Sunday 19 June 2016

Lush surroundings

Freshly cut silage
After three weeks of amazing weather, we are now back to normal with highs of 16C and barrels brimful of rain water. Never mind, I still love this time of year when everything is so lush, the days are long and the garden begins to yield all kinds of goodies. The lettuces are particularly good this year.

Delicious Merveille de Quatre Saisons
Today I harvested the last of last year's chard and the first of this year's. I love a seamless transition! The same goes for the chillies. The last of the frozen ones and the first new one are going into the chard curry tonight.

Because of the good weather everything is early this year, including the strawberries. We've been getting four or five a day for a week - just enough for our morning's porridge. I've started potting up runners for a new strawberry bed (we're going to have three so that we can rotate and replace them after three years).

Thinking of next year's strawberries already
The chicks are growing at a tremendous rate. Looks like we've got quite a few cock birds though!

Spot the cocks
Soruss is no more - he was just too aggressive. He made a delicious soup and now the hens are much happier and everything is much more peaceful. In fact, the hens are acting as if they're on holiday! They don't like being bossed around, it seems.

Our new grain crops - quinoa and amaranth - have been planted out and are doing well inside their pot protectors.

Amaranth
Another new crop, oca, has surfaced and is doing well. The achocha, however, is not. Another one has died and these things are supposed to be vigorous!

Oca
This year has been much better for our nascent hedges and I'm pleased that the sea buckthorn has finally started growing after only putting out a few measly leaves last year. Up in our top corner, the elder is looking like a proper tree.

Our first hedge after 2.5 years
Inside, tomatoes, chillies, peppers and okra are setting and the first cucumbers and melons are swelling up.

First of the cantaloupes

Crystal lemon cucumber
The roses and lavender are in full swing and the wild flower strip has come back to life.

Daisies first, but the poppies are coming

Patio lavender
The summer-flowering heathers are also blooming and there are some interesting ones.

'Stuart' heather
But maybe the most popular with the bees are the parsnip flowers. I left a few parsnips to gather fresh seed this year and they are immensely popular.

Parsnip going to seed
Together with Jim, I've started another, more thematic blog, Reasonably Good Life. Please have a look!


Thursday 2 June 2016

Summer time

The latest arrivals
Summer has come to Scotland. We haven't had any rain for two weeks and temperatures in the low 20s - yesterday we put up our sunbrella because it was too hot to sit in the sun! Perfect timing for the hatching of our new chicks. We got seven fuzzballs out of the ten eggs incubated, three black ones and four white ones. We're referring to them all as 'she', but we won't know until the wattles and combs appear how many males and females we've got.

Still spending most of the time under the brooder
It's incredible how fast the chicks develop. 21 days to hatch and then walking, drinking, eating on day 1 and today, their third day, they already briefly ventured outside and were flitting around inside, pecking at this and that, scratching around in the shavings.

The big squash and brassica plant out
The wonderful weather meant it was time for the big plant out: 30 squashes and 16 sweetcorn. This time, I'd sown the squashes in the first week of May so they only had a couple of true leaves each and suffered virtually no transplant shock. Hurray! I also put three-litre pots without bottoms around each one as an individual windbreak as they don't like the wind at all. Eventually these pots will also get a bit of copper tape around them as anti-slug defence.

Super pak choi in the polytunnel
The visiting season has also begun and we've had several helpful visitors doing jobs such as gathering grass clippings for mulch and weeding the strawberry patch, which had been full of couch grass.

Thank you, Marian and Gordon
We've also divided up the top paddock a bit more and planted two black mulberry trees. Now this is a seriously long-term project: seven years to fruit!

The tiny mulberry trees are in between the windbreak fabric fences
Inside, tomatoes are setting, the first melons and okras are appearing and chillies and cucumbers are flowering away.

Female melon flower needing hand pollination
The veg garden is now totally full. No space to plant out the celeriacs until the Swiss chard is finished.

Full house
Jim's started digging the new bed, in anticipation of the quinoa needing planted out. His rate of progress is four wheel barrow loads of stones per day removed from the bed.

Looks like a weed but is quinoa seedling
The comfrey has been going great guns and it was time to harvest it today. I used the sickle, which was very handy. Now the comfrey is accelerating our compost and being used to mulch the potatoes.

Time for a haircut
The roses are on the cusp of blooming, but the poppies and irises have beaten them to it.

Yellow iris by the pond
Today I saw the first pea pods on the overwintering peas. Not long now until bonanza time!