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Its November and there is still no sign of winter. We were expecting a very cold entry into winter at the end of October but it continues to be mild and windy and we have hardly had a frost. Here is the Patch with its greenhouse seen from the top of an incline round an old slurry in front of our barns. We moved this big oak tree which had fallen behind the buildings to make a seat - a look out point over the fields to the oak woods and hills to the East. There is also a good view of the greenhouse from there! We put up the windbreak netting a while back to protect young plants from the harsh winds which come from the South West much of the time due to us being up on the crest of a hill. It works! |
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| These are the Aquadulce Claudia broad beans that I sowed in September in trays in the greenhouse. They are a wonderful autumn sowing variety and should fruit quite early next year having withstood winter frosts. I have staked them against the wind and hung CD's over them to stop the pigeons from eating them. Behind them you can the onions, shallots and garlic shooting up and the leeks in the distance. |
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| Radar onions on the left and then shallots with their clumps of green shoots and you can just see the garlic to the right of them beginning to shoot. Somehow its even more exciting to see the bright green shoots of new plants in the winter months....they seem so brave! |
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| White Lisbon spring onions shoot up too in the mild autumn sunshine. They take up so little room and will be lovely salad onions from spring onwards. You don't need to thin them...as you lift them small for salads the ones remaining get bigger. Brilliant for a small garden. |
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| I decided to dig up the parnsips instead of leaving them in the ground. Mainly because even with the ground still soft it was a hard dig - they were so deep in the ground it was a struggle. I could imagine the struggle if the ground had been frozen, and the frustration at not being able to get at the tender roots on Christmas Day! Here they are scrubbed and ready for their box of damp sand in the shed. |
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| Faboulous roots! |
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Three of our new baby fruit trees, a Merryweather Damson, a Ouillins Gage greengage and a Comice pear, safely in with their stakes to protect them from the wind. At the back to the right of the trailer are three more trees - a James Grieve apple, a Fiesta apple and a Bramley cooking apple and a young Beech tree. Together they all make a circle of trees around the barn. |
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This is the Red Maple (Acer Rubrum) that we have planted above the Patch. We will be able to see it from the windows in the barn as it frames the view across the farmland. It looks a little strange in this photo as the manure pile is in front of it - dumped by the kind farmer who knows I need it for the Patch! The secret of so much veg is the way I have been able to dig in so much well rotted cow poo. Last year we had cows and their calves in the barn beside us all winter. I loved it - there is something so comforting about them. |
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| New Hedging. We took the plunge and planted agricultural hedging behind the barn to give us a good boundary with the rest of the farm. Ordered a few months ago, two hundred plants arrived plus stakes and rabbit guards. A mixture of hawthorn, hazel, guelder, dog rose, crabapple and field acer. We dug a trench with the digger, forked it all over and just before the heavy rain we managed to get all two hundred planted. Stiff with cold and sitting on my bottom in the mud I put the last rabbit guards on in the dark by torchlight to get it finished and this photo was taken the next morning triumphantly after a night of hard rain. It would have been too wet to get them in the following day..... |
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| Still harvesting every day - leeks, spinach, kale, sprouts, purple sprouting, salad and pak choi..... |
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| A sinkful of perpetual spinach being washed to be blanched for the freezer |
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Spent a day planting up the pots on the deck with new bulbs - tulips, crocuses and miniature daffodils - and transplanting pansies and violas grown from seed in the greenhouse. I moved some of the tender plants, agapanthus and alstroemeria in their tubs, into the greenhouse and put straw on top of them to keep them from the frosts. |
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The kittens are nearly nine months now. I love their company and their antics when I am doing jobs outside. This log is a favourite view point! |
