Compost boost

 Ooh, I've been sent what may turn out to be a rather nifty product to try out. Bio-Enzym make a range of products for the garden and first of all I'm going try out their Bio-P4 organic compost accelerator.

Now those who are familiar with my blog will know that I love making compost, that I make quite a bit of compost, in fact I make loads of compost! The reason for my composting enthusiasm has less to do with any green credentials and more to do with the soil here. Or should I say the lack of soil.

Photo from old property details

The field next to our house used to have commercial greenhouses on it, but sadly they were in a dilapidated state and so taken down by the previous owners of our smallholding. Inevitably some (a lot) of glass ended up on the ground. Then, when they were having the kitchen extension built, the sub-soil that was dug out for the foundations was put on top of the glassy grassy area. Grass and weeds grew in abundance on the field and for three to four years it was grazed by alpacas and a pony, which compacted the soil into a concrete hard base during the summer and a water-logged swampy area in the winter. I exaggerate of course, but only just.

Anyway, the lack of decent soil and the inability to get a spade into the ground to dig it over meant that I decided to create raised beds in which to grow our fruit and vegetables and to adopt a no-dig method of cultivation. But raised beds require soil and the best way to make more soil is through composting. We bought in some top soil but it's £40 a ton and it takes a ton to fill one raised bed to a 4 inch depth. I'd ideally like the beds to be about eight inches deep, so that would cost £80 per raised bed and there are twenty-two raised beds. My budget for creating the annual vegetable garden was, well, zero. So bought in top soil was not a sensible option for filling all the beds. But making my own compost was. It meant that a little top soil could be mixed with a lot of the compost to create a reasonable growing medium. 

Trying to be realistic about my capacity to make compost I've started with beds that are three to four inches deep so that I could at least start growing some food and I plan to build the depth of them year after year. I also didn't make all the raised beds in the first year, but I hope that by the end of 2017, all the raised beds will have been created.

So my composting adventure began quite soon after we moved in, I made one compost bin from three pallets that were lying around the smallholding and that was it, I was hooked on pallet compost bins. 

Since then I have built a fence made from pallets around the vegetable garden, which has made a series of compost bays. Some of the bays will also be for storage and for water collection, but most of them will be filled with compost in its varying stages of decomposition. 

At first I struggled to find enough material with which to make compost, but now that we have the poultry I have a never ending supply of woodshavings with poultry manure and the grass cuttings from the areas that could be loosely described as lawns, masses of leaves from the huge sycamore trees and of course all the green matter from the vegetable garden.

I used a fair amount of straw in the first compost heaps, but I am less convinced now that this is a very good idea. The straw has to be bought in and we have no way of knowing what chemicals were used on the crops before they were harvested and the straw cut. So I will use what is already on site, but will wait until I find a source of organic straw before buying in more for compost making.

Anyway, back to my trial of the compost accelerator, I plan to make a couple of compost heaps next to each other and try as best I can to fill them with the same proportions of materials, so that whenever we take out the kitchen compost bucket, I will divide it between the two heaps, likewise grass, woodshavings, wood chippings etc. will all be divided as equally as I can between the two heaps. Once the compost bays are filled I will use the Bio-P4 on one of the two heaps and see how it works. 

I can check the temperature and also see how well the organic matter is breaking down. Health permitting, I hope to turn the heaps at least a couple of times to add air and mix the 'ingredients' and will water them if necessary during dryer weather.

I will be honest in my assessment of this product, although I was given the product to try, I am not being paid for a review. I will give my honest opinion and as the two heaps will be next to each other, it should be fairly easy to compare the results.
You can find more information about Bio-P4 here and if you want to try it out too, I see that the product is currently half price. If you do decide to give it a go, please let me know in the comments below and we can compare our experiences with it.

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I also post vlogs daily (almost). You can find my YouTube channel here.

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Covering up

What a blessing it has felt to have such mild weather at the end of October. I have spent a part of each day this week in the garden, some days more than others, but I've enjoyed every moment that I've been outside.

