Third Compost Bin . . .

I managed to get the third compost bin put into place today.

Having experienced the unpleasantness of rats moving in to the first one, I now make sure there is wire mesh underneath them right from the word go. This was almost the last of the mesh we got for the chicken run - there is only a little bit left now, after us thinking we had bought far too much. Nice to know we didn't waste our money.

The first bin I got (extreme left one) was from somewhere like B&Q and cost me over £20. You will be very happy to hear that our local council started "selling" bins last year for a fiver each - with a cap on two-per-household. I am not sure why they cap it - there have to be more people NOT wanting them than there are people wanting more than two. .  you know? Seems to me they could be a little relaxed for us interested lot. I was totally wrong in my anticipation that the bins would be "spit-through-and-tiny" - they are actually really quite good - and as you can see they are bigger than the one I bought.

YAY!

It wont be long before this one fills up a little and beds down into the mesh, making it too difficult for the rats to move in to their des-res.

The first bin isn't quite ready for emptying though. Am not too sure what I'll do when the third one is full. There is something very wrong about the idea of putting the valuable chicken poo in the green collected bin and "giving it away"! I may have to acquire two more bins. . . I'll show you a photograph of Iain's face when I announce that to him!

Here is a lovely shot of one of the apple trees this evening:

If you believe the amount of buds on the trees, this is going to be a bumper crop. Fingers crossed for that - we really enjoyed the apples last year.

Sunday Plans

Wanna see what we are going to be doing on Sunday - weather permitting?

We will be lifting the slabs so we can put in a new lawn, moving the slabs to the chicken run and partitioning off one part to be an extention to The Allotment.

I can't see it all happening in one day but I sat this evening and mocked this up on the computer so we have a plan. I was surprised to find that a. I will have a 4' x 12' extension rather than a 4' x 8' as previously thought (YAY) and b. at the right hand side there will be two slabs left behind rather than one.

Watch this space for further developments.

Tomorrow David and I are heading off to our first Poultry Fair just for fun. I can't see us bringing anything new home but. . . you never know :D

Cobwebs

In order to push on the tomatoes in the greenhouse a little I rarely leave the door open now. The heat builds up and the automatic window opener allows a bit of ventilation through when it gets too hot. (Remember that one day?) However, only going in once a day means the spiders think they own the place.

Every morning for the past week or so I have thought "WHEN WILL I REMEMBER ABOUT THE COBWEBS?" as I walk in through the door and gather them in my eyelashes and up my nose. . .

As well as the tomatoes there are also cucumbers in there. I have never successfully produced cucumbers before and have high hopes that this year will result in a couple of decent ones. At the moment they are small and prickly!

Overall I am less than impressed with the amount the garden has produced so far. The peas are almost finished - they didn't last as long as we had hoped, the carrots are small, the brocolli seems to have gone to seed already . . . I am going to have to be a lot better prepared next year.

Iain and I were looking at the slabs we have planned to lift to make way for some new grass this evening. I have decided we will lift them and put them straight in to the chicken run. The shower curtains on the sides has helped with the wetness inside but after thinking it through, the whole run would be better to be paved and - waddya know - we just have 30 slabs going spare.

It suddenly struck me that by lifting a few more of them we can add a 4' x 8' strip to The Allotment. It will take a few loads of good top soil to fill this new space and we will have a depth of about about 6 inches of sand to remove. But I stood looking at it and was so happy with the idea there were almost tears in my eyes! It really makes a big difference to what I can produce next year!

It also means that I am starting to take control of the garden a lot more and that pleases me too.

(The photo here is the only one I have of cobwebs! The whirly-gig is right next to the greenhouse - does that still count?)

Where Did I Come From?

There are loads of ideas running round my head about how I first became interested in gardening and how it has lead to where I am going to be in, say, 3 month's time from here when I will have harvested from my Allotment properly for the first time in years and will be selling off surplus eggs from the chickens which have yet to be bought. . . Let's not get ahead of ourselves yet though. I have written this all out and back-dated it a little to be the first entry. Here is a wee story for you:

I was brought up in Scotland by my Grandparents and Uncle. My Grandad always had a sizable vegetable patch. My earliest memory of gardening was of watching a tonne of manure being delivered and Poppop digging it in to the patch. Later that week my brother fell near the manure, cut his chin and had to be taken off to get a tetanus injection. I always think of cut chins when I see a pile of manure.

A few years later we moved house further into the countryside and Poppop continued to maintain his patch in what we called The Paddock, a triangular piece of land above and behind our yellow-bricked house, now using an old caravan as a shed. When we had visitors staying my brother and I would camp out in the caravan with the old gas mantles, the discarded playing cards and the half empty packets of seeds.

