This And That - Outdoors and In.

 Hello, I'm celebrating! 

This is because my laptop is now my own again as my youngest has bought himself a new device and therefore no longer needs to use mine for his homelearning, hurrah! This celebration comes in the form of a new blog post.

This is a little ramble about what's happening here on our little homestead, also know as #mylittlepatchofparadise, from the end of last month and into February. February! How did that happen? Also I'm talking about jobs and this 'n' that around the garden in the coming weeks.

February is a wonderful month really. Even though we are still having some wet and chilly days, with it comes the promise that Spring is just around the corner. It's also the time to be chitting seed spuds, if that is your thing. Not everybody bothers as you can see in February's issue of Grow Your Own magazine; Blake and Laura debate whether it's a necessary job to do. I always chit mine, I'm still waiting for my Charlottes to be delivered, as I think those early shoots give them a little kick up the garden path to a good start and a hopefully healthy harvest! 

As for existing plants/edibles and in garden, the frosts in the coming months need to be prepared for so make sure you have your closhes, fleece etc ready; our last frost should be in April, fingers crossed.

In February you may be able to spot Wild Garlic underneath hedgerows and in woodland and be lucky as English Country Life to have been to pick some already. (You can find them on YouTube, Twitter and Instagram plus their YouTube channel here with oodles of help and advice for the smallholder, budding or experienced.) If you are forraging for it always be careful to only take a small amount; we're lucky enough to have a good clump growing in the garden. 

However, last year we lost most of it to the chickens and orphan lambs nibbling away at it. This year I think I will take up and re-locate it to somewhere safer!

Whilst out forraging you may be lucky enough to spot the odd primrose or catkins on the Hazel branches and of course snowdrops are for a lot of people one of the first signs of Spring not being far away - their nick name is flower of hope as they bring that hope of lighter and brighter days to come.

Each month no-dig guru Charles Dowding - find him on Twitter, Instagram and here, too - has a column in Grow Your Own magazine dispensing help and advice so here are a few snippets ready for next month. At this time of the year he says it is too early to start tomatoes and best to sow them in the 3rd week of March to be kept on a warm windowsill then be planted out under cover in May. It is worth remembering that seeds need more heat when germinating than seedlings need for growing; windowsills are a great place for the first 7-14 days after you've sown your seeds.

Lambing is not far off now. We had the lambs scanned and we hope for 26 singles and 17 twins, no empty ones. 

In January Jon refurbished a trailer incase we need to transport ewes from the fields down to the barn should they be in trouble.

We have medecine, injections, tube feeders etc. ready if we have any mums or their lambs needing help. All set but fingers crossed for not too many problems.

Indoors now. I've never made Seville marmalade before - I normally go for a much easier 

all-in-one method which I took from I don't know where! I decided to give it a go and used the recipe, complete with this YouTube video, from Pam The Jam Corbin. I'm going to be honest and tell you I needed to do the dreaded "re-boil" as it didn't set the frist time! Consequently my batch is a good thick preserve but I'm very pleased with myself as we have a jar in the fridge and five more to add to the cellar stores. (An embarrasingly small store but you have to start somewhere.)

I was determined to start the year off with a bang and I will, hopfeully, continue to make and store as much as I can from things I've grown.

My new blog, Put That Light Out, is so much fun. I'm reading my books for research but also enjoy watching some TV programmes, often on the Yesterday channel, plus YouTube videos

to give me more detail for my posts but also just to extend my interest I have in the 1939 - 45 period.

To finish up, the weather here today, Friday, is damp and miserable. We've had snow this month

and the forecast says we can expect more this weekend....It won't make much difference as in Wales we are now into another three weeks of lockdown. We just continue our usual routine; I shopped on January 22 so I won't be going again for a week of more except our local fruit and veg cabin and meat deliveries from the butcher in the same town if we need them.

I hope you are all excited about the sowing and growing season being around the corner. By tomorrow it will be 5pm when the sun is setting so the days are defintely getting longer; before we know it we will be in our gardens, poly tunnels and greenhouses until all hours! My last post was about my own plans for next month and I'd really love to hear about what you have planned for the coming weeks and months. You can find me on Twitter @Goodlifeinwlaes and Instagram @livingthegoodlifeinwales.

Take care everybody and stay safe.

Bye, 

Lou.xx 

A Big Old Catch Up.

Hi! Well, how good has this weather been, although I did see somebody on social media saying it wasn't right to be this warm in February, meaning that the planet was warming up, I think....

On Thursday it was my youngest's Ysgol Eisteddfod, school Eisteddfod. He recited a poem, in Welsh, for of the categories and came 2nd; he also won places in two writing classes. Very proud of him.

On Friday I had a delivery of my bare root fruit canes and some blueberry plants and seeds from Thompson & Morgan.

Sorry about the last photo being a bit scew!