A local tradesman has been applying rendering to the external wall of our bathroom this week. When we bought the house the previous owners were going to put cladding on the small extension, but as it would have been the only part of the house with cladding on it, we asked them to leave it as blockwork and agreed that we'd get it rendered. Moving in during the stormy winter months, it didn't get done for the first few months, but we were keen not to let it sit exposed to the rain and wind for a second winter. So a couple of weeks ago, I got several quotes for the job and the local plasterer completed the job this today. And it looks great!

What surprised me about the rendering task was the difference in the quotes that I received. I asked four local tradesmen for a quote for the job, each was given the same information about what we wanted done, but the quotes were wildly varying. Three of the quotes were for over £800 and the last quote was for a little over £310. Needless to say, I declined the higher quotes and saved us well over £500. Normally at this point, I would rant about why tradespeople feel it's okay to charge so much for a job when clearly it can be done for less than half the price, but I guess I must be mellowing as I don't want to waste my energy getting cross about it.

Outside I have continued to move wood chippings into the young Food Forest to cover the pathways and build up layers on the planted areas. 

 The planting beds have now had the weed suppressing membrane cut away from them, cardboard placed on the ground and composted wood chippings and topsoil put on top of the cardboard. 

 I've placed wood around the edges of two of the beds which should rot down over the next few years, but in the meantime will provide some definition and support for the wood chippings as I build up the depth of the beds.

 I also placed some sticks in the body of this planting bed, they will add to the compost in time, but it was a useful way to dispose of some of the larger twigs and sticks that we have lying around.

Then the fruit and herb plants were planted. I had intended to leave the membrane down for a couple of years and then lift it around the plants that have been planted through the membrane, but I changed my mind and decided that doing this process now would stop the plants from being disturbed after they have put down a good root system. The Food Forest area is now about 30 feet by 70 feet and I'm very pleased with how it is beginning to look.

I've started to plant the trees that we bought last week. I've put in two cherries, a plum and three apple trees and have decided where the others will be planted. The soil is so poor and the ground highly compacted, so digging the hole for each tree is taking far longer than I'd like it to. I've also discovered two self-sown plum trees, one of which I think is a mirabelle (because of where it is growing). I'm using RootGrow mycorrhizal granules on the roots in the hope that this will help the trees settle into their new places more rapidly. The trees that are planted through the membrane and have chippings around them won't have to compete with weeds, but those planted into the other parts of the paddock are at risk of being swamped by clover, thistles or stinging nettles. So I have placed cardboard around them and covered it in a deep layer of wood chippings (taking care that it isn't touching the stem).

I've also continued to build up the layers of material on the most recent raised bed in the vegetable garden. Today I have added a layer of composted straw and brewery grains which have spent the summer in a compost bay with some summer squash growing on the heap. They aren't completely rotted down yet as I can still see some of the grains and the straw, but they are mostly decomposed and can continue to break down on the raised bed. The last layer to go on to the raised bed will be some topsoil, but the heap of topsoil got very wet in the rain last week and I've found it very heavy to move, so the final layer will have to be moved little by little as I have energy or will have to wait until Mr J can help me.

Elsewhere on the smallholding, the young chickens and ducks continue to grow but the chickens have all but stopped laying. Diesel is still laying around five eggs per week, Jack stopped laying some weeks ago and is now in full moult and starting to look rather sad for herself. The Cream Legbars have also stopped laying and are just starting to moult. For the winter period we have moved the Cream Legbars back into the main chicken field so that they can sleep in the large shed with the rest of the birds. This has two advantages, that more bodies in the shed will help keep it warmer and that there will be fewer houses for me to muck out. 

The Australorps will stay in their own section of the field until they are less in number. We currently have one female and six young males in the Australorp field and over the next couple of weeks Mr J and I will decide which two we will keep for breeding and the others will be our meat birds for the next couple of months. The young female and two males will either join the flock in the main field or we will move them, together with the older female Australorp to a new site on the smallholding.

Next week we are due to have some leggy trees cut down and removed from behind the piggeries, which will give us another area that the chickens could move into. I am quite keen to let the Australorps run through the area behind the piggeries because they have proved to be excellent at clearing weeds and scrubland. In the meantime, I will spend a little time over the next few days clearing some of the debris that is behind the piggeries. I haven't really done very much in that area since we moved in and there is plenty of rubbish that needs to be taken away from the back piggery before any chickens live there. 

