Transplant, transplant and yes transplant!

Our snoozing Ouessant sheep flock

Poly tunnel tomatoes

    The weather has been variable with sun and showers. Still, it has not been too hot to work in the garden.
   The last week has been dominated by transplanting. Tomatoes, sweet peppers, (orange mini bell, yellow stuffing, Wisconsin Lake red, large orange) cauliflowers, cabbages (Precoce Louvier, Golden Acre), chili's (Basque, Nigel's Green Jalapeno pepper), basil (Lemon, Mammoth Lettuce leaf, Sweet Genoese) with still more to do. Also Gigante runner beans, Borlotti beans, dwarf french beans (haricot vert), radish, winter squash and more basil sown. Amongst all that asparagus was cut, radishes pulled, lettuce cut, last of the leeks dug up, weeding, fence fixing and mowing the grass! Phew! Busy time.
  On the animal front one of our hens, Mrs Chick, has gone broody and was sitting on six eggs. Unfortunately one egg was nibbled at by another chicken and had to be removed. We will be very fortunate I think to get any chicks. Mrs Duck continues to lay daily and the sheep, well are being sheep.

Country things....

    Living in the depths of the french countryside has its advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is having bullocks living in the field next to yours and the "gate" between your field and them is nothing but three pieces of vertical wood connected by barbed wire and sheep fencing! It is very common here for entrances to a field that contain cows just have a piece of string across them. Seems to work most of the time, however, these bullocks decided that the grass was greener on the other side of the fence and they pushed the "gate" over and came into my field and ate my grass! This happened three days running and they destroyed one of my fence lines.I had got in touch with the farmer who came and got them out of my field. Pretty large animal a bullock! On the last occasion the farmer replaced the posts the bullocks had demolished and moved them to a field further away from mine. Oh what fun! In the past I would never have gone near a bullock but when you are mad and trying to get them off your grass ones fears goes out of the window! Alls well that ends well I guess.
    So, what else has been going on this last week or so. "Evie" sprouts, (seed was given to me by my youngest grand daughter for my birthday present) have been transplanted to an outside bed along with Precoce Louvier cabbage. They are now well established and looking good. Over eighty mixed variety tomato plants have also been  transplanted. I am trying a new idea this year. Instead of having one large bed of tomatoes I am planting nine or twelve plants at the ends of various beds. The idea is to avoid blight. If one batch of plants get it hopefully the others may not. In the poly tunnel early purple spouting and a winter savoy type cabbage have been sown. I have also sowed another variety of cucumber, marketmore into pots.
    I have managed to break the handles on my mower again. I am obviously using it in a way it is not designed for! Lol! Fortunately my bush whacker will cut the grass to a reasonable level although not as short as the mower.
     On the animal front chickens are being chickens. The ducks are being ducks and the female continues to lay. The sheep are looking fed up with their fleeces and need to be sheared. The rat population has taken a major hit with our new neighbours cat catching a good number of them.

It went quite...

   This  blog is covering two weeks. The first of the two weeks was very quiet with odd jobs being done, like a little wood splitting (tiring!), fix to a gate and moving sheep from the large field to a paddock to allow the grass to grow for hay making. Other work done that week was changing the duck pond water and I transplanted some Provence thyme to pots! Oh, not forgetting the cutting of a lettuce and mowing the dreaded grass.
   So the second week has been a little busier. I cleared a small bed of weeds into which I think I will put courgettes or melons. Maybe a pumpkin? Umm. I continue to earth up the potatoes to protect against any frost which is now becoming rarer, however, last frost date is not until the 15th May! More sweet peppers and aubergines have been transplanted to pots leaving just a few sweet peppers to do. The various types of basil, lemon, mammoth and sweet Genovese are growing well. A good number of asparagus spurs have been cut although the chickens got on the bed and I think have done some damage to the plants. I noticed that the first lot of carrots have dared to show themselves so it will not be long before I will need to get the second sowing done. The chickens have taken a fancy to the pea bed so I am resowing and trying to protect them Chickens are a double edged animal. Good for bugs etc bad for anything green and succulent.

Evesham Special Sprouts

First lot of outside the poly tunnel lettuce

Jersey Royal Parsnips weeded and thinned out