AUGUST

    My small garden has progressed! Courgettes, tomatoes (round red, pear shaped red, Jens orange, a heritage variety grown from saved seed) are all being gathered and enjoyed. There are still Paris (white round) salad onions and Touchon carrots. The cabbage planted way back is recovering from flea beetle attack and looks like I will get something. The other cabbage, which you pick the leaves and it continues to grow up is doing well and I am about to try it out. Wild black berries are in abundance in my hedge and are easy to pick and are also being enjoyed in crumbles and mixed in with stewed apple. Of course there is the continual problem of weeds particularly in the gravel! Real pain to remove but I have made the effort on the front drive which is now cleared and I am monitoring every day for weed growth! The wild flowers growing round the pound are starting to go to seed and I will let them scatter in the bed around the pond in the hope they will flower again next year. My common thyme sown in a triangle bed in the middle of the patio at the front of the house is thriving.

Thyme bed

Wild flowers round the pond

Tomatoes and courgettes

Touchon carrots

BEEN A WHILE

     My last post was in October 2022 just after I had moved from number 6 Champeau de Bas to number 5 Champeau de Bas. This post will bring the story of the garden in number 5 Champeau de Bas upto date and hopefully I will now regularly post a blog!

Starting to dig the veg plot 120223

Two casulites!

Plot all but done 140223

Sprouting garlic 230323

Cabbages 

Tomatoes Courgettes 210523

Batavia lettuce 210523

1st crop! 18Jour radish

Front of house triangle bed sowed with common thyme

1st early potatoes from a pot sown by Toby 180623

Sunflower from bird seed holder!

1st tomatoes 150723

5 Champeau de Bas

     So 6 Champeau de Bas is now in the past and I now move onto 5 Champeau de Bas and a different but smaller challange with more emphasis on flowers I suspect.  I still intend to have a small veg patch but I think it will be for salad type stuff with a small potato patch to grown some new potatoes and a few tomatoes! We shall see!

The start 081022

12 years and now its over

     Since the last blog entry on August 14th I have finished lifting the main crop potatoes, Desiree, with a reasonable crop some 54 kgs and total crop for this season of 87.5kgs. Not bad but definately smaller than previous years. That pretty much concludes my gardening exploits at Watermeadows. Ther might a cabbage to cut and a few carrots maybe before the new owners take charge on the 20th September 2022 but that is it. Onto a much different and much smaller garden and a blank canvas to work with. My aim is to grow some veg but probably just a few lettuce and maybe a cabbage or three but no over winter stuff. We will see. No chickens! It will be strange not to have ones own eggs.

    34 eggs were laid up until the remaining four chickens went off to pastures new.

    The next blog will be about the garden at 5 Champeau de Bas and that will probably be sometime in October.

    It has been fun and an experience!

Watermeadows March 2011

IT IS HOT!

   Another week goes by and the weather has been hot hot hot! The ground is very dry and the grass, well , what grass? Even the weeds are starting to give up. My small sowing of sweet corn is struggling and I do not think there will be any. If maize is struggling, its hot and dry!

   Nothing done in the vegetable garden and or any part of the garden. Cut a cabbage, the last one, lifted a few AGATA potatoes and dug up a few carrots. 

   The chickens are not enjoying the hot weather but they have been laying a little better. Round about two eggs a day over the last seven days with only one day with one egg.

Someone enjoys the weeds...Tabitha Sophies cat

The garden still give

     

Agata spuds Grehound cabbage Touchon carrots

Two weeks since the last blog. Agata potatoes lifted, the last pointy (this one a Greyhound) cabbage cut and some Touchon carrots dug up. The weeds continue to grow although they are showing signs of suffering from the lack of rain!

   Looks like my blog will be every two weeks rather than every week as my activity in the garden has dropped to next to nothing. I did manage to cut some hedging though! 

   Egg laying is pathetic to say the least with maybe one a day if I am lucky. I lost another hen so now have four left. They are being kept shut in for their own safety. I am stopping putting the average daily lay in the blog as the egg count is so low.

   It is sad to see my veggie plots go to weeds but the priority is to my move and there is lots to do! I do wonder though with the drought we are now suffering as to how much whould have grown successfully this year.

Stopped

    Well any work on the vegetable garden and the garden in  general has pretty muched ceased. Some lifting of potatoes, watching out for Colorado beetle, cutting the odd cabbage and pulling a carrot or two is about the sum of my activities. The weeds and hedges are growing and I look at the grass thinking that I need to mow and I need to cut the hedges! My time is now spent on my move rather than the garden.

    I lost Mrs Brahma hen this last week. She has been off colour for a while and I think the heat finished her off. No real sign of any illness. Her comb was bright red and she was still getting about without any sign of effort. Chickens are very good at hiding any illness. So down to five hens now and the beggars are not laying! Average daily lay this last two weeks is 2.

   My field was mowed for the last time under my ownership and it was mowed rather than cut for hay. I did not need any bales and I guess the farmer did not either.

    This is how it is going to be over the next six weeks or so but I will have to spend a day cutting the hedges that is for sure.

Mowed field