I am looking forward to a weekend of pottering in the garden and with luck we will have another evening like today, when I can sit outside with a cuppa and watch the sun go down.

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Plants, trees and leaves

 We are heading towards the end of our first year on the smallholding and we are taking stock of what we've achieved in the last twelve months and thinking about what we want to do over the next year.

This week I've been planting the plants, rooted cuttings, bulbs and trees that we've been given, bought or propagated so that none are sitting in pots outside the greenhouse unless that's where they will be for the next couple of years. I have a few tree seeds in pots that can stay by the greenhouse where it is light but sheltered until they are large enough to plant into their permanent positions. There are also several pots and bags of plants that I've put there with the intention of getting them into the ground, but as yet they haven't made it into the borders or field.

Several of the perennials that need to go into the perennial border have been put into a raised vegetable bed that otherwise would be empty of a crop over the winter. I've heeled in some perennials that I've divided and that I've been given and will scatter some buckwheat seeds in too, to be a green manure and ground cover over the winter. Then in early spring when I've weeded the perennial border, I will add the new plants in spaces between the existing clumps.

The perennial border has had little or no attention from me this year, other than to appreciate everything that has flowered in it, including the weeds! I've been delighted with the show of colour that we've had throughout most of the spring and summer, even the feverfew-daisy type weeds have added a welcome splash of white and yellow. The border has had different types of grains growing in it, these are from the wild bird feed that the previous owners put out for the local birdlife and as my focus has been on setting up the vegetable garden, I've left the grains to grow, enjoying the structural element that they have added to the border.

 As I started to clear some of the pernicious weeds from the border earlier this week, I noticed that the seed heads from those grains and also the herbs that I've planted look very much like a firework display hovering above the rest of the plant growth. The dill and fennel seeds with their umbilical like seed heads and the millet and oat plants offer different shapes and sounds as the wind moves through them. I take such pleasure in these simple moments of observation and appreciation and I'm glad that this pleasure hasn't lessened over the years.

I'm still gathering crops from around the smallholding to store for use over the autumn and winter. The apple trees that were here when we moved in have had varying degrees of sucess. One hasn't produced any fruit at all, but then I can't remember it having any blossom on it either. One has produced some fruit but the whole tree has black spot and the fruits do too. The third apple tree has produced some nice fruit which I have gathered and stored in the barn and the last tree's fruit is still not quite ready to pick. When I try to twist the apples from their branches, they do not come away easily which means that they are not ripe enough quite yet, but they look fabulous. The six new apple trees which we bought earlier in the week are unlikely to produce any fruit next year, but in a couple of years time we should, I hope, have an abundant harvest of apples.

The huge sycamore trees that grow to the side and back of the piggeries are starting to lose their leaves in the early autumn breezes. Yesterday I started to rake them into large piles with the intention of using them to create leaf mould or adding them to the food forest to improve the soil structure there. I filled a large green compost bin with them, pressing them down to fit in as many as I could. When that was filled I started to pile them up on the ground. After half an hour of raking and piling I had still only partially cleared an area about forty feet by six feet and there was an awful lot more to go! The trees look like they have hardly lost any leaves and yet the ground is starting to get covered with dried crunchy leaves. I can only imagine how deep the layer of leaves will be once the trees have shed all of them.

I think the best approach to the leaf collecting will be to take the wheelbarrow to the area and fill that a few times, taking the leaves to the food forest area and the rest can go into a compost bin or be piled up on the vegetable beds to rot down over the next few months. Last year, by the time we had moved in and I felt up to wandering around outside, the leaves were soggy and I didn't have the energy to rake up most of them. I cleared a small pathway to the chicken field, but left the rest to rot where they landed, this year I hope to gather the majority of them to help improve the condition of the soil in other productive areas of the garden.

My daughter and grandson number two came to visit on Thursday and we spent a delightful couple of hours chatting, laughing and putting the world to right. She is coming back again on Monday with both my grandsons and I'll be asking grandson number one to gather some leaves with me and then we can choose some with which to make an autumn collage.

