The Drought Is Over

138.8mm of rain for Holbeach - that's us!

Last night it rained. Proper rain. More rain than we've accumulated in the last 4 months.

It's the first we've had for a long, long time. In fact I think it's only rained a few times since the beginning of April. and only once this summer.

[ed. I knew it rained a lot and the fields were full of standing water, but it turns out that on a wet day countrywide, Holbeach was the wettest with a staggering 138.8mm of rain!!!] 

Unfortunately there is an obvious pattern in recent years of all our rain saving itself up for the occasional deluge which surrounds uncomfortably long periods of aridity.

It's made for a difficult growing season (to put it mildly) and we've had to think about how much feed we need to bring in for sheep to overwinter.

In the veg plot, crop after crop has failed. Beans, sweetcorn, potatoes, onions, cabbage.... the list goes on. Those planted earlier in the year have mostly come to nothing and it hasn't even been possible to plant out any young plants sown in late April and May. For the most part the rain has come too late for another attempt at things. At least it's a good opportunity to empty the freezers and in reality we never go short of food.

The barley crop next door has been baled. Just look how dry everything is.

If temperatures of 40C and prolonged dry periods are to be a feature of our lives then I can only guess that plums are going to take over the world! Every single plum tree is literally dripping with fruit. Thank goodness we have several varieties which don't all ripen at once.

The forest garden has fared better as that is designed to be a sustainable system which can deal with weather extremes, though I've lost a few young perennials which were tricky to source in the first place.

The controlled climate of the polytunnel will give us some crops this year and I've a couple of new greenhouses too. We'll be living on squashes, peppers, aubergines and tomatoes.

I mentioned winter feed for the sheep. That's because we've already had to start dipping into it.

We are careful with our stocking levels and try to leave some paddocks long to prevent the worst excesses of drying out. But months of dry weather and a couple of intense heatwaves have left the paddocks looking a touch bare and scorched. We bought in our winter hay from a fellow smallholder a few weeks back - the first hay harvest was incredibly early this year, but we've already had to start topping up the sheep's diet, in particular the rams.

So it was fortunate that one of our local smallholders was having a clear-out and we were able to purchase a whole load of old hay and straw. Shetland sheep are not bothered about the quality of their hay so it doesn't matter that it's not this year's.

I've got more straw than I need for animal bedding so I decided to lay some of it onto all the veg beds which I've abandoned for the year. Sometimes it's best to cut your losses and start preparing for next year. The straw will protect the surface, keep in moisture and gradually rot down and be incorporated into the soil by the worms. Over the winter the ducks will sort out any slugs which try to use it as cover and will further fertilise the beds.

I might have a go at some straw bale gardening too, then let the straw bales rot down into the beds. I'm thinking especially about some of the potatoes.

May Daze

Come back Rain, all is forgiven

Hot sunny days and lockdown have meant that I don't particularly have to work around the weather or other commitments. I can relax a little more and still keep on top of things on the smallholding.

Having said that, our boom and bust weather patterns do make things more difficult. 7% of our usual May rainfall has necessitated watering in new plantings and watering where I sowed the carrots, one of only two crops which I now sow direct. The parsnips failed to come through this year, so did their replacements. Worse still, the water butts have run dry so I now have to use metered and treated water. At least hoeing has been easy.

The body and soul of the soil

I have steadily been moving last year's compost onto beds. The huge pile is now all gone, but the encouraging news is that I had enough to cover the majority of the 80 or so beds I have. 

It's amazing how much material we produce to feed the compost heaps. Hopefully I can persuade some to break down enough for a mid summer mulch. 

Bee-keeping Update

We have only had five swarms of bees this year so far. Three of them have been huge swarms. One we gave away, the other four we collected and created new hives. One of these disappeared again, so Sue is now left with NINE hives. Her ideal number is three!!!

It looks like a good honey year. Sue has already taken 60 jars of early honey. She is not one to rob the bees of too much and always leaves plenty for the girls. 

