Get Off My Land!

Saturday 26th May 2012
Set for another hot one.

Today I got to use the traditional farmer's refrain "GET OFF MY LAND" .

I didn't say it to this goose, which had wandered into the veg patch.



Nor to this beautiful Asparagus Beetle.

No, I said "GET OFF MY LAND!" to my neighbours. Not Don, off course. The other side. The ones I don't mention. Unlike them, I like to concentrate on the positives in life, so we'll move on...

Back to that Asparagus Beetle. A beautifully marked beast, but the minute I spotted a couple of them on the tips of my asparagus plants, I remembered reading about them and instinctively knew that these little beasts were the subject of my reading. Reading up, though, they don't seem too difficult to manage (famous last words). Squashing adults and larvae seems to be the best way to keep them at bay, plus burning the stems at the end of the year, and with them the overwintering larvae.

I found out about them here...

http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/profile.aspx?pid=504 

Granny Elvis??

Chick of Elvis finally got what she wanted today, a couple of eggs to sit on. When I opened her hatch, she raised her bum feathers as is her wont, even though she's been sat for several days on no eggs at all. When I put two eggs under her (only the large ones, so that the offspring hopefully lay large eggs too) she made the most contented clucking sound. She can have any we can spare for the next couple of days. I really hope she stays on them and hatches them successfully. The sight of a mother hen leading her chicks around is something we have not yet had on the farm (Except when Elvis had Chick of Elvis, but that was only one chick.) Funny to think, Elvis will be a doubly surrogate grandmother.

Slimeballs

Wednesday 23rd May 2012
Another warm, muggy day.

This is the second year of our asparagus bed and I'm being ever so good and resisting temptation, letting the plants establish for another year before we start harvesting. If only someone would tell that to the slugs!
So much for mulching the asparagus with hay. The garden's entire slug population has moved into this deliciously dark, damp microclimate, with a choice of asparagus restaurants just a short slug slide away. So I've un-mulched it.

I did take a nice close-up shot, but it was out of focus, even with my glasses on. Still getting used to using the DSLR again - the compact has to be sent back to Hong Kong for repair, so goodness knows when we'll see that again - one disadvantage of international internet purchases.

ed...

Are we sitting comfrey?

Thursday 17th May 2012

Comfrey.
The bees love it. The veg plants love it. I love it.


Comfrey grows at an astonishing rate and tolerates being cut right back four of five times a year. This gives a huge yield of greenery from the comfrey bed.


OK, I hear you say, but what do you do with it? Eat it?


The value of comfrey lies in its deep roots which are incredibly efficient at tapping into nutrients. It can be simply added to the compost heap or used as a mulch, or the leaves can be steeped in a barrel or bath of water to give a very good plant feed.

But I plan to produce something much more potent. So, for this purpose, today I cannibalised a broken old pallet and built my Comfrey and Nettle Juice Extraction Unit.
Into the bin go chopped up leaves, weighed down (and covered when I make a more suitable weight) and at some point a thick, smelly black sludge will start to drip out of the bottom into waiting bucket. This is plant feed liquid gold and a little bit goes a very long way.


Until now I had forgotten, too, that the wilted leaves can be fed to chickens. I must try that very soon.


Only half of my comfrey bed would fit into the plastic bin, so I have left the rest and as yet there is no room for nettles in there either. I will hopefully get into a routine of topping it up every week. Meanwhile I will let some of the comfrey flower for the bees and the nettles, as long as they're growing in the right places, provide a wonderful home for all sorts of beneficial insects. I won't let all the comfrey flower, as I believe that flowering takes up a lot of energy which would otherwise be put into the leaves.


And before anybody points out that comfrey can all too easily turn into a most unwelcome and ubiquitous weed, I purchased Russian Comfrey Bocking 14 variety, available from the Organic Gardening Catalogue. This was developed in the 1950s by Lawrence D Hills, a leading early figure in the organic gardening movement. Bocking 14 is sterile, so can only be spread by root division. This I will be doing next year, as I want to have little patches of this wonderplant all around the veg patch and fruit area.

And a big patch near the chickens too, so that I don't forget to include it in their feed.

Meanwhile the asparagus shoots reach for the skies.
So tempting just to eat a few, but not this year.

The Last Frost???

Monday 7th May 2012 (bank holiday)

Scary stuff!
Thought I should dress up for what is hopefully the last frost of the season.

Friday night's promised frost never really materialised, though it did appear overnight on Saturday, but nothing to match this morning's. Hopefully it will be the last significant frost of the year.

I forgot to mention yesterday, I did manage to completely mangle one of the fleeces I had placed over the young potato shoots. I just caught the edge in the mower and this was the start of an unstoppable, cataclysmic reaction which saw the fleece spiral into the mower blades and come out in tatters until the blades eventually ground to a halt. 

Some of the potato shoots got caught by the frost. Not too many, and I will use the opportunity to see how much damage is caused. That way, I'll know for next year how much effort to put into protecting my spuds.

After the sunrise photo, I came back into the house to give the sun a chance to warm the ground. I was delighted to glance at my phone and notice the following two comments posted to this blog. Due my my tinkering with comments systems, I've lost them again, but am copying them here as they really cheered me up and made me feel proud of what we are doing here.

 

Found you yesterday. In the interests of research, bacon for breakfast and roast shoulder of pork for dinner today. We are very difficult to please but your product is SENSATIONAL. Keep up the good work and we look forward to being regular customers. Very Best Wishes ~ Sue and Steve

Have just enjoyed reading your blog.I
It was nice to meet you earlier today. Hope we didn't take up too much of your time. Thanks for letting the girls feed the piglets they loved it.

