Buried treasure

Hey, look what I found in the compost! (I have a tiny, itsy-bitsy problem with secateur retention. Just a little one. There's probably four more pairs around the property somewhere. That's normal, right?)

If I left them for long enough do you think they'd grow into loppers?

Wet Wet Wet

Rained-on chickens always look pretty miserable. Rained-on, moulting chickens? The very definition of pathetic-ness. (I don't think the girls are actually miserable. Chickeny life seems to continue as usual. But damn, do they look it!)

Unexpected dividends

Well the barley that grew from the straw I mulched the sweet corn with has produced - enough for a couple of pots of soup anyway! It doesn't appear to have competed overly much with the corn either - I'd call that a reasonably successful unplanned experiment!

Monsters in the undergrowth

Oops, took my eye off the courgettes for five minutes.

Awesome sauce

A 3.5 kg pick from the Black from Tula toms today. Sauce, methinks.

Winter planning and planting (yes, really!)

Alrighty, winter vege a go-go! (Yes, if you want to grow them from seed now is the time.) I've got a big variety in as you can see, including my own red cabbage, lettuce, green mizuna, red mizuna, rocket, land cress, giant red mustard. Go mad with these and any other brassicas you love, as well as Florence fennel, celery, celeriac, spinach, chard, endives etc.

Happy new year, fellow garden denizens!

I've had a couple of extra tenants on my patch recently. My redcurrant bush has been host to a blackbird nest with two cute wee fledgelings, and it looks like today is going to be a big day for them!

They're out of the nest for the very first time, looking rather apprehensive,  and mum is calling them right now from the peach tree across the way. Good luck little ones!

I'd love to know what influences birds to feed from certain crops or not. The redcurrant bush is currently laden with fruit, and the raspberries next to it are still doing pretty well too, but the birds never seem to go for my berry crops. (Even when they're living there, it seems!) Yet I have several friends who have to net their berries assiduously every year to get even a few for themselves.

I count my blessings in this case, but what gets hammered in my garden instead is peas and lettuces. It's the sparrows that do 'em in, and I must say I don't think it's very neighbourly behaviour (sniff). Unless I net the pea plants from day one the poor things never get a chance to grow - they're just eaten down to nubs. If I net them until they're flowering they survive, but they still get ripped to shreds, reducing their crop significantly.

Oh well. I'm glad it's not the berries, anyway.