We've had quite a lot of visitors over the past couple of weeks, and we were meant to have some more yesterday, but plans changed and we had the day to ourselves. Breakfast in our favourite cafe (of course), a trip to the tip, and then an afternoon in the garden. I decided to tackle the edible windbreak, where the fruit bushes were being lost in a sea of nettles and weeds, and the rhubarb had vanished altogether. I covered this whole area with hay at the end of last year, and it kept the weeds down for a while, and then gave them enough nutrients to grow wild. It's impossible to get in this space with a scythe or a strimmer (we did attempt a strimmer once, and lost a sloe bush). So it was hands and knees and a pair of secateurs, and Bunty the chicken. I filled several trugs of weeds, and eventually got to the top of the compost bay. I tend to move my compost from right to left, but there was some lovely well-rotted compost in the middle bay that I wanted to remove first. The finest stuff ended up in pots down by the house, waiting for flowers, and the more bulky stuff went round the fruit trees and under the squash. Eventually there was enough space to turn the compost into the middle bay, helped by the younger chickens. Finally, after all that distraction, I got back to the windbreak. I didn't get loads of it done, but I did manage to clear around the gooseberry bush enough to see that they're going to need harvesting within the next week or so. All that digging and crawling round on the floor quite wore me out, but I'm going to try and do an hour each evening this week which will hopefully get me to the end of the windbreak. And then it'll be time to start on the hay meadow, so everything will get mulched again.
There are no damsons this year, but the damson tree is growing and the elders are filling out nicely. At the minute it doesn't block much more wind than the wall behind it, but I'm hopeful that next year we'll start to feel the benefit. I do need to think about the ground cover a bit better though - I'm sure there's something useful I could be growing under the fruit bushes. A project for next year...
2 Comments
25/7/2021 09:48:37 pm
You have a beautiful garden, weeds and all.
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Hello!Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Jenni, and I write here about our new foray into country living, which includes growing food, knitting, baking, wandering around the fields, and seeing which local cafe serves the best cake. Categories
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