A welcome hair cut

The hot weather is hard on the sheep too, so it was a relief for them when the shearer came a few days back. Jason and his wife Chloe are really friendly and fantastic with the sheep. Not only do the sheep get rid of their uncomfortably hot fleeces, but they get their feet trimmed and a dose of Clik to protect against fly strike. It's also a chance for a health check by people who know much more than us and for us to ask any questions we have.

One of our ewes looks suspiciously fat. If she is pregnant, it will be a virgin birth as the three rams have been kept well away. I have my suspicions how it may have happened. We'll see if she really is pregnant and what the lamb looks like if there is one.

Rambo, our breeding ram, has lost a lot of weight and his stools are not solid. We have tried worm and fluke treatment but it has not made a lot of difference. Jason gave him a mineral drench (this is not as it sounds, but simply means given orally) and says that often cures unknown problems. Let's hope.

Respect your Elders

Another feature of this time of year is that the elders come into flower. This is the cue for Sue to make elderflower champagne. The process is very simple. Just dissolve sugar in water, est and juice lemons, add elderflowers.

Stir daily until it starts to bubble from the natural fermentation. Then bottle and burp.

Sue has also frozen about 50 heads. Don't worry, there are absolutely loads left for the birds and insects.

Birdlife on the Farm

These two swallows ended up inside the house.

One found the exit and I caught 

and released the other.

Swallows are now swooping in and out of the stables, robins, blackbirds and starlings are already feeding young. Blue tits and great tits are busy collecting food for young families. A pair of pied wagtails loiter around the stables and often fly out of there as I approach. A couple of years back they nested under some pallets by the polytunnel. Woodpigeons, chaffinches and goldfinches breed in good numbers here and we have a thriving colony of house sparrows. Further down the land there are meadow pipits nesting in the rough grass and skylarks rise high to blast out their song. Wrens sing loudly and are dotted all about the smallholding. We have thrushes breeding on the smallholding too, both mistle thrushes and song thrush. But they are outcompeted in the song stakes by our blackcap which hasn't shut up for weeks now. I saw the male carrying food into a bush in the front garden yesterday.

Above: The rewilded front garden

Below: Native hedgerows as they should look, planted by me 7 years ago.

The Little Owls are incredibly secretive at this time of year. I rarely even hear them. Excitingly though, tawny owls have moved in and I hear them almost nightly. They may have driven the barn owls out though.

Finally we have summer migrant warblers back. Our first singing sedge warbler and whitethroat appeared earlier this week. We had a reed warbler singing from the hedge for a couple of weeks, but it needs to move on and find the right habitat. 

I've probably forgotten a few of our breeding species, but every year we seem to get more and more which is a fantastic result of all the work I've put into creating a nature friendly smallholding.

It's a Rat Trap

One species not so welcome on the farm is rats. The traps are working well and at the moment I am catching young ones. The traps are not live traps but are very secure in terms of not catching non-target species. I leave the dead rats on a post and something takes them.

A few weeks back I was just checking and resetting the traps when one of our geese got trapped inside the brassica netting. In my rush to free it, I misplaced the rat trap (not set to spring) and have been searching for it ever since. Well yesterday I found it as it go mangled by the mower blades. It fought hard though, so I now need to get the blade mechanism fixed.

Poultry News

On the subject of the geese, they are still laying and we are still trying to steal their eggs. However, one is now permanently settled on the nest so we'll leave it to fate whether or not we get goslings this year. 

The glut of goose eggs means Sue keeps busy making cakes. We freeze these and they are an extremely good way of storing a surplus of eggs. Goose eggs make the best sponge.

In other poultry news, one of our turkey hens managed to hatch out three healthy poults. We put them in the poultry cage as protection against crows and they are all doing well. The other hen is desperate to sit on eggs but the crows keep finding her eggs. Hopefully she'll find a good spot somewhere in the veg plot or soft fruit patch before it's too late. We are happy to leave this up to fate again.

We have two Silkie hens sitting on Muscovy duck eggs and now one of the Muscovy ducks herself has made a nest in the corner of the chicken house and is sitting. Hopefully we'll end up with a few ducklings. Two of our Muscovy girls are now missing in action. We don;t know if they've been taken by something, moved away or are secretly rearing clutches in some forgotten part of the smallholding.

