The start of the new beds and todays planting

We finally got the mini digger working today and started making the beds for the medicinal herb garden (and promptly ran out of diesel), No matter, we have the digger for another day or so and we'll do what we can tomorrow. It's raining heavily outside in any case. 

I started planting up the hotbed we finished yesterday. So far from right to left I planted 

Garden Catmint Nepeta racemosa 
English sage Salvia officinalis 
Anise Hyssop Agastache foeniculum 
Japanese catmint schizonepesa tenuifolia 
Chinese liquorice Glycyrrhiza Uralensis (Gan Cao) 
Feverfew Tanacetum parthenium  
Russian Tarragon Artemisia dracunculoides
Artichoke Imperial Star Cynara scolymus
Giant cape gooseberry Physalis peruviana 
Dwarf cape gooseberry Physalis pruinosa 
Tomatillo Verde Physalis Ixocarpa 
Aubergine Snowy F1 (One that slipped through) Solanum melongena 
East Indian Lemongrass Cymbopogon flexuosus 
West Indian Lemongrass Cymbopogon citratus 
Chilli Numex bailey piquin Capsicum annuum
Chilli Bhut Jolokia 
Pepper Red Cheese  Capsicum annuum

We're still in a waxing moon and I prefer to do most of my planting when the moon is waxing (It seems to help germination but that's just my opinion.
I often follow a biodynamic calendar but I haven't got one yet for this year) 

Forgot to mention that so far only the tomatoes have germinated, of those the cherokee black have done the best. They all seem to have germinated whereas only one or two each of the others have done so so far. They started coming up about 3 weeks ago and the others started coming this week.

More tomorrow hopefully

One hotbed completed and some planting

Leia came back to the farm yesterday and helped me with some gardening today. 

We planted some quick growing stuff in the new bed in the polytunnel and finished the first hotbed. (The bed in the picture is about 3 meters long, about 1.5 meters wide and just over a meter deep) The area around the one pictured looks a bit untidy because it's right next to where a lot of the wood cutting gets done.

The new bed in the poltunnel was planted in rows from right to left with Radish, Giant of Sicily, Pea mange tout Norli, Lettuce Ariana, Salad onion Paris silverskin two rows of Pea Early onward, Sage English broadleaf Salvia Officinalis , Broad leaf thyme Thymus pulegioides the herbs will be planted outside when they're large enough. Planted a tray of Angleica archangelica in a tray that I put outside. I'm hoping we have enough cold weather to break dormancy. Planted a tray each of peppermint Mentha Piperita and Dyers greenweed Genista Tinctoria that I put in the new hotbed.

Here's how to make a hotbed:

  Create some walls for the hotbed (We used some polystyrene filled walls from a prefab hut) and fill the bottom with some branches to allow air into the bottom.

 Fill with fresh manure (In this case stable sweepings from Mr Miles next door) leaving a south facing slope walking on the manure from time to time to make sure you have enough in there to get hot. They say you need about a meter depth for it to get hot enough.

 Cover the manure with about 6 to 10 cm of compost and then cover with glass or plastic. The whole thing should have a slight southward slope. I have the means to make another two of these and we're part way through making them.


These beds will make a good place to germinate most of our warm loving seeds and then they'll be planted up with cucurbits like melons and courgettes, aubergines and okra later on. 

Machine hassles and some hotbeds

Machines often fail here for some unknown reason and this week there's been a lot of it going on. First the mini tractor got stuck in reverse gear and wouldn't come out then the mini digger Danny had borrowed for us turned out to have a duff starter motor (The pic is of me trying to jump start it before we found out the problem).

I've been relocating some old hot beds to near my bender. Over the weekend we had a delivery of manure from Mr Miles our neighbour and a friend of Matt's dropped off a truck load of wood chippings.

These are the hotbeds I moved with Bam Bam's help

The machines are still broken so progress is a bit slow hopefully I'll have some help over the next couple of days and get them finished and planted up. I'm planning on using them to germinate stuff and then to grow melons and other things that like a lot of manure and heat in them later.

New bed in the polytunnel

We had a lorryload of topsoil turn up yesterday (can't imagine anyone wanting to get rid of topsoil). So I decided to get on with making the beds with the help of our Wwoofer, Leia.

Here's a basic mulch bed:

There was already the end of the other bed there to make one end. The ground was already mulched with a layer of cardboard and some straw. We made some holes with a digging pole and bashed in some posts with a mallet. Then we nailed on the planks Danny made.

We put in a 12-15cm depth of topsoil and then about an inch of well rotted manure. Then we put on about 5-7cm depth of good compost. If I can afford to get some I'll add a few handfulls of rock dust and some mycorhyzzal fungi to the bed with some wood ash and some bonemeal.

The temperature is around 3c or so freezing at night. I planted 5 yucca plants (Yet to be identified) that Matt gave me on the northern end of the new herb garden.

I put the morus alba and nigra outside to stratify for 4 weeks.

A day spent in the woods

I needed some posts for my beds and I was running low on firewood so I decided to spend the day sorting it out. Matt is our main woodsman. He's a gardener and tree surgeon and he knows a great deal about wood.

The area we were working in yesterday was coppiced last year and Matt took down a few dead chestnut trees as well. Here's a bit of a gallery of the day. The next job will be putting the beds together. Freash horse manure will be arriving this weekend to make the hotbeds.

When I arrived Matt, Julia and the Wwoofer (can't remember her name at the moment, I'll get it later) were putting some new tarpaulins on Matt and Julia's bender.

This is how you split a log for stakes, you bash one of the splitting wedges into the end of the log with a mallet.

Then you use the other wedge to force the split along the log.

Repeat until the wood is the right size.

These posts will then be split diagonally and pointed with the chainsaw to allow them to be bashed into the ground.

This area was coppiced last year the wood has been sitting for a year and is now ready to burn. 

Here's Matt showing me how to sharpen a chainsaw. He clamps the saw to a bench then gives each blade 3 swipes with a round file parallel to the mark on the blade filing each alternate blade (The ones pointing in the appropriate direction) then he turns the saw around, clamps it again and does the same to the other side but doing 4 swipes because the left hand is weaker. He then takes a flat file and does one swipe on each of the depth nubs of metal in between each blade (I'm sure it has a proper name but I don't know what it is yet).

He then made sure everything was clean and properly tensioned and put it back together.

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It's snowing today again so more tomorrow hopefully.

Delays and more delays

I'm waiting for a bunch of deliveries at the moment so not a lot is getting done. (Which is why I haven't been posting for a few days) 

It doesn't really matter because the first outdoors planting won't be happening for a couple of weeks yet.

This is the slowest month in the gardening calendar. I will be doing some more planting indoors over the next few days but there's no rush right now. 

I'll post again whan things start happening.

Back from Wales

That's Star in Brechfa forest. We got back from Wales last night. The compost still hasn't arrived but we have a couple of weeks till the parsnips and broad beans have to go in so I'm not that worried. We still have the compost Matt made. In about a weeks time there's a poultry show near Canterbury so I'm going to go down and choose some chickens and maybe some ducks. We already have a duck pond so it's time to populate it and hope the fox doesn't get them.

 

More later.