An Early Spring Smallholding Week

What I love about working on the smallholding is the rich variety of jobs. So, by way of a bit of a catch up, here's a quick overview of a week here on Swallow Farm.

Thursday 15th February 2018
I started the day by jointing the ducks I recently dispatched and plucked - I am getting better and better at getting all the meat off the bone, which is great as I hate to waste anything when it is an animal's life we are talking about.
Hazel Coppicing
A trip to the vets for standard pet supplies hurt the wallet as usual, but we stopped off at a fellow smallholder's place on the way back to help coppice some hazel. Just one tree for this year but it gave us a fair haul of useable poles. They are a bit rustic but should be ok for what I have in mind, which is to make some hazel and willow hurdles. I had forgotten that the willow needs to be cut for a couple of weeks before it can be sufficiently bent without snapping, so that job has gone on the list.

I would normally cut all the growth at ground level, leaving sloped edges to shed water,

but the owner wanted this year's growth left - which made cutting a lot, lot trickier.

Friday 16th February 2018

The large water butt (an IBC - Intermediate Bulk Container) has been working well as a reservoir from the gutter to the wildlife pond. But the best laid plans... today I just needed to move it about 4 feet to make room for something else.
Willow harvesting

The job went more smoothly than I imagined, so I got straight on with harvesting the remaining willows. For the moment they can lay in neat piles until they have weathered enough to use for hurdle making.

Let there be light in the polytunnel
With jobs falling thick and fast, I made hay while the sun shone and cleaned the polytunnel. I have bought a new long-handled squeegee and soft broom for this and all was going well until a small plastic protrusion went straight through the polytunnel plastic. Fortunately I had a couple of foot of repair tape left over. More has been ordered as this is one thing you want in stock on the rare occasions when it is needed.

The monster chicks foraging in the rhubarb bed.

The upturned bins are for forcing pink rhubarb.

Saturday 17th February 2018

Rhubarb forcing

Not much done today, though I did place a couple of plastic dustbins over two of my rhubarb crowns in the hope that I can get a small crop of forced rhubarb this year. We'll see how it goes.

Sunday 18th February 2018

Grow-Your-Own Motivation

A day spent with the Grow-Your-Own group. I have handed over the reins of this group as I have taken on being Chair of the Smallholders Club and that is taking up quite enough of my time.

Our subject for the day was succession planting and we had a very informative discussion. I showed off my seed organisation system, which I can't show you as it is patent pending (actually it's not, but it should be).

More importantly we enjoyed a high quality bring and share meal. Then there was more club business. Four of the Grow-Your-Own group are now committee members of the Fenland Smallholders Club and we informed the others that the group had volunteered to organise the April club meeting. As this would be the first I had been in charge of as Chair, I want to make it a good one.

Lots of ideas flew about and I think we will put on quite a show.

I always come back from the Grow-our-Own group feeling inspired and reinvigorated.

Monday 19th February

Early Crops

Finally the polytunnel is ready for me to start planting. (I discovered that the old soft broom head fitted the new gubbins I've bought, making for the perfect polytunnel cleaning set up).

In went ten Arran Pilot seed potatoes for a super early crop of new potatoes. I sowed carrots, beetroots, turnips and lettuce too. The polytunnel is great for squeezing an extra crop in before anything is possible in the unprotected beds outside.

Turkeys not just for Christmas

I managed to catch and dispatch the superfluous male turkey - important to do this while I could still tell it from the older stag.

I got it all plucked too while it was still warm. I find turkeys the easiest of all poultry to pluck.

Primocane Raspberries

With these jobs done before lunch, I continued on to cutting back the stems of my autumn fruiting raspberries. It is amazing that from nothing new stems will shoot up, flower and fruit all before winter comes round again.

These are my new raspberries, one called Joan J which gets rave reviews from everyone and one called All Gold (though it doesn't produce chocolate raspberries and they're not Terry's!)

Another Re-organisation

With drizzle coming down all day, I was by now getting pretty damp. The water table is high which means that any rain makes the soil unworkable and things churn up pretty quickly. So I continued the day reorganising the stables. I have made some room in there and want to make good use of the space. It is amazing how every space I create seems to fill up with 'stuff', hence the endless reorganisations.