Clearing the seedling log jam.

Planting out beans. The climbing structures are made from coppiced willow rods

which the sheep strip for me.

With the last frost gone (a really late one would be a bit disastrous) I have been busy clearing the logjam of young plants in the polytunnel. I have moved most of them to benches outside as temperatures have stayed in double figures day and night for quite a while now. 

Corn, beans, tomatoes, courgettes and squashes have all gone into the ground outside. We had a couple of very windy days which was a challenge for the newly planted beans, but on the whole I've never had young plants settle in so well. They usually suffer a setback for a week or so but not this year.

The Rewards

At the other end of this process, we are already starting to get some decent harvests, particularly from the polytunnel which is yielding delicious new potatoes, carrots and mangetout. Once these are harvested their space will be required for tomatoes, peppers, melons and cucumbers. In fact, they are already underplanted. Outdoors we have now stopped harvesting the rhubarb but we have a couple more weeks of asparagus left. The gooseberry bushes are bursting to overflowing and we'll very soon be thinning out the early picking for the sharp gooseberries. The rest are left on to sweeten. 

We have salad leaves coming out of our ears. We have so many different types of salad leaf and can always spice them up even more with edible flowers or herbs such as fennel or oregano.

So, that's about all for now. As you can see, we're always busy on the smallholding. 

Stay safe.

Sowing, Hoeing, Mowing, Growing

I got the grass mowed this week for the first time this year. It's always a relief when the mower starts up. Until now the geese have been doing the job for me, but the warm weather and a bit of rainfall have spurred the grass into action.
On the whole grass is a pain. I have no want for a green carpet so welcome moles and weeds. But since I've got it I might as well make the most of it, turning it into meat and eggs via the sheep and poultry. And when there's so much that I have to mow it then it makes a good addition to the compost heaps or direct as a mulch, so it all ends up indirectly in my tummy!

I leave some of my grass to grow long. This irritates Sue but is a joy to me.













The thermometer in the polytunnel has soared this week, creeping up into the high 40s. The early sown turnips bolted but the mangetout is doing wonderfully. I have now planted all my tomatoes, peppers and butternut squash in there too. I am trying a variety of squash called Butterbush in the hope that it won't take over the whole polytunnel!


It has been perfect weather for hoeing. Within a couple of hours any weeds that have been chopped off at the base lie withered and dead. I'm gradually working my way round all the veg beds. The ones that have been previously mulched are much easier to do.

A forecast of frost for the next few mornings has been holding me back in the veg patch. As soon as this next cold spell passes the garden will fill with young bean plants, sweetcorn, squash and tomatoes which I have been raising for outdoors. Until then I am trying to hold them back in the polytunnel.

Self-seeded Poached egg plants,

wonderful for bees and a great

companion plant for broad beans.

The vegetable patch is starting to look gorgeous at the moment. I have left a lot of self-sown and naturalised plants to flower and the willow arches are coming on great. These seem to be a magnet for bee swarms and so it was that the third swarm of the year, almost definitely not from our hives, appeared on our last hot day. The swarm was huge.

And the reward for 

longest swarm

goes to...

Having already successfully housed two swarms and moved back up to 8 hives, any we collect from now will be given to fellow beekeepers. This swarm has gone off to Thorney, about ten miles down the road.

Our turkey hen who has been sat on eggs under a patch of borage and flowering rocket started clucking three days ago. I suspected that either chicks had been born or the eggs were pipping.
Sure enough, the next day a little head was poking out from under her feathers.

Our first view of our turkey hen's offspring

She sat tight for two days but was thinking of moving off the nest this morning. With the local crows loitering, we decided to catch her and any chicks and transfer them to a vacant poultry pen. There were just three chicks and three unhatched eggs. Sue retrieved the chicks while the hen slipped my grasp and proceeded to defend her family quite resolutely!
All are now settled into their new home.

Meanwhile, after three Silkie chickens only succeeded in constantly swapping the four ducks eggs they were sharing, we have put one of the Silkie hens on her own with four new eggs. Hopefully we'll have some success. Two of our Muscovy duck girls have now vanished. The optimistic side of me says that they may appear at some point with ducklings, but it is surprising that we have not seen them at all.