Today there is a distinct chill in the air and although the autumn sun is trying to shine, I'm finding it hard to spend much time outside doing gentle chores before I need to come back in for a cuppa.

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Moving the ducklings

 

This week I am being the guest tweeter on SmallholdersUK account on Twitter. Each week a different smallholder is featured, celebrating the diversity of smallholders' lives and this week I am taking a turn at sharing my plastic beads of experience (it feels like I haven't advanced to pearls of wisdom yet). I didn't have a grand plan of what I was going to write about, but I did make some notes of subjects I knew I wanted to include.

I am surprised at how much additional energy I have used up in tweeting throughout the day, how tired I am in the evening and how quickly I'm getting off to sleep. Sadly though, I am still waking up at silly o'clock in the morning and lying in bed wondering if it's too early to get up. This morning that process of waking, staring at the ceiling, getting over hot, then too cold, dropping back to sleep and waking up again started at 1.25 am. So by 5 am I gave up and made my way downstairs and, as I often do when it's too early to start rumbling around outside, I put the television on.

I spend quite a lot of time reading and researching. YouTube has become my go-to learning resource as I can find so many really helpful vlogs and films. Obviously I don't take the word of just one person who's posted a film on the internet, I make sure that I watch several (or lots) of films about any particular subject. The more that one certain topic is covered in the same way, the more I can trust it to be likely to be true. But in the end, there's nothing quite like first hand experience. 

The experience has once again been of making compost, raised beds, preserving food for the late autumn and winter and putting in a new fence.

On Monday Mr J banged some fence posts into the ground in the duck enclosure so that we could start to section off part of it for the ducklings to use. The posts were recycled ones from my sister's home. She had replaced her fencing and these posts were of no use to her any more. My brother in law had kindly cut points on the bottom of each post to make getting them into the ground more easily.

I then stapled chicken wire to the posts and used heavy duty ground staples to secure it along the base.

 We hung a gate that I had found lying around on the other side of the of paddock (there have been some very useful bits and pieces that I've found that were left by the previous owners).

 We moved the two ducklings from their outside nursery pen into the new enclosure and watched as they revelled in the additional space that they suddenly had. Frederick was less than impressed at having two new neighbours, but over the last couple of days he has calmed down and now seems more miffed than cross.

The vegetable garden is filling out even more as the squashes make a last ditch attempt to produce their fruit before the days get cold. The purple sprouting broccoli(on the left) is an early variety, I hope that it will withstand the howling autumn and winter winds and flower early next year.

 Mr J and I created the next raised bed late on Tuesday afternoon when the strongest heat of the day had passed. I had put down a layer of cardboard in the morning and we covered it in topsoil and then in composted wood chippings. 

I will plant this up today with some purple curly kale seedlings and rainbow chard seeds (because the chickens like the leaves and we like the stems).

I was delighted to find that the compost pile made in early July is now a deep brown colour and although it's still quite soggy and I think I may move it to around the base of some fruit trees and cover it in composted wood chippings to help feed the fruit trees which have been working so hard to produce lots of apples. I've made another compost heap using chicken manure and wood shavings given to us by our neighbours, grass clippings, kitchen waste (uncooked fruit and vegetable waste), spent brewery grain and straw. I also turned the drier materials from the previous compost heap into the new one. The last heap is starting to rot down, I can still see the individual components but the centre is going brown and I will top the new heap with the partly decomposed material to add microbes to it.

I've made several trips into the field that borders our smallholding to pick blackberries. I've been careful to walk on the scrubby edges of the field to avoid damaging the clover crop that the farmer has growing there. The field is buzzing with the sound of our neighbours' bees, so hopefully there will be some delicious clover honey available later in the year.

  I have also been gathering windfall apples from my neighbours' garden. They have invited me to collect as many as I like as they feel overrun with cooking apples. Their cider apples are also ripe and they will be pressing them in the next week or so. I like it that the neighbours have a surplus to different crops to us and that they make different products to us. We are starting to swap surpluses and produce which gives both of us a wider choice of food.

I have now ordered some bare-rooted fruit trees and more hedging trees to complete the hedge planting from The Woodland Trust, who have a Welsh Farm Tree Pack scheme, which enables those who farm in Wales to buy trees to create more woodland at a reduced price. They also offer help to other parts of the UK. You can find out more information here. 