And finally, despite the weather forecast for the coming week, there are more definite signs of spring. Here's a photo of some catkins I took today.

What a Very Productive couple of days

Sunday 11th February 2018
Looking after my body
I woke up aching. These old muscles need recuperation time from activities such as lugging sacks of potatoes about.

So I chose gentle jobs for the day. First up was creosoting all the wood in the polytunnel for I suspect that is where the red spider mites hide away to overwinter. The metal frame has already been nuked with disinfectant and blasted with water but a multifaceted chemical attack is clearly what is needed.

All I need to do now is to clean the polythene. Most of the algae is on the inside and the outside is just grimy. I have ordered a long handled squeegee / soft broom affair for the job. The reason it is not here yet is another story.
This is a great job to do, as the light floods in afterwards.

We are not exactly having many beautiful clear winter days at the moment, so again it was not a day for outdoor jobs.

Instead I potted up some of the tomato seedlings. I've started a few varieties off early this year just to see how they do compared to the others. My hope is that the conservatory proves to be the ultimate plant rearing facility and I can start everything off that bit earlier so that harvests come sooner. I don't normally rush things, but the sooner I get a harvest the more tomatoes I will get if blight strikes later on.
I have sown some lemongrass as well and it has already germinated as has my first sowing of coriander.
I potted up the chilli seedlings too. I am still waiting for a couple of varieties to come through, but old chilli seed often loses its viability.

Finally I sowed my leek seeds for the year. I have changed variety this year as last year's suffered terribly from rust and have not stood the frosts well. I just feel it is time for a swap, so I've gone for Porbella which claims to have good rust resistance. By the way, this is not the same rust that cars suffer from!

With the sowing of this year's leeks, I harvested the last of last year's for a leek and potato soup. I harvested the last of the carrots too. They should have been harvested before the winter to save them from the slugs, but we got plenty this year so I left some standing in the ground.
The last ones left were Autumn King and had grown to a good size.
There was a fair amount of slug damage and a few millipedes and woodlice had been munching too, but I still got a good bowl full even after sorting. The geese got the rest and spent the next few days doing orange poo!
As I harvested the carrots, the chickens pecked up the baby keel slugs which had moved in. One I'm particular waited for me to hold up each newly dug carrot. The fate of this carrot harvest was a carrot and ginger soup which came out very nicely. In addition, any spare carrots, leeks and a few other bits and bobs were used to make two big pans of stock to add depth of flavour to the soups.

The evening was spent cooking. I am still keeping to my New Year's resolution of cooking more with our produce. The two aforementioned soups plus a big pot of roast sweet potato and pumpkin soup.
These soups will feed the first meeting of the Fenland Smallholders Club committee that I am chairing this weekend.

Monday 12th February 2018
Cooking and Preserving

Beef Goulash with roast Salsify and Scorzonera.

Portuguese Corn bread and very British Lardy Cake.

What a very productive day. After three batches of soup yesterday evening, I took on a Beef Goulash with Roast Salsify and Scorzonera with Ginger, Lemon and Honey. Yummy!

Then onto bread making. with a Portuguese Corn Bread (thanks to finding somewhere to buy corn meal) and a soda Pumpkin Bread (courtesy of the buttermilk I found in the same shop)

While I was doing all this, Sue was processing a ton of blackcurrants from the freezer, juicing them ready to make a jelly. She mad 30 jars of delicious damson jam too.

Next up for me was Lardy Cake. I make this wicked favourite every year, using some of the very best lard we saved from Daisy when she went to the great pigsty in the sky. 

Then biscuits for the committee meeting. Orange Biscuits, Walnut and Chocolate Slices and Prune and Peel Rock Buns.

It's a good job I am trying to lose a bit of weight at the moment!

Seeds for a new growing season

Monday 22nd January 2018
This year's seed order
After yesterday's seed audit, I sat down to think about what to grow this year. I have decided to concentrate on what we know we like to eat and what I know grows.
I am going to finally give up on some crops.

