Winter's nearly over - quick, take cuttings

Saturday 10th March 2018

Quick to the cuttings

15 degrees today. What a contrast to last week.
Heavy rain last night left some fairly substantial puddles on the land. The water takes a while to sink through the clay, especially when the water table is already high after the snow melt last week.

I am running out of time to move last years cuttings and to take new cuttings. Everything is springing into growth and the pace of gardening is hotting up.

Last Wednesday I planted a new mixed hedge of about 100 plants.

Next on the list were the yellow willow cuttings which I poked in the ground last year. Most of them had survived and some had really flourished. With the ground wet, they were not too difficult to uproot. My plan was to plant them closely in a line along the boundary of the land. I will pollard them so they form a colourful boundary, especially during the winter. During the summer and autumn they should provide shade and shelter to the sheep paddock. 

I had quite a few spares, so decided to plant them even closer in amongst a wild area of nettles. This area needs taming a little - there are plenty of nettles elsewhere so nothing will suffer. The idea is to form a willow spinney.

Not much to see now, but my new area of willow coppice will be an attractive

part of the wildlife garden behind the bug hotel

Next a bit of sorting out. The pallets which make the compost bins make great storage for canes, stakes, guttering and hazel poles. The added benefit is that these form a more solid wall to keep the heat and moisture in the heap.

With that job completed, I moved on to seed sowing, potting up and moving some seedlings into the polytunnel. The spring conveyor belt of plant rearing is truly in full swing now

Sunday 11th March 2018

The Pest from the Zest!

Some days I seem to get very little done. Some days I get a lot done. Some days I get loads done!

Today was one of the 'loads' days.

The day started with identifying what is wrong with our small lemon tree. It has been secreting a sticky sap for a while now and the leaves have started to yellow. Some have sooty mould on them and the baby lemons have turned black and fallen off. A close look and an internet search identified the culprit as brown soft scale. These are flat, armoured insects which suck the lifeblood out of the plant. 

Now that we know the problem, we should be able to solve it with careful cleaning of all the leaves, repeated applications of insecticidal soap (just a weak solution of castile soap) and occasional wipes with surgical spirit to penetrate those armoured shells.

Butterfly Heaven

Transplanting continued with 25 buddleias. They had rooted really well. Final home for these was to be weasel ridge, around the living willow chair and overlooking the veg garden. First though, I needed to dig out a load of nettles, roots and all. This is a satisfying job but it is hard work and can be painful at times.

I was pleased to be distracted halfway through by buzzards calling overhead. When I looked up there were seven circling over together - quite unprecedented here.

I didn't intend to use all the buddleias on the mound, but in the end I planted them close. They should be absolutely alive with butterflies later in the year.

Plenty of help from the chickens today as I planted up the buddleia bank

While I was doing this, Sue was cleaning out the chicken houses and equipping them with fresh straw. I knew her every move as I have fitted her with a new wife-tracking device - aka very squeaky wheelbarrow!

Mr Motivator goes for a spin

With a little warmth in the air, I decided to give the rotavator a try while Sue took the dogs for a long walk down to the river. The broad bean bed, the turnip bed and the bed for the early potatoes all needed to be prepared. The soil was just about workable and the rotavator increases the air and surface area so it should warm up and dry out much quicker now. I gave a couple of other beds a preliminary tickle too.

This is a turning point in the year. Over the next month the winter veg patch will be transformed as beds get worked and borders neatened.

Another duck pond to dig

The ducks are moving back into the veg garden too - a decision I made after I had dug them a new pond!

This is all part of the Spare Veg Patch being turned into a paddock for sheep, pigs, goats, whatever. The heavy soil was too difficult to work and a haven for slugs, which made their homes deep down where the ducks couldn't reach them. This has been most apparent this week when I have been digging up cuttings. With the clay soil being so heavy it is not practical to keep it worked frequently enough to unearth the slugs and expose them to the attention of the ducks and chickens.

And so I spent the last hour of daylight making a start on a new duck pond. It was just a start as I had a place to put the excess soil but it needed wheeling away.

A busman's holiday

I received an email today confirming our summer holiday plans. For the second year in a row we are getting a week away, thanks to Sue's friend who has volunteered to come and look after the smallholding. The plan is to spend the week in West Wales... on a smallholding!!! We really are suckers for punishment.

The day ended on a possibly sad note. Putting the Muscovies away, I noticed that the brown female was not with the other three. Thinking about it, I don't recall seeing her for some days now. There is a very small possibility that she is holed up somewhere sitting on eggs, but I think it is more likely that she has come to some sort of mishap. 

I'll have a good look around in the morning, but don't expect to find her.