No Dig Potatoes. Did the under cover potatoes grow?

Back in late March I planted my seed potatoes out, under cover. If you didn't see how I did that you can watch my vlog about it here.

The theory is that you don't need to earth them up because the covering excludes the light and the potatoes sit just below the covering, on top of the soil, so you don't need to dig down to find them.

And today I peeled back the covering for the first time to see how my no dig potatoes have grown (or not). 

If you cannot play the video on your device, you can watch it on YouTube here.

So I will definitely be doing this again next year, with the addition of woodchippings as you can see the difference it seemed to make.

All in all I would say that so far it's a success, the final reveal will be in two to four weeks when I harvest the crop for storage.

Aspirations for 2017

 Happy New Year!

I'm not going to do a look back over 2016, I feel as though I've documented it enough already and reviewed our first year on the smallholding during November and to me the best part of the new year is the possibilities that lie ahead.

So, for 2017 my hopes include

To learn more
I'd like to take more courses, read more and research more. By continuing to learn I'd like to not only increase my knowledge, but to keep my brain engaged and alert. I've been looking at a variety of courses including a Permaculture Design Certificate, a horticulture certificate and practical skills like charcuterie, cheesemaking and woodworking.

To start driving again
I haven't driven a car on the road since September 2015 and while Mr J is more than happy to drive me anywhere I want to go, not having the independence is irritating. I stopped driving when I became too ill to be safe on the road, after all it's no good to be behind the wheel when you keep falling asleep, your ankles are too swollen to be able to move your feet properly and your legs jerk uncontrollably. The decision to stop driving was entirely my own, I just wanted to keep myself safe and respect the safety of others on the road. Both the jerking and falling asleep are now as good as gone and the swelling has reduced far enough to have almost full movement in my feet, so it seems to make sense to start getting myself back on the road.

To raise our own ducks

Early last year we bought Frederick and Mrs Warne, the ducks that we weren't going to name. We hatched two ducklings from eggs laid by Mrs Warne and we also hatched a further five ducklings from eggs brought via eBay. We enjoyed raising the ducklings, we were surprised by how endearing they are, but when the run up to Christmas arrived we said goodbye to five of the ducks. Frederick, one of the two and three of the five were despatched. This leaves us with one of Frederick's sons (whom I've imaginatively named Frederickson), Mrs Warne and two girls from the five as our breeding flock for 2017. Mrs Warne has continued to lay eggs throughout the winter, she had a short pause during early autumn and is now back to laying around 5 eggs a week. The two younger girls haven't started laying yet, but I don't think it will be too long before they do and Frederickson has started practising treading on the girls, although nothing is actually happening as yet other than a lot of noisy quacking and some fairly inelegant balancing tricks.

To increase the flocks of Australorps and White Jersey Giant chickens
We have seven white Jersey Giant chickens of varying ages. Little White has been renamed Big White as he is huge and he shares a house and pen with three females, one of which is at point of lay and two are a month or more away from laying. A younger male now lives with the 'spare' cockerels, young males destined for the table that I have separated from the flocks to prevent fighting that could lead to injury. The two youngest Jersey Giants were hatched late in the year and are now eight weeks old. Normally at eight weeks I would integrate the chicks into life with the older birds, but because of the lockdown, the chicks would have no escape from (possibly unwelcome) attention of bored birds and I will wait a while longer before the integration process.

There are six Australorps, two females, four males. Two of the males are separated and now live with the other young cockerels. The older female (hatched in late June) is just coming into lay, at least I think she is and the younger female is about a month behind her. I'd very much like to hatch several more Australorp chicks, the boys make good meat birds and they are all very affectionate and more girls would give us a constant supply of Australorp eggs. What I can't decide is whether to wait and hatch eggs from the birds that we have or whether to find some eggs from another breeder to widen the gene pool of our flock (we currently have birds from two different lines).

To complete the raised beds in the annual vegetable garden

In 2016 I created seventeen raised beds and there are still five more to be created to fill the annual vegetable garden. Together with the pumpkin patch and food forest, we should then have enough space to grow just about all our vegetables and herbs for the year. This level of self-efficiency would be very pleasing.

