Woodpecker on my birdfeeders

Today I managed to capture the camera shy woodpecker. Here the short video, enjoy.

First Veg Harvest (Peas & Courgette)

We had some of early peas today, after the odd one pod we managed quite a handful to harvest now. They are soooo yummy.

They are first earlies, "Douce Provence", and I had a trial going: all sowed at the same time, but one set in the garden, one in pots and the pot ones when planted out one half behind glass and one half just in the ground. This is the result: The potted ones came out about a month earlier then the garden sown ones. The ones behind glass had the first flowers and peas, but stayed teensy-weensy. The potted ones planted in the garden normal are the ones we are harvesting from now, but they too are quite small and seem to stay that way.
The ones sow directly in the garden are big and really really strong. The first flowers are just starting to show up. Unfortunately the hens love them as well and all the bits they can reach they will happily tear off.

These are the garden sown peas, the right one diminished by the hens

This is my recycled whirly gig pea tower with the set of potted peas

My courgette that grows in a pot in my front garden surrounded by a wind shelter is ready to harvest soon as well. Just compare it with the plants which grow in my windy upstairs kitchen garden. I made a wind shelter round them as well, but no comparison. Both plants are planted same day, same soil.

 

the potted one

here in comparison the sad looking upstairs garden one

They are F1 hybrids and I have decided that in future I will only go for non-hybrid seeds/plants where I can save my own seeds. I hope they will be stronger when "self-seeded" or at least own seeds are used. We will see.

Wind, Wind and even more Wind

The last two days we had quite a bad wind, storm really, which brought down the tree of our village's school. (Do they have to redesign their logo now?)
But that was not all, both of my plum trees broke in half as well. How sad, as one of them was bearing lots and lots of fruit (for the first time since I had planted it, last year I got only three plums from 5 flowers). I was so looking forward to making plum jam, but I guess there will now be only enough for pick and eat.

The wrecked plum trees were not all: the wind blew away the enviromesh with which I had protected my broccoli from the nasty wind up here and (mainly really) from my hens. They just adore anything cabbagy. When I came back from school pick up and was going to tie the enviromesh back up again all my broccoli was gone, apart from a few empty stems. Sometimes I could just wring their necks. As good as the ladies are with eating slugs and other baddies as bad are they with eating my cabbages (and strawberries and anything I am keen on). And they are escape artists par excellence. They will not be confined to a limited space, no, they want to have run of the whole place. I can't remember how much time I have already wasted in trying to make their space escape proof, they always find  a hole to creep through or fly over.

I tried to self-seed mustard, mizuna & mibuna for them, which they adored eating last year. That worked well and it grows in their space now really good, but they do not want it. They must have an extraordinary sense of smell that they can find cabbages where ever it is.

This is the sad reminder of what's left of my broccoli, so new seeds I have to get now and start all over again...

Potatoes the frugal way

As we have the waning moon (good for root development and plants with fruits underground) and also in Capricorn, an earth sign, also good for root development, I thought I shall try out something really frugal which I had seen recently on "Superscrimpers". I used up potatoes which had already sprouted and potted up the sprouted peel: 

I don't normally buy seed potatoes anyway, I only ever use up sprouted old potatoes or if there is an old bag of seed potatoes drastically reduced. 

Usually I plant potatoes where I want to get a piece of ground cleared off perennial weeds as my plot suffers badly from ground elder, polygonum and couch grass, also creeping buttercup, docks and thistles. 
This has worked well so far (though not for docks and thistles), so I decided to venture with my potatoes this year into the chicken plot (the piece of garden which was meant to be for the hens, but they would not respect the boundaries and have taken over the whole garden), as they don't use their plot anyway. They are only where humans are, so if I want them to eat and reduce the ground elder, which they are supposed to like, I have to want to harvest it for myself (I like them as well, the young shoots are better than spinach) then they'll come running and try and beat me to it.

The first strawberry of 2011

Today we harvested the very first strawberry of this year. Josiah picked it and loved it and he let me have a bite and it was sooooo sweet and juicy! We can't wait for the strawberry season to begin properly. Due to my chickens getting into my new early strawberry bed and digging out all the labels I do not know which variety that is/was, but it was lovely.

I mulched the bed twice with comfrey which turned into compost very quickly, the third time I used nettles which were quite big by then, they dried out in the sun and keep the strawberries of the soil.



With the next picture I want to show you a recycled strawberry planter I made with the eco group at my son's school. We used an old pallet and three growbags and a piece of plastic piping in which I drilled holes for easier watering.
And although we were really too late in planting and the plants were in the shed for months (Elsanta from my garden), they have picked up really nicely. I intend of giving them comfrey/nettle tea as support.

The first few fruits are already there, so lets hope the kids will become inspired to eat more fruit if they have grown them themselves...

Perennial Vegetables, an attempt on Broccoli

Perennial Broccoli? I had decided to grow more and more perennial
vegetables, as I already have a few and they are so practical.

I grow for example perennial spinach (leaf beet), of that I let a plant go to self-seed and don't have ever to bother again with buying seeds for that again, as it is coming up so nicely. 

I also have Jerusalem artichokes which come again, a globe artichoke,
which nearly did not survive this years cold winter but is doing fine now, rocket
and of course all my berries and soft fruit. I decided to give the one perennial broccoli variety I could find named "Nine Star" a try and got 30 seeds of ebay. First mistake. Only 10 of them germinated and half of them were brussel sprouts. Then the harsh winter came and wrecked the majority of my nine stars. I had one surviving plant left which developed a nice head by end of April:

We had it for dinner one night and I have to say I much prefer the
taste of broccoli and calabrese. This tasted like a mixture of
cauliflower and broccoli, and considering the space it takes up in the
garden  (90 sq cm per plant) and by the looks only delivering the one
flower head per plant I am still not so sure if I shall have another attempt with them this year or rather experiment with a variety of sprouting broccolis instead.