Going Cheep

April's Showers Arrive Late

I wouldn't be English if I didn't open with the weather.

We've finally has some of this...

Rather a lot. In fact I've had a butt full of it. Water butts of course! I've managed to fill two IBC containers, that's 2000l of water collected. 

Frost-free?
Not only that, but following an overnight frost on the morning of 7th May, we now have a frost-free forecast through until 20th.

I've finally started moving some of the plants out of the conservatory. Chances of anything apart form a light frost are now very low.

Chicks, Ducklings and Poults

The week has been all about baby birds though, We suddenly have 53 extra little mouths to look after!

We bought in a score of ay old chicks. These are hubbards which grow at a medium pace and are well suited to free range life. They are meat birds but we don't place a huge priority on bringing them to weight as fast as possible. The fastest growing birds, as used in the poultry industry (and by unthinking smallholders), just grow too fast for my liking. They are genetic monsters which can easily become too heavy for their legs or hearts to carry them. On the other hand, some of the more traditional breeds really aren't economically viable, producing scrawny birds which take ages to get to weight. This is fine if you are in the privileged position to pay considerably more for your meat, but it is not a viable route.

So we strive for a happy medium, birds bred to grow faster than normal and to put on more breast meat, but which can still lead a happy and healthy (if short) life. The shortness of a meat bird's life always comes as a shock to those not in the know. A commercial meat chicken will have no more than  couple of months of life. 

Gut instinct is that we want our chickens to have a much longer life than that, but this is where reality kicks in. For no chicken bred for meat would go much past 6 months. For starters, it would be very expensive, but more than that any chicken older than that turns to rubber. Imagine eating one of those chicken dog toys!

There is obviously the option to go vegan, and I wouldn't criticise that choice at all. In fact I was a vegan for part of my life. For me the important factor is the quality of life an animal has while it is still alive and keeping our own livestock gives me complete control over that. 

Hot on the heels of the chicks came the ducklings. Indeed it was a lot hotter on the heels than I had anticipated and it had me scrabbling around for somewhere to keep them. Again the ducklings are destined for the plate and will grow quickly. I searched around the smallholding for a suitable container in which to keep them. Finally I found the perfect solution, a large and strong plastic post office sorting box which we had been gifted and were using to store logs.

I fashioned a lid from strong metal mesh and suspended a heat lamp from the rafters in the garage. The poor little things were very sleepy and would just collapse asleep. A week on and they are almost unrecognisable. I am really pleased with how strong they are. If they feather up and the weather warms it won't be too long before they can enjoy free-ranging around the smallholding. For the moment they wouldn't survive the cold and wet, not to mention crows and rats!

Back to the chicks. Just a day old, they went straight into an old gerbil cage we scrounged off a friend. Here they had warmth, food and drink and safety. But their rate of growth is phenomenal and it doesn't take long before the smell  becomes somewhat noxious.

So already, after just a week, their accommodation has been considerably upgraded. We managed to scrounge another post office sorting box so they have moved into the garage alongside the ducklings.

As if that weren't enough to keep us busy, the turkey hen who was siting on eggs under a pile of sticks by the roadside paddock has hatched out al her eggs. I returned home from work to see her leading nine poults (baby turkeys) through he long grass.

I quickly sprang into action scooping the fluffy little balls into my coat pockets while mum did her best to fend me off, flying up at my face with claws outstretched. This is a dangerous lifestyle! 

We had prepared a stable in anticipation so I led mum towards it as she followed the calls of her babies. Again it is much safer for them to be reared indoors until they can fly up onto a perch.

There's more! A week later the other hen who was sitting on the straw bales hatched out her own clutch. Interestingly these chicks look completely different. One mum is a Norfolk Black, one a Bronze, but dad is a mix. However, the poults seem to have taken on the genes of their mums. We had no idea how many eggs she was on so I was pleasantly pleased to fin myself scooping up a dozen baby birds. Just one didn't make it out of its egg. Mum will be a very good parent. I can tell by the tenacity with which she sat for four weeks and by the tenacity she showed in jumping onto my back several times to defend her young.