To plant more trees
I still have masses of trees waiting to be planted. There are approximately two hundred hedging trees and shrubs for the west perimeter of the smallholding and around 12 larger trees waiting for their permanent positions. I planted fourteen fruit trees in the late autumn and have selected some other types of tree that I'd like to add to our food forest to give us an even wider choice of fruit in years to come.

To expand the Food Forest

The main part of the food forest is now laid out, small trees and fruit shrubs have been put in place, perennial plants and ground cover plants are planted and should romp away this year. I have decided that I would like to extend the food forest into the chicken fields, so that although there would be fewer fruit bushes, there will be some fruit trees, herbs, flowers (for the bees from next door's hives) and berry canes will be able to scramble up and along the netting that divides the chicken fields. The herbs will provide an additional source of food for the chickens, the trees will provide some shade and the windfalls will give them rich pickings and no doubt the chickens will share the berry crops with us. The chickens' manure will continue to add fertility to the soil and their pecking and feeding activities will help to reduce the pest population.

To install a large duck pond

View to behind the piggeries

We have identified two areas that would be ideal for a large pond. One is behind the piggeries which would be a good use of the space and the other is within the existing duck enclosure (an area about 150 feet by forty feet, so plenty of room for a decent size pond). This second site is the one that I'd like to complete this year. By digging out a large pond, we can use the soil from the excavation to create a mound for a swale. The pond would be dug out of the highest point of our land (which is not quite, but almost flat) and the mound would encourage rain water to move more slowly through and across the ground, it would also give me a raised area to plant another hedge of currants, berries and nuts together with wild roses for rose hips. This hedge would then act as a wind break and reduce the damaging impact of the winds that whistle across the whole smallholding. This particular hedge would help to protect the vegetable garden a little more.

To offer volunteering opportunities
We would like to offer a chance for people to come and experience life on a smallholding built on organic principles. For this to happen we will need to find a suitable caravan for volunteers to stay in and I think installing a composting loo on site would be a smart move too (some comforts are important to establish early on!). In exchange for their volunteering effort, we will provide accommodation and meals and share what we've learnt. We aren't by any stretch of the imagination, experts in any of this, but we do have some experience, our trial and error has taught us a huge amount in a short time and I'd be delighted to share some of that experience with other like-minded folks.

I have no doubt that as the year goes on we will find other projects and activities that we want to tackle. The back of the piggeries needs work if it is not to become a tangled mess of brambles and weeds, the piggery buildings need attention to prevent them from rusting and collapsing, sections of the stable roof need mending and gutters need replacing... the list goes on and on.

Right now I need to go and complete the project that I've been working on for a couple of weeks, but as it's jolly cold outside first of all, I will make a cuppa!

- - - - -

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Rooty fruity

As part of our plans for the garden we want to surround the plot with native hedging and plant numerous trees. Although the smallholding is not very big, by careful planning and planting we will have space for plenty of fruit trees in the Food Forest.

Today we headed to a supermarket that had bare-root fruit trees for sale for £4.50 each. I expected to find small trees or whips, but to my delight they are healthy looking plants around four feet high. The roots are wrapped to keep some moisture around them and as yet I haven't inspected their root systems, but the top of the trees look good. They are grafted onto M26 rootstock and other semi-dwarfing rootstocks, so the eventual height of each tree will be around ten to twelve feet. For us, this is an ideal height, not so short that the trees look out of scale in the available space, but not so large that we'd need ladders to reach the fruit (or not for many years at least).

The fruit trees that I selected are

1 x Apple Cox's Orange Pippin (which were my father's favourite apple)
2 x Apple Elstar
1 x Apple Jonagold
2 x Cooking Apple Bramley

1 x Pear Doyenne Du Comice
1 x Pear Conference

3 x Plum Opal
1 x Plum Victoria

2 x Cherry Stella
3 x Cherry Morello

All these for a little over £75!

