Wednesday 28 September 2011

Morocco and Scotland

Grow for a wet cold and a hot dry climate to almost guarantee success.
Root veggies (Scotland) looking great, squashes and sunflowers (Morocco) covered in mildew.

 Winter brassicas all netted, and the new hedgeline being dug.

Chooks now in their element in the garden, weeding under the bushes for us.

We have new chooks!  We worked out that if we got another three and sold their eggs, we'd break even with the cost of feed.  Thing is, chickens as well as being chauvinistic, are also racist.  We got one Sussex and two ISA-types and the original greys won't have anything to do with them!  I've just been out to close up the coop and the browns are being kept off the perches because the perches are for Greys, and the shitty floor is for Browns, obviously... One day the browns will come out in a show of solidarity and the greys will respond with wee chicken riot shields and batons, claiming to be keeping civil order.


Also working very hard in the hot sunshine digging a French drain to dry out the kitchen wall, and we're putting in a grey-water system as found here.  It's going to water some of the trees in the orchard (we're putting in some new eating apples this winter for it).  All according my favourite new motto, 'keep it simple and it won't go wrong'.  It's a pipe that ends in a thick bed of wood mulch with a tree downhill of it.  Mulch soaks up water, which cools, and releases it slowly to tree.  Tree drinks water and makes apples for me to eat.

 Some winter stuff (chard, carrots, beetroot) going well in the tunnel and the toms are getting a second wind with this heatwave.  Wee thing centre is turmeric.  Sowing peas, broad beans, salads, and other bits soon.

Although they're being killed off by botrytis or whatever, the squashes are still doing reasonably ok.

So, all in all not bad.  Just need to crack a few more veggies (like the sweetcorn) and dig, dig, dig.  Apart from the no-dig bits...

Saturday 3 September 2011

Main crops

Haven't got any pictures (camera's dead) but please feel free to Google "120kgs of Desiree potatoes".
Should be ok for the winter...

Also harvested the buckwheat and made a right pig's ear of it - I scythed it and the stalks went everywhere, and I left it too long and a load of the seed has "shattered" and been lost on the ground.  Still, it's all a learning experience and most of it is now hanging on a line with a fine net under it (scaffold net again) to catch any seed.
It's funny what a sense of security it brings.  Like Cobbett said, "a couple of flitches of bacon hung up are worth more than fifty thousand Methodist sermons even if accompanied with the horrors of hulk and gibbett".  Food security.

A couple of flitches of bacon is next year's project.