Pegleg's Veg

Meanwhile in the veg plot some plants have finally started to be transplanted outside. Broad beans, onions, turnips and radishes are the first out. None of thee mind the cold too much, but I've been waiting ages for rain to wet the soil.

In the polytunnel, Florence fennel I sowed last July is just now coming good. Its the first time I've had success with this crop.

I've also been busy creating a new area to attract and feed wild finches and buntings. In general they won't come too near the house but we have really good numbers of Yellowhammers on the holding this year. To attract them I've sown some of the mixed seed we feed the birds into an area bordering the sheep paddocks and orchard. It's already working as there are regularly several birds feeding there, though they are showing a remarkable ignorance of farming. Each seed they eat could potentially have produced many hundreds later in the year!

One For Sorrow

Now for some sad news on the nature front. Having watched the pair of long-tailed tits busily constructing their delightful nest, I went outside to see a pile of feathers on the floor. Something, I suspect  magpie, had found the nest and pecked a hole in the top. The long-tailed tits have abandoned, leaving their tiny eggs in the nest. Nature can be so harsh.

Nature's Undertakers

One of my favourite jobs is turning the compost. It is a thriving city of minibeasts beavering away. Last week I unearthed a large beetle, maybe an inch long, with notable orange blobs o its antennae. A minute later there was another. They scuttled a bit too quickly to get any decent pics.

I looked them up and they are black sexton beetles, nature's undertakers. They sniff out small dead animals then dig underneath them until the corpse is buried. These two had sniffed out a dead rat! Smallholding's not always as glamorous as it seems.

Bloomin' Lovely

A quick update.

We've had some spells of windy weather lately but the almond blossom managed to come out at just the right time so hopefully the bees will be getting a good chance to pollinate the flowers. In fact the garden has been full of contented buzzing this week. The willow catkins are alive with bees, the mirabelle plum hedge is in full blossom for the first time since I planted it and the ground is covered with the hue of red dead-nettles.

I have decided to embrace
red dead-nettles

The mirabelle plum hedge is in blossom for the first time

For the first time we have frog spawn in the pond too which is very exciting news.

I planted my onion sets this week and my first early potatoes. There's not much to look at right now but it won't be long before the veg plot is full of crop plants again.

I've been busy in the polytunnel too, preparing poles for all the climbers. As well as tomatoes and cucumber, I want to grow squashes and melons vertically this year. I also have some sweet potato slips coming and a couple of more exotic climbers, groundnut and Madeira vine. It's time for another go at Yardlong beans too now that hopefully (fingers and everything else crossed) the red spider mite is on the retreat. I am using willow poles harvested from the pollard trees.

The big news is that Sue and I are old enough that we have had our first Covid vaccines but it doesn't quite feel like we can relax yet. A rare visit to Peterborough had us aghast at the sheer volume of people. I did manage to find two versions of eddoe in one of my favourite Asian supermarkets. 

Talking of eddoes, the bulbs I showed you last time have now been potted up and are doing really well. The ginger is growing too so the polytunnel should have a tropical feel to it this year.

On a sad note, the cat which appeared on the farm passed away. Sue found it under the straw store and at least made it comfortable for its last few hours..

Our turkey stag has gone into the freezer too. It seems he lost a battle with the young male and was looking very sorry for himself.  He was quite a size and I struggled to even carry him. We will miss him and the new turkey king will have to step up.

It is now the start of my Easter holiday and we have a few days of hot weather forecast. With the  equinox past, it will be a fortnight of hectic seed sowing and veg bed preparation. There'll be plenty to report on in my next post.

2021 Week 4 - My Perennial Project

We'll start with the weather.

It's been a week of fluctuating conditions, beginning with snow and early morning temperatures down to 5 below. But this was followed by a warm and very wet weather system. A couple of nights of heavy rain have seen water levels rise back to annoying levels. The seasonal lake and various ponds have reappeared and it is pretty squelchy underfoot. 

This was my week to be in school rather than teaching from home, so combined with the weather I have had limited opportunities to make significant headway on the smallholding.