It's time to put the kettle on.

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Tons of wood chips in the garden

After months of searching I have finally found a tree surgeon who is happy to give us some wood chippings and this week we took delivery of the first trailer load. It was mostly newly chipped wood, so we used it to cover the weed suppressing membrane in the area between the perennial border and the kitchen garden.

Much to my delight Mr J commented that it is like walking through on forest floor and that is exactly what I was aiming for. Over time I will remove the weed suppressing membrane and replace it with cardboard, but for the next year at least the membrane will stay in place.

As Tom the tree surgeon had contacted me to say that some more chippings would be arriving on Saturday, I wanted to clear the first pile before the next load arrived. It is probably the only time that I will race to clear one before next arrives, but when the first load arrived I asked them to dump it on the grass near the driveway and now more was arriving I really wanted it dumped nearer the back of the same grassy area, so I needed to make access for the trailer to put it at the back.

I can't overstate how grateful I am for this gift of wood chippings, there is no way we could afford to go out and buy enough bark or wood chippings to cover the pathways and now they are covered with just the cost of our energy and effort. I know that I've done too much and pushed myself too hard to get the chippings onto the pathways and that in the next couple of days I will need to take some seriously long breaks and rest more than I'd really like to. But it is worth it as they look fabulous.

The second load to arrive was very exciting, it has some more recently chipped wood in places but most of the load is very well composted wood chippings. So now we have a pile of rich black fine crumbly compost to add to the topsoil and to mulch the vegetable beds with. As time goes on and we get more loads of chippings I will create the rest of the raised beds and cover the pathways with the most recently chipped material.

I've already used some shredded leaves and chippings in the latest compost heap to combine with the spent brewery grain, straw and chicken house waste. The relentless compost making continues and sometimes I get bored of thinking about it, but as soon as I start the next heap I get a burst of renewed vigour and interest. It is after all, the stuff that will help to feed us in coming years, so for that alone I know it is worth continuing to create as much as I can.

Over the next few days I will move some of the semi-composted wood chippings to the chickens' field and give each group of chickens several wheelbarrow loads to scratch through and work on. I will put it in the 'circle of love' that is now on each side of the field. Next year, each circle will be fenced off from the chickens and a new circle made for them to turn over. In the fenced off area I will grow crops that the chickens like to eat and it will form a part of their diet in the winter months when the pickings of green matter in the field isn't as rich as it is now.

Today has been a rainy day, but first thing this morning I spent a couple of hours in the garden before breakfast and before the rain started. I transplanted the last of the leeks into the newest raised bed and popped others into spaces in several of the other beds. I lifted a few weeds, the annuals went into the compost bins and the perennials into a garden sack.
Then I picked some runner beans and headed indoors for most of the day. 

Using my trusty 1960s Spong's bean slicer I prepared the beans for the freezer. Whilst we would prefer to eat them fresh rather than frozen, I want to make sure that we have some beans for the dinner table in the autumn and winter months.

Much of each day seems to have been taking up with watching the birds. I lose great chunks of the day just watching them busying themselves. The little chicks are now five, six and seven days old and have started growing wing feathers and a few now have tiny little tail feathers. They are light on their feet although not entirely accurate as yet, there is quite a lot falling over, but they pick themselves up again immediately and try again. 

Neither Mr J nor I had been prepared for how endearing ducklings are. They have had their first dabble (and dibble) in water. We set a paint roller tray in their pen and part filled it with water and it didn't take very long for them to find their way into it. As they dibble in the water with their tiny bills, they make bubbles and then chase the bubbles. It's delightful to watch them playing for a few minutes at a time before we take the water out again. We didn't spend too much time with them for the first few days so that they didn't imprint on us as that can cause problems later on. It's been hard not to spend hours watching them, but we have stayed away so hopefully they don't think of us as parents and have identified with each other as fellow beings.

Mr J now has a part time job, so for a part of each week it will just be me working on our smallholding, but he will also have plenty of time for being at home, pottering outside with me on a variety of projects and creating his radio shows (you can find out more about these on his blog page here).

