garden – We bought ‘The Land’!!!

Hello sunshine!

The last few days here in Cornwall have been fab! The sun has shone, I feel like I’ve got plenty done and the rate of seedling demise seems to have slowed. The alliums in the garden have started flowering, I’m definitely planting some on the allotment next year – the bees can’t get enough!

I have plans for making more rhubarb jam this week (hopefully I won’t burn it this time!) and have seen a recipe for a rhubarb cordial that I’d like to try.

On the allotment, the peas we put in at the weekend have so far avoided any significant damage from birds and we found a birds nest above our potting bench – the chicks are now big enough to peek out of the nest:

Yesterday, Ashley and I collected some carpeting from a local marquee company that was to be dumped or burned – we are going to use it to mulch our paths and other areas for the next year in the hope of really getting on top of the weeds. I’m hoping for another good weekend so we can get some more work done – although it’s a bank holiday in Cornwall which practically guarantees rain!

I’ve spent loads of time this week sat out in the garden potting on seedlings, sorting and clearing pots that have been emptied by the slugs and re-jigging plants to hopefully have some colourful flowers in the garden in a few weeks time.

Hope you’re all enjoying some sunshine too!

Sunshine and Flowers

It has been a beautiful day here in Cornwall! The sun has shone all day and you could almost imagine that summer might be drawing near… if it weren’t for that chilly wind that just will not desist! Ashley and I started our day in the front garden; Ashley potting on his beloved Foxglove plants and myself clearing debris from plant pots and checking my seedlings.

Ashley reminded me this morning that we used to take many photographs, almost daily, with our DSLR camera, but these days photo’s often get taken on mobile phones which then stay there and don’t get viewed as part of our photo collection. Today, we have both picked up the ‘proper’ camera again and have thoroughly enjoyed it! Cameras on phones are so good these days, but there’s a depth of field and quality that you get with a DSLR that just isn’t the same on a mobile phone. And of course, you can change settings, use specific ‘modes’ or go completely manual with a DSLR camera. I hope that we continue to use the camera more again and develop (ha! I’m so funny!) our photography skills.

The sun was bringing out the vibrant colours in the garden today. It’s been such a pleasure to sit out and enjoy the garden.

I should be able to fill more of the garden with flowers soon, as there are now no chickens to destroy everything. That’s right, Blue and Penny have gone to their new home to enjoy an endless supply of fresh grass and bugs, make new friends (hopefully) and maybe even meet a man! We have been a little undecided about getting rid of them this week as we do enjoy their daily goings on and adore the fresh eggs. But ultimately, it just didn’t sit well with us that they didn’t have free space to roam and were, at times, clearly bored. So off they’ve gone! We hope to buy fresh eggs from the friends that have taken the girls and we know that they will be well looked after there.

After dropping the chickens off at their new abode, we headed to the allotment this afternoon. I FINALLY planted some onions and garlic, we did some weeding and tidying. The potatoes aren’t showing yet (I was quite late getting those in too), but the rhubarb is romping away! It was much later than we had planned when we got to the allotment, so we didn’t get as much done as we’d hoped. I did manage to get a few snaps of the rhubarb in all it’s glory – I hadn’t noticed the pink edges to the leaves before. That’s something I really love about taking photo’s; noticing the details and seeing things from a new perspective. Tomorrow we will head back and get some carrot seeds in, amongst others, do some more weeding and clear away the brassica’s that aren’t being productive any more. I also plan to sow some poppy and other flower seeds.

I now have to go and supervise Ashley – he has grand plans of a rather large shed going where the chickens used to be in the garden! Without intervention, I fear I will end up with more shed than garden!

Thanks for visiting! Hope you all see some sunshine this bank holiday weekend!

Meet Penny!

This is Penny, the newest addition to the garden! She’s a pretty thing, isn’t she?! Unfortunately, ‘Red’ passed away a few weeks ago but soon after, this little lady was offered to us. She’s fairly young and had just started laying before we got her. Penny has been friendly from the start and will follow us everywhere! ‘Blue’ took a few days to tolerate Penny, then a week or so to really relax in her presence. We were lucky to never experience any real fighting between the two, and the worst Penny got from Blue was a few pecks. Now, they cuddle up together at night and stay pretty close all day so I think their bickering days are behind them!

Blackcurrants

This should be our best year ever for blackcurrants! We’ve never had so many, I can’t wait for hem to ripen! I’m out in the garden every day checking on them and picking any that are ripe, popping them straight in the freezer to use later. When we moved into our little house 6 years ago, there was an overgrown bush half covering the front door and dropping these little berries all over the floor. Whilst we were moving furniture and boxes into the house, many got trampled into the carpet and I vowed that this bush was going to be dug out and disposed of as soon as I had the chance! After realising that they were actually blackcurrants, I had a change of heart and decided to keep it. Tried to cut it back and train it into a suitable shape but it still dropped berries by the front door and the berries were few and far between and very small. I decided that it needed a new home with more sunshine. My Grandma told me that moving it was as simple as cutting off the stems and pushing them into the ground so that’s exactly what I did. All but 1 stem took and turned into a little bush of its own and I learnt to prune them properly. The first year after they were moved we didn’t get much but that was to be expected. Last year we had quite a few berries but not masses. This year, however, every bush has gone mad! My grandparents used to grow all sorts of fruit and veg in their garden, including blackcurrants and homemade blackcurrant jam was a staple. My Grandma and Mum used to make hot blackcurrant drinks using a spoonful of the jam and mixing it with slightly cooled boiled water, then strained through a tea strainer. I can’t wait to make my own jam (hopefully!) this year. If we have enough blackcurrants, I’d like to try some sort of cordial or sauce too. Now to find some recipes…

A day with the chickens

As you may have seen, we have two chickens that we keep at home in our garden. I thought I’d take you through what we do with the chickens on a daily basis.

