Hurrah its raining..

I never thought I would be happy to see the rain, but as  we haven't had anything reasonable here since Christmas, I was pretty pleased to see the overcast wet windy day I was presented with when I opened the curtains this morning. It hasn't stopped a hosepipe ban in lots of the South though, but amazingly not here. Well done to our local very small water company. Lets see how long it lasts! 

Not much been going on outside. Thats the trouble with growing stuff, If it doesn't want to grow, it won't. 

The potatoes have come on and are almost ready to be banked. 

The shallots are now at a very presentable height,

and I have more tomato plants than I know what to do with.. ( Lots of Green Tomato Chutney in September) 

I also have lots of trays that look like this, hopefully the next time I take pictures they will have something growing in the cells 

The postman arrived yesterday with a large packet.. Whats this? I had ordered so many things I have lost track of whats arrived.  Rhubarb! and Asparagus. Two of my favourite things. They each have one of the smaller beds for themselves outside the greenhouse. I can't wait to get out and plant them. 

And finally what Gibson has been up to this week. We went for a walk in the New forest an he met his first wild pony. 

He wasn't really sure what to a make of him. Another day he decided he wanted to join me as a gardener, so while I wasn't looking thought he would help out with a couple of tubs near the house. 

Obviously he doesn't like winter pansies. Thinking that he may not have been my favourite puppy, he went inside and decided to post himself back to Florida,  in a box that had recently arrived from my oldest friend in America... 

Happy Easter, don't eat too much chocolate.

How do you outsmart a chicken?

I sometimes wonder about my new life. I held down a pretty responsible full time job for 30 years making some fairly important decisions on occasion and now I spend my days trying to work out how to beat my chickens at their own game! 

They are devious, there is no two ways about it. After they lost the right to roam at will in the garden, they have done everything in there power to P*!s me off. Escape attempts from the run have been thick and fast, so far today Margot has escaped 5 times and Geri not far behind on 4. Bab's seems perfectly happy in the run, but I expect her to start at any minute.

I don't see what the problem is, they have a wonderful life. A very comfortable hen house, a large run attached and another large run on the lawn. It doesn't seem to be enough. I think the taste of freedom they have previously had,  has made them lust for it more and any chance they get, they are off!!

Well its round one to me.. Good old ebay, a large chicken run with a covered top is in a delivery van somewhere making its way to may little piece of England, and they won't be able to get out of that! 

So they are also trashing their run every time they are in it for more than five minutes. I spent ages getting it nice. They have lots of nice hardwood chips to walk on but all they want to do is dig them up. We have wasted so much food and grit because they keep filling the feeders up with muck!

The chips they kick up all the time have been falling through the wire and making a mess all around the run and I have been spending ages sweeping them up each day so something needed to be done to stop this happening. 

Thanks goodness for pallets. We had a stash left over from the landscaping, so I had to come up with plan. I decided to make the sides of the base higher to stop the bits coming out. So I borrowed Jim's Jigsaw and drill and off I went. 

It took me 4 hours in the sunshine but that was Round 2 to me as well. They spent an hour kicking up bits and none came out! Roll on the third round whatever that may be but as I am well ahead of them, they are going to have to come up with something good to beat me!

On to the vegetables. Things are finally beginning to grow in the raised beds. By things I mean Shallots. I planted them about 10 days ago and yesterday I noticed that green shoots have appeared. 

So at least if nothing else grows, we will have some nice shallots to fry and have on our summer barbecue burgers!

The greenhouse is finally living up to its name. There is greenery everywhere. Flowers, fruit and veg is popping up on a daily basis. 

The temptation to start planting outside is great, but even though it was the warmest day of the year so far today, there is still the chance of frost, so I will have to wait for another 4 weeks or so. 

I was a bit worried that the strawberries were flowering too early and they wouldn't be pollinated, I shouldn't have been concerned, I wandered into the greenhouse this afternoon singing along to the rather loud music I was encouraging my plants with, ( Do you think Prince Charles plays Creedence Clearwater Revival to his plants)  and nearly swallowed the biggest bumble bee I have seen in ages, it was flying straight for my mouth!! goodness knows how I avoided it!

I hope she did her job and I get great strawberries. 

Finally it wouldn't be the end of a post now without a Gibson picture. He has spent the day outdoors running around having a great time. Unfortunately he has discovered that he can dig holes. Two today!

He was very proud of them but was concerned that I wasn't as happy about it as he was. So he tried to give me a kiss by way of an apology, I was though holding the camera at the time!

Whats growing this week?

Well a Puppy of course!

Gibson moved in on Sunday and planted himself firmly in our lives. He is certainly a little live wire, more later. Of course his arrival and it finally raining has put paid to most garden activity this week. I keep looking at all my packets of seeds but it is still a bit early for most stuff to go outside.

The plants in the greenhouse are doing well but more pictures of small green shoots will bore me so I am sure it will do the same to you. 

I did manage to get a couple of things in outside yesterday. With a bit of advice from an old work colleague, I finally got round to putting in my first seed potatoes. I have never grown potatoes before, so it was a new experience.

The trench was dug as per the instructions,

and the potatoes, an early red variety called Duke of York, were evenly spaced

and then covered over. The packet says they should be ready for digging in 10 weeks so the countdown is on. By my calculations we should be eating home grow potatoes by the 15th of May so watch this space. 

I also managed to plant two rows of shallots and a row of early carrots. No point in taking pictures of a row of carrot seeds. And talking of taking pictures, you may notice fewer pictures of a poorer quality for a while. After being told quite a few times to be careful with Jim's camera I managed to get grit in the lens, so now its at the menders. I have had to resort to using the camera on my phone!

So back to the puppy. He is a happy little soul and we are doing very well on the toilet training, only a couple of minor mishaps indoors and everything else has been in the garden. He is loving the freedom and as predicted has appointed himself chief herder of chickens, so as promised, pictures of puppy chasing chickens, Who by the way should have started laying eggs by now, but haven't!

Maybe we will gets eggs this week.