At the weekend our Airbnb guests enjoyed the sun. We were really very busy with that as well as jobs around the house and outside.

Jon was doing the first cutting back of trees near to the roadside. 

There is more to do but with help as we'll have to take care of the passing traffic. 

In the afternoon he took the boys down to the river for the first try out in the kayak we bought them for Christmas.

On Sunday I manged to get into the garden. Yay!!! I sowed my February onions, variety Sturton in one of the large tyres. After it being suggested to me I've planted 5 of my existing strawberry plants in a drainpipe.

I may suspend this from the rafters of the poly house. I still have a couple more along with the 12 that came in the fruit order.....!

Last Friday I sowed the following: 

Sweet Romano peppers x 4 pots of 2 seeds
Sunflower Pacino (pots as above), these have been put in the conservatory, one of the Sunflower seeds is showing its face.

I've sown a couple of other things which are in my homemade propagator again, but I'll spare you the details as its early days yet. 

Cornflowers and Field flowers in the chimney outside the poly house and I'm looking forward to those coming up as they were lovely last year.

Yesterday, after the two sets of guests left,  I got myself outside. I discovered the other day that one of my rhubarb crowns have survived when I thought it had been flattened following some work in the garden. This morning I saw signs of the second one; they are very small!

I decided to clear the space properly, which included exposing the Wild Garlic I could smell as I was working, and to build something to protect said rhubarb. The area was a BIT over grown....the crowns were planted somewhere in the bottom left of the photo so was a little tricky to find them.

This is how it looked after a bit of work.

And here is what I am chuffed with. I used branches left from Jon's tree job on Saturday and made pegs to twine them around.

I am ridiculously pleased with myself. I just really hope after all my hard work that the crowns survive. If anybody has any advice for me it would be really appreciated.

The boys were busy too, one helping our elderly neighbour with some logging and the other sorting out some kindling for the store.

That's about it, apart from since I began planning this post I now have three Airbnb bookings for this week, and it is not quite the end of February!

Weather gorgeous again today so after getting both rooms ready this morning I'm having some lunch then going out into the poly house where, about 2 hours ago, it was 29 degrees. I plan on taking up the blueberry bushes from the garden and putting them in planters along with the cranberry I was given at Christmas. I bought ericaceous compost yesterday for this job.

Bye for now.

Garden Bits and Bobs.

Good morning.

Last evening I stood in the Poly House and thought to myself "I am soooo content right now." I was so happy to be there doing what I was doing. This was me, crocks, socks and shorts - not the best look!

The recent much needed rain has really brought things on in the sowing and growing department and I'm loving it. After the slow start to Spring we really seem to be catching up, apart from my tomatoes which are quite a bit behind last year but we're getting there. I have begun potting them on and have put some of the Sweet Aperitif variety in their last growing place with stakes ready for when they hopefully shoot up!

In the fruit patch, still slightly overgrown but getting to that! I'm really confident of a good harvest of soft fruit this year from the blackcurrants and blueberries as you can see here. No point showing the raspberry bushes as they are beasts!

As you may have seen in my last post I have cancelled one of my Twitter accounts. Before I did this I was really lucky to win a pair of gorgeous gardening gloves in a competition run between the RHS and a company called Gold Leaf gloves. Look!

When coming in the cellar back door the other day I saw this! A nest in the corner of one of the nooks. There are four eggs being looked after by a Robin; she happily sits on them even though I go in and out of the door quite frequently it doesn't seem to bother her at all.

I have picked some of the wild garlic, including flowers, and put it in stir fries and on salads; its been yummy.

I am doing my best to get the pesto made very soon as it is already dying back and I don't want to lose all of it. I really hope to be harvesting the first of our salad leaves very soon; as you can see they are looking great.

This is a mixed living lettuce I bought last week; I've planted them out before and they've grown really well so I thought I'd add this into the mix!

I was earthing up the Arran Pilot first early spuds the other day and look what I accidentally brought up! They will be properly ready for harvest quite soon so look forward to crossing that item off my shopping list along with salad leaves.

I'm chuffed to bits with how the main patch is coming on. The sweet peas on the end of the frame are coming on a pace, as are the climbing peas...

and spuds are looking great (see further down the post), I have red and green lettuce in there, too, and the spinach beet is peeking through although I'm not quite sure what it'll look like when ready to harvest!

 The dwarf beans seem to be catching up with the season....

as does the kale, beetroot and turnips in the small bed.

Jon tasted one of the first strawberries yesterday and I'm hopeful for a small but good crop on the two plants.

Right, that is my catch up for now. Visitors coming today and a few jobs to get done. Watered outside, chooks fed and washer on already so just to have breakfast now and crack on.

Bye for now.

Lou.xx

Warming Weather And More To Come?...

Hi!

The weather is definitely improving. (Hope my sunflowers grow this well!)

Even though in Wales we're still getting rain showers, of course, the mercury is still rising. 