OUT 😢

Celeriac - too unpredictable, with decent bulbs only every few years

Aubergine - I've never had anything more than a pathetic crop in the polytunnel. Never ripens well and fruits are small. Also one of the first plants to host red spider mite. Has to go.

Outdoor peas - only grew well one year, when we were virtually waterlogged. OK for a small plot where it can be watered plenty. 

Kohl rabi - grows well but we're not that fussed

Asparagus pea - great for bees and a pretty plant, but the pods taste less like asparagus and more like cardboard

Hamburg Parsley - a nice idea, parsley leaves and parsnip roots, but I find parsnips give better roots and curled parsley gives better leaves

Watermelon - fails every year in the polytunnel, which is a shame as I love it

Cauliflower - when I have managed to get decent curds, the slugs or the weather have invariably got to them first. I have much more success with Romanesco, which is a cross between cauli and broccoli.

Radishes - I grow them because I feel I should, but we never eat them before they bolt

IN 😊
Celtuce - a cross between lettuce and celery. I'm going to give it a try. More in a later post if it's successful, otherwise it can quietly disappear off the list like so many other experimental crops in the past.

Blight Resistant Tomatoes - Legend, Lizzano, Mountain Magic. Growing tomatoes outside is disheartening when they suddenly get hit by blight a few weeks after it has hit the potatoes. Pretty much the whole crop is devastated and the plants have to be pulled up just as they are beginning to crop. So this year I have splashed out. At nearly £3 for six seeds (yes, SIX) they are ridiculously expensive. They are F1 too, which means the big companies have you hooked in. But a full season's harvest from just one plant would easily repay the cost.

Leek Porbella - I've been getting more and more rust on my leeks, so in an effort to break the cycle I am going to switch varieties to a more rust resistant type. Growing disease-resistant strains is one of the mainstays of organic gardening, but one which I often forget to use.

All go

Entertainment for the day involved the setting up of traffic lights outside for BT to do something to the phone lines. Mid morning my internet and phone went off. It amazes me that, with just three houses affected and about a dozen men on the job, that none of them bothered to knock on the door and politely explain what they were doing and that the service would be interrupted for a while. Just common courtesy and good public relations, but there you go.
So instead I decided to go and pick up some bales of straw. I just had to manoeuvre past the van that was parked half across my driveway and pull out in the middle of the traffic lights. Maybe my house is invisible.

I set the alarms off at the farm where I get the straw. They have been having terrible problems with hare coursers. The level of intimidation, even with the police present, is disgusting. These people are vile human beings and need locking up or worse.

Nuking the Polytunnel
With the straw unloaded, main job for the day was to spray the polytunnel with disinfectant. Not particularly nice stuff, but I need to nuke it every winter to try to get rid of the red spider mite which can devastate the plants. I then blasted every inch with a hosepipe. Most of the water seemed to end up soaking up my sleeve, dripping on my head or splashing back onto my glasses.
Tomorrow I will repeat the whole procedure.
If I could rid the tunnel of red spider mite for good I could begin to use it to hold and grow crops through the winter. As it is, we have to go for a full clear-out every year.

There was just time to take the dogs along the river before sunset. The afternoons are getting longer by the day and it won't be long before we have light evenings.

A Fire, An Explosion and a right Battering by The Storm With No Name

Monday 15th January 2018
A full scale drama and we didn't even know about it
The chimney sweep came today. After Christmas there was a strange boom in the woodburner. The next day we found the back flu cover on the floor.
Well it turns out we must have had a chimney fire which caused the small explosion (without wanting to sound too dramatic), shearing the metal lugs clean off.

Tuesday 16th January 2018
Wintery weather for lots of the UK today, but here we had a gorgeous winter day. The polytunnel clearance continued with my team of fowl helpers. I was intending to disinfect everything too but have decided to give the chickens a week to scratch around. They will clear the soil and it is good for them to be able to find somewhere to dust bathe at this time of year.