After living there for a while my uncle decided to buy some ducks. They were collected in an old hessian potato sack, in the back of Poppop's company car (if I can remember rightly it was a Renault 9 type van!) and we sank an old bath in The Paddock and fenced off an area for them. We had them for years. We always had eggs from them, hulking large things which were collected from under the rhododendron bushes and could never be trusted to be fresh. We had to break them in to a bowl to check they were edible before scambling them.

We had two apple trees (eating and cooking), gooseberries, I think there were raspberries, potatoes, carrots and probably loads more than that but I paid scant attention to what came out of there. I wish I had been more interested in what was going on. Later on I bought two apple trees for my garden but kept to eating varieties. I remember Poppop gathering the eating apples, wrapping them and storing them in the attic. I only ever remember eating a few after that. I don't think they were eaten.

We have a fairly uninteresting garden, laid out by the previous owner who had a brilliant plan to flag the whole back garden, leaving rectangular areas clear to plant wild shrubs which all grow far too tall and start to take over. It is only know, after 8 years of being in this house that I am starting to take control of the garden and come up with some ideas to make the garden my own.

Fast forward to my adulthood and a few years ago we had a few pounds to spare and I decided I wanted a greenhouse for our new house and garden. I bought a wormery (the first person I knew to have one), bought two compost bins (long before Councils thought to encourage them) and installed a water butt on the end of the greenhouse. All the ingredients were there for me to become a Green-ish person but somehow it fizzled away and the greenhouse was used for a couple of seasons and then it became a dumping ground for garden tables and chairs, old seeds and pots. The theory was good but there was no one to encourage me to continue with it all.

My *new life* kinda all kicked off earlier this year when we started to get the garden under control again and we dedicated one muddy part of the garden to, what we laughingly refer to as The Allotment. I have brocolli, carrots, pumpkins and strawberries in that part with more carrots and brussel sprouts in seed there now too but there was still one small area of garden which was not going to be actively used and that bothered me.

A couple of Saturdays ago I delivered Jessica out to a friend’s house for a play date, literally in the back of beyond and in the 3 minutes I was there realised that I would love to have a less “building site” or developement” type garden. You know the type: a cul-de-sac of houses, backing on to another cul-de-sac of houses with a rectangular garden, times two, between neighbours. Jessica’s friend has low level walls built of stones and a lawn here and a smaller lawn over there and all very natural looking and some kind of peace about the landscaping. Yea, I know, I wouldn’t have the energy for the upkeep of such a place but dude - it would be fun trying huh?

I came back from that visit a little unsettled but still not knowing what I could put in the empty space. Then I received an excited phone call from my Uncle. He had just ordered a weird thing called an Eglu and urged me to look up the web site that sells them and to look at the wonderfulness of the whole thing . .. This is a chicken run with attitude and he planned on getting 4 chickens to go in it too. (He actually got a Cube in the end.)

I caught his bug and started to think along the lines of *anything is possible* for a while, planning the garden around MY Eglu until reality took hold and I realised that there was no way I was going to be able to afford a new one and second hand Eglus are umm like umm hen’s teeth in this part of the world and although there are plenty in England through eBay they are all listed as Pick Up Only due to the sheer weight and size of them. Then I had a shift in thinking about a run and we headed off to B&Q to buy a shed which we will kit out as a coop and then build a run round that too.

So far we have the base in. We were supposed to have the whole shed built and in place last Sunday but the rain started and forgot to stop. At one point Iain insisted in continuing on with the laying of the blocks and I was determined not to leave him to it so Bailey and I sat under a large golf umbrella on a patio chair and encouraged him on to lay the blocks faster. When the rain got too heavy he joined us under the umbrella much to Bailey’s delight and got his face licked dry for his efforts. Iain - not Bailey.

We stood in the rain trying to work out the shed plans but as the paper got wetter our determination got damper and we gave up. We will finish it another day.

Since deciding to get chickens in the garden I have learned loads and done much research and know new technical words. I have been thinking ahead and am so obsessed with the idea have actually gone to the window at night to make sure *the girls* have been put to bed for the night and have on more than one occasion asked the kids if anyone has let the chickens out yet in the morning. I hate buying eggs now - preferring to wait for the FREE ones when they start arriving and am getting such a kick out of the whole *eating free food from my own garden* malarkey.

I even went to the fishing tackle shop last week and bought a pint of maggots for them, got home and THEN realised WE. DON’T. HAVE. CHICKENS.YET!

Today we ordered the wire for the run and I even ordered some special food which will create less-stinky poo which is better for the garden. I have even ordered 2 new compost bins from the council! And yes, I have names shortlisted. This may surprise you when you remember that neither of my children were named for three weeks after they were born!

It has been fun! I joined the Omlet forum and have found the people there to be really nice and full of advice. I have no doubt that they will keep me right when the chickens finally arrive. That may not be for a while though - can’t have them arriving before the run is ready - can’t have the foxes having Chicken Tonight!