I am sure that over the next few days I will get back into the rhythm of blog writing on a more regular basis again. The arrival of the baby birds spread out over four days consumed my attention last week, but I am now getting into a steady routine with cleaning their living space, topping up their food and water. I think that for this year we have (probably) hatched our last batch of chicks, but we are going to incubate one more batch of duck eggs in the hope that we have a few more ducks. Several people have asked whether we have ducks available and it seems to make sense to have some to offer.

As I type, Mr J is closing the hen houses making the birds secure for the night and encouraging the ducks to go to bed. It is time to put my feet up, watch a bit of telly and, as always, have a cuppa!

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Volunteering on our smallholding

A little while ago Lisa from Cottage Coppicing got in touch to ask if I would like to swap a day of her energy for sharing some of our ideas and practices with her. As this sounded like a fabulous swap, I jumped at the idea. So this morning Lisa came to our smallholding for a chunk of the day. 

Because so much of my day revolves around food, growing, tending, harvesting, preparing, cooking and eating it, I thought our day together should start with 'second breakfast'. So earlier this morning a made a sticky ginger loaf and some fruit salad to have with a (decaf) coffee before we got started.

Lisa was having a 'me' day and chose to spend it with us as a change from her usual routine. I was chuffed to bits to have some additional help in doing some more physically demanding tasks.

So Lisa asked a few questions and I told her about how we came to live here and how my health had impacted on our decisions about the way we would live in our new home.

I showed her the eggs in the incubator, the 3 week old chicks, the young cockerels who are 6 weeks old, Big Red and Little White who are 11 weeks old and the rest of the chickens. She met the ducks and asked whether, if I could only keep one would it be ducks or chickens. I said ducks, because I like their independence and Mr J said chickens because the ones we have are friendlier than our ducks.

Lisa turned one of the compost heaps in a matter of minutes. This task would have taken me about an hour and then I'd need to rest for a couple of hours or so, I don't think Lisa knows how grateful I am for her volunteering.

The compost heap is coming along well, it certainly isn't going to be three week compost, but it will probably be an eight week compost heap, which I still think is pretty good going.

We then went inside for a cold drink, in the heat of the day (and it being surprisingly breezy here) I am extra careful about keeping up our fluid intake and taking breaks from the sunshine.

 

We headed into the stable to continue the mucking out that I have been doing bit by bit since we moved here. Lisa shifted five barrow-loads in no time, so I emptied the wheelbarrow each time it was full, into the area of the chicken field that is becoming the 'circle of love' for the part of the field with the shed in it.

 

Lisa sat in a chair in the field and held some kale for the birds to peck at and true to form, Big Red and Little White jumped up onto her lap to eat the kale and be stroked.

I think that Lisa was up for doing plenty more, but I was starting to get hot and tired and it was definitely time for lunch, so we had a picnic lunch at the kitchen table and talked some more about our plans and ideas for the smallholding and Lisa's plans for the summer holidays. Lisa works with wood and makes lovely items that she sells in her etsy shop, (link above) I particularly like some of the little garlic chopping boards. I've asked Lisa to make me some robust plant labels to go under the currant bushes, so that we can identify the variety of currant for years to come.

After Lisa had gone, I wandered back to have a look at how much had been achieved and I am delighted that she has cleared about a third of the old muck in the back half of the stable area. There is still one more barrow load to take outside, but that will have to wait until it is a bit cooler.

The other thing that I spotted in the stable was that Red and White have finally discovered the shallow bucket with sand in it that I put in there over a week ago. They were very happily have a dust bath in the nice clean sand. These two little birds are such a pleasure to spend time with. I suspect that if Lisa wasn't 100% sure whether she wanted to keep chickens before that, the two young birds sold the idea to her.

 

If you'd like to spend a day with us on the smallholding exchanging ideas, enthusiasm and energy, please get in touch.

Morning celebration in the kitchen garden

First thing this morning I took a long, hard look at the garden and I am really pleased with how it is progressing. So, here's a picture-filled catch up of what's been going on.