The water butt now acts as

a water reservoir to feed the

rainwater from the stable roof

to the wildlife pond and bog

I am giving up having a water butt in there as I have concluded that it probably makes very little difference to night time winter temperatures. Instead I will insulate the young seedlings using propagators within mini greenhouses within the tunnel. For extremes, bubble wrap and fleece should do the job.
I think too that a big water container in the middle of the polytunnel didn't help with air circulation in the height of summer.


Seeing the chickens enjoying the polytunnel has given me an idea. I have an old polytunnel frame sitting outside, probably not good enough for a second growing tunnel, but hopefully plenty good enough to build a covered area in the chicken pen. I may even be able to have one in the turkey pen too.

Blue eggs have started appearing in the stables again.

For the moment we know where they are being laid.

(Brown one made of wood as a decoy)

The afternoon was dedicated to my resolution to cook more this year. A lamb casserole, pulled pork and lentil dahl with five-spice soda bread, using the buttermilk left over from Sue's recent butter making. There was also parsnip, ginger and orange soup.
The lentil dahl scored 20/10 from Sue. I was more conservative at 6 stars (out of a possible 5).

Wednesday 17th January 2018
A Storm with No Name
A dash back from work today to take the dogs for a walk along the river. All was still, but little did we know what was in store.

A forecast of high winds on Wednesday night was somewhat understated. I was awoken just before 4am by a creaking roof, buffeted windows and wind outside which sounded like a high speed train. It's fair to say we experience our fair share of windy weather here on the open fens, but tonight was something else. I was genuinely worried for the structure of the house and feared what I would find on the smallholding in the morning.
At about 5am I ventured downstairs and peered through the windows into the moonlit darkness. It was just like a hurricane, with trees and bushes getting an absolute battering.

I managed to retrieve the wind chart information. Pure numbers hide the drama, but a 45mph wind with gust upon gust at close to 70mph was actually quite scary.
Next up... what I found in the morning.

Garlic and Shallots - Divide and Conquer

Tuesday 9th January 2018
The final order for ducklings from fellow smallholders was 226. I look forward to the day they all come.
Garlic and shallots in the ground
I got the garlic planted today as planned. The cloves are planted just below the surface. The more space you give each one, the larger the final bulbs (within limits). The main choice is whether to plant on a square grid pattern or in rows. Either way, you get roughly the same number in the same space. I prefer rows as it's easier to cultivate in between the plants later on when the weeds are running riot.
They should still catch a few heavy frosts which they need so the cloves divide later in the year.
Garlic gives a fantastic return, with approximately a ten-fold increase on your original investment in just half a year. If I had replanted all of the offspring from the original three bulbs every year I would be growing 300000 bulbs this year! I think I'll stick to the usual 100.

I got 30 shallots planted too, ones I saved from last year. These grow in a similar way to garlic, one set dividing into maybe 5 or 6 during the year. It's like free food every year.

The geese have been keeping the grass short in the orchard and have been wandering further up the land. It is nice to see them feeding in the young woodland.
There was a treat for them today as I discovered a few missed carrots in the ground as I was clearing one of the polytunnel beds.

The chickens 'helping out' in the tunnel.

The polytunnel is usually a strict no go zone

for the chooks as they can wreak havoc,

but I like them to scratch around when I'm having my annual clear out.

That's all for this post. Thanks shallot! (sorry, but it makes me chuckle every year)

2018 Veg - All Systems Go Go GO!

Sunday 7th January 2018
Poultry losses
We lost one of the ducks on Saturday, the male Cayuga. He just wasn't there when I went to put them away. No feathers, no blood, no body. I count my blessings really that whatever took him just took one. It rarely happens and always at this time of year, when food is short for predators.

And today one of the commercial meat chicks. I didn't count them in last night, but only 7 emerged this morning. I searched everywhere before the gruesome find of the poor little thing encased in ice in the paddling pool. This is the first bird we have lost in there, as we have placed bricks around the edge and a wooden ramp to aid escape.
Losses are always sad, but sometimes they are unpredictable or unavoidable. It's part of the price of letting the birds have more freedom.
Monday8th January 2018
Turning the soil
Onto more positive things.
I took advantage of drier and frosty conditions this morning to finally get the bed ready for the garlic cloves. They'll be going in tomorrow when the soil is a bit softer. 100 cloves to produce 100 garlic bulbs. This will be the fifth year I've used my old bulbs with no negative effect on harvest. Not bad considering I ignored all the advice to buy specialist stock and instead brought them originally from a small Asian supermarket in Harrow.

