the grass.  On closer inspection I saw it was in fact a moth about 35mm long with a bark like pattern on it's wings.

It didn't seem to object to having its picture taken so we took a few and left it in peace.

It wasn't there a short time ago, hopefully it hasn't been on the lunch menu for some errant blackbird.

Well short and sweet is this blog today but who knows what's going to happen in Grandpa Southwellski's garden tomorrow.

Its been a long time.......

since I was last here, Mr B dying has hit us all really hard and still we have a few moments where its still too sad for words. 

But in the garden life has continued be it plants or weeds and they are all growing at an alarming pace, especially now we have had some rain. Its odd that as a gardener I can irrigate my plot yet in some parts of Norfolk farmers aren't allowed to take water from the rivers and drains and yet we still use clean, drinking quality water to flush toilets.

We have had the best of the strawberries on the plot although the plants in the forest garden seem to be a bit behind and are just fruiting. We have noticed that in the forest garden the strawberry plants have grown taller and the fruit is larger than those in the cultivated plot.
 

Jarvis keeping watch

So much so that they have become a target for the blackbirds, I don't like to use a lot of netting in the garden in case the brids get tangled up in it although I do use it around the peas to give support and protect them.

Luckily we have our own security patrols, see left, in the shape of Jarvis and KC our two cats. They tend to be a better deterrent than netting or any of the flappy things I tie across the plot.

Brutus - as handsome as ever!

Brutus is doing well, his flock now numbers 8 since we lost a couple of hens to natural causes.

The eggs are still coming, but predicting how many we will get each day is a bit like picking the lottery numbers.  There were three today so the chooks have had a stern warning and been told if production doesn't go up there will be redundancies!

We have given the chooks a much larger run, they can wander about quite freely and in perfect safety.  I think this may be the reason the eggs production has dropped.  They get nosing about their run and forget why they are there!

Gooseberries

Cherries

Our fruit trees and bushes are looking good,
we have loads of cherries on the old tree and gooseberries on the old bush in the main garden.

The new gooseberry bushes are a little choked up by grass at the moment but its on my list.

White grapevine

We also have 4 grape vines planted in the plot and these have taken really well and throwing out lots of new growth so posts and wires will be needed pretty soon. 

We have two red grapes and two white so we will have to see how productive they are before we launch 'Chateau Southwellsi' on the wine loving public. 

Peas - the first pods!

Our peas that we started in the potting shed way back in March are now producing their first pods, we have planted some more seeds and these are now peeping through and will hopefully continue the crop for a few weeks.

We will plant another set of seeds in about three to four weeks time.

We have done repeated sowings with a number of crops by way of an experiment to see if we can gauge when we have stuff ready so that we don't get it all at once.

Radish

We learnt from experience with the lettuces not to sow too many at once as we had a whole row go to waste (although the chooks would disagree) because we couldn't eat them fast enough.

The same thing with the radishes.  I am the only one who really likes them but I just can't eat that many and I was pleased to give some away tonight to friends who visited.

I hope to get into the plot tomorrow and do some serious weeding and thinning out but we'll see what the weather has planned first.

New for the garden

Coco, Nanny Southwellski and I had a bit of a spend up today. We wanted some plants that Coco and I could grow and some herbs for the kitchen so a trip into Brandon saw us return with a load of seed packets, including Radishes, Lettuce, Beetroot, Sweet Peas, Nasturtiums and other bits and bobs.

Tomorrow, Saturday, well its today really because I am up very late (Coco is fast asleep) is going to be a busy day outside.  Nanny Southwellski and I are going to have a tidy up in the orchard before Coco and I start preparing the beds in the garden.

You will remember we found a 'treasure', well we contacted the Norfolk finds liaison officer, Erica, who said it could be a livery badge of some sort dating back to the late 1800's to early 1900's.  A friend of our, Mark the mechanic said there were Prisoner of War camps nearby and it could be a badge from a foreign uniform so we are going to investigate that too.

We must remember to take before and after pictures of the garden today so everyone can see what we are doing.

Coco and I forgot to mention that last week we saw a small bird get hit by a car and land on the road in front of us. It was still alive when we stopped and picked it up. We put it in a box with some warm bedding and some food and water because it couldn't fly. It has been living in our potting shed and can now fly up to the stool we use to sit on but that's as far as it can go so we are feeding it lots of good food and fresh water and we think it will be able to go soon. Watch this space.