Finally there have been more night time capers. It seems tawny owls have moved into the neighbourhood. I regularly hear them when sat outside at night. This may be at the expense of our barn owls as I rarely see or hear them now.
A couple of nights ago as I sat outside under a wonderful full moon I could hear a female tawny nearby. I speculatively imitated a male hooting and within a minute the unmistakable silhouette of an owl flew up into one of the trees in the roadside paddock. Then it flew right over my head and into one of the large ash trees in the garden. It may have been one in the morning, but the full moon meant that it was easily visible against the moonlit sky as it passed over. Then another!
The pair started duetting really close by. Amazing stuff.

And final finally, a couple of lockdown images. One of my new lockdown hair and one my Google timeline for the month of April which tells its own story.

Planting garlic cloves - the first job of a new decade

It was at the beginning of the last decade that we took the plunge and bought our smallholding in The Fens. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then.

And so we enter a new decade.

One of the things which we love about growing most of our own food is how our lives are now so entwined with the weather and the seasons.

The first bed of the year planted up with garlic cloves

New decade or not, the turn of the year has seen me planting garlic every year. This marks the start of a new growing season. The ancestors of the garlic cloves I planted today go right back to those three bulbs of garlic I bought from a greengrocer in London quite a few years back. Every year I select some nice plump cloves from last year's crop and each develops into a new bulb, multiplying itself by about 10.
And by my selection every year I get stronger stock adapted to growing here on the smallholding.

In keeping with the developing patterns of climate breakdown, this winter seems even warmer and wetter than previous ones. In fact, it would be good if somebody could tell the rhubarb to stay in hibernation for a couple more months. It really is quite confused at the moment.

Some very confused rhubarb

I had to wait for a protracted spell of dry weather before I could consider working in the veg plot. Even though I have gone no-dig, so no need for digging over sodden soil, even just walking around on the paths would create a mud bath.
Fortunately that dry spell has now come. The puddles are receding and yesterday I was able to prepare the first bed ready for planting up with garlic cloves. The whole family came out to help. Sue cleared the asparagus bed of its old stems, Gerry climbed a tree and the dogs went digging for voles.

My team of helpers.
Left to right: Boris, Arthur, Gerry and Sue

I have had to move the sheep more frequently to stop the ground from becoming poached - with water lying on or just below the surface, their hooves quickly turn the ground muddy and the grass is slow to grow. We have moved the rams well away from the ewes as we are not breeding this year. They were spending all their time frustratedly pacing up and down the fence-line turning it into a swamp.
We have had to feed more sugar beet and more hay this year. Hopefully the paddocks will recover with drier weather and we won't have to hunt for more hay towards the end of the winter.

The ewes are quick to move to a new paddock when I lower the electric fence. 

But the grass doesn't last long in these conditions. 

A Transformation - No Dig comes to the farm

The first half of 2019 has seen a huge transformation in my veg garden.
We are now officially NO DIG.

NO DIG I said, Boris!

The Wheel - A little design history

I initially designed the veg plot based around a wheel split into 4 quarters for crop rotation. Each quarter had 20 small beds which could be accessed without being trodden on. There were flowers and herbs grown with the vegetables and self-seeded waifs were selectively kept growing where I found them.

All was good, except that the sheer number of grass edges and paths made things unmanageable and gradually a major slug problem developed. The overhanging edges and small beds were perfect for them to shelter under and make raids into during the hours of darkness. 20 beds x 4 sides each x 4 quarters = 320 edges to maintain!

Gradually I joined beds together till eventually there were just four large beds in each quarter, plus a smaller one for forest garden / perennial growing.
These beds were much easier to work. In a single afternoon at the back end of winter I could comfortably rotavate half the plot. Coming into the spring I could have all the beds worked and all the paths mown and edged. A fresh start for the new growing season.

