Planting time!

Wow it has been such as busy few weeks that I haven't bloogged anything about our garden!!!!

 

 

Back in March, I spent an afternoon tidying up one of my greenhouses. Since then I have been sowing seeds and planting etc. We also filled another of the raised beds leavign us one more to do - but that needs some serious weeding first which I have had to resort to chemical warfare with. Fortunately the mesh around the veg cage means that our bees are not affected by spraying inside.

 

 

So in my greenhouse I have sown so far my earlies and second earlies potatoes in grow bags (maincrop went out  in the veg cage recently). First I sowed rocket to grow in the greenhouse for some early salad greens (we are on a health drive in our house so salads for lunch it is!!!). I have also sown lots of strawberries for our strawberry pallet seating area (seperate post). I also started brussel sprouts, kale and cabbage for our healthy brassica intake. Tomatoes and pepper for the growbags also started and doing well. I planted our early peas but started maincrop peas in the greenhouse as well. As an exotic experiment also started patty pan and butternut squashes under their clingfilm and they have all sprouted beautifully!

 

More recently out in the veg patch I have also planted beetroot, carrots, parsnips, perpetual spinach and swede and onions. I transplanted my brassicas out a few days ago and put them in mini-polytunnels. I have been told it is going to get colder this upcoming weekend so very worried about frost though...

 



 

 

Birthday season

In our family, three birthdays come in quick session. My daughter is three tomorrow so I have been busy making (at her request, and with many a cringe from Mummy and Daddy), a Peppa pig cake.  This is the first time I have spent more time on presentation of a cake than the baking of the cake...  The head is chocolate sponge sandwiched with chocolate fudge icing, The body is vanilla sponge sandwiched with butter cream and home-made blackcurrant jam.

Child Labour

Who says having kids doesn't pay?

It's been great seeing our little girl so excited with all the spring garden activity. Not only does she insist on visiting the greenhouse and veg patch every time we go but she's determined to help too!

She's been planting veg, removing weeds in her tiny barrow and dashing about the raised beds in search of little green poking up stuff.

It might just be her age and the fact she wants to get involved with the grown up stuff but she seems so genuinely interested in the animals and garden that for her birthday, next week we've got her a tiny plastic greenhouse and some gardening tools for herself. She'll love them!

Tiny egg !

Quail eggs are not the largest variety of pre-poached perfection however one of ours may have broken a record. Check out the tiniest quail egg we;ve ever seen (must have been a new layer as the eggs of this colour are now up to proper size)

A busy (as bees?) couple of weeks in the garden around easter has also seen us sorting out our bee kit. Not only has Karen painted my shed in which I keep the bee gear with some little bees and flowers to be added later but this being only our second season we had (literally hundreds) of frames to make :-(

However things were cheered up with a random bottle of champagne that we found left over from Christmas - probably the classiest frame making effort in the history of beekeeping?

Little Porkers

Having chatted about getting pigs for some time we decided that we (obviously) don't have the space for them. However as luck would have it a friend of ours in the village also wants a couple of porkers and his rented house has three acres of unused fields...

So fast forward a few weeks and we've got permission from his landlady, a holding number, and some fence posts in place. I've knocked together a quick gate which needs some stock mesh adding to it and we're going to mesh and barb wire the fencing next week.

We can't wait to get started with them and will keep you updated.

Birthday Time

My amazing wife sorted me out a list minute birthday present after spying a bargain on ebay last week.

I think it looks great - we'll add some seating and improve the beds around it then hey presto! a great little place to sit out, we've positioned it to catch the afternoon sun.

Big bee news !!!

So been a very busy time for the bee stuff...

First of all we finally finished making and painting the two extra hives that we hope to fill this year, we now have a yellow and green one added to the blue and pink hives already there. Which I had intended to stick up a quick blog about but then....

During an inspection we noticed just how much our blue hive had exploded with activity - we stuck a super on each of the blue and pink hives to take them up to a brood and a half and within a couple of days blue had drawn all the new foundation. Bees spewing everywhere and plenty of brood in so we decided to take off a nuc for the green hive.

Loadsa bees following a quick inspection!

I'm happy to report that the nuc thus far seems to have gone well, the nurse bees have sorted out two emergency queen cells which should break out at the end of this week !!

In fact the blue hive has already recovered so quickly from loosing a couple of brrod frames to start off the nuc that we are even considering pinching a couple more and setting up the yellow hive too.

On a slightly more depressing note our pink hive, which has always been decent but not as prolific as the blue one, has chalk brood. While this isn't a horrendous issue and common to most hives at some point the number of mummified brood has noticeably risen over the last fortnight. While I would describe the pink as a reasonably strong colony we've always been underwhelmed by the population and food growth within it. Might be time to re-queen and hope to get a more vigorous lady instead - that should help with the chalk brood and of course speed the girls along a bit.

We'll keep the blog updated regarding our course of action but lets hope this year ends with four decent colonies and loads of honey...

Planting!

Spring is springing upon us and already the weeds are taking off at a rate of knots EEK! So with a rare few hours spare and not too much heavy rain, I set to work this weekend with spade, fork, trowel and rake to weed some of my beds and do some planting...

BEFORE

AFTER

 

And the by-product of my labours being the remaining leeks...

 

 

And some happy chickens...

 

 

So with my beds freshly weeded I got some carrots, parsnips, beetroot and peas in today. New potatoes are breaking through the earth in some grow bags but will get maincrop potatoes in hopefully over the next few weeks but their bed needs some realy good digging so watch this space!!!