The Mangetout are Through

Not the most exciting photos in the world, but today was a big day in the 2016 growing season.

The mangetout peas I sowed for growing early in the polytunnel are starting to poke through the soil surface and reach for the skies. Green shoots and all that.

The sowing season has gone up a gear too. Today I sowed my aubergine seeds. It's very early and I will have to tend the delicate little things for quite some time, but until now I've had precious little success with aubergines. They are a temperamental crop. Some people do well with them. Some people just can't get a decent aubergine off them. I come firmly in the latter group. Until now. This is the year when I plan to join the former. The tender treatment starts now, with the seeds soaked in tepid water for 24 hours (obviously the water was cold by the end!) and now in a small heated propagator, which I purchased over the winter. It's just a crude, basic one but I'm hoping it is just enough to kickstart seeds into growth. After that, for most crops, double and triple cloches in the polytunnel should afford enough protection until springtime proper arrives.

I sowed lettuces too. I always grow too many at once and never keep up the succession properly, resulting in fields of lettuce all ready at the same time, most of which go on to bolt, followed by no lettuce whatsoever. This year, that changes and I've started by sowing some very early lettuce which I hope will germinate under bubble wrap in the tunnel - similar to the mangetout. The crucial thing with lettuces is that the temperature is not too low (below about 5C) and not too high (above 20C) for the first couple of days after sowing. The second of these is often far more difficult to achieve in the polytunnel and once we get into March I'll probably be using the cold frame for germination.
The varieties for so early in the year are the Cos types and the looseleaf (green rather than red). I have sown seeds of Little Gem, Lobjoits Green Cos and Buttercrunch.

Finally I have sown early carrots too today. Early Nantes, straight into the polytunnel beds. If we were in a cold snap, I would hold off on this, but the bees have been out for a couple of days this week, a song thrush was singing today and it is beginning to feel like spring already. I'm sure that winter will still have a say at some point. I hope so.

I've learned from last year and covered the rows with mesh. There always seems to be an interminable wait for carrotlings to emerge, so you can imagine how disheartening it was last year when first the chickens got in and destroyed a couple of rows and then Boris discovered that the polytunnel was a very good place to go digging.

Tomorrow the first turnips go into the polytunnel beds.

Meanwhile the outside  jobs are more winter-like. Moving, pruning and taking cuttings from dormant plants. Digging, shifting compost, rotavating when I can.

One cold snap does not a winter make

I cannot believe that we are already in the last week of January. I consulted my all-knowing spreadsheet, on which I have intricately mapped out every conceivable job and when it needs doing through the year, and it is time to start sowing seeds! Aubergines and lettuces to start inside, carrots and turnips in the polytunnel beds.

But outside, the soil won't be ready for a good while yet. I've been itching to work on it but waterlogged clay soil is no fun and to trample all over it would just do more harm than good.
But with our first (and hopefully not last) spell of cold weather last week, I was up early cranking up Mr Rotavator. When the soil is frozen solid, I have an hour or so to turn as much as possible. After this, once the temperature reaches thawing point, the clay sticks to the tines until they become one solid lump.
I need about half a dozen cold mornings to make a significant difference. I can let the cold in, incorporate some air and, most importantly, expose the slugs and other creepy crawlies to the chickens.
Every slug unearthed and devoured at this time of year is a small army of baby slimy munching monsters which won't be around when my crops go in.

The chickens move in

My two best digging machnes!

Unfortunately two of the three sharp frosts last week came on work days for me so I have only had one chance to turn the soil, but I was pleased with what I did manage to do. I could really do with another freezing spell. Without it, turning the soil will be hard work and the chickens won't have long on it before the seeds and young plants go in. Hopefully February will deliver the goods.

The cold weather reminds me of the need to keep the bird feeders stocked up too. We've had up to 50 Reed Buntings and half a dozen Yellowhammers on the farm of late, by far the most we've ever had. I must be doing something right. But if the buntings feel the need to come in from the fields then the other birds, the more familiar visitors to the feeders, will most definitely need feeding to stay alive.

Pleachers, Beetles and Binders - a day spent hedge laying

The weekend started with a gorgeous sunrise.

This morning's sunrise, captured through the top of the fedge.

Sue and I had signed up for a spot of hedge laying organised by the CSSG (Cambridgeshire Self Sufficiency Group). We've done a fair bit of conservation work and woodland management in the past, but hedge laying was something new to us. Thankfully we had Mick on hand, Mick who pretty much runs the CSSG and who is an absolute mine of knowledge.

Our hedge was located a fair way away down in Haddenham in The Fairchild Meadows. The local committee and helpers from around the village were keen for someone to help them lay about 100 metres of hedge. Mick had been looking for a hedge to demonstrate on and to let us loose on for a while.

This old woman (the one on the left) was pleased to see us laying

the meadow hedge in the traditional way.

The dog is, apparently, an ex champion at Crufts.

This was it's first long walk for a few weeks as it had to be put in a kennels

as its owner had rolled her car!

Mick showed us how to cut, bend, twist and tie a ten year old hedge into a neatly laid hedge. And why would you want to do this? Originally it was mainly to keep in livestock, though these days this is more usually done with fencing. But it also rejuvenates a hedge, using its established rootstock to spark plenty of new growth from the base.

After a little pruning on the good side of the hedge, we learned that you basically perform a shocking piece of tree surgery low down on the main trunk, cutting at an angle almost all the way through until you can bend the whole tree over. The half-severed trunk is now known as a pleacher.