These will be the bulk of the fruiting trees in the food forest together with an apple tree from my neighbour (not sure what it's called but the fruits are delicious) and a mirabelle tree that I lifted from the root system of a mirabelle tree in the duck enclosure. I'll also plant some young hazelnut trees and elderberry trees moved from behind the piggeries. I'd like to find some quince, mulberries and a medlar tree, but those will have to wait until I find them at a reasonable price.

Tomorrow I will start to prepare for their planting by digging holes and incorporating plenty of well rotted wood chippings and garden compost, I will add a very little granulated organic plant food and prepare a mycrorrhizal fungi gel which should encourage root development and give the trees a good start. Where I can't dig down into the soil, I will build Heugelkultur mounds, piling old logs onto the ground with smaller branches on top, then cover them with a mix of topsoil and composted wood chippings before planting a tree on top of the mound. The mounds will be ideal on the areas where there are gentle slopes, so that water naturally gravitates towards the tree mound and the woody material will absorb the water, giving the trees access to moisture when they need it.

I plan to under-plant the trees with comfrey that has deep roots to draw up nutrients from the lower levels of the soil and leaves that can be used as a chop-and-drop mulch and also strawberries which will wilt quickly when they are lacking water and give me a hint that the trees may need a drink too.

Hopefully by next spring the trees will be settled into their new positions and will reward us with a lovely display of blossom.

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Compost hotbed with vlog

When I went to bed last night I felt as though I hadn't achieved very much in the garden over the weekend, but as I talked it through with Mr J, I realised that I had managed to do quite a lot really. It's strange how our sense of achievement can so often be well under the reality (having said that, I know plenty of folks who also over-estimate what they have achieved!).

On Friday morning I spent a very happy hour in the area behind the piggeries starting to clear some of the semi-wilderness. I had been dreading tackling this, but the recent rain had softened the ground enough to make lifting the weeds a very simple task. Armed with leather gauntlet-style gloves, I was able to pull up stinging nettles, general weeds and brambles. I piled them into separate piles of compostable matter, stinging nettles (to use to make a feed and tonic for the plants in the kitchen garden) and pernicious weeds that I don't want to go into the compost heap and end up in the garden.

I cleared a space about twelve feet square, which hardly made a dent in the chaos, sorry the wildlife area, that we've let grow while we started the kitchen garden and other areas of the smallholding. The soil at the back of the piggeries is probably the best in our garden, years of leaves falling from the trees and rotting down have made the soil dark, rich and friable. So, rather than letting this good soil stay unused, we've decided to plant it up with some oca that I was given. Oca is an old vegetable that was replaced in popularity by potatoes, but in many ways they are easier to grow and less hassle than potatoes. They don't need to be earthed up as they don't go green and they store very well.

I also spotted a couple of nice seedlings in the kitchen garden that have self-sown (volunteers). Amongst the onions I spotted what I believe is a Virginia Creeper. It has just one large leaf and another smaller one just forming, so I'm going to leave it until it's about a foot high and then transplant it into a pot before deciding where it's final home will be.

I also found this seedling, which looks like some sort of fern. It is growing in the pea bed and I will leave it for a while yet to try to work out exactly what it is before deciding whether to lift and transplant it or dispose of it. If you know what it might be, please leave a comment to let me know.

There's a fairly strong smell of 'countryside' in the kitchen garden at the moment and we realised that it is probably coming from the pile of compost made from spent grain, straw and chicken manure with wood shavings that is in the open rather than cocooned in a pallet sided compost bay. So, to tackle the rather unpleasant aroma I decided to cover that compost pile in straw to try to keep the smell contained.

Mr J and I enlarged the bed to fill the allotted space and then to make use of it, as a productive area, before covering it in straw. And below is a short video of what we did. (If you can't view it on this blog page, you can find it on YouTube here).

