Come and Have a Peek in the Net Tunnel

It's about time I let you have a proper peek inside the Net Tunnel.

In the last couple of weeks the central area has had masses of bark chippings poured in over a layer of membrane in a bid to keep weeds out as much as possible, and the last couple of beds have been filled with sifted soil, compost and some 6X fertiliser.  The tunnel has been in use since it was first covered in net but has never been fully productive as the beds on the righthand side were waiting to be topped up and the middle was a bit of a dumping ground.

As you can see the Blueberry bushes are now stood there and are currently a mass of flowers.  Eventually there will be another raised bed in the centre ... I have my eyes on something in Lovely Hubby's shed that will make a great deep raised bed for depth loving vegetables   ;-)

It's nice to be welcomed in with flowers  :-)

On the left as you step in th front doors are some over-wintered Rosemarys and Lavenders.

Next to them some Primula Auriculas that I separated out from a single pot that was bought last Spring at the garden centre, on one of mine and Mum's lunches out.

Further along past the triffid-like cabbages, are the Leeks.  They are doing really well in here and are the best and quickest growing Leeks I have ever had, to the right of them are some onions.

Opposite is the Garlic bed, there are lots of lovely healthy garlic plants in there that should keep us going for the next year.  We are currently almost coming to the end of eating last years crop, we have about enough for the next month or so hanging behind the kitchen door, so these could be available just in time.

This is what it looks like looking back the other way,  the empty beds are now on the left soon they will be filled with the seedlings from the polytunnel, lettuces of every description, spring onions, radishes, rocket and other tender crops that I don't want to risk on the hillside.

And that's the idea of the net tunnel, to be able to have more crops growing outside of the polytunnel, but to be able to protect tender salad crops from the ravages of rabbit attack, which was at an alarming level last year.   It also diffuses the wind and is a degree warmer than outside the netting.  It means plants are 'almost outside' and can benefit from the regular rain, and slightly less regularly the sunshine will be diffused so things don't become as parched and scorched as they would be outside.  

The idea seems to be catching on around these parts, we've spotted another tunnel that used to be plastic and is now net covered, and a few people have asked us for the details of where we bought the netting etc.  

Just in case you want to know ... we got it from First Tunnels the same folk that we bought the polytunnel off,  the framework for the netting is our old polytunnel frame that we also bought from there.  There is a link to them way down on the sidebar, under the photograph of the henhouse.

Someone was keeping an eye on me while I was taking these photos!!

Sue xx

Storing Pumpkins

The last of our pumpkins which were harvested at the end of Autumn of last year is finally being eaten.

I have to admit to giving a couple of them to the chickens who care not a jot if a snack is bit soft, soggy and almost mouldy, but we have enjoyed the majority of them.  In soups, stews and pasta sauces mostly they add their luscious taste and bulk out a meal nicely.

Of course this looks like a full pumpkin ....

... but if I turn it around you can see that I've already chopped it in half  ;-)

The good stuff is for us, ready to go in the oven and be roasted, the trimmings are for the chickens and the other half is being popped in the fridge until I decide what to do with it.

Pumpkins store really well, I just leave them to harden off where they grow for as long as I can and then bring them indoors.  Last years specimens lived on the conservatory windowsill looking very ornamental from harvest time until three days ago for this one.  You've got to love a vegetable that gives you so long to decided what to make with it haven't you.

Sue xx

I left you hanging in the air ...

I left you hanging in the air at the end of the last post ... mainly because I had to go and get a photo of a little addition we have had to add to the new Chicken Land.

We have added some short trellis fencing to the top of the stock fencing that separates Chicken Land from the Veggie Patch and I'm sure you can guess the reason why.  The 'Welsh Girls' the four youngest, fittest of our birds have spent the last few days hopping over the fence to scratch about in the Veggie Patch, making a real mess of the bark chipping pathways and nibbling at the few veggies that are currently in there.  

Not so much of a problem at the moment but it would have been a huge problem when I start to transplant the seedlings that I am currently growing in the polytunnel ready to grow on outside.

To stop them ... or so we thought ... we clipped their wings.  It doesn't hurt chickens at all, a bit like us clipping our fingernails, but what it does is make them lopsided and they find it harder to fly. Chickens don't like to fly much anyway .... unless there is a good food source just over a fence  :-)

One of the culprits!!

We didn't realise how young, fit and agile three of our girls were, the day after we clipped their wings they just flapped and jumped and they were over the fence.  So alternative methods had to be thought of.  Luckily the way Lovely Hubby had fenced the veggie patch to separate it from the orchard included a horizontal rail at the top of the stock fencing, it was put there to help the fence posts remain rigid on a wet hillside.  So he has nailed and added supports to this and topped at all with the trellis fence topping panels that we went out and bought yesterday.

So now we will just have to see how high these three chickens can jump, up to now they have not made it over the newly raised fence .... but I have a sneaky suspicion they could be in meetings to plan the digging of a tunnel  ;-)

Sue xx

Chicken Land

Last week as soon as we came back from our weekend away we got stuck in to moving the chickens.

  Chicken World is looking decidedly worse for wear.  After the chooks being in the same spot for the two and a half years we have lived here and the bad, wet Winter that we have just had it is time to rest the land a bit.  Lovely Hubby also has plans to landscape it slightly to make it all easier to mow and safer to walk on in wet conditions and add a new permanent fence along the roadside, which will be so much easier to do without birds under his feet.

The best way to move a lot of chickens so that you don't cause a huge ruckus is to wait until they have all roosted for the night and one by one removed them from the perches and pop them into a chicken crate.