No more so than in the conservatory which, you probably know, is standing in as my Poly House until such time as the storm damage to the latter is mended.

Outside I can see the tops of the first early spuds from the Poly House, such is the rate of growth just now. 

On the fruit patch the apple blossom and other fruit trees are flowering and the blackcurrant bushes and raspberry canes are coming on a pace, too. 

The rasps have re-seeded themselves in a couple of places, which I'm very pleased about, but I'll wait until they're a bit bigger then tidy them up with bamboo canes and string as I did with the biggest of them this morning. 

Ooh, today my neighbour who works at the local nursery brought me another rhubarb crown; I've planted this with the first one and I'm looking forward to having quite a sizeable patch eventually; just grateful that rhubarb is not too fussy where it grows as the area I've chosen is a bit stony but it doesn't seem to be bothering it.

The wild garlic is getting huge so I MUST do something with it very soon!

Today I've sown carrot seeds in the same bed as the parsnips and radishes. 

Whilst doing that I've, hopefully, sufficiently bunged up a hole where a mole or rabbit got through into the bed at the end of last year's growing season. Not that much damage was done then and hope to minimise it this year.

I also sowed some spinach beet, perpetual spinach, among the 2nd early spuds in the main patch; this is another of my efforts at a bit of mixed planting; it is described like this:

- A delicious spinach substitute but easier to grow. High yields of nutritious greens and resists bolting in Summer. 

I'm getting very excited about how things are coming on and feel really positive for the coming weeks and months. I'm sure the good weather forecast for the weekend will help towards us all catching up after a very poor start to Spring.

That's all for now with my ramblings.

Bye for now.

Lou.xx

Floral Fun, Sowing and Growing.

Good morning. A bit miz here today so pleased I got some outdoors jobs done yesterday.

In our garden we don't really do flowers, however we are very lucky that the previous owners planted so many daffodils which seem to increase in numbers each year. These are accompanied by a carpet of snowdrops which is further creeping its way up from the bottom fence line. Both the daffs and snowdrops have pretty much died off but are always followed by these lovelies. They're alongside the picket fence near the veg beds but it's so wonderful that nature replaces one thing after another.  

On the other side of the garden you'll find my Magnolia Stellata. 

When we first came to Bronllan I really hoped there was a Magnoia in the garden and not a cherry blossom and hey presto! This usually flowers between March and April but only came into flower last weekend, late like a lot of things just now. It is hardy so of course survived the recent bad weather no problem; I do hope it flowers into May because of it taking some time to bloom.

I've already had some of my wild garlic and it was, as usual, delicious. 

Its not quite in flower yet but it has re-seeded itself after last year so is really substantial now - can't wait for those edibles to put on salad; I'm going to make pesto and freeze it so I make the most of this wonderful herb.

The rhubarb, which is planted in the vicinity of the wild garlic, has been terrorised by the chooks when they went free range but I do hope it is resilient enough and recuperates; apologies for the chicken reference!

Now this is a tree I think which has come back after being cut back when the chicken enclosure was built.

Not sure what it is but I just like the colour.

Outside the kitchen window is my lilac bush which flowers when it feels like it to be honest! Looks like we are on this year; in the background across from the house is a flowering blackcurrant which I love.

The conservatory has definitely come into its own standing in as my poly house for now, but could do with a little of that warmer weather coming back... Anyhow, between the homemade propagator and in there I'm getting on with some seed sowing and growing. 

So far I have sown: 

Dwarf Bean Ferrari

Tomato Golden Sunrise

Climbing pea Colossus outside and in

Auberine Black Beauty

Tomato Costoluto Fiorentino 

Tomato Moneymaker

Tomato Red Peas

Turnips

American Cress and lettuce

Beetroot inside and out

Sweet peas

Rocket

Coriander and parsely outside

French Marigolds (for around the tomatoes)

They are all in various states of growth but most have some ways to go yet! 

I also have two containers of strawberries indoors - which I spotted yesterday are flowering!

Now, I've been making the best of the good weather this week doing a bit of garden prep. I've put a top layer of compost on the smaller raised bed and also the one outside the poly house. After being covered over for the winter there were hardly any weeds at all and now they look just lovely and healthy, ready for something very soon. Eeeek!

The larger one I think will have a mix of carrots, parsnips and shallots as the soil is much more well drained than the main bed. Have to keep an eye on the rabbits or moles that took a liking to the smaller patch late in the summer last year. 

The smaller one will have cabbage in I think; had that there last year but not too bothered that I should rotate such a small space. I'm going to put sunflowers in there, too, as it'll give a bit of height and colour, plus I should be able to see them from the top kitchen window when in full flower, then the chooks will get the heads at the end of the summer. Win win!

Ok, that is my update done for now.

As ever, look forward to see how your sowing and growing is coming along.

Bye for now.

Lou.xx