2021 Week 7 - Mulching and Willow Weaving After The Big Freeze

What a difference a few days make. The sun is streaming through the window, the snow is gone, the bees are out, birds are singing. 

Goose Love is in The Air
Valentine's Day on the smallholding means one thing... Cleaning out the goose stable, several months worth of accumulated straw and muck. For this is when the geese come into lay. Their behaviour changes as they become much more raucous and aggressive with each other.

Rather perversely, this is one of Sue's favourite jobs. I am happy for her to do it. All that mucky straw doesn't go to waste though. I am chief distributor. The blackcurrants always get a good dollop of this nitrogen rich mulch, as does the rhubarb. Both of these are relatively unaffected by the slugs that the mulch might attract.

I also decided to risk mulching some of my veg beds with it. The beds over near the boundary hedge are prone to drying out and this year will be hosting brassicas and squashes, both hungry crops. It will be a while before any of these seedlings are planted outside and it should give the ducks time to get on top of any burgeoning slug population before their services become more damaging than helpful and they get kicked out of the veg plot.

Ready, Steady, Sow!
Valentine's Day is also the starter gun for seed sowing. The days are getting longer quickly. and conditions are easier to provide to keep seedlings happy. I have pushed all my timings forward this year. In one sense this is a bad idea since you're pushing the limits and not growing the young plants in ideal conditions. On the other hand, I know there will be serious bottlenecks for propagator space and bench space in the near future, so the more I can get going now the better. The heat mats are in particular demand. These peppers should hopefully get off to a quick start with some bottom heat. Once germinated they can move to a warm spare room by a south facing window.

This week has seen me sowing more lettuce, turnips, carrots, radicchio, kohl rabi, parsley and broad beans. I've been busy sowing seeds of perennial plants too. These are often harder to germinate and look after, but the rewards come if you can get them through to planting out.

The conservatory is full of chitting potatoes

My potatoes arrived this week too. Varieties were a bit limited but I've risked saving some through from last year. I think I have eleven varieties. A bit excessive but they all have very distinctive qualities.

Additions to the Forest Garden
I received some plants in the post for the forest garden too. This is the experimental, exotic end of my growing. Japanese Raisin Tree, Himalayan Honeysuckle and Red-berried Elder will make exciting additions to the collection.

Fortunately the snow melting and a little rainfall has not flooded the place out. In fact it is drying up quite nicely.🙏 The warm weather and a steady breeze helps but I think when the ground is frozen it allows the soil deeper down to drain somehow faster than usual.

Willow weaving
Because of this I've been able to get out and sort the willow poles that I've been cutting. I have everything from thin slithers to three inch thick straight branches. The first thing I did was to construct a protective cage for my surviving perennial kale since the turkeys and ducks had ravaged the ones I had left unprotected over winter. I love this sort of task as it combines willow weaving with gardening and being outdoors.

I then picked out willow poles suitable for various purposes - bean poles, climbing structures, support frameworks. I will gradually throw these to the sheep to debark so they don't start growing when poked into the ground. The bark stripping service is available at a small price 🐑🐑🐑🐑😉.