This warm weather has been amazingly lovely but has also created a lot of work around the small-holding. Things have been growing rapidly, whether we want them to or not!
We had a couple of weeks away (terrible timing really, but it was a welcome respite from the tree-planting and mud). When we returned we found the grass in the field had grown so much, we could no longer see the trees we'd trenched...oh dear! There's a lesson somewhere there in doing things sooner rather than later.
With careful exploration we found all the trees (well, hopefully... we might find the odd tree was missed and grows in the middle of the field!) and stoically continued our mission to plant our little woodland. We've now finally, finally finished!!! All 775 trees, or thereabouts, planted successfully! Hooray!!!
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| Final tree to be planted! (A bit wonky, but maybe that adds character...) |
We've finished our orchard, which is now full of knee high nettles again, and finished our nature woodland (also full of nettles) which we'll make into a beautiful habitat for bees, butterflies and all manner of bugs, finished our willow tree tunnel in the middle of the field and planted some trees in our small field too. Now to sit back and watch them grow!
There are so many nettles growing everywhere, I decided to find a use for them (as well as composting them). You can do all sorts of things with nettles, including making tea, eating them and making rope. I've tried the tea, which is pretty good, I'm going to try nettle soup next. I'd love to try making rope, but that does take time which I'm not sure I have, but maybe I'll be lucky and find a spare afternoon. :)
Other things which we're deliberately growing, unlike the grass and nettles, are a variety of vegetables. We have potatoes and broad beans doing very well, onions and spring onions doing nicely and radishes coming up, the first ones I think are just about ready. I decided to try covering the potatoes in mounds of grass cuttings instead of soil as we have too many cuttings for the compost, I've no idea if this will work, but it's an experiment, and I do like experiments!
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| Potatoes covered in mounds of grass cuttings |
I'm very happy that my grape vine which I grew from a seed is also looking lovely and healthy. :)
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| Grape vine that will need potting on very soon! |
Newly planted seeds include tomatoes, mange tout, broccoli, carrots and nasturtiums amongst others. These went in a bit later than I'd have liked as we were away, but it's not too much of a problem, fingers crossed they all grow.
When planting my seeds, I use a lot of various containers. Some are in standard seed trays, but a lot of them I plant in old food packaging to avoid waste. Egg boxes are brilliant, as they compost down as the plant grows and roots can poke through. This means you can start plants off in 'seed trays', but simply tear the sections apart when planting on which avoids disturbing roots.
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| Egg boxes as seed trays |
In the past I used a lot of large plastic bottles to grow leafy veg and tomato vines, as I could tie them to my fence, maximising space in a small garden by growing vertically. This year I don't need to do this as we have space to spare, so I'm using plastic bottles in a different way. I found an idea online to grow plants in bottles complete with their own reservoir of water, I've tried a few to see how they go. Here's a link to the video: https://www.facebook.com/buzzfeedniftyoutdoors/videos/208309989645860/
It's a shame I didn't see the video before my holiday or I could have started more of my plants by now!
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| Bottle planters with reservoir beneath |
So a lot more planting ahead of us next month, with a lot of digging still to go, but hopefully slightly less labour intensive than the trees and hopefully with nicer weather to work in!
Happy Spring everyone!