We carried them over to Chicken Land, which is in our baby orchard, (young trees that is ... we are not growing babies .... phew!!) in three lots, we have a trio of heavy birds and the crate weighs a bit to start with so we made sure only one of these was in each load.

Three trips later and they were all sat on perches in their new house and no doubt wondering what all the fuss was about.  Ginger helped us out, wandering over with us every time we took a load of birds across but the dogs were confined to the house to save a lot of barking and upsetting the birds.

 As night fell on their new home they were tucked up safe and sound.

Now I can spy on them from the bedroom window ...

... and they have the sheep as neighbours.  

The lambs were very interested the first morning when I let the chickens out.

Their favourite thing seems to be the wind and rain shelter that we made for them.  Simply a piece of the old, old henhouse resting on and nailed to a horizontal bit of wood that Lovely Hubby added to the fence.

There was one thing we didn't really think about ...... doh !!

Sue xx

Coffee Break Posting

I'm busy, busy, busy today but I thought I would just do a quick post to let you know that Lovely Hubby's head is healing up quite well and he is working hard to keep it clean and dry as per the nurses instructions.  So there's been no swimming for him this week!!

This is what he was making and getting into position when he had his not so little accident.

He tried it out first under the cover of the garage as it was raining on assembly day, then later when the sun came out he put it into position at the bottom corner of the paddock, bashing in the posts to keep it in place .... and then you know what happened.

What is it?

It's a large muck holder, like a giant compost bin only for rotting down horse manure and barn scrapings .... handy for throwing the chicken house muck in each day on my way past too.  Once it's full it will be covered with a tarpaulin and left to heat up and do it's stuff.

This has been my coffee break off to do some more weeding now  :-(

Sue xx

Not For the Squeamish

The gatepost piggy is wearing Lovely Hubby's hard hat ....  if only he had been wearing it a little bit earlier he wouldn't have done this ....

... it's deep, even deeper than it looks on this photo.  

He was almost concussed but managed to stay sat on the grass until he recovered enough to come to the house and tell me what he'd done.  I couldn't have missed the fact that he'd hurt himself he had blood everywhere.

How did he do this  ... well he was using one of these, a post knocker inner thingy to get the posts in to hold up his new  large manure holder/compost bin style thing, and on the forceful downward stroke he got it a smidge wrong and it hit the edge of the post and bounced back right on top of his head.

OUCH!! 

When I Googled the words 'post knocker inner' to get you this image guess what there were lots of on the same page ....

... photos of our chickens!

Lots of shots of our chickens ...

 ... how weird is that!!

And one of our paddock before the Veggie Patch was there or the polytunnel ... I understand why this photo was there, this is the tracter with the post knocker inner thing attached from when we had all the paddock fencing done!

His head is healing very nicely now and although he refused to go to A&E for the stitches that he should have had, he did eventually get it checked out while he was at the Dr's last week and was told to carry on keeping it clean and dry.

He banged it again a couple of days after doing it ... he was only wearing his flat cap for protection, hence he was finally persuaded to dig out his hard hat and wear that for any jobs where there was anything over his head that he could bang it on.

Sue xx

I Love My Polytunnel

In the polytunnel at the moment is a lovely green mish mash, a delightful mix of new seedlings, old over-wintered plants, things being shifted around and new life springing up either planted by me or self seeded from last year.

The young Leeks at the front of this bed have just been moved over from a larger bed under the work station.  They were taking up far too much room and water spread out as they were, so I decided to re-locate them ... they seem to have survived the trauma!!

A top view of the same bed ... Leeks to the left, spring greens at the top and a spinach cluster at the bottom.

I seem to be making more and more mixed beds at the moment.

 I think I like a bit of variety, and I love the mix of the greens and the difference in the  leaves and stems.  It's not really seen as the right thing to do in growing circles as you are supposed to rotate where you plant things and this makes any rotation harder to do.  But I prefer to rotate less and look after my soil and compost more and let the plants mingle.  I may live to regret it one day ..... but hey that sums up life in general, right  ;-)

This bed has a row of onions (a trial polytunnel/net tunnel thing) a few rows of late planted spinach from last year and some garlic, which is also being trialed in the polytunnel to see how it compares to the net tunnels garlic ...

.... and in the pots in the back corner some potatoes (Estima) taken from last years crop.

Yes the supersonically chitted potatoes are thriving ;-)

In the very back corner on the other side, under my workbench are last years celery plants.  

Instead of pulling up some of the bunches by the roots I chopped them off just above soil level and as you can see they are growing into another bunch of celery.  This is proving to be a useful thing to have learnt as having this second early batch of celery growing is helping to fill what is known by growers as the 'hungry gap', that annoying time of year when you have eaten most of last years crops and although you have tray after tray  of lovely young seedlings of all your favourite vegetables coming along,  there just isn't anything tasty to actually eat now, something I really don't need to happen on our journey to self sufficiency.

There are quite a few vegetables and salad crops that will do this - cabbages, lettuces, spring onions  and as you can see celery, I think I am going to experiment some more this year with this phenomenon, an extra crop from one sowing of seeds is always welcome.

The weather fluctuations of this week have seen the temperature in the polytunnel plummet to just 4 degrees and then rise in less than twenty four hours to 35 degrees.  When I'm working in there I peel off the layers as it's gets warmer and warmer, usually ending up working in just a T shirt even when the temperature outside is still jacket weather.

Can you tell I love my polytunnel  :-)

Sue xx