This part of the task was surprisingly satisfying, although the blackthorns in particular occasionally bit back!

Next part of the process was to drive in hazel stakes at 18" intervals. I hadn't realised the importance of these. They are woven together using long hazel or willow binders and provide a framework through the newly laid hedge so that it doesn't get damaged by the wind.

Then it's time for the beetle to come out. I have no idea if I heard this term quite correctly, but that's what it sounded like. It may just be a very local word. It is basically just a big bit of stick for tamping down the woven binders to secure the pleaches and brushwood.

And that's it!

We didn't quite get the whole 100 metre stretch done, but some folks are going back tomorrow, hopefully to finish it off.
What we did achieve was pretty impressive though and I can't wait for one of our young hedges to get old enough to be laid. (that sounds so wrong, but I can't think how to rephrase!)
Or I could be really brave and tackle the twenty foot high roadside hedge... or that might be a bit too ambitious.
However, I could possibly apply some of the same principles to gradually try and rejuvenate it. It would be reassuring to think that there was something beyond the rickety fence should the sheep ever decide to jump.

Taking advantage of good conditions

Boris, Arthur and Gerry were all keen to help in the garden

Boris was behaving very strangely last night and it took a while for me to work out why. It was only in the evening, as my fingers started tingling, that I realised the same may be happening to Boris's paws and nose. However I can explain my tingling, for with the soil soft and workable yesterday I had been digging out nettles. As I threw them to one side, Boris insisted on running after them and shaking them - hence his strange behaviour as he struggled to understand his strange sensations.

The weather this past weekend was somewhat disappointing. We had finally been promised that cold spell we so badly need to set the seasons right. Saturday night was forecast snow and Sunday morning a temperature plunge to several degrees below zero. Somehow we totally missed the band of snow which had others out throwing snowballs, sledging and building snowmen. Maybe because of this, overnight temperatures barely dipped below zero. At least the ground was fairly solid for a couple of days which made a pleasant change from the squelchy conditions we've had underfoot of late. With the Grow-Your-Own group visiting on Sunday, I had been having a bit of a tidy up and had a couple of moments of inspiration.

Twigs and herbs strew the ground

 - an aromatic carpet over the churned up ground.

As I trimmed the herbs which line the polytunnel ( to ward off rodents and to provide a safety zone for the mower blades) I realised I could strew them over the ground as a kind of aromatic carpet to cover the muddier walkways. Pleased with how this went, I moved on to line a muddy path by the chicken pen using a pile of hollow lovage stems. In the chicken pen, I used dryng old catmint stems to line the muddy floor - this should help deter rats too as they reputedly hate the smell.

Broken lovage stems make a good path over the mud.

Yesterday the ground was completely thawed. Thankfully a few cold, dry days had allowed the water to drain out of the soil and it had become more pliable than for a long time. Time to finally get the garlic and shallots in, before a promised low of minus four overnight.

I planted the garlic cloves 4 inches apart in rows 15 inches apart. That's a bit further apart than the rows need to be, but I'm growing something in between. I just need to make sure there's enough space for the hoe. I use a ruler for this as it's surprisingly easy to space wrongly when you're down on your hands and knees with little perspective. I will sow parsnip in between the rows, as the garlic is a good companion for it and will come out before the parsnip plants get too big.

The garlic cloves are planted about an inch deep and it won't be long before they take root and the green shoots appear above the soil. Some are already doing their best to start growing.

Until they get a good roothold, the garlic plants need protecting from the birds' scratching feet and inquisitive pecks. This was the ideal opportunity for me to try out one of my new vegetable cages - more on these in a later post - which I purchased cheaply as part of a 'Black Friday' promotion.

Next in were the shallots - generally the smallest of last year's sets saved for this year. I had about 40 to plant and this was a very quick process with the soil in the right condition. They were simply laid out on the surface at 7" intervals each way and then poked into the soft soil until just their very tips were poking out. Chicken wire went over the top to stop them being pulled out again.

A Touch of Sad News on Blue Monday

What with turkeys, geese, guinea fowl, ducks and chickens, we have almost fifty birds altogether. It never seems that many as they generally wander over much of the farm and each group tends to keep to certain areas. Then there's the peahen which isn't ours but has moved in almost permanently now.
With this many birds, it's a sad but inevitable truth that we occasionally lose one. Last week I found a poor chicken being pecked at by the two turkeys (poultry have no sympathy for each other and can be very harsh indeed). I saved her and moved her to an isolation hutch, where she has stayed ever since. But I had decided that if she was not mobile this morning then it would only be fair to put her out of her misery. Sadly this is what I had to do. It's not something I enjoy doing, but I have got used to it. In fact being able to euthanise your birds efficiently is very much a part of being a caring smallholder and poultry keeper.
However I wasn't prepared for another loss today. For when it came to putting the birds away, only one of the two remaining white ducks was to be seen. In the vanishing light, I looked around and was a bit gutted to find the other lying dead in the raspberry patch. I'd been working very close by all day and hadn't noticed anything untoward. All I can say is that something did not seem quite right when she hopped out of her house this morning. It wasn't anything obvious, but more of a hunch. This was a real shame as yesterday she had gone to roost very happily, quacking and nodding her head up and down enthusiastically.
At least I know that both birds had good lives.

Overall though, despite this, it's been a good day. I've spent the whole day outside with the dogs and got loads done.

Boris, Arthur and Gerry kept me company in the garden today.