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.