Bank Holiday Weekend Work.

Good morning.

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I'm going to start off by saying that I absolutely love living in such a rural place but it can be challenging at times regarding the circle of life. We all need to make sure we are keeping to rules and regulations and respect everything around us.

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Hi everybody, how did you get on over the Bank Holiday? Obviously another strange one but didn't stop a lot of us getting outside I am sure. However, I started off the weekend on Saturday by catching up with Gardener's World - lovely start to the day but still a little sad not seeing Nigel. I decided to do a bit of planning for work in the garden so I knew what needed doing for the next few weeks. Love doing that, makes it very exciting knowing what it coming up, in more than one sense of the word!

Sunday was a great day outside. I planted kale in the poly tunnel and broccoli outside. 

The broccoli are the plants in the middle of the bed (radishes at the far end and courgettes closest in the photo). They will have a frame to protect them as I've never managed to grow it without getting eaten by something other than us! We're utilising this which was over the bed behind the poly house and our eldest and I made a good start but just needs the netting putting on it now.

I did some potting on outside the poly tunnel in the sunshine.

This involved cabbages Greyhound, a Black Beauty aubergine (always have trouble germinating those but keep trying) and a sunflower to hopefully have outside the tunnel if the lambs don't eat it!! Oh and what I think is the last tomato plant.

The eldest also helped me put up my bunting in the tunnel, need a little girly-ness in there.

I have now moved the Brown Turkey fig tree into the poly tunnel and it is going great guns already. 

A couple of other jobs included earthing up the first early spuds; these look to be recovering from the frost damage with plenty of new growth showing.

I've been saving woodash from the Rayburn and read somewhere that it is good for onions when they start bulbing so I'm giving it a go - can't do any harm.

Finally I cut back the oregano in the herb sink and it is now drying nicely in the conservatory and will be added to our box of herbs in the kitchen; 

this is something I really want to keep doing when I can this year. It was the last job of a really satisfying day and the best thing was we had another day to do it all again!

Yesterday morning, after a lovely brekky of scrammbled eggs, I set to deciding on the jobs for the day. These were partly helped by watching the latest YouTube video by Kev here at An English Homestead; he gave us a great tour of his garden and poly tunnel and I took a few hints and tips along the way. 

I got outside and sowed the following:

Dwarf Bean Speedy in a tray of 15 cells

Dwarf Pea Hurst Green Shaft the same

Beetroot Bolthardy, again in a tray of cells 

These have gone, along with a pot of Sweet Basil, into the poly tunnel so I can pick them at the same time as salad leaves.

The bed shown here is from where we took the old frame to use for the broccoli protection. It was going to be for parsnips but I've changed my mind. I found a number of weeds that seemed to have something like rizehomes but it wasn't the dreaded ground elder as far as I could tell. Anyhow, it is all prepared as I covered it over with cardboard, which I luckily still had, and then covered in fresh compost no dig style. I'll add some more when I get it but this bed is now going to be for cabbage or cauli, not decided which yet. 

I'd already started putting down cardboard around it so hopefully nothing nasty will get in.

My tunnel is coming along well but there are still has a few spaces as, obviously, I'm starting from nothing so don't have a full year of sowing and growing happening. 

Here is a butternut squash Spaghetti given to me by a friend. Funny, she says mine is doing better than hers!

However, I'm chuffed how things are working out but we did have a little visit from a mole the other day - I check today and all seems well, fingers crossed.

This year I am sooo late with my sweet peas but have a few called Bright and Breezy that germinated. I planted up three in a fairly big pot plus wigwam then in the top of the herb loo I've put a couple to brighten up the poly house area. The only other things I potted on yesterday were half a dozen All The Year Round cauli.

We're still feeding the youngest of the lambs who is really taking time to bulk up but I fed him a good 400ml of Lamlac this morning which is great.

After we came in from the garden I did some of my papercrafting. I've just started on my second junk journal. I think you can tell I love the vintage look and feel of things when I'm in a creative mode. I love finding anything from old sheet music and magazines, old adverts, books, paper, letters, labels, stickers, you get the idea. So... should you come across anything like this you know to give me a shout.😀

Ok, time to get on, after one more cup of tea. Not a lot on the agenda today but maybe a little bit of baking later on and deciding what will be on the menu for today and the rest of the week.

Hope you enjoyed the Bank Holiday and that you are just keeping on keeping on and managing mentally. With restrictions starting to change here as well as things in the news I've been feeling rather anxious. I've had to delete my Facebook feed since the weekend as too much negativity going on that is affecting my anxiety, plus I've muted some things from Twitter for the same reasons. Here, we are just concentrating on simply staying home and staying safe so I hope you are doing what ever you need to do wherever you are.

Bye for now,

Lou.xx