Mr Rotavator comes out for the first time in 2018. I love to see the chickens and robins grabbing the opportunity to rid my soil of creepy crawlies. I'm sure they eat some good ones too, but so be it. As long as they get the slug eggs.

Sue picked up some Early potatoes for me too yesterday. They are to go in the polytunnel immediately, to start the new potato harvest early.  So after I had rotavated the garlic bed I set to clearing out the polytunnel. I'm tight for time for a spring clean, but if I can get the tubers into the soil I can get the spring clean done before the leaves poke through the surface.

I need to plant my polytunnel mangetout seeds too - which means auditing what seeds I have and completing my vegetable seed order for the year.

Wow! All of a sudden it feels as if the 2018 growing season is upon us. It gives me a spring in my step. Between now and February half term I'll try to take advantage of any fine days when the soil is not sodden to work all the veg beds, emptying the compost bins and incorporating it into the soil.

This year I plan to stick to the basics. No fancy crops that we don't really eat. Besides, I've tried just about every exotic vegetable there is to try.

I have some major smallholding projects planned for the year, so I am going to try to make my veg growing more simple and organised.

A bumper pepper harvest

Tuesday 24th October 2017
Still mowing
Crazy as it seems, I've been doing a lot of mowing this last week. The weather in our part of the world has been unbelievably mild and dry so the grass is still growing fast.

Wednesday 25th October 2017
A quick trip to the beach
A trip to the beach. With high tide falling mid morning, there was no avoiding it and the limited beach space made for perfect socialising conditions for the dogs. Boris really isn't that bothered. He is completely obsessed with the ball and rolling around in wet sand. Arthur on the other hand is desperate to meet every single dog he sees.
There were children everywhere too as it was half term. At least they are getting out in the fresh air, though we did hear one mother telling her child not to dig in the sand as it was wet and dirty! eh?
We didn't stay in Norfolk too long as it was absolutely packed. With the dogs tired out we returned to the smallholding and ventured into the polytunnel, which has all gone a bit overgrown.

Bumper pepper harvest
I would love to use the polytunnel to hold crops over the winter, but unfortunately I will soon need to clear everything out and thoroughly clean everything to keep the spider mite and blight down next year.
Today's task was to harvest and sort out the pepper plants. They were slow to get going this year and I forgot all about them. But peppers and chillis seem to thrive on neglect and Sue and I had soon collected a bumper crop.
Most notable were the lemon chillis - we will have enough for the next few years! The paprika chilli had done well, but the Jalapeno looked suspiciously like Cayenne - this often happens with chillis.
The sweet peppers had succumbed a little to the mice and slugs - in fact they are both partial to the hot ones too - but fortunately there was enough for everyone.
The Sweet Bananas were especially prolific this year and the long twisty Turkish Corbaci peppers made an attractive change from the more familiar bell peppers.

We cut the dried up angelica stalks too. They are hollow, so they have become the latest addition to the insect hotel, which is gradually getting filled with a rich choice of bug habitats.

Return of the red spider mite

GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
They're back.

Spider mites are the peskiest of pests. There are two sorts of red spider mite, those which suck the blood of chickens and those which suck the life out of plants in the polytunnel. Neither red spider mite is red! Both are very destructive and an absolute pain to get rid of.

I first identified red spider mite in my polytunnel four years ago. These tiny arachnids multiply rapidly and in that first year weakened my Yardlong beans so much that I got virtually no crop.
One standard treatment for red spider mite is to import a biological control predator, but it's not cheap. I don't mind spending twenty quid if it gets rid of the problem, but not if it merely controls the numbers to come back every year.

