Year One part 3 Permanent Planting

   The Shrubberies were put in early in the year to make a colourful welcome as we drive along the lane into our yard.

 Our friend Jane gave us several shrubs and others were lifted from the area next to the piggeries and stables.

  I planted the perennial shrubs along the length of the border and have added a few more since. 

 After a few months of growing the long shrubbery has filled out and has given us some colour every month. Some of the plants in the shrubbery have uses in addition to looking attractive. The buddleia has attacted many butterflies and other pollinators as have all the flowers on the shrubs. I've harvested the lavender flowers, dried them and I will use them to make lavender bags, lavender sugar and to refresh the pot pourri in our home. The roses will produce rosehips which I will add to the rosehips gathered from the hedgerows and other sources (read about rosehips from my sister's home here).The fushia bush should provide us with berries, although as yet it hasn't produced very much and having never tried fushia, I'm keen to find out whether the berries from this particular hardy bush are sweet or have a bitter aftertaste.

The short shrubbery is still only half completed but is already starting to look good.

 We brought with us several pots of raspberry plants that had been lifted from Mr J's parents' home, together with shrubs, herbaceous plants and a couple of small trees.

Jane helped me to dig the turf from the area that would become the herbaceous border (actually Jane lifted the most of it) and we planted it with the plants that she had given to us and some that we had brought from our previous house. Over the year I haven't weeded the area anywhere near as much as was needed and as a result we've had a display of weed and wild flowers amongst the cultivated perennial plants.

The Food Forest

I decided that creating a permanent planting area filled with edible plants and supporting plants would be a good use of a large space. The more I explored the ideas behind permaculture and the way to use the land in harmony with nature, the more I realised it fits exactly with our thinking and a food forest should work really on this site.

I've had to make some compromises with how to start the food forest, but I'm happy with how it is coming along. Wood chippings have been poured onto the area and composted wood chippings used to make planting beds. It was a bit tougher than just pouring wood chippings, because finding a source of wood chippings took me several months. My budget for the garden is close to zero and it was important to find a free source of materials, but luckily I have now found a local tree surgeon who brings a trailer load of chipped wood on a reasonably regular basis. It gets dumped in the front garden and I then move it one wheelbarrow load at a time to the place I want it. 

 We made a small wildlife pond using a butyl liner that was already on the smallholding when we moved in. It's not very pretty, but as the planting around the edges grow, it should hide the liner and attract beneficial wildlife.

We've recently bought 17 fruit trees which I am in the process of planting and below them I've put fruit shrubs like currants and raspberries (lots and lots of autumn fruiting raspberries), herbs and ground cover plants like strawberries. I've been researching perennial vegetables to include in this area and in the meantime, for the next couple of years at least, I will use some of the food forest area to grow annual vegetables that will act as good ground cover (like some of the squashes I'd like to grow).

 It will take a few years for the food forest to establish and there will always be some maintenance tasks to do there, but it should be more productive in relation to the effort put in as time goes on. 

Hedges and boundaries 

There is very little hedging around the boundary and whilst that gives us fabulous views across the adjacent land, it also gives us no protection from the wind that whistles across the area from the Severn Estuary.

In early spring, Jane helped us to plant a hedge around the east and south sides of smallholding. It is mixed native hedging, that will be good for wildlife, pollinators and food and although still very small, it has started to fill out over the year and I'd imagine that by their fifth year, the hedge plants will be around shoulder high and knitted together to form a thick wind shelter and a good place for birds and other wildlife to live. I used weed supressing membrane and planted through it in an effort to slow down the invasive weeds coming through the stock fencing that surrounds the smallholding. 

I've put up some wind break fabric on the stock fencing to reduce the impact of the wind on the plants in the garden and as some relief for the chickens who were getting blown around by the wind. Much of the winter and spring brought winds of 30 to 40 mph and a few times it reached up to 60mph, which, if you are a small chicken (or a large human) is pretty miserable to be in.

We still need to plant some hedging along the west boundary and I've ordered some more native hedging to put in the ground later in the year together with some elderberry trees that we can lift from below our trees. I'm also going to add some fast growing trees like eucalyptus which I'll keep cut back so that they are large bushes rather than tall trees.

Now that we have divided up the paddock and are happy with the area designated for the chickens, we've put in a more permanent fence. I've started to plant some fruit canes along the fence that can be supported by it, offer more protection for the chickens, look attractive and be productive.

I've written further blogs looking at the vegetable garden and our animals . The best way to ensure that you don't miss them is to subscribe to my blog, which you can do below!

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Raised beds, gifts and chickens

  It's been another good week in the garden, although the sun comes up later and the air is cooler, I have still been able to get outside and make some progress. We've had another couple of loads of chipped wood delivered by the local tree surgeons (two different tree surgeons now drop off chippings to us), so I have been able to move ahead with making pathways around raised beds.

  I've struggled to keep on top of the weeds growing through the cardboard layer that I've put on the pathways between raised beds and they've been rampaging through the vegetable beds. So I've made the decision that for the first couple of years I will have weed supressing membrane on the paths, covered with wood chippings and once the raised beds are more established and the pernicious weeds are killed off, I will lift the membrane, replace it with cardboard again and a deep layer of wood chippings.

I would rather not use plastic in the garden, but I need to find a balance between what I'd like to do and what I am physically capable of doing. If I spend the time and energy keeping on top of the pernicious weeds in non-productive areas, I won't have energy to either tend the productive areas or to develop further areas of the garden. On balance, this seems a sensible compromise, long term the plastic membrane will be removed, but in the short term I am giving myself a chance to get the rest of the garden developed.