As I fed the chickens, I was lucky enough to be able to watch two baby Mistlethrushes begging and being fed by their parents. What a lovely start to the day.

Chasing piglets
At 9 o'clock I received a surprise phone call which made the day considerably more eventful.
A while ago a couple of other smallholders had put a deposit down on three piglets and we had sort of arranged to hand them over on Monday 7th May, once they had been weaned. However, we had no further contact and had got the ansaphone yesterday.
Unfortunately, when it comes to piglets, lots of people profess a definite interest in acquiring them, but the promised phone call of confirmation never comes. So I never really felt 100% sure that we had actually sold three.
Anyway, true to their word, Bev and Stuart were coming shortly to pick up their piglets. Bother! I had already fed them. I say this because pigs are ten times easier to control when they are hungry.
I would shortly be faced with the task of catching three of my little piglets. To be more precise, three boars. Ideally I would be able to view them from the back so I could tell what I was catching.

However, just look at the state of their pen after weeks of constant rain. Old clothes would be required!

And just look how wary they look having just been separated from mum. Piglets are not stupid. In fact, they are rather smart, as well as being fast and strong. The extra people, the dog carriers and the second feed of the morning all spelled danger to them. They would not let me get within about 6 feet, and even then they made sure they were facing me. This meant I could not easily tell the boys from the girls, and it would take a most athletic lunge to grab a back leg, the best way to catch them.

Please excuse the lack of action photos, but it was not our main priority!

Fortunately Bev and Stuart had brought a large fishing net with them (note to self...buy one!) We were very lucky. The first three piglets we caught were all boys. They squealed to high heaven, but quickly settled into the carriers and seemed happy enough in the back of the people carrier.

 

The pair in the foreground,
three ganders in the background.

Bev was then kind enough to give us a lesson in sexing birds. Having scoured the internet, there seemed to be numerous different ways to tell boy from girl geese, most contradiciting each other. My birding experience convinced me, from their behaviour, that we had a pair and three younger ganders, possibly the offspring of the other two. This was confirmed on close inspection (the fishing net coming into its own again).

Bev also gave us lots of advice on looking after the geese.

Beetroots and Salsify
By midday we had already done what felt like a full day! But the weather was holding off so I took the opportunity to do some more planting in the veg patches. I finally got round to planting some beetroots, golden, stripy, purple and red. I interspersed them with onion sets, as these are supposed to be good companions. Then into another bed were sown salsify seeds with pot marigolds. A few weeks late, but it should be OK. Known as the oyster plant, salsify (purple salsify, Tragopogon porrifolius ) is a lesser grown veg in this country. However, it grows well and has a pleasant and unique taste. If a few plants are left to overwinter, they produce wonderful, spiky purple flowers in their second year, beloved of bees and hoverflies.

Asparagus

The asparagus bed, weeded and mulched.

I put thirty asparagus plants in last spring and they struggled in the bone dry conditions. However, they eventually grew well producing their feathery fronds late into the autumn. Asparagus cannot be harvested in its first year, since the plants need to build up their strength. A few spears can be taken in the second year (though I will be patient and let the plants continue to build their strength). From the third year on, and hopefully for quite some years after, spears should be produced in profusion. 

This year, the asparagus has been slow to grow. A dry winter, a hot March but then a cool, wet April and start to May have not been ideal growing conditions. But now the spears are starting to emerge in larger numbers. Unfortunately the weeds are growing even faster and asparagus does not like competition. 
So, with the soil wet but not sodden, it was the ideal time to pull the weeds without the need to cultivate too deeply. 
I read somewhere that asparagus loves a mulch of hay, but did not want to do this earlier in the year as it would block the rain from watering the soil. However, this is not now an issue and the mulch will lock in the moisture and hold back the weeds. 

At the end of the day, we gave the four chicklets an hour of freedom in the whole chicken pen. These four chicks have very strong characters and love to explore. Off they went through the long grass with no fear whatsoever. It was lovely to watch them.

A piglet peers through the fence at Guinea Guinea.

Welcome To The World!

A Celebration of Spring Growth

Today, two of our dark brown eggs hatched - French Copper Black Marans. After our dismal attempts at hatching eggs, and with 2 of these already being smashed courtesy of Royal Mail, we were just about ready to give up on these eggs and the whole idea of trusting our postal system with delivering fragile eggs.

Your old home is needed. Out you go!

2 Crested Cream Legbars and 2 Cornish Dark Indian Game chicks take on the outside world. It didn't take long to start squabbling over a worm!

Meanwhile, in the veg garden, fending for themselves...


Glad I held off with the potatoes, or I'd have been busy heaping soil
on new sprouts to protect them from the frost.

 

Parsnips pushing through



Turnips should give a quick crop







Broad beans always seem to take an eternity to come up



 

Up come the peas

And the first asparagus - two different types. I won't harvest much this year, but from next year I can take as much as I like till about June.

The natives are well advanced now.

I love Red Dead-Nettle,
but not as much as the bees.

 

And in the orchard the young plums are in full blossom.

 

While, in the protection of the greenhouse...

These young lavenders are doing brilliantly.
Reckon I should get well over 100 plants
for the price of a packet of seeds.

Young poached-egg plants,
excellent for bees and hoverflies.
They will go under the fruit trees where the hoverfly larvae will munch any nasty aphids.

and how many Gypsophila plants will I have?

All my pepper seedlings are looking very healthy this year.

Back in the herb bed the Angelica is going mad - now in its second year it will flower and produce thousands of seeds.

And, judging by this sequence of events,  young guinea is definitely a female

Bring on frost-free nights, then things really start moving!