Seed sowing steps up
My growing year has stepped up a notch with a gradual trickle of seed sowing. I've pushed everything a little earlier this year and purchased an extra heat mat to help persuade the seeds into germination and keep the tender young plants warm and snug. 

Some of my onions have germinated very well. As they germinate they come off the heat mat to give room for others. They just move to a different shelf on the staging which is currently in a warm spare bedroom. As soon as things warm up a little most of this will move into the conservatory which offers much improved light, but for the moment it's a bit cool in there and damping off of seedlings might be a problem.

All my aubergines have germinated. These need a long season to produce ripe fruit as I grow them outside. Of all my crops these are the most susceptible to red spider mite when grown in the polytunnel and I don't want to risk giving it a foothold back in.

I've started off my indoor tomatoes too, ten different varieties. I'll concentrate on these in a future post.

Strong lupin seedlings
but one seems to have
given up the ghost.

On a more decorative front, some of the seeds I collected from a gorgeous lupin plant have germinated strongly. Hopefully I can look after them and raise them into perennial splashes of colour around the smallholding.

Potatoes
As we move towards February, potatoes loom on the horizon. It won't be long till I pick up my order of seed potatoes for the year and set them to chit. Because of lockdown I saved some of each variety from last year just in case there was a problem with supplies this year. I put them in a spare fridge which seems to have held them quite well. This is just an emergency measure as it's best to start with fresh stock each year.

I have however planted the Arran Pilots which I saved through. These early potatoes have gone into a polytunnel bed with a heavy compost mulch and should give me new potatoes way ahead of the outdoor plants.

Perennial Hope

The week's main excitement has been a steady stream of deliveries of growing supplies. Thank goodness for the internet during lockdown. and this year is seeing a flood of experimental new crops - the product of too much time on my hands during lockdown. The idea of trying a few trendy perennial crops such as oca and Caucasian spinach has rapidly expanded into developing a major new area of the garden. 

I'm no artist, but this sketched plan opens a whole new can of worms

So here are some of the crops which will be in this area:

Fruit and nut trees already present - apples, pears, plum, almond, hazels, sweet chestnut, mulberry, fig. Also small-leaved limes which can be used for fresh leaves and tilia tea.

Soft fruits already present - gooseberries, red, white and blackcurrants, Japanese wineberries, loganberries, blackberry, raspberries, strawberries, chokeberry, Japanese quince. There's also a huge mahonia plant and an area of buddleia and flowering currants.

Other crops already present - rhubarb, asparagus sorrel, horseradish. There's also the elephant grass I planted last year for biomass which has developed strong rhizomes.

Up till now these have been grown in quite separate areas, but a redesign of where pathways go should help link it all together. I plan to introduce more layers to include climbing plants, herbaceous perennials and perennial tubers.

I'll be adding in some herbs too, such as rosemary, oregano and creeping thyme. Comfrey too.

So here's a list of the new and wonderful additions which will pretty much turn the area into a fully blown forest garden.

Good King Henry - Also known as Lincolnshire Spinach. I am currently trying to germinate the seeds.

Caucasian Spinach - Hablitzia tamnoides - If I can get this growing, it should be a vigorous climber whose leaves can be used as a spinach substitute. If this works I won't need to bother trying to grow annual spinach each year, which always bolts ridiculously quickly.

Oca - Tiny little tubers. I've not tasted them before and at almost a pound a tuber I'll eat some of the produce and sell some for growing. Some of the tubers I received were frost damaged (should be safe outside if well mulched) but I have enough left. They are currently sitting in dry compost in a tub in a wardrobe in the garage. They are actually a type of oxalis and will provide a very attractive summer ground cover.

Yacon - I tried this once before but lost it over winter. However, the taste was great and the harvest huge. If I had saved the growing points properly in a frost free place I could have multiplied it a hundred times. I've started this off in pots in a warm room and they have all thrown up fresh green foliage. They will need potting on before they go outside later in the year.

Mashua - A perennial nasturtium whose tuberous roots apparently taste radishy. I'll probably just use this as a decorative climber to come back year after year.