But somehow I gradually realised that I had moved away from my idea of a productive potager style garden. With beds being completely turned every year, waifs and strays and smaller patches of nature did not really fit in with the system. I noticed too that the soil somehow felt less alive. For a clay soil it was in good shape, but there were no worms, no fibrous roots, no complexity or structure. Yet if I left a bed unattended for a while, the soil surface protected from the elements, I would invariably find a different story, with crumbly soil alive with worms.

I wasn't doing anything terribly wrong. I still managed the plot for nature, chemicals were banned and pests and diseases were largely under control thanks to natural balances, but more and more I felt that the actual soil I was growing in lacked vibrancy. It was just a hunch, a feeling.

NO-DIG
I was increasingly hearing about No Dig gardening, but considered it a bit of a gimmick. After all the promise of not needing to dig, greatly reduced weeding and healthier crops seemed too good to be true. It seemed to be an idea which was almost being sold as a panacea to all gardening woes. When I looked further into it, crop comparisons seemed to rely on an abundance of salad leaves, which do seem to do better under this system, but which I could never possibly munch my way through. Fine if you want to market them, but otherwise...   Indeed, figures seemed to show a slight decline in yield for brassicas, which normally require a firm, undisturbed soil, and this seems to be glossed over everywhere I look.
Another problem I perceived was that no dig gardening seemed to place a huge emphasis on an annual mulch of compost (or even worse, black plastic). I don't have a problem with the compost idea, but it doesn't seem right if people are buying in compost left right and centre. The idea of sustainability seems to have gone down the pan. It's ok if you've got a farmer friend who can transport an endless supply of manure to you, but we are not all in that position. Anyhow, I'm not sure how healthy cow manure would be, what with the amount of antibiotics, growth hormones and goodness knows what else are used these days. Horse manure has its problems too, mainly due to the problems caused by aminopyralid weedkillers which persist from being applied to hay crops, through the horse, through the compost heap and on to destroy your vegetable crops. With ineffective regulators this problem seems to be rapidly on the increase. I came across it once when I was collecting horse manure from a friend and it caused no end of problems.

To counterbalance this argument, it is probably fair to say that even a conventional plot should ideally have at least as much compost applied as a no dig one. It's just that you can more easily get away with skipping this to some extent.

One final problem was that this seemed a bit like the latest fad, another excuse to go out and buy things, most especially lots of landscaping material and wood for edges. Facebook groups are full of people's photos of their newly landscaped no dig gardens.
To be fair though, one of the main proponents has moved away from wooden edges, which are not just impractical on a large scale but also harbour slugs and snails galore.

But still something inside me told me that a modified version of no dig was the way forward, so I started making plans to circumvent the problems I perceived.

The first beds being prepared for no dig - note the use of cardboard (top left) and how there are now paths dug to divide the larger beds into smaller ones.

Mulching
I absolutely won't use black plastic as a mulch. It seems to go against every grain of nature-friendly, sustainable gardening. I am however making great use of cardboard to inhibit weeds. It eventually rots down and contributes to soil structure.
Mulching in temperate climates brings a huge potential risk of harbouring slugs and snails, a gardener's number one enemy. My previous attempts at using straw under strawberries attest to this - fine in a dry year but disastrous in a wet one. Instead I am following Charles Dowding's approach of aiming to use prepared compost. This should avoid problems of a gastropod nature since slugs and snails thrive on decomposing material, not decomposed material.
I will reserve grass clippings and animal bedding for specific crops, such as the soft fruits which don't seem to be affected by slugs. Otherwise these can go straight onto the compost where the nitrogen rich materials greatly speed up the composting process.

The garlic bed and salad leaves has grown rapidly.

There are radishes down the middle of the garlic

and it is flanked by two rows of young parsnip plants.

Once the radishes and garlic are harvested I shall plant tall flowers between the parsnips.