Yesterday I started another compost bay as we'd been given several more large bags of spent brewer's grain and hops and if the grain isn't covered fairly quickly it gets jolly smelly and unpleasant. I used three pallets tied together with baling twine, the back pallet is part of the fence that I am constructing right around the kitchen garden, the pallets that become the sides of the compost bay offer stability to the fence, which we need because this site is exposed. My hope is that composting and water collection bays along the lengths of the garden will help not only to protect the fence, but also offer protection for the crops within the garden.

I then lined the pallet with straw and began created the compost heap with layers of straw, spent grain, annual weeds, chicken and duck manure and a little compost from a heap that I made a couple of weeks or so ago, to add micro-organisms.

This is the heap that I turned last week and added some more grass clippings, it is breaking down nicely. The thick straw top, which I will remove before I use the compost, has been very effective at keeping the heat in and the rain out, I will do this again. I used a little of this compost in the new heap and also to add to the heap we made last week that is out in the open rather than in a pallet sided bay.

A couple of weeks ago I fenced off an area that the chickens have turned over very well and planted some seed potatoes and then mulched it with straw.

I was delighted to notice yesterday that the potatoes had started to grow. The little shoots are now about two or three inches high and I now feel reasonably confident that we will have some sort of crop from this area, although they may not be very large potatoes as I put them into the ground quite late in the season.

The old tractor tyres that I planted up a month or so ago are now filled with rapidly growing potato plants. Having 'earthed up' using partially rotted wood chippings last week and mulched with straw, I was surprised to see just how quickly they are putting on growth now. I suspect that all the recent rain has been to their liking.

The tractor tyres are next to the herbaceous border and I am really pleased with this corner. The delphinium and foxgloves were bought at our local garden centre in the reduced section as they were really very much past their best. They were six packs of mixed colours so I had no idea what colours would appear when, and if, they grew. As luck would have it, the delphinium and foxgloves are creamy white, so it almost looks as though it was planted this way on purpose. As this is their first year the flower spikes are small but still, they are very pretty. This rose with delicate pink flowers was a gift from my friend Jane and the acer in the very corner was already in the garden but tucked away behind the house, so in February Jane and I moved it to this spot where it seems to have settled in well.

Anyway, back to the kitchen garden. When I drew up the plan for the garden I had grand visions of immaculately manicured pathways and attractive beds giving it a potager look. It didn't take me very long to change my mind when I realised that actually what I want is a highly productive garden that works as much as possible with nature, but also one that doesn't create a huge amount of upkeep. I knew that this year, during the setting up period, there would be a vast amount to do, but I've also learnt a lot of ways to reduce the workload and to make best use of the resources that we have. One of those resources is the chickens and in the autumn, when there is plenty of clearing up to do in the beds, they will have a part to play. We already have a run, that we used for the chicks in the garden that is the perfect size for putting over the beds. We can then put a few of the chickens into the run for the day to scratch about in the bed and clear it of weeds and any remaining crops that have started going to seed. At the same time they will be fertilising the soil, turning it over and fluffing it up.

We are now about half way through creating the raised beds and bit by bit I am covering the pathways with cardboard and shredded dried Leylandii (because that's what I have). Next year on the pathways I will probably use straw or, if I can find a good source, with wood chippings. I have now put up approximately a quarter of the pallet fencing that will surround the kitchen garden and it really feels like it is all coming together.

 I haven't grown broad beans before, I don't like them, so there was little point in giving them space, but Mr J does like them and so now there is a jolly good reason to learn about them. I sowed them indoors early in the year and grew them on in the greenhouse until they were about four inches high before planting them out. I planted them between the rows of garlic, hoping that the smell of garlic would confuse any bugs that might find the broad beans tasty. Today I spotted that there are small bean pods forming and none of the leaves look too badly nibbled by unwelcome visitors.

The onion beds are a mixed bag of results so far. I planted two varieties and one has done very well, with strong growth and a rich dark green colour, the other is weaker, smaller, paler and not looking so happy. I will make some nettle and chicken manure liquid feed in the hope that they will pick up once they've been given a nutritional boost.

