General update, March 2021

Photos?  Who needs photos!  It's been so long since I took a photo that I'm just completely out of the habit of it.  I don't use a smart phone so I take pictures on an old digital camera.  When I take pictures, that is.  The husband sometimes sends me photos he's taken, but unfortunately they're rarely of the garden or allotment.  

But anyway, back to the subject at hand.  Tomorrow (31 March) poultry all over the country are allowed out of confinement again.  At last!  Our chickens will be making their way back to the allotment, while our ducks will have their usual free range on the non-veg portion of our small property.  We'll have to sort out their pond (again). 

Our family all has this and next week off work and school and we are doing some work around the place.  Seed sowing, weeding and hoeing, pruning, planting.  And some other non garden jobs around the house.  We have a long list of things to get done, and gardening is right at the top of the list.  Time to get stuff done.

This month I've direct sown some root veg seeds, and sown several trays of brassicas and salad greens.  I've also got a few sowings of snap peas and broad beans up at the allotment (the first broad beans are now poking up) and a couple of trays each of leeks and onions just about to transplant out.  I've also been spreading some great compost which has been maturing over winter:  dark brown and crumbly goodness.

And we've been digging out grass and weeds at the allotment, and supervising the chickens and ducks while they do the same in the veg patch.  I've collected a pile of cardboard for another small round of sheet mulch--possibly in and around the allotment's strawberry plants in the hopes it smothers grass long enough for the plants to flower and fruit this summer.

Not enough time?

I have gone back to work after taking a year off to look after the daughter (who has just turned one).  I've also (perhaps rashly) agreed to double my old hours.  I still work part time but am closer to full time hours, at least till the end of July.  When I pick up the daughter from childcare she needs a nap immediately--I can do a little bit of gardening out back during this time, but must constantly check inside in case she wakes up (she sleeps on a bed and I don't need her waking up and roaming around!).  

I have other household chores to do during naptime too, which are much easier/safer when she is not around, like cooking and some cleaning.  And I also really need time to just sit down and catch my breath--I'm on my feet constantly at work, and it's tiring!  So gardening has not been a top priority.

And I find myself in a strange position where I cannot visit the allotment during the week.  I have been doing the weekend only;  the son and I went for an hour on Sunday for digging weeds and planting caulflowers.  That will be it until next weekend.

It's the busiest--and most critical--part of the whole year, and I don't have enough time!  Last year I had a tiny baby as my excuse;  I was hoping for better this spring.

State of the flock, March 2021

I had hoped the AI (avian influenza) enclosure order for poultry would be lifted by now, but our flock of nine hens and three ducks are still locked away and hating it.  They're hating it so bad they've not been laying for pretty much the whole time--we've been getting somewhere between one and four eggs a week from ten adult birds.  Nobody's happy--them or us.

I have let them take short supervised breaks into a small adjacent run (on the veg patch), but it's only for about an hour at a time, and not every day either.  They have done some excellent work in such a small amount of time on it, tidying up weeds and spent Brussels sprouts plants, and eating bugs and scratching up the soil.  It'll be ready for planting up very soon, then I'll move the run onto the lawn.

I'm not sure if we'll be raising any chicks this year;  we didn't last year as our flock was too big (12).  Unless we lose a few more chickens, I think our flock size is still big enough.  We've been talking about trying to raise some ducklings instead, but it would mean killing and eating excess males--and ducks are a lot cuter than chickens.  But then, drakes are as agressive as cockerels--just a lot less sharp--so maybe it wouldn't be so hard to kill them after all.  And duck is so tasty... 

But yeah.  If our duck starts laying eggs ever again, and our little hen goes broody at some point, we might try her with them for some ducklings.  If not, I don't think we'll be adding any more to the flock any time soon.  And hopefully I'll be letting them out for some proper free range very soon.

At the allotment, March 2021

 First off, ours is still not quite the weediest plot on the allotment site, but only just.  A combination of digging over the last summer (to give to chickens) and sheet mulch over winter has reduced the weeds by about a third.  A third-ish.  Maybe closer to a fourth.  But anyway, there are fewer weeds than last year, which had fewer than the year before.  

Actually our weeds are mostly just grass.  Really coarse, tenacious grass--the kind that throws out lots of long fragile runners.  I don't think digging it out is a viable solution, unless the diggers are chickens who spend a month in the same spot.  Even then, the chicken yard is now starting to regrow some grass;  despite it being about three inches deep in manure, there is still some determined blades showing through.  Of course if they were still there it would be taken care of immediately;  they've been off it since November.

Sheet mulch seems to be a better solution, as the spots which were deeply sheet mulched last winter (as opposed to a few places where the mulch was kind of shallow) seem less grassy.  The grass there looks newly grown from seed rather than established clumps.  Also, the sheet mulched sections are much softer, richer soil with lots of worms--easier to dig.  It's not a perfect solution however:  grass is not eradicated here, just set back.  Sheet mulch is a lot less work than digging, another reason I prefer it.

As for digging, I've been doing a little in order to sow some rows of broad beans and snap peas.  I got a couple rows of the broad beans down already, and will hopefully get a couple more by the end of the week.  

The son has also been digging!  I've struck a deal with him:  I will pay him £1 for every bucket of grass--with roots, not just the tops--he digs out of the strawberry bed.  It's the one bed where the grass has taken over completely and I almost think it might be unsalvageable.  I wanted to transplant to a different spot, a sheet mulched spot, but I think it's the wrong time of year now.  But then again, if the strawberries are swamped in grass they might not fruit anyway this year, so will I actually lose anything if I transplant?  He has earned £3 so far.

Getting back to work

 It's been a long, cold, lonely winter.  I guess it's still winter technically, but March is the first month of spring isn't it?  The days are much longer now than two months ago though we are still getting some frosty nights.  Regardless, I've been itching to get out there and do some stuff.  And I have!

A few weeks ago the son and I pruned the fruit bushes and took some cuttings from the redcurrant trimmings.  I took some last winter too but it seems they all disappeared over the year.  Hope a few of these take (I had several take the year before which were given to friends).  

We also pruned the tiny Asian pear of its longest branch dragging on the ground.  I took five scions off of it and attempted grafting them to the stump of the (non) flowering pear tree which the husband cut down earlier.  While inspecting them yesterday it seems that two look dead, two look mostly dead, and one looks not dead yet.  I guess if none of them take it's not a huge deal.  I no longer have any expectations from that Asian pear;  it's older than this blog but is still pretty much the same size as when it was planted.  The other pear was getting out of hand, far too tall and spiky, and had never flowered.  It was meant to be a pollinator for other pears in the garden, but was just not working out (especially the spikyness).  And those other pears are all dead anyway.

Just this weekend I raked and weeded one of the veg beds and sowed it with a variety of root veg seeds.  Just a few short rows, I sprinkled crushed eggshells over them as a slug deterrent, then covered the bed with crisscrossed sticks as a bird deterrent (mainly against escaped chickens).  Last year the veg patch was mainly planted up with brassicas with a few other things here and there;  I think I'll do mostly roots this year.  All the other veg can go to the allotment.