   After laying out the paths and giving them a three to four inch layer of wood chippings, I covered the area that will be the raised bed with a layer of cardboard boxes and then covered the cardboard with well composted wood chippings. Next I will put some topsoil, garden compost and mixed them together and top it with another layer of well composted wood chippings. This bed will then be ready to plant up.

Having decided on next year's planting plan I have realised that some of the options I've selected just won't work. I've allocated one bed to have broad beans in it, which will need planting in the next couple of weeks if I want to have an early crop next year, but that bed still has purple sprouting broccoli, carrots and spinach in it and they will sit in the ground over the winter. So I will need to re-jiggle my plan again and put the autumn planted vegetables into beds that are vacant or becoming vacant very soon.

I've been back to see my GP this week to discuss the results of last week's blood tests. It looks like the short Hashimoto's attack that I had a few weeks ago took it's toll on my thyroid, as it's function had dropped again. Although my results showed 'within normal range' I have learned that I feel best when the TSH level is around or just below 1. The normal range for the tests that my GP uses is 0.3 - 4.2, so in theory anywhere in that range is acceptable. I'm not sure who it is acceptable to, but it's certainly not right for me! When I can get my TSH to around 0.5 (together with some pretty careful management of what I eat and when, and what activities I do and when) I feel close to normal in energy and general health, last week's test showed it had increased to 2.38, which explains why I have been feeling less than sparkly for the last few weeks. My lovely GP, who is happy to work with how a patient feels and not just the numbers on the screen, was happy to increase my medication to help put my TSH back to where I feel I good as I can.

I'm aware that I am very fortunate to have a GP who works with a patient in this way, so many people that I've spoken to are told that they have reached 'normal range' and that's that, they are left struggling with a thyroid still not being supported to the extent that it needs to be for them to feel healthy. Hats off to my GP for listening to my request and being happy to work with me as I try to take some control of my well-being.

Hashimoto's is an auto-immune disease, my body has mistakenly decided to attack itself and in particular, attack my thyroid gland. I have a couple of other auto-immune issues lurking away, but thankfully they don't effect my every day living and hopefully they never will.

Growing my own food is part of managing the Hashimoto's disease and the hypothyroidism that it's caused. Reducing the synthetic chemicals and toxins that I eat has gone a long way to helping how I feel and Mr J says that he is feeling healthier too. Added to the reduction in substances that were causing problems, the increase in fresh air and gentle exercise has also helped me feel better. It's a win-win situation.

Earlier in the week my brother-in-law telephoned me to see if I could make use of some grapes that a friend of his had. So mid-week we went to my sister's home and collected two huge carrier bags filled to the brim with sweet black grapes.

I have washed them and sorted through them, picking them off their stalks and discarding unripe, over-ripe and mushy ones. The first bag yielded almost 9lbs (4kgs) of grapes ready to cook. 

I used 4lbs of fruit to make some grape jelly, which tastes wonderful and will be a lovely accompaniment to cold cuts of meat or roast duck. The remainder I have frozen and will use to make syrups and wine when there is a little less to do in the garden.

Over the weekend, we started to put fence stakes into the ground in the chicken field. Until now we have been using flexible chicken netting (the type that can be electrified), but two long rolls of this netting were on loan from Helen at Valerie Chicken. We need to give the netting back to Helen for her to use to keep her pigs secure and although she doesn't need it back until December, there is no point in us waiting until last minute to put in our permanent fencing. So using the recycled fence stakes that came from my sister's home, Mr J has put in the first row of stakes that I will then fix metal chicken wire onto and that will divide the field in two (as the flexible netting does now). 

We have decided that it would be sensible to then plant trees and shrubs along each side of the new fence. This should provide us with more fruit, nuts and berries and give the chickens some shade, but most importantly it will offer more wind protection and as the plants grow, the hedge should slow down the wind that whistles across the chicken field for most of the year.

Last night (Sunday) we moved the Australorp pullet that was hatched at the end of June into the chicken coop that houses the other Australorps that were hatched at the end of July. As they are from different breeders, the eggs from the older bird will be ideal for breeding additional members of the flock and for providing us with hatching eggs to sell.

This morning she doesn't look wildly happy about being in a new enclosure and her former companions are looking rather put out that she is now in an adjacent space, but it won't take too long for either her or the others to settle down again.

Once the new fences are in place we will also create a separate enclosure for the Jersey Giants. I had said that I'd finished hatching eggs for the year, but I changed my mind and decided to hatch one more batch of chicks which can over-winter in the shelter of the stable and venture outside at their own pace. 

 So I have found another breeder of Jersey Giants (photo of his young birds above) and ordered six eggs which should arrive in the next few days. Hopefully this clutch will give us another female or two and if we get a cockerel then it will be going to the breeder that we bought the first eggs from to put some fresh genes into his flock of birds.

I have tried to build good relationships with the breeders of birds that we have bought eggs from, because there is nothing quite like asking advice from folks who know the breed well and it's nice to be able to offer something in return, like birds from different bloodlines. We are still learning (an awful lot, thick and fast) and I feel that knowledge and experience are the greatest assets we can acquire.

We are heading back outside this morning to continue installing the new fencing for the chickens. But first, as always, it's time for a cuppa!

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