In my ignorance I hoped the spider mites would vanish over the winter, but over the following two years they came back stronger each spring. Last year I'm pretty sure they got outside too as my whole bean crop was disastrous with the plants making no headway whatsoever.

So this winter I blitzed the polytunnel, spraying with Jeyes fluid (I had previously tried less aggressive solutions such as Citrox) and treating the wood with creosote. I also removed all possible overwintering homes such as bits of wood, support ropes etc. I've also been using the overhead irrigation regularly, as spider mite do not like humid conditions. The trouble is, these conditions encourage moulds too, which can be a problem when the vegetation in the tunnel inhibits air circulation.

All of this brought me success in my battle... or so I thought. My plants have grown well with none of the tell-tale signs of spider mite damage.

Luxuriant growth in the polytunnel

Growth trimmed back to allow air circulation

But then, a couple of days ago, I went to check if any of my aubergines were beginning to grow fruits and I came face to face with leaves that looked like this.

This mottled effect is caused by a

multitude of bite holes which

significantly weaken the plant and can kill it.

On very close inspection, for spider mites are absolutely tiny, I could just about see the pesky little blighters crawling along the stems.

Look very closely!

In preparation for this I had brought in some Pyrethrum, newly available as a group of producers clubbed together to pay the huge cost of getting it approved for use. I also made some rosemary oil earlier in the year, as this is supposed to be the active ingredient in some hideously expensive commercial sprays.

The pyrethrum is to be sprayed at seven day intervals. I spray it in the evening, after the bees and hoverflies have gone to bed, making sure to drench the plants and get right under the leaves. Fortunately I have caught it early so only need to do a small area of plants.
In the morning I turn on the irrigation to wash the leaves before the sun comes up and to keep conditions humid during the day.
But I am taking no chances. On the days I don't spray with pyrethrum I will use a weak rosemary oil solution. I am praying that my actions have a significant impact, as last year it was a tad demoralising.
If I don't see a change very soon the aubergine plants will go - they rarely give me a crop anyway, though I suspect that is because for some reason they seem to be extremely prone to spider mite.
Other plants which get hit are beans (I don't grow these in the tunnel any more), cucumbers and melons and, in a bad year, even the pepper plants. So far the tomato plants have seemed largely unaffected. Removing all the leaves below the developing fruits probably helps too.

Meanwhile, the harvest has started in earnest. Tomatoes are ripening and cucumbers are coming thick and fast. It looks like a very good year for melons too.

Cucumbers galore

A New Comfrey Bed

18th March 2017
Re-reading the works of Lawrence D Hills (founder of the UK organic movement) has inspired me to make better use of my comfrey plants.

My established comfrey plants are coming up fast.

Half a comfrey plant will make many more.

They are of the variety Russian Bocking 14, which importantly does not self-seed all over the place. Instead you multiply it by dividing the rootstock. This is the time of year to perform this operation, just as the leaves of established plants are poking their heads up into the spring air.

It is achieved by simply plunging a spade into an existing plant. The considerable rootstock is surprisingly juicy and crisp. I like to leave at least half of the old plant in its place, but the other half can be subdivided into a dozen new plants easily. In theory, each small part of root will become a new plant, but I like to use a part of root which is throwing up new leaves. I think this may be the difference between a root cutting and an offset, though I may be wrong! Anyway, you can't really go wrong with comfrey.

I guess the only thing would be to establish a bed where you don't want it to be in a few years time, for the depth of the roots and the ease with which they grow into new plants when chopped up means that getting it out of the ground is almost impossible (repeated doses of weedkiller would have to be the solution I guess)

Today I used three of my established plants to create a new bed of 50 plants! The parent plants will be back to their best very quickly and by next year the young plants will have caught up with them.

Why do I need this much comfrey? Mainly as a natural fertiliser and as a compost component. Comfrey has extraordinarily deep roots which bring nutrients from way down. The leaves can be cut half a dozen times a year and if you let it flower it is much appreciated by the bees. I have planted a few in odd corners which I allow to flower, but the main beds I try to keep on top of cutting.

