Gardening top tip!

Instead of sowing herbs like basil and parsley buy a tray of plants from your supermarket (intended to cook with).  My tray of basil plants contained 25 plants and cost me 50p - bargain!  These trays are often reduced in price as they reach their sell by date to be even cheaper!!

Rain at last

Strawberry tart - yum yum

Yes 21 millimeters of rain yesterday! All the tanks are full and I can plant out the winter brassicas today with no worries.  In the wood the new tarp collected 35 gallons - result!

Everything is early

Yes this is a spectacularly early year!
We are picking; Raspberries, strawberries, courgettes, cucumbers, peas and sugar snap peas and would you believe our first ripe tomatoes! According to my gardening diary of last year two to three weeks earlier for most things!

On the rain front; we have had 10mm of rain in the last month.  They are promising rain tonight so we are working hard to make the most of it.  Here is a construction we have made in the wood to funnel rain into a depression and capture it.

Phacelia in bloom

Bumble bees working on phacelia flowers.  We grew phacelia as a green manure over the winter. I left a few plants to go to seed so as to save the seed for another sowing.  I didn't expect such a striking flower - would be at home in the flower border as well as the veg patch

Poor hatch from our broody hens

We are getting very poor results from our broodys this year.  Some of the failures are infertile eggs and I guess our cockerel may be struggling to cover our twenty four hens.  We have also had lots of eggs developed but not hatched and I am wondering if this is to do with the dry weather.  I have built the nests with soil as usual but the soil is dryer this year.  Anyone else had similar experiences?  The last hen to hatch was distressing for me as she hatched some chicks but killed them all herself -young inexperienced mother I guess freaking out when the chicks appeared underneath her!!

Now the wind!

Yes, on top of the drought (three months and counting since significant rain!) we have strong winds this week battering and damaging the plants - especially the courgettes and squashes.  I have had to cover them with cloches to protect them.  The Bees swarmed yesterday in spite of the 40mph winds, they hung very tightly together on a tree and were easy to shake into a basket and run into a hive.  The good news is that the solar water heating panel and the solar PV (electricity producing panels) have done very well over the last two months averaging more electricity than ever before.

WWOOF helpers are great!

We have just had a family from WWOOF http://www.wwoof.org.uk staying with us to help in the wood and smallholding - a great week with very nice (highly skilled ) people.  WWOOF is a great idea, people stay with us (usually for a week ) living as part of our family and trade their help 5 hours a day 5 days a week for board and lodging. No money changes hands and we have made several good friends in the process.

Nessa, Christoph, Gabe and Alma removing bracken in the wood