Busy long weekend!

We are still recovering after such a busy long weekend! Weather was great so plenty of time outside, which let us finish up jobs in the garden and see the changes happen.

Old potato bed changing into new onion and bean bed!

  
This time, I decided to it is my turn to do a bit of  heavy lifting, so I shoveled some top soil into our newly built raised beds.I could not lift my arms for couple of days after! Another job that had to be done was turning the soil. It seemed easy at first but just managed to do 2 raise beds and left the rest for the coming weekend!

We put our first seeds in the ground as well which is always very exciting! So far we have lettuce, radish, peas, spring onion, beetroot.

  

Many more to go, and the kids raised bed is still empty as they are negotiating what should we place there…it’s great to see them fighting…over broccoli and corn…:) Their art work these days seem to be preoccupied with the theme of the garden as well!

So the plan for the coming weekend is garden, garden, garden! And some walks of course! 🙂

February, is it Spring?

February is supposed to be the beginning of Spring but I feel that is just  designed to lift a little of the Winter gloom. There is not too much  growing in February, save for the daffodils and snowdrops.

Temperatures are still very low and the ground has not really warmed up to spur on growth in the veg patch. But with a little human intervention in the form of cold frames, cloches and polytunnels seeds can be tricked into thinking it is later in the year that it really is.

We have not yet invested in a polytunnel but we have improvised, which is a great skill to have when you are trying to be more self-sufficient. Some plastic sheeting and some wire hoops (or wire coat hangers) can be put together without too much trouble to create a nice and warm environment in which you can sow some early seeds.

We have planted some salad leaves, radishes and some early cabbages among others things to get our veg patch growing. Hopefully in 4-6 weeks we will be chomping down on some lovely fresh lettuce and radishes.

The Asparagus is in its second year so fingers crossed we will have our first home grown asparagus later in the year to enjoy, I have been carefully tending the Asparagus bed for the past year so I hope my work will pay off – I will accept payment in tender Asparagus spears!

The Strawberry Pallet Planter needs a little attention which will have to be completed pretty soon as the plants will be back growing and producing fresh strawberries soon enough.

Over the Winter I added a section onto the compost bin, so there are now 3 compartments, I really don’t know what to expect but I am hoping all of last year’s waste has broken down nicely, to be honest, I don’t think I approached it properly as a lot of the material I placed in the compost heap I didn’t break up small to aid the decomposition process.

I also spent some time mulching my fruit bushes with cardboard. It has worked out quite well so far as it really does help to keep the weeds down, which means less competition for my raspberry, gooseberry, blueberry and Blackcurrant bushes.

Most of the Winter though I spent rambling the hills and fields of the Cooley Peninsula in search of game, Pheasants, Woodcock, Snipe, Duck, Rabbit, Hare and Woodpigeon.

But now that the season has ended I need to turn my attention back to the veg patch. My next little project is to build a few more raised beds using some old scaffolding planks and hire a rotavator to till last year’s potato bed which is slight mess!

Time to get planning again!

2014 is long gone and we are now in the new year. That means only one thing for us, we need to get our veg patch in order and start planning what we are growing and where.

Lettuce…

Last year we had a good supply of lettuce, but in hindsight we could have prolonged our season had we spread our planting a little bit more. If the truth be told we could have done this for a number of our crops. Our courgettes did well, probably best, and we have good extended season, they really are so simple to grow.

Potatoes…

One of my intentions for our veg patch this year is that it provides our family with all the salad leaves and potatoes that we need. We ran out of potatoes just before Christmas time, so I will need to give twice as much space to growing potatoes this year and that will present a little challenge, as we will
have to manage our space quite tightly. The issue of being self-sufficient in lettuce and salad leaves will be resolved far more easily with the help of sowing different varieties and also using a small tunnel to bring on some early leaves and also to give us fresh greens late into the year.

Carrots…

I can’t get my head around them, I will have to reassess my carrot sowing regime as it was, to put it bluntly, a complete failure. But I guess that comes with the territory, there will be ups and downs to growing your own veg.

Garlic…

My big plans are for Garlic. Firstly I love Garlic, raw and cooked. I am hoping to grow enough to sell in my local community and if all goes well I will expand this further next year.

But back to planning the veg patch for 2015. We will sit down over the next couple of weeks and finalise our list of fruit and veggies to grow this year. There will be a few definites apart from those mentioned above, Strawberries (the kids favourite), pumpkins, broccoli, cauliflower and beetroot, the rest will be chosen very soon…

Now that’s a load of horse sh*t!

So there I was faced with a grassy patch of land on which I was supposed to grow fruit and veg.  At about 30 square yards it was a fairly large piece of ground to dig by hand and I don’t have access to the required machinery to plough it up, so my choice was a fairly simple one – Raised Beds.

There was some timber lying idle around the garden from an old boundary fence so I got out the chainsaw, hammer and nails and off I went.  The result to of my weeks work are three masterfully crafted raised beds.  They look so well you’d happily put them in your front garden for all to see but it’s in the veg patch out the back they are required so that’s where they have gone.

Now in the interests of comfort I made one or half of one of the raised beds about 3ft high. The bed was about about 6ft across and the same in length.  At the time of making this bed it seemed like a real clever idea until I realised I would now have to fill it with soil and compost both of which I didn’t have a whole lot of lying around.

So on Saturday morning I got up early and went to fill my brand new trailer with poo, horse poo, from a local riding centre.

After I dropped off the horse muck at home I met up with a local farmer who had kindly offered to give me some top soil he had spare.

Back at home surrounded by the soil, poo and some compost I had from the garden I got busy mixing.  All the above mixed together will hopefully form the basis from which the family will grow all the yummy veggies we desire.

My next job will be to actually sow something, I will start with lettuce and radish, they are both simple to grow and also fairly quick to give a harvest, about 6 weeks.  There is a still a fair bit of work to do to tidy up the whole veg patch, clear some brambles to make way for my fruit bushes, make a few more raised beds, 3 or four more I think will be needed and then that will hopefully put the veg patch in fairly decent shape.

But for now, I need to jump in the shower and try to get the smell of horse off me.

Taking control.

Waking up after a night on the tiles can sometimes bring an unexpected clarity to life. Nobody likes a hangover, nobody wants a hangover but they exist and have to be dealt with.
Lying there this morning I realised I was not entirely happy with my lot. I was not doing what I wanted to be doing, and why on earth would anybody choose to live like that when there are alternative choices, namely choosing to do the things you want to do, things that make you happy.
Eureka.
In the shower, down to the hotel lobby, breakfast consumed and out onto the road home. My family, my home and my dreams beckoned. The raised beds needed to be made and my fruit patch needed to be, well yes, it needed to be created it wasn’t just going to appear in the field.

Lesson learned. The consequences off some of my actions take me further from my dream. I need to choose wisely what I do.