Digging for potatoes

While appreciating the progress made in the onion/garlic bed I decided to target the next bed, for carrots and potatoes. I have a lot more space around this area but I've dug a small-ish bed at first.I also have three old tyres so I can test which works best, a dug out bed, or fake deep bed in the tyres. Watch this space

Pre-any-dig.

First-earth-break.

The first bed dug.

Now to find some carrots and potatoes to plant

Green Shoots

It was a lovely fresh day today, so I went to check on my existing growing things and, JOY OH JOY!! we have some green shoots :) so some pictures have been taken.

The herb garden, fruitful as ever

Garlic starting to sprout through!

Garlic making itself known

Some crocuses(?) that have just start appearing around the garden

Lovely sun on the grass, new veg plot being done on the right near the orange wheel barrow

Gorgeous day, gorgeous garden.

A man, he gotta DIG!

So it's been a long winter, and so I've not been posting but now I'm back and today I went outside digging out a vegetable patch :)

So, for your pleasure, below are a selection of photographs showing my progress today :) I feel GOOD!!!

1. The Herb patch, post weeding, showing the winter survivors.

2. Starting to dig out the vegetable patch, ready for Onion Stuttgarter Giant :)

3. Vital fuel for a digging man - that and chocolate.

4. My wheel barrow with lawn dug out to make space for veg :)

5. The first planted section, now housing little baby Stuttgarter Giant Onions

6. Starting to dig out the next section

7. A friendly little robin that was hopping around all the time I was digging.

8. The finished vegetable patch

9. Left to right: Stuttgarter Giant Onion, Karmen Onion, Red Sun Shallot and Casablanca Garlic

It doesn't take ANY effort

As I have said, one of the main reasons for me doing this blog is to talk about how I have managed this growing food and self sufficiency thing, while being very very busy at the same time.

And I have found that it is the BLOGGING which is more of a challenge than finding the time and energy to get into the garden.

I am very lucky in that my garden was totally overgrown with brambles; in the last couple of weeks I have been able to pick well over a kilogram of ripe fruit having put NO effort in whatsoever beyond reaching my hand out and plucking.

The apple tree by the front gate is also laden with fruit which I will be bringing in shortly to make a blackberry and apple crumble for some friends.

And finally, barring some minor (5 mins a week) weeding the herb garden is flourishing.

The point being, it really IS easy to gather and grow food in your garden; I will probably be reducing my yield of blackberries by continuing clearing the garden.

So, get out there and gather. Don't be scared of "how much work it is" you only need put in 30 mins a day (and you get the benefit of fresh air and stretching exercises)

TPTH

Well I can do the working... and the gardening...

... but obviously not the blogging..

wow it's been a long time since i put an update on this, mainly because any spare time I've had around the house has been dedicated to ripping weeds out in the back and front gardens.

Today, I am ill and so sadly I have time to update the blog :)

So what has been going on since the last update?

I have dug out and cleared an area for our herb garden, which I will be putting various plants in over the next few days.

I have bought an incinerator which is not being as useful as I hoped - it turns out burning weeds you have pulled out of a pond is not really that easy :)

The composter is going well - I have just found that you can compost a whole egg which is cracking news as we have over-bought on eggs recently.

Talking of which, I'm still keen on getting chickens, though I'm concerned about the noise that cockerels may make (and the impact this may have on my day job).

I'll try and update more regularly... and maybe get some photos of what I have done so far.

Meeting friends... and inspiration

Wow a lot has happened since the last post.

We are now in the new house and settled in, however this blog post was "virtually written" in my head the week before the move; I will follow this up with another post about the settling-in process of the new house but for now, this is about my visit back to Reading to see my oldest (well... longest) friend.

The visit was a purely social occurrence but, imagine my surprise when it turns out that they have been doing exactly what I want to do for the previous few years!

They have a small area built up on sleepers in their back garden, probably about 200 square foot, with tomatoes and small cucumbers and other small plants. The meal that Ira cooked for me involved produce from the garden and all I can say is WOW.

They also have rabbits but these are going to be moved to a better home and they are planning on chickens.

Their compost bin is quite mature and they have a good routine of a small margarine pot with kitchen roll in the bottom which they put vegetable and compostable waste in during cooking etc and empty it every day; this means that you don't end up with a large pile of smelly waste on your kitchen windowsill, which can happen with the large receptacle that most websites seem to sell.

Anyway, I went away with a couple of pots of (very very very tasty) plum chutney and a renewed determination to get something rocking in the new house.

So, thank you Wardy, for your welcome and hospitality.

Keep up your homesteading!

Chickens... and egg boxes

The date of the big move the new house is fast approaching...

Last weekend myself and my girlfriend went past the house and yes, once again, it looks ideal for both growing a certain amount of produce, composting and recycling for our own benefit, and potentially having chickens - indeed there was a small cage type thing that certainly looks like chickens have been kept there before.

Any and all specific planning for this experiment has been put on the back burner while we pack our stuff from the old cottage and get ourselves transported over to the new place however, I have made one specific plan.

For the last few months I've been saving ALL our egg boxes and they have been packed so when we arrive, if I do decide to compost I have some ideal "brown" and also, if we get chickens and when eggs arrive we will be set up for storing them.

This is my tip for the day then - if you are planning on getting chickens, save your egg boxes in the months before you get them.

Cheers

TPTH