Chufa (Tiger Nuts) - Actually the bulbs of a grass. These are harvested and dried for eating or replanting. I've tried a couple of the dried 'nuts' and love them. They are sweet and nutty, turning coconutty.

Day Lilies - Edible flowers and young shoots. They'll probably be a very occasional harvest, but will add splashes of colour in the understorey of the forest garden.

Perennial Kale - Taunton Dean Kale, Daubenton's Kale and Portuguese Walking Stick Kale. One survived from last year but the ducks or turkeys have demolished a couple of others, which is an expensive lesson for me to provide some overwinter protection. I'll make cages out of willow. I have ordered a couple of replacement cuttings of Daubentons which will hopefully root successfully. The walking stick kale will be raised from seed which came all the way from The Azores. In our cooler climes they shouldn't set seed so easily so will stay perennial.

Wild Garlic - I've purchased seeds. If they germinate, these will be going under trees as lush ground cover.

Wild Strawberry - the seeds have just gone in the freezer to simulate a winter. if successful, these will be used for ground cover to provide tiny jewels of flavour explosion!

Skirret - A very old-fashioned crop. A bit fiddly to grow and harvest but it will be interesting to try.

Babington Leeks - I purchased six tiny bulblets last year and five have come back over winter. These have gone into the new perennial area and should grow much more substantially this year. They start growing midwinter and will have died back down by June, thus offering a leek flavour at a completely different time of year to traditional leeks.

Bamboo - I discovered a couple of lost bamboos at the back of my herb patch. They've been there since we moved in and have just started to thrive. I have taken cuttings from a golden bamboo which grows really tall. This was something I found on YouTube but I had no hope of the woody stem sections throwing out new growth. But lo and behold one of them has. The other bamboo is much thinner but considerably denser. It has gradually expanded into a large clump hidden by a large bay tree. So I have been dividing it, not an easy task. 
I will harvest the bamboos for sticks and canes and might give the fresh shoots a try too. But really I am growing them mostly for their statuesque appearance and for the rustling of their leaves and stems in a breeze.

Siberian Pea Tree - I've just sown seeds so this is a long-term project. Siberian Pea Tree is a nitrogen fixer and will be an important addition to the forest garden.

Sorrel - non-flowering. I already have a large patch of sorrel, but it is quick to go to seed every year and looks messy. So I have purchased a non-flowering form which should give fresh leaves over a much longer period. If it grows well I'll propagate it and dig out the old stock.

A sorrel root division and perennial kale cuttings

Mushrooms - I cant wait to get going on these. I'm planning on growing shiitake, oyster mushrooms and winecaps. An exciting new venture and just perfect for the forest garden.

I am also trying some more exotic perennials which will get their own area in the polytunnel. I'll still have to lift and store every winter probably. So I am trying ginger, galangal, eddoe, apios (groundnut) and Madeira vine. 

The delight of perennial plants is that, once they've got a hold, they can easily be multiplied (sometimes too easily!)

Next week: Pruning the orchard fruits

Know Your Onions - Get Ready, Get Sets, Go!

Every year I go to Limmings in Holbeach and I purchase one bag of Red Baron onion sets, one bag of Stuttgarter onion sets and one bag of Sturon onion sets. Put simply, sets are miniature onions which grow into big onions.
This gives me a whole bed full of onions. They are simple to grow - just plonk them in the ground about mid March and keep them weeded. That's it. The worst problem I have ever encountered is a few of the onions bolting if the weather is warm and dry.

This year however Limmings has shut down. I could still hunt around for onion sets in other shops but it seems like a good time to try something different.

So this year I have ordered onion seeds.
The advantage is that many more varieties are available. Also they apparently are capable of growing to a larger size than those started from sets as long as they are started early.

I have six packets - Red Onion Brunswick, Stuttgarter, Sturon, Globo, Sweet Spanish Yellow and Long Red Florence. I have a lot to learn. I do know that they need to be started quite early. I also know that they can be multisown in modules and planted out in groups.



So last night I sowed 6 trays of onions. We will see what happens throughout the year.

