Spanner in the works

That time of year again when blog posts become scarce. All the usually gardening and poultry tasks to be attended to, plus the allotment and bees to see to. Been thrown some curved balls by the weather too to deal with. There’s quite a bit of other “stuff” going on too round here at the moment just to keep us on our toes.

Last week when I checked the bees I took my guru along (after sales service he called it). Hive full of bees all looking very happy and healthy, brood, egs, feed, pollen, queen etc. No signs of swarming.

Today when I checked – hive full of bees, starting to bring in some honey, pollen, capped brood, erm, no queen (not unusual – she goes for flights and sometimes just has too many attendants to spot her), but wait, no eggs either. Bugger.

A quick call to the guru confirmed what I suspected – leave the hive alone for 2 weeks and they’ll rear a new queen. Bit of a pain as it’ll set the hive back about a month and I was hoping to make a second colony with a controlled swarm, but they’ve already started raising there new monarch and with no eggs in the hive she’s unlikely to swarm, so fingers crossed.

All part of the learning curve.

Off at a tangent

I used to have an allotment – actually, I’ve had 2, but not at the same time. For a while now I’ve been missing having one – I miss the banter, I miss excitement of seeing how it’s doing, I miss showing it off to people, I miss the ritual of “going down the plot” and I miss the escape.

Friends have an allotment in a nearby town, and they very kindly let me plant my over wintering onions there when I discovered I had white rot at home. They also said I could use as much of it as I liked, but that’s never felt right to me. I’m the sort that would always ask if was OK for me to do something – which could become wearing for them, but the way I see it that’s surely better than them turning up ready to plant something out only to find I’d used the space they had earmarked.

Last week I confessed to the OH that I might ask them to let me know if a plot comes up – these things don’t come up very often and it’s only a small site.

On Saturday, I was out collecting manure with one of the aforementioned friends. He asked if I’d like an allotment, and after a few seconds of deliberation, I admitted that yes, I’re really like one. “There’s one just come up, I’ll get you the guy’s number”. Oh, OK. So maybe not next year then, maybe rather sooner.

I didn’t hold my breath, as I knew my friend had to jump through hoops to get one himself. Saturday lunchime (in between manure runs – so to speak), I gave the guy to call. Having quickly established that there was a plot available and how I’d found out about it, I asked if I could put my name forward (thinking there was probably a list of people wanting one). “It’s yours” he says. Oh, OK. Thanks. So maybe right now then!!!

I think my friends were a little miffed – they’d had a struggle to get theirs and I’d walked straight into one. Not only that, it’s a good one – fenced, with shed, the beds are edged, loads of strawberry plants, well dug, hardly a weed in sight.

I’ve already planned it out and planted my onions out. Found some old drums in the shed that I’ve now installed as waterbutts. There are some changes I’d like to make to it, but most of the major ones will be made in the autumn and winter. For now I’ll concentrate on the rowing bit and worry about the structure later.

It’s funny actually, After I had a look at it I thought “what on earth am I going to fill that with?”. Then I got home and had a look round the greenhouse. I’m careful with seed – only sowing what I need plus a bit extra for spares (I hate “pricking out” – it’s my least favorite gardening job. I’d rather do the weeding!), but this year I’ve sown far more than I’d need for the beds in the garden. Spooky!

I told you so

…but I still don’t believe it!!!

It’s a bit cooler today (and very windy) but still nice and sunny, so I decided to sort the compost out. Having worked up a nice “glow” decanting 1 cubic metre of ready to use compost into bags (for dryer storage and easier transportation), I made a start turning the half-done cubic metre into the newly vacated bay.

About a foot down, out the corner of my eye, I saw the dog looking quizically through the fence at the chooks (collies have a perculiar way of looking that means you can actually see the cogs turning). It took a while to register in my own head, but sure enough there were 3 chooks also looking quizical (a permanent state for a chook), but not at the dog. Being quite good at maths puzzles at school, I joined the dotted lines – followed the line of sight of the dog, and that of the chooks, to see where they’d cross.

X marked the spot right enough – chook number 4. Where? In the bloody veg beds of course!!!

I still can’t work out how she got there (tunnel I suspect – the request for an exercise horse should have been a clue!), but she obviously knew she wasn’t suppose to be there, as when I opened the (6 foot high) gate, she shot out. All 4 chooks then retired for a dust bath under the tree – no doubt to compare notes.

Whoever thinks chickens have very small brains are so wrong!

Finished at last

[Well, nearly there, but "Nearly finished at last" didn't sound as good]

Having started work on the re-arranging of the veg beds late last year, I’m please to report significant progress.

I started with 3 beds – 4ft x 12ft and then work commenced:

Work started, with the bed on the right already dug out

By day 3, I’d already reached this stage:

All beds dug into one large one, with post in place and fencing started.

Then rain stopped play… along with snow, heavy frost, more snow, more rain, more frost, a holiday, oh yes, and that other little thing called work.

But, with recent good weather and a renewed spirit from the holiday, we now have this:

And from another angle:

There’s a bit too much exposed soil there for my liking, but hopefully that will be rectified this weekend by the addition of some mulch and manure and some plants – I have broad beans up and ready to go in.

The chooks didn’t seem over impressed, but were happy to watch and snack on the freshly dug weeds – though I’m sure I caught them furtling away at a plan to break IN to the new Fort Knox

A bit of rearranging

4 years ago when we moved here I created some veg beds in the garden. Since then, life has changed a lot (something I’ve only really realised very recently) and they’re no longer fit for purpose.

For example, we got a dog, so the whole area was fenced to keep it dog free. Then I took an allotment style agreement with a local landowner so I could grow more veg than I had space for at home. Then I decided that was taking all my time and I was neglecting the garden, so I decided to bring it all back “in-house”. But now we have chickens – who free-range in the veg growing area -  this year’s crops had to be truss up like Fort Knox. In other words crops were planted then heavily protected from the beaked foragers which meant they were impossible to properly weed without a major Bear Grylls-style expedition. That said, the chooks did appear to have great fun sitting on top of Fort Knox, crowing loudly and playing the chicken version of I’m the King of the Castle!

So, I’ve had a bit of a rethink, and now the 3 beds are becoming one. The “veg bed” will have internal paths, so i can still practice a part no-dig, part layer mulch and part “regular” gardening arrangement (as that appears to be working well for me) and the whole area will be fenced to prevent raiding parties – I have large fowl who shy away from the tiresome exercise of flying.

So, that’s the plan – watch this space…