Big cats?

TThat's Henry. I named him because I don't intend to eat him. I got the chickens a couple of weeks ago and I'm collecting five Indian Runner ducks next week. Unfortunately two of my Light Sussex pullets got taken by a predator last week in broad daylight with me about a hundred feet away.

Matt and Julia have had attacks on their pigs and there are rumours of a big cat in the area. Above are Matt and Julia with a load of water melons for the pigs that were over ripe and rejected by a supermarket. The chickens love watermelon too.

Nearly Solstice and mixed results

As you can see the cucurbit beds are doing quite nicely. They needed a dressing with bonemeal (£27 for 25kg I was shocked) and wood ash because some off the courgettes looked a bit off color but everything looks pretty good now.

















Here's one of the watermelons

Unfortunately it seems the mulch beds have been a complete failure as compared with the dug beds 

I've started digging all the mulch beds. I can't afford to take years to get these productive. I'm planting marigolds, sage, russian tarragon, japanese catmint, catmint, thyme, coriander, basil and other things like chives and garlic chives throughout the beds. Legumes are coplanted with everything but alliums.

As so many of the things in the mulch beds have failed I've scrapped the documentation I was going to do on the vegetables I'm growing. 

Once I have the problems ironed out I'll keep track of that again.

The herb garden has gone berserk and I think it's a wonderful jungle, that's the milk thistle


I thought I'd say a little bit about the forest garden. I've been planting cider apples, a couple of pears (One of which was killed by the deer. I had to bridge graft one of the apples as it was completely ring barked. I took of a couple of twigs from the tree long enough to cover the gap and got to it with my grafting tape.)

The tree dosn't look too bad.)

There are a couple of Albizia julibrissin , three Honey locusts Gleditsia triacanthos a load of gooseberries and some named cobs. There are also a few cherry plums.

For later addition I'm growing a lot of the other plants for the forest garden in the polytunnel garden. The above is the American ground nut Apios Americana I'll have enough of them this year to risk putting some into the garden. They fix nitrogen as well as being a useful food.

Watering is the main chore at the moment but it looks like it might rain today.

Flea beetles

The picture is of the beginnings of a nettle and comfrey tea. The picture was taken about 3 weeks ago and now it's a brown stinking mess bt it's really good plant food.

I haven't posted for a while because there have been some problems and I wanted to wait ntil I knew what was going on before posting about it.

It mostly boils down to a lack of water. I was hoping that the mulch beds would retain water well and for large plants it does but it's not terribly good for seedlings. Because the plants were water stressed we've had an invasion of flea beetles. Once the garden gets going a bit more and the herbs I've been planting arond the edges of the beds get going things will improve and I decided to dig the beds in the polytunnel garden where I had the strawberries for brassicas and I think that's far enough from the beetles to avoid the problem. There's also a water supply nearby so I can water them more frequently. I planted Jerusalem artichoke Helianthus tuberosus
some Taro Colocasia esculenta This is a tropical plant but if we have a decent summer we may get something. I have a plant in my bender that I've kept going for 3 years. I also planted a few sweet potatoes Ipomoea batatas

In any case, the flea beetles mean all the brassicas have been hammered. Everything else is getting big and growing well but I've decided to dig in the mulch in all the beds for next year. The dug beds have been the most successful.

I need to have a long think about water. Wish I had the money to get a trickle watering system. 

No sign of tutors or tutorials yet so no progress on the diploma front.


I've been feeding all the beds with wood ash and bonemeal. Several thjings were looking a bit deficient but they're looking better now. I've also been using rock dust and mycorrhyzal fungi (They work together although the rock dust people talk about worms on their packaging it's mycorrhyzal fungi that pass the minerals to the plants.


Six Bay trees were planted arond the edges of the main garden Laurus nobilis 


All the strawberries were moved into the fenced garden as the rabbits were killing them all by digging them up. They have a bad habit of digging round the roots ot my perennials and damaging them Fortnately Star killed his first rabbit yesterday so maybe he can help scare them off. I portioned it and fried it up for him.