On Sunday the weather forecast said it was going to rain for a greater part of the day, so we got as many chores done as we could early in the day and then headed to my sister and brother-in-law's home. They had offered us some waste wood as the roof of their house is being replaced and they offered us the old battens from their roof. So after a nice cuppa and catch up, we loaded up the van with two by one battens and then some old fencing posts that they didn't need. My brother-in-law kindly used his chain saw to cut a pointed end to each post so that they are ready for us to use right away and then, to my delight, he also gave us almost a full roll of chicken wire. It's a win-win situation, they no longer want the wood or wire and we do, so their garden is cleared of unwanted materials and we have more resources to enable us to complete even more tasks sooner rather than later.

While we were there, my sister asked me to 'go and have a look behind her shed'. When I'd finished laughing and double checked that this wasn't a euphemism, I duly wandered around to see the area behind the shed. It is absolutely filled with foxgloves and as a result, was alive with bees feasting on the nectar. She has invited me to lift some young foxglove plants for the garden which I will do in early autumn and transplant them to the young hedge that surrounds our plot. I won't put them into the herbaceous border as I have white foxgloves there and would quite like to keep them as white ones as long as I can, so to avoid too much cross pollination, the pink ones will be planted away from them.

After lunch the predicted rain paused for a couple of hours, so I headed back out into the garden to get as many plants as I could into the ground before the next downpour. I have a lot of young plants that have been hardened off outside the greenhouse and they are starting to show evidence of stress as they will have used all the nutrients in the soil in their pots. I planted this lovely ornamental cherry tree that my daughter gave me for Mother's Day. It arrived in the post as a ten to twelve inch high sapling and has now more than doubled in height and is strong and healthy. Around the tree I have placed a layer of cardboard and mulched it with straw, my main reason for doing this is to protect it from the strimmer or lawn mower rather than to reduce competition from weeds (which is also a useful side effect of the mulching layer).

Over the weekend one of the Cream Legbar chickens started to become broody, she sat in the nesting box of the henhouse that most of the chickens sleep in for half of Saturday and most of Sunday. Mr J and I talked through our options, it would after all, be nice if one of the chickens would raise a brood of chicks rather than us being surrogate parents, but we currently have 18 fertile eggs in the incubator which are due to hatch in eight days time and we weren't sure that we'd have enough quiet spaces for this broody hen to live while sitting on some eggs. It was good to talk through our options and work out where we could or would put the chicks from the incubator and a broody hen space. We have a small henhouse that could be used for a broody hen, so very carefully I moved her to the small house and we put water and food in it and left her there to settle down again. This morning, she was scratching to come out, had kicked the eggs all around the little house and was decidedly unimpressed with being in the small house. So for yesterday at least, that was a broody fail. I will keep a close watch on her in case she decides to nest in the large henhouse again and I'll have another try at moving her to a quieter place.

I've just been out to check on the chicken that was in a broody mood, she is back in the larger henhouse again, puffed up, low down on the wood shavings making little bok bok noises. The eggs that were in the small house that I moved her to (and that she abandoned this morning) have been attacked by the other chickens. I have no idea which of them started it, but when I walked around the corner of the shed to see what the commotion was, there were three hens and the cockerel in the small house having an 'egg fest'. They haven't touched the eggs that have been laid today in the usual nesting boxes, so perhaps they pecked at them because they were in an unusual place and there was a small container of chicken food in the house too.

Today we plan to start making the nursery area for the chicks that are due on 28th June. Once they are hatched they spend the first 24 hours in the incubator and will then be moved into the small secluded pen that we have set up in the boot room. This will only be large enough for them for a few days (it was fine for just the two chicks that hatched last time, but it won't be for more than four or five chicks for long) and then we plan to move them to the chicken condo that we've created in the old stables. They can have a slightly larger space with their water, food and the brooder in it (an electrically heated platform that they can nest under to stay warm that acts as a surrogate mother, for the warmth at least). They will live in their nursery area until they are four weeks old and then we'll move them into their own house and run in the chicken field until they are eight weeks old and can join the main flock.

So, it's time to go and start drawing up a plan of how we'll make the nursery coop and of course, have a cuppa!

Broody hen update - she spent most of the day on the nest again, coming out a couple of times for food. Tonight she is still on her chosen nest space with the other hens going to sleep around her, it hardly seems like a restful space. We will think again about finding a dark and quiet place for her to be moved to.