The deeper bed which had parsnip seeds sown into it and edged with pot marigolds is now starting to do well. I got very excited last week when I saw lots of little seedlings appear, only to realise that I was getting excited about small vetches and plantain! This week however, I can celebrate properly as the parsnip seedlings are starting to pop up in neat lines across the bed. I'm leaving the weeds to grow a little more and then when they are four to six inches high I will hoe them off and leave them where they are to feed the soil and create a green mulch to reduce the number of other weed seeds that might otherwise germinate. There is also a volunteer potato growing in this bed because some potato peelings ended up in the compost heap rather than being boiled and fed to the chickens. The peeling has sprouted and grown and I'm happy for it to be there, it may or may not produce edible potatoes, we will know later in the year.

This pea bed is also growing now. At the far end are mange tout which seem to be struggling a bit, the lower leaves are yellowing. Everything in the garden seems to be suffering from a lack of nutrients, which I suspect is a reflection of the poor soil on which we are trying to create this vegetable and fruit garden. Looking further around the garden, I can see some shrubs with similar problems, so I think it must be an issue across the whole of the smallholding. The large amount of compost being created should help improve the soil in the long term, but for the immediate needs of the plants I will make nettle and chicken manure tonic and look in the garden centre for organic plant foods that I can use to give the poor plants a boost.

The borlotti beans are now about three feet high and this morning I noticed this beautiful flower had opened. The plants are more delicate to look at than those of the robust runner bean, or at least they are at the moment, I'll assess them again for delicateness at the end of the season.

 At the back of the vegetable area is the space that we have designated for soft fruit. In late spring Mr J and I dug a small bed (which we nicknamed 'the grave') and planted it with some of the raspberries which we brought from Mr J's mother's home. These are now doing well, but interestingly no better than the plants that are still sitting in pots waiting to go into the ground. I haven't got as far as weeding between the rows of raspberries, but will need to do so before they go to seed.

The soft fruit area runs to the far end of our smallholding. Along this boundary we have planted a hedge with native plants like hawthorn, buckthorn, hazel, wild rose, dog rose and honeysuckle. As small plants they will take a while to form a useful boundary, be a wind break or to provide us with hedgerow crops. Yesterday I spotted that a large bramble has grown, it's roots are just on the other side of the stock fencing that marks the edge of our property and I made a mental note to take the secateurs to it. This morning however, I have changed my mind. I will go out with some garden twine and tie the longest stems to the wire of the stock fencing and rather than battle with a weed, I'll embrace it (not literally) and use it as a valuable fruit crop.

Yesterday Mr J moved several barrow loads of top soil from where it had been delivered in the front garden to the next raised bed in the kitchen garden and I mixed in some compost and hops. Today he plans to add a few more barrow loads and then I will plant it with purple sprouting broccoli (which should provide us with a crop next spring), under-plant them with perpetual spinach and strawberries. I noticed some strawberry plants hidden amongst the long grass in the back garden, hopefully if I take a large enough soil ball they won't notice that they have been moved.

Last week we cut and ate our first home grown lettuces. Rather than pull the plants out, I cut them quite low down, leaving a few leaves. This morning there are new leaves growing from the base, so we will have a second flush of crispy lettuce from this plant. The red oak leaf lettuce is doing the same thing, so we'll be able to enjoy more if the slugs don't get to them first!

And finally, to complete my celebration of the kitchen garden, I checked on the  plants in the greenhouse. The tomatoes are doing very well, they seem to have grown quickly in the last couple of weeks. I've tied them gently to their cane frame and pinched out the side shoots as they appear. Between the tomatoes I've planted lettuce and along the front is a row of basil and one clump of parsley. I have a few red skin onions that can either be spring onions or left to grow into bulbs, that I plan to add to this bed, again in the hope that the aromas of basil and onion will keep away anything that might attack the tomatoes. The tomatoes at the back in pots are a cordon variety (the name of which I can't remember) and the front ones growing direct in the soil are Money Maker. I also have some Red Alert tomato plants that I will plant in the kitchen garden area. Interestingly the Money Maker seem to be growing more strongly as plants even though the ones in the pots have already started producing fruit.

 

Today my friend who lives in Tasmania is calling in for a cuppa again, on her way from visiting one family member to see another while she is in the UK. As I was up at four this morning, I imagine that I will head for bed after her visit, so nothing much more will be done in the garden by me today. And that's okay, I think the garden is doing just fine at the moment.