A Little Adventure

Check him out! This is one of our little Great Tit babies that are hanging out in our garden at the moment! They're pretty timid so stay in the tree most of the time crying to mum and dad for more food. I have to say, mum and dad, hats off, you have been working like crazy.

But this little fella decided to brave it and go for a little adventure. Hopping around the garden, getting stuck in, looking for insects no doubt. We got a little worried at one point as we thought he was going to hop into the house. But instead he flew up onto the neighbours roof – hence the shot above.

Here (s)he is in the tree at the bottom of the garden.
What a cutie!

What a Great Pair!

What a lovely start to the Bank Holiday weekend. I came home from work to such a racket in the garden! And what do I find – two Great Tits razzing around like nobodies business.

They had three little fledglings in the big tree at the back of the garden – no wonder they were busy! Well they were doing a great job – I put out some dried mealworms for them which they lapped up instantly.

Also saw a Wren running backwards and forwards, hopefully he's got a brood on the go – with the hard winter we had they need to boost their numbers. Historically Wrens have been pretty good at bouncing back so fingers crossed he's doing his little bit. Imagine how small a baby Wren would be! Incy teeny weeny – bet they're so cute!

Dead chuffed about the Great Tits, we've also had a baby Starling, Blackbird and a little Dunnock. Waiting on the Goldfinches now... come on Gary, don't let us down!

Say Hello to Alfie

Alfie is our new tree. He's a Japanese Maple – otherwise known as an Acer. We think he's just beautiful. He's sitting in our front garden looking very majestic. If you walk by give him a little stroke, he's wonderfully soft.

We hope you like him.

Easy Peas

We've had our peas growing on the kitchen windowsill for the past couple of weeks and we thought we'd do a little time-lapse experiment on them – results above.

I admit, not the most exciting piece of time-lapse you'll ever see but I love the way you can see them reaching out for things to grab hold of. This was just over the space of an hour and amazing to see how much they actually move about.

Hopefully we'll do some more time-lapse in the garden – we'll have to think of some stuff we can video... any suggestions?

Nail the Snails

Yes... it's that time of year again, out of hibernation come those pesky snails and they've been gorging on our seedlings. Once again we move heaven and earth to try and protect our precious crops. Pray what contraption have we come up with this time?

Well... we can't actually take all the credit for this one. We spotted it being used by the allotments near the train station but contraption it is and so far it seems to be working...

It's as simple a few pieces of timber and some chicken wire. We got the smallest chicken wire gauge we could get – it's never going to stop all of the snails, especially those little baby ones but it will stop the big buggers and lets be honest – they're the ones who chomp straight through your line of seedlings.

It's basically a wire cloche – cut your four bits of timber and make a base and then staple chicken wire to form an arch. The one above is over our beetroot seedlings. The first row got munched completely but the second row is doing well now it's covered.
Our rogue potato really needed some help – it was on the verge of death by snail. We cut a length of wire and then weaved four canes down through, and into the ground. You just have to make sure that you earth up around the wire where it comes into contact with the soil, make sure there's no gaps they can get in.

Hey presto. It's working so far.

Oh Chit!

To encourage your potatoes to have nice sturdy shoots you should chit them before you put them into the ground. You're basically getting them to sprout before you plant them, giving them a bit of a head start.

You need to start about six weeks before you intend to plant them. The piccie above is our Blue Danbue maincrop being chitted. It's easy peasy, you just stand them into an empty egg carton and put them where there is plenty of natural light – a windowsill is ideal. We really need to get them into the ground now – we've run out of compost (again!) so they will have to wait until next weekend now.

This year we've gone for Accord as our earlies, they're great for growing in planters which is exactly what we've done.
The diagram above shows how you plant them in patio containers. As the plant grows you earth it up and add more compost. Last year we just filled it right up straight away and stuck in our seed potato. We got an OK crop but we're hoping this year if we actually plant them correctly we'll get a biggest harvest!

Both our earlies and maincrop are going in containers – we had a lot of trouble last year with our main crop – partly our inexperience and partly the dreaded mollusc invasion. Hopefully this year we'll be able to avert any major disasters.

Happy Mashing!