During the summer months, we don’t tend to shut the chicken house up at night. This is to help with ventilation and to avoid having to get up at stupid-o’clock in the morning to let them out. They have been pretty noisy early in the morning until we’ve let them out before and as we live in a mid terraced house, I didn’t want the neighbours to have issue with us keeping chickens. So when it starts getting light very early and the nights are nice and warm, we have found that the ‘girls’ are happy to come out early and just potter around until 6:30-7:30am when we go out and feed them.

We use a ‘layers mix’ pellet feed that we buy from a local farm supplies store. It’s only about £3.50-£4 a bag and a bag generally lasts about a month so certainly doesn’t break the bank! The girls get a cup of food in the morning, we sprinkle it around their ‘scratching bed’ (unless it’s very wet) so that it takes longer for them to eat it and is more interesting for them to have to ‘find’ the food.

We then clean the poo from the house and anything on the path. We used to put this straight in the compost bin but found it seemed to be slowing the rate of the composting process so now we are storing it in a seperated bucket and allowing it to dry out with the intention of using it down the allotment.

The girls rarely lay first thing in the morning, so cleaning the house out first thing helps to keep the eggs nice and clean. Their water is topped up daily and about once a week the water bowl is washed out thoroughly. Occasionally we add a few drops of Apple cider vinegar which is supposed to help stop the water getting a build up of algae and is supposed to be good for the chickens too. They seem to like the taste which is another plus! Later in the morning, if I’m home, I will go and look for eggs and often find some weeds, snails or surplus veg leaves (beetroot is a favourite) to give the chickens.

The aftenoon is generally when we let them out to roam the garden. We only have a small garden but there are plenty of nooks and crannies to find bugs, worms and vegetation to pick at and scratch about. Whenever I sweep up piles of leaves and soil, I tend to leave most of it in a corner somewhere, then the next time the girls are out they have something new to scratch at and there’s always plenty of bugs to find!

Blue has recently discovered how to get to my strawberry plants! She is very pleased with herself when she manages to get a nice juicy red strawberry!

All it takes to get them back in their run is a small amount of feed in a cup (they seem to recognise the cup we use now and will follow it anywhere!) and a call of ‘ chook chook chook!’.

16th June, quick allotment visit

I popped by the allotment this morning as I was nearby.

There was a rabbit on the plot, not quite a baby but certainly small. I think I’ve figured out where he’s getting in so will have to fix that soon. Luckily, he doesn’t seem to be doing too much damage, though my herb fennel has taken quite a battering! The fleece that I covered the chard with is doing it’s job and I put some netting over the peas so they’re OK. I think the onions are too big now to really be affected by a little bunny, hopefully he’ll be too big soon to hop through the fence.

The parsnip foliage seems to be almost doubling each time I go to the allotment! I did some thinning out as they were getting a bit crowded, the chickens are now enjoying the thinnings – if it’s not composted, the chickens get it so nothing goes to waste!

Aphids had visited the pepper plants in the greenhouse so I sprayed them with water and wiped them off. I’ve heard that aphids don’t like citrus so I’ll take some lemon juice down next time I go and add it to the spray bottle. At home, I use soapy water on the roses etc but would rather not put soap on the edible stuff.

Last Friday, Ashley and I put in a new ‘no dig’ bed, I’ll show you what we did in another post soon. That was looking great today, a few weeds on the surface but it is very hot today and they had wilted anyway. I can’t wait to get planting in that one, but I don’t want to get caught out like we did before with weeds overtaking the plants so I’ll give it a few more days. The leeks are patiently waiting in the greenhouse to go in this bed. I must put them outside actually to harden off. Do you need to harden off leeks? I have no idea, but I’d rather not lose them for the sake of doing something as simple as leaving them outside somewhere sheltered for a few days.

See you soon!

The first strawberries!

I managed to get 3 perfect strawberries from the garden this evening! This feels like quite an achievement since the chickens discovered where they were! And they were MASSIVE! Home grown strawberries really are the most tasty. My much younger brother in law said that he didn’t really like strawberries until he tasted one of ours! Supermarket ones can be a bit bland, particularly out of season and if they’ve travelled a long way. I prefer to eat my strawberries ‘as they come’ – that is without sugar or cream, apart from the odd spoon of clotted cream (we are in Cornwall!). We chose to grow them in the garden rather than the allotment so that we could keep a closer eye on them and harvest as soon as they were ready, rather than letting the birds, rabbits, slugs and anything else get there first! Can’t wait for more!