A different patch of parsnips will be allowed to grow into a second year 

(these are last year's sown for this purpose and now flowering) to attract hoverflies, 

to give architectural design to the garden and to produce fresh parsnip seeds for next year's crop

Compost
I shall ramp up my compost making. To do this I have specifically planted elephant grass and short rotation coppice willow, both of which will be shredded to bulk up my compost.
With these measures I should come much closer to being able to apply a thin annual covering of compost.
But already I am noticing a huge benefit just by having the soil protected from the elements, compost or no compost. So I intend to selectively use green manures. These are traditionally dug in, which is not ideal in a no-dig system! However, there are some which can be chopped off and removed to the compost bin. The goodness will still eventually end up on the vegetable beds and while the green manures are growing they do a fantastic job of protecting the soil from erosion and from being beaten down by the rains. It is surprising how quickly a freshly rotavated fine tilth can turn into a sticky, solid clay mass or develop a concrete-like crust on it. Already I am noticing a huge improvement in soil structure where I have applied compost mulch. The crops are doing very well too, but it has been pretty much a perfect growing year so far.
Finally I am planning to try something which I've not seen before in this country but I did come across in a YouTube video. Where crops are harvested early and I don't intend to follow with another crop this year, I am going to sow oats. These I get incredibly cheaply in the form of animal feed. I know that they germinate as I do this to provide fodder for the turkeys. The idea is that they grow to protect the soil surface but then die off with the first heavy frosts. The thatch will then protect the soil over winter and will have rotted down enough to rake off and go on the compost the following spring. So I guess I am talking about winter mulches which are removed in spring. Slug problems will be avoided because of....

Ducks
The Khaki Campbells have, for the moment, been ejected from the veg plot after developing a taste for peas, spinach and coriander. Having said that, they were far less destructive than any other ducks and certainly less destructive than chickens. I expect to be able to let them back in the veg patch as their light nibbling will be a small price to pay for their almost total slug control. I seriously doubt the slugs will bounce back much even if the ducks have to stay out until autumn.




Paths
I originally planned to have so many grass paths because of my clay soil. It just would not work to turn all the grass over to earth. Paths would end up a sticky mess and in the wrong conditions most of the ground would be clinging on to my wellies and weighing me down. My compromise is to keep the main paths but to dig out shallow paths in the larger beds, effectively recreating a whole system of smaller beds again but without the endless grass edges. The soil dug out from the paths has just been used to build the beds up a bit so effectively we now have raised beds.

The paths are one rake wide, which means that as soil is gradually displaced into the pathways from the beds (this shouldn't happen so much as things settle down) I can very easily hoe and rake along the paths to keep them clear.

With the beds now being permanent and not being turned every year, I can plan to grow more herbs and perennials and leave self-seeded specimens to grow if I like where they are.

The broad bean bed in its early days.

Under the beans grow poached egg plants to protect from blackfly

and coriander which enjoys the shade.

The whole bed will be used for Purple Sprouting Broccoli once the beans and coriander are harvested.

The flowers will provide ground cover and will self-seed to give transplants for next year.

Growing methods
Only carrots and parsnips are now sown directly into the soil. Everything else is started off in modules and the plants are then moved into their permanent spots when the time is right. This way I can nurture them and prepare them for the big outdoors. I have found it is best not to delay planting out too much as they really take off once in open ground, as long as a liberal dose of patience has been applied and you don't try to push the plants to grow when conditions are not yet right.
I have been trying some multisowing too, where small clumps of several plants are grown together. This won't work for everything and I am very much following Charles Dowding's lead on this one. I shall draw my own conclusions later in the year.

Transformation complete
The transformation is now complete. It has been hard work, greatly helped by the use of volunteers, but it was a one off job which won't need doing again. Mr Rotavator has gone into semi retirement (though I'm sure he will still get the occasional run out, just maybe not in the veg plot) .
My hoes and edging tools are now being put to much more use, as is my transplanting trowel. The spades will still have the occasional use, not that I ever was much good at turning the soil with them. The days of double digging are certainly over




Now in early June most of this year's plants are in the ground and the harvest is already under way. So far results have been impressive with the salad leaves and early growth has been strong with almost everything I have planted out.
I am not yet giving no-dig the credit for this. The almost total absence of slugs has made a massive difference when trying to grow the likes of carrots and sunflowers and the weather has been pretty much perfect so far.

As ever I am open to trying all sorts of new ideas, but I do not approach them with my eyes closed. I retain a healthy cynicism and will constantly be evaluating and adapting the system to suit local conditions and my own needs from the veg plot.