Comfrey leaves can be put straight into the ground under transplanted seedlings or laid on top as a mulch. They can be added to the compost heap or steeped in water to make a tomato feed soup. If I can grow enough, I intend to feed it to the chickens too as a once a week treat.

It took me most of the morning to create my new bed (much of which was taken up extracting dock roots and creeping thistle from the new site) which is down in the spare veg patch, next to the compost bins there.

While we are on the subject of compost, I now have a new source of horse manure. Next door have a fancy poo hoover and today I took delivery of my first poo, all nicely chopped up. It will be a fantastic addition to the compost bins, adding goodness and considerably speeding up the rate at which they turn garden rubbish into black gold.

Much of last year's mature compost went onto the veg beds at the beginning of winter. More specifically it went onto the beds where this year I will grow potatoes. It has been rotting down and being incorporated into the soil by the worms.
Today I took Mr Rotavator onto those beds and managed to turn them. Mr Rotavator has been a bit poorly of late. His engine has been running far too fast and threatening to explode! I have poked around a little bit and today he seemed to run fine which was a relief as now is not a good time for him to throw a sickie!

New potatoes and rows of turnip seedlings

doing well in the polytunnel

Double protection for the carrot seedlings

I was hoping to get my early spuds into the ground, but the heavens opened and drove me into the polytunnel. In there the extra early potatoes have already reached the surface. We should have scrummy new potatoes just as last year's stored tubers have run their course.
I sowed a new row of turnips too and resowed the carrots. For the second year in a row they seemed to disappear as soon as they germinated. I have taken the precaution of cloching the new ones in case it is too cold for the seedlings at night time. I have scattered some organic slug pellets in there too to cover that option.

The rain never stopped for the rest of the day. I did all the work I could think of to do in the tunnel and then retreated indoors.

The evening was spent at a Race Night (lots of gambling, drinking and eating, all in moderation of course) to raise money for Sue's school. They raised over £1000 which is not bad for a small village school. The money will be used to pay for the children to go to the pantomime later in the year. I reckon it should be Jack and The Beanstalk or Mother Goose.

Taking shelter in the polytunnel

Plan for the day was to peg down the groundcover sheets between the raspberry rows and to mulch the canes with compost. But the rain put an end to my plans. I don't mind getting wet, but I was slipping and sliding all over the place. Some jobs are easier achieved on dry days.

Instead I retreated to the polytunnel where the mangetout that Sue planted back in January were ready for planting into the beds. About 80% of the seeds had germinated, which is good considering they were planted midwinter.
Hardest part of this job is erecting the pea netting, always a tricky and frustrating operation. So instead I decided to use the plastic mesh which I use for tree protectors. It was far easier to manage and should give a good framework for the mangetout plants to cling on to as they climb.
Before this though I dug out trenches and buried some of the compost mix which kept me so busy yesterday. It should retain moisture at root level as well as providing nutrients.

By next month we shall be harvesting delicious mangetout from the polytunnel, enough to keep us going all year. In less than three months these plants will have been evicted from the polytunnel to make room for young sweetcorn and squash plants.

Turnips 'Snowball' and 'Purple Top Milan'

While I was in the tunnel I tended to my turnip seedlings. They have come through well so I gave them a first thinning today. The same cannot be said of my early carrot sowing. As with last year, the seedlings seem to appear and then disappear just as quickly. I have yet to work out the cause. It could be slugs, but the tunnel population is very low. I am wondering if it is just the cold night air. The next sowing is due about now, so we shall see how they do.

Mid afternoon there was a break in the rain, though the sun never broke through. Sue and I lured the three Shetland lambs into a pen to administer their wormer and check them over. This was quickly accomplished and then Sue led them back to their paddock, transporting some mangel wurzels and beet nuts with her. I'm not sure she even realised that some of her load was being pilfered along the way!

Does Sue even realise what's happening behind her?

Final job for the day was to take the dogs out along the river. Boris has developed a habit of refusing to go outside on rainy days, but the promise of some dyke action gets him lively. There is one part of the dyke with particularly orange mud in the bottom. Boris considers it a great colour enhancer for his magnificent apricot coat!