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.

Go Girls!

We made another trip to Little Hen rescue on Sunday and collected another 6 hens to add to our flock.

It would be good to say they all got on famously from the minute the new arrivals stepped out of their crates, but that wouldn't be the truth.  In fact poor old Brutus aged about twenty years in the first hour from running around stopping fights, rounding up the ones who were wandering off.  It was hard work, this I know because as Brutus was stopping one fight I was stopping another!

But I take my hat off to the boy, he knew what he was doing and did it very well, and very calmly until one of the new hens went under the trailer at which point he just gave up and walked back to the flock.  Mr Bumble helped to shift the reluctant hen from under the trailer and got a peck for his troubles.

Two days on and I just went out to lock the coop doors and all 10 hens and Brutus are crammed into one coop and very contented noises they were making too.

Egg production is up as well we have rocketed from 2 a day to 7 a day and very nice they are as well.

On the downside I have replanted my onions at least twice now, and in the case of the poor little onion closest to the hen houses, at least a dozen times!

Nanny Southwellski suggested that we introduce the dogs to the hens and I thought she was a little premature but I followed her instructions and the dogs have developed a very healthy and wise respect for the beak.  Mr Bumble has had a couple of pecks on the noggin and that was more than enough for him.  He now keeps out of reach.

The plot is taking shape very nicely now and a handful of corn scattered in the right place means I get the grass stripped up by the chooks leaving me to turn the soil over. The sunsets have been beautiful these last few days although a bit of rain, more than the few drops we had today, would be very welcome.

Our strawberries are in and under fleece cloches now, to keep the chooks away as much as protect them from the weather. Our potatoes are also in and the runner beans that didn't get frazzled are almost ready to go out.

I ordered the middle level fruit and nut trees for the forest garden at the weekend there are some good offers out there at the moment if you look for them.  I used D T Brown, I bought my hedging, strawberries and potatoes from them and was very pleased with the quality and prompt service they provided.

I also finished the deck at the front of the potting shed so that Coco and I don't have to tiptoe across the bearers anymore and it gives us somewhere dry to stand as well. While I was doing that Coco dismantled all of my neatly stacked pots and emptied my compost all over the floor, bless her!!!!  It looked like we had been burgled.

If the good weather holds it will be more digging tomorrow.

Sky blue linen posts? oh and Forest Gardens.

That was what I thought when I opened the packages for the new linen posts, not new really, we've had them for about 5 months now.  Nanny Southwellski just couldn't settle on a final position for them.

Now when I say Sky Blue I mean SKY BLUE!! The same sort of blue you see in the sky over a Greek Island!

I had some concrete left over from the new path around the dog run and managed to get a decision from Nanny Southwellski and before you could say 'its a good drying day' the holes were dug, the post were in, uprighted and concreted!  Job done!

I only managed to get about half an hour on the garden today before it rained, bit of tidying up was all I achieved.  Coco had her friend Calypso over for a visit this afternoon so I had to do the work on my own.

I've been reading about Forest Gardens just lately in a book (Left) that Nanny Southwellski bought me, and the idea of having a productive woodland bit really appeals. When I say productive, I mean more than just fruit trees.

The basic idea, as I understand, it is to set up a stacking system where each layer of plants compliments and protects the layer below, so you have tall fruit trees over fruit bushes and dwarf varieties.  These in turn shelter herbs and veggies and finally root crops underneath all of them. By covering the soil with plants, it is protected and water loss and erosion are reduced.

Obviously there are certain plants which need plenty of light and these can be grown in clearings or as we are planning, in the veggie patch. We have decided that some of our plants such as the runner beans and strawberries will be split between the Forest Garden and the veggie patch.

We already have the woodland with well established fruit trees and a few soft fruit bushes dotted here and there which will be moved in due course to make it flow.

I particularly like the idea of nature taking a lead role in what happens and when for example as one plant finishes and dies back it feeds the next one coming through.  It being low maintenance also appeals, Nanny Southwellski will tell you I'm not brilliant at time management which is why all my posts are late in the evening.

A lovely day to be outside

It rained all day yesterday so we didn't actually manage to get outside, so Nanny Southwellski found us jobs to do indoors. Today was a completely different story with blue skies and sunshine although we didn't really get started until late in the day. You see Coco has new curtains and didn't wake up until 8.30 this morning, then there was breakfast, playtime, toast at 11.00 and then chores to do before lunch and then outside. 

Can I have a go too?

While Coco had her afternoon nap I prepared the new path around the dog run ready for concreting and put a hammock up near the apple tree.  When she woke up, Coco and I gave it a test run along with Blossom, one of our four terriers, she wasn't invited by the way. 

Mr Bumble, our Norwich Terrier just couldn't quite get onto the hammock with us.

You will remember the little bird we rescued, well he left us today and headed straight to the nearby hedge.  He wasn't flying as well as we would have liked but he found a gap and off he went so we reckon he thought he was ready.  We finally identified him as a Dunnock.

See, what you do Grandpa is......

We planted the rest of the privet hedging and started to prepare the beds for the strawberries, here you can see Coco giving them a very close examination in the potting shed.

If it stays dry tomorrow we should get the path concreted and the beds finished.

Great 'Little' Nanny Mero bought us a very special packet of seeds which we are going to plant in our 'Forest Garden'.  They are 'Forget-Me-Nots', to help remind us of Great 'Little' Nanny although everyone who knows her will tell you she will never ever be forgotten!  We all love you 'Little Nanny'.