Just in case things go wrong, I have also purchased a small amount of onion sets which were on sale as part of the Potato Day last week.

I also sowed my first rows of carrots in the polytunnel today and half a row of turnips.

Things are starting to move.

The Very Best of Fenland Smallholders Club

My weekend was devoted to Fenland Smallholders Club.

Saturday 17th November 2018
Our first Beginners Grow Your Own Group
Once a month for the next ten months I am leading a Beginners' Grow Your Own Group. Today was our first meeting.
Before we got started on my tour of the veg plot, the orchard, the soft-fruit area and the nuttery, I had a plan to get our caravan moved. We had parked it up on the gravel driveway and Sue and I just couldn't get it moved on our own. Many hands made light work.
We hope to use this caravan to house volunteers if we can attract them to spend time here on the smallholding with us.

I am initially running the BGYO group as a ten session course and hope to give people all the skills they need to become pretty much self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables (unless they fancy the odd banana and orange!)
There are a range of participants, all smallholders, ranging from complete novices who are about to embark on setting up for growing food to others who have been doing it for years but want to extend their activities.

For this first session I tried to focus on the big picture such as choosing a site, deciding how to arrange beds and where to place perennial and annual beds. We looked at issues such as water supply, placing sheds, climate and microclimate and options for indoor growing.

Time flew past. I fed everybody with a couple of soups I had knocked up using one of my many pumpkins and bade farewell.

I still had some of the afternoon and evening to embark on my first ever basket-making without a tutor to guide me. I started with a basic basket which I had made before on courses. I made a couple of beginner mistakes, but overall the techniques came back to me. In fact, without a tutor to rely on I learned a lot more when I had to figure things out for myself.

It's all coming back to me now

I would dearly love to have another go straight away, but unfortunately the willow needs soaking for several days.

Sunday 18th November 2018
Preserving Day




Sunday was the main Smallholders Club meeting, for which Sue had done most of the organisation. We set off early and managed to get into the village hall in good time to set everything up. The day started with a talk by Sue on using a dehydrator. Her notes for the talk were on the equivalent of an old-fashioned fag packet, much to the amusement of others. Sometimes our teaching skills come in very useful.

After the talk there were about ten tables covering all aspects of preserving which club members kindly ran. There was onion stringing, eco-wraps, fermenting, jam and chutney, freezing, vinegars and cordials, bottling, sausage-making... everything you could want to know. We also had a jam-swap, which with hindsight I should have named the Jam-boree. This worked really well and will become an annual occurrence.

Lastly the pumpkin soup left from yesterday made a very popular appearance on the refreshments stand, alongside cakes, pizza and cheese scones which others had brought along. That one Crown Prince squash, with just a few onions and leeks and a small packet of sweet potato, had made three large pans of soup and provided about twenty five warming lunches. It had made a fair bit of money for the club too. 

One particular nice moment was to see Steve, a professional gardener, mentoring one of our younger members in the art of onion stringing. A bonus for Sue and I too as we got all our onions strung and all our garlic plaited. And that was that. 


A very busy weekend which hopefully lots of people learned a lot from and enjoyed.

Broad Beans Sleeping In A Blankety Bed...

August has been busy and at the same time not busy. Busy because there's been harvesting and weeding and mowing to be done, plus I've been trying to catch up on a few jobs like creosoting and mending chicken houses. Not busy because it's the holidays and I don't have to work every spare minute just to keep on top of things. It's been dry so the weeds and grass have slowed their growth. At the same time, some of the warm weather vegetable crops like the beans and squashes have really started to thrive. I've had the onions out drying too.

7th August 2016
Mowing today. It's so much easier if I can keep on top of it, but it still takes a good couple of hours.
Before I could mow I had to collect up the potatoes which had been laid out on the surface to dry before storage.

I was in a good mood today for Sue was due back from a little break in Italy. Apparently if she hadn't been there just at the right time this tower would have toppled over.

