Summer weeding

I'm getting a little bit more gardening done now that my iron levels are creeping up;  and the daughter is four months old now and can watch me from her stroller or laid on a blanket on the grass.  Or sometimes she's even asleep upstairs (not reliably yet though).  Thankfully there's no heavy tasks to be done this time of year;  it's mainly harvesting, watering pots and planters, and a little light weeding.

Actually the allotment could do with some heavier weeding, which I have been accomplishing a little at a time.  Since we now have chickens there, we visit both morning and evening--mine is usually the morning slot, along with the son and daughter.  I've been spending 10 minutes or so every morning digging up clumps of grass and weeds and chucking them over the fence into the chicken yard;  the chickens are very happy for some greenstuff, now they've scratched up all their own.  I make sure there's plenty for everyone (seven currently), and it's usually all eaten by the time I visit next morning.  The son and husband are gradually mulching the bare spots too, to prevent more weeds germinating.

At home, weeding is a lot easier:  the soil is much more enriched and soft and most weeds simply pull out without the need for digging.  I pull them out and then lay them down on the soil to break down. 

I'm not too worried about weeds at home seeing as they are so easy to get rid of, but the allotment has a lot of grass;  it seems like the vegetables surrounded by grass are a lot smaller and weaker.  The cabbages at home are at least twice as big as those at the allotment:  same batch, planted at the same time.  Now that I have a bit more motivation to get it dug up (chickens are hungry!), maybe I can keep on top of it better.

Starting to preserve, July 2020

Though we're not harvesting a lot at the moment, I've started preserving a few things, most notably fruit:  cherries, strawberries and raspberries have all gone in the freezer.  We got a bigger freezer for free from the neighbors this past winter and I've got about six or seven bags of frozen fruit in it (though all but one bag of strawberries we picked at a local farm).  I think once the red raspberries are finally finished at the allotment--they're done at home--I'll make some jam with them;  we're still picking a handful every day or two.

I've also fired up the dehydrator for the first time in a few months;  I made some strawberry chips and have started on the fig harvest with the first three ripe figs.  To fill up the rest of the trays while those figs slowly dry, I've been picking nasturtium leaves;  they work well in stews and casseroles as they aren't spicy after cooking but add a nice tang--and they dry within a few hours.

I tried to brine some chard stems to use as a salty/sour addition to salads but am not particularly enamored with the result.  Not nasty, but just sort of bland.  We generally eat the stems along with the chard, even if we eat them as salad leaves so at least I didn't do a very big batch.  Oh well. 

Speaking of brining, we've been given two big cucumbers from fellow allotmenteers (so far) and I'm considering making pickle spears with one of them.  May they be the first of many, as my own cucumber seedlings withered and died before I even got the chance to plant them out. 

What we're eating, July 2020

Even though we're not doing the Vegetable Challenge this year, I'm keeping vegetables off the shopping list for the time being (exception: onions) and eating from the garden and allotment instead.  Well, there's not much to harvest at the allotment now, though we're still getting a handful of raspberries every other day.  The husband dug up one volunteer potato plant last week--a meal's worth--and we might carry on digging them up one at a time as we seem to have a lot of these volunteers, saving the ones we planted in spring for the main harvest in autumn.

At home we're picking snap peas--though they've almost finished--and kale, mizuna and chard.  The runner beans are flowering profusely--hoping for beans very soon.  The zuccini and other brassicas are still growing; though both the red and green cabbages are starting to form heads they're probably not ready for at least another month though.  There's a few small tomatoes forming, but again, not going to harvest any time soon.

We've finished picking all our cherries and strawberries now, pretty much all the red raspberries, and most of the red and black currants.  The sour Morello cherries went in the freezer, as did most of the strawbs and rasps, but we ate the sweet Stella and Kordia cherries and currants (both in hand and in smoothies).  The yellow rasps are just fruiting, and I'm looking forward to some figs very soon.

State of the flock, July 2020

As of today we are down to 10 chickens, having lost our oldest hen (a rescue) the other day;  there is another rescue hen looking very tired and I doubt she'll be with us much longer.  She, the recently deceased, and two other old hens have been here with us at home while the other seven are at the allotment in a smallish yard. 

The husband put together a coop from shed panels scrounged from the abandoned allotment opposite ours (it's now been taken over by someone new) so there's enough room to sleep 10 chickens, but I don't want to take up that old poorly hen.  She can die at home and her two remaining friends can go up there once she does.  Until then, the three of them are free ranging the non-veg section of the garden every afternoon.

Our two ducks and two drakes are the ones confined to their own yard now, having been free range since early spring.  I want them to work on waterproofing their new enlarged pond--which does hold more water now:  it's a big puddle that seeps away very slowly.  Every day their the dirty water from their three drinking buckets gets emptied into it, and they splash and dabble around in it.  Their yard encompasses it and a little section of the property behind our garage which we call the Robot Club (it's a good hiding place for little boys).  I anticpate giving them periodic free ranging again after a few more weeks.

We're getting four or five eggs a day from the allotment hens and one or two from home.  Our little broody hen Cookie finally gave up sitting after about two or three months and starting laying again;  we decided not to raise chicks this year as we have enough chickens.  If we get down to around seven by next spring, we'll consider it, or possibly adopt some more rescues.

The ducks are laying, but they keep moving their secret nests!  I think they are both laying every day or every other day.  We don't collect them every day as we can't always find them.