Permaculture, potatoes and pumpkins

The more I learn about permaculture the more it makes sense for what we are hoping to achieve here at home. Over the last couple of days I have made use of the excellent scratching job that the chickens have done near their houses.

In early winter, not long after we moved in, I piled a large amount of wood shavings, hay and manure in what became the chicken field. They have spent the last few months scratching through the heap, leaving their droppings on it and turning the heap over and over. The vast majority of the light and fluffy compost has now been used in the raised beds, which left us with an area that we know has been well composted and should be full of nutrients. So, it doesn't seem to make sense to leave it to grow back as grass or worse still, super-charged weeds and to that end, yesterday I sectioned it off from the chickens using four feet bamboo canes and some chicken wire.

I've planted it with Maris Piper seed potatoes, I have no idea if it's too late to plant them as I've never grown potatoes before, but it will be interesting to find out later in the year how they have done. Having watered them in well, I then covered the area with straw as a mulch to help reduce weed growth and in the next few days I will plant a few squash plants through the straw into the soil beneath. This should make this nutrient rich area a highly productive one.

 Back in the kitchen garden proper, I've been working on the next raised bed. Earlier in the week I part filled some more cardboard boxes with top soil and homemade compost and yesterday I divided the soil mixture even further so that there was just a small amount in each of the 16 boxes that make up a raised bed.

We then went to my sister's home to collect some more composted bark that she has had in a field for a couple of years and doesn't need. I topped up each of the cardboard boxes with this composted bark and mixed it in well with the topsoil and our homemade compost.

This morning I have planted one seed potato in the corner of each box and a squash plant in centre of each box. So in this bed there is a mixture of Maris Piper potatoes, both green and yellow courgettes, yellow and white patty pans, butternut squash and pumpkins. The latter two I have planted at the ends of the beds so that they have room to run riot along pathways.

Yet again, I have no idea how the plants will do in this growing medium, it certainly isn't soil as I'd normally think of it, but as long as there are enough nutrients in it and as long as I can add to the soil mix to increase the nutrient levels if I need to for this year, then that will do me.

These boxes will be watered well and then mulched with straw to keep the moisture in and suppress weed growth. At the end of the growing season, all the plants will be cut down and either left in place to rot down or added to the compost heap and the soil will be given a good layer of compost from the oldest heaps to improve the soil and build up the level of soil in each bed.

Building a new vegetable garden is an interesting process. Almost all of the ideas that I had when we put in the offer on the house (but before we moved in) have been laid aside because the soil is so poor and having lived here for a while, I am more aware of the local weather conditions, which areas are more shady and which just get baked by sun and dried by the wind coming up from the estuary. What is being created is actually so much nicer and more fun to work in than the kitchen garden space I had imagined.

I'm learning all the time, I spend a while each morning reading and watching informative videos and just as importantly, I spend some time thinking about how the information that I'm gathering can be applied to our garden and still have it look as attractive as I'd like it to be.

I am delighted that the seed potatoes I planted in old tractor tyres last month are now growing. I've started to top up the soil level in the tyres and as we collect more well rotted compost from my sister's home and our next compost heap is ready, I will add more.

This evening we were supposed to be going to see the Stereophonics in Cardiff, I have been looking forward to it for months. I had tickets for their last tour but wasn't well enough to go, actually at that time I couldn't get out of bed, let alone be up and about or dancing. So I was delighted to have tickets for tonight's gig and sensibly I had bought seated tickets so that I didn't overdo it and have to leave early. Well it seems my body is conspiring against me because shortly after planting a few seed potatoes and squash plants this morning, I started feeling unwell and have spent most of the day on sofa, either asleep or feeling very weak. Hey-ho, that's the way it goes sometimes. And, so the tickets weren't wasted, we have given them to our neighbours who are delighted to have an unexpected evening out. Because I don't feel up to venturing out, I intend to spend the evening watching more videos and reading about organic gardening and about permaculture.

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