May felt properly like summer, and we spent a lot of time outside. The garden is starting to take shape. The veg patch The big project for the month was to create a veg patch, fenced in to keep chickens (and hares and sheep) out, and easy to maintain, ultimately with a no dig system. I picked a spot, nine metres by nine metres, in the sunniest part of the garden, and we put up a fence. It's pretty exposed, and having this area fenced in also gives us the option of adding wind proof fabric round the outside while our edible windbreak establishes. Over the course of the month, popping out for a few hours each evening, we cleared the grass and edged the beds with stone. This has been a lovely project - not too arduous, and we could just do little bits, half an hour here and there, and could easily see the progress we were making. As each bed was edged, I filled it with mulch, mostly home made compost. Not all the beds have compost underneath, as I didn't have enough. We wondered whether to buy in either gravel or wood chip for the paths, but have settled on a longer-term (and cheaper) option of producing it ourselves. We acquired a garden shredder from Freegle a while back which we'd not used, so that was pressed into service. We don't have many trees here, but we're collecting branches when we can, and we'll do a bit of pruning in the coming weeks, and slowly we'll amass enough to cover the paths. June's job is to finish placing the stones round the beds and round the outside of the fence, get everything mulched, and fit gates to keep the chickens out. They won't be impressed. Seedlings May was the month that most of my seedlings got properly started - rather late for those in warmer climes but pretty usual for us up here (especially with my lazy sowing habits). By the end of the month, the greenhouse was starting to look rather full, and several plants like they might eventually be able to survive outside. We had plenty of apple blossom this year, and it didn't get blown away, so I have my fingers crossed for a decent crop. I finally got round to buying some paint pens for drawing on stone, and created some extremely cheerful plant labels so I can remember what's what. The weather May has mostly been filled with sunshine, but we didn't have our last frost until the 14th, and there have been some epic winds, and even a dramatic thunderstorm. Between all that, I was quite glad all my seedlings were still in the greenhouse (in fact today is the first day I've started acclimatising some of them to outside - and now we're in the middle of a downpour). Clearing the drains I mentioned this in my last post - towards the start of May the farmer noticed that part of our field was rather lush and there was a suspicious whiff... He kindly loaned us his bag of rods, and used his digger to find our pipe (which I was VERY grateful for - how long would I have had to dig to find that by hand??) As it turned out, most of the pipe was blocked, so we stood at the end pushing rods into it until eventually we got to the other side of the blockage, and first thick black gunge, and then water, came gushing out. Once it was flowing freely again, we pulled the rods out, all still connected, so we could see how much pipe we'd had to unblock. It was quite a lot. It's a strange business, doing something like this. I've unblocked the u-bend under the sink, and the drain outside the kitchen, by hand, but faced with a blocked septic outflow pipe I confess even my first thought was 'how much is that going to cost to sort out?' But our farmer neighbour (thank goodness) is far more experienced than me and explained what we needed to do, and gave us some rods, and once we got going, it was indeed pretty straightforward. We'll definitely keep an eye on it from now on though - I don't really want to have to unblock it too often. There's not much else to report for May on the homestead. There's still no progress on the kitchen, although we have at least laid some tools out now, which I suppose is a start. The weather was far too nice for most of May to want to be inside much, and our local DIY shop was closed for much of the time anyway. I suppose we'll have to turn our attention back to it at some point though - we've been using our little temporary kitchen space for eight months now, and the novelty has very much worn off.
So by the end of June, I'd like to have the veg patch finished, and much of the seedlings planted out. I want to sort out the edible windbreak area, which is looking extremely overgrown. It would be good to make some progress inside - although now we're allowed to see people again we'll have less time I imagine. And who knows what will have happened in the world by the end of June?
1 Comment
Amanda Schofield
15/6/2020 02:34:51 pm
Wow! You have achieved huge amounts! I must admit to having a little veg bed envy 😊
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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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