8th August 2016

Harvest.
Broad beans- time for all the broad beans to come out. The harvest is good but the plants are looking a real mess now.
I've grown them from saved beans for a couple of years now, Bunyard's Exhibition originally from a mixed pack of beans from Poundland! They've now given me three years of good harvests, so not bad value really. This year we got 6 large freezer bags full, once podded.
Unfortunately you used to get 30 beans for your £1 (plus some less useful dwarf and climbing beans and some peas). Now you only get 10.
Anyway, it's time for some new seed stock now, so I may change variety.
Climbing French beans
They've been a bit slow to get going this year, but we finally took a first small harvest of climbing French beans. The tastiest beans are the Cobras, but the seedlings were deformed this year and I almost abandoned them. In the end, I just threw the healthiest few plants into the ground and stuck a cane next to them. They are doing fine now and we'll probably get a decent harvest. Next year I'll invest in some new seed though.
I do like a waxy yellow French bean too and hunted high and low for a climbing variety. I eventually came across Kentucky Yellow Wax. Again, it's not been the most vigorous of plants but it has just started to crop. Hopefully the plants will thicken up and we'll get a bumper harvest by the end of the year.
Courgettes
The courgette crop used to be an officially classified threat to the human race! But last year I was struck by mosaic virus and courgettes are proving a real struggle to grow now. One of the forgotten principles of organic growing is to find the right variety for your conditions. Although more expensive, Courgette Defender has survived where others have failed and is now starting to give us a crop.
Sweetcorn Minipop
Sweetcorn Minipop, despite being grown just for its baby cobs, is a handsome and vigorous plant. Today we took the first harvest from the outdoor plants. 78 baby corn cobs. This variety has grown just as well outside as in the polytunnel, so next year I'll use the tunnel space for something else, probably more standard sweetcorn, which has been a little disappointing this year. I'm sure the cool weather hasn't helped, but even in the polytunnel the crop has been slim, though the cobs which have been produced are plump and delicious. Next year I'll have a change of variety though.

Pea trial not good
I find growing peas hardly worthwhile. Lots of effort protecting the crop and constructing a climbing frame for at best modest harvests. Add to that the destruction caused by pea moth larvae and I abandoned all peas apart from mangetout for a few years.
But this year I decided to grow an old traditional climbing pea in the hope that it would crop over a longer period. I purchased a pack of Champion Of England from RealSeeds.co.uk. They weren't cheap but would hopefully be worth the expense and I could save the seed from year to year. I sowed it at the back end of April to avoid the attentions of the Pea Moth.
So far so good. The plants germinated fairly well and started producing some very tasty peas. Up till this week I'd taken a few handfuls. It is important to keep harvesting peas so they keep producing, so today I expected to take my first significant harvest. How wrong I was! The plants had gone over already. All I could do was to leave the few pods there were to collect the seeds and have another go next year. What a disappointment.

9th August 2016

Our new neighbours had their hay baled today. It's good to see the hay not going to waste. They have a couple of rescue Dartmoor ponies which have not moved in yet. It will be nice to have some animals in the field.

Hay cut...

and baled.

As the baler chomped up and down the field, I chomped my way through the task of podding all the broad beans we harvested yesterday. If I see another broad bean!









It was a momentous day for the youngest batch of Ixworth chicks as they came outside for the first time. They'll go back into their cage with the electric broody overnight, but with the weather warm they hardly ever seek out the warmth it provides now.

The older chicks chilling out

Let there be light
For the past three months we've had no lights in the kitchen! Every time we turn them on they trip the switch. We have a good electrician, but he often needs several phone calls before pinning him down. So somehow we've just kept putting it off. We did call him a week ago, but our call has not been returned. We've finally trained ourselves not to switch on the light.
Anyway this morning we had a builder round to give us a quote for some other work. He gave us the number of a different electrician. At 5 this afternoon I came in from the garden to discover a very tall young man fixing the kitchen lights. He wasn't even stood on a chair. Even I can't reach the kitchen ceiling without climbing up on something.
We now have kitchen lights and it is amazing! The place is so bright. But we still hesitate before hitting the switch. We also now have a new electrician who has the decency to return our phone calls and doesn't make endless promises.