Winter Builds and Blues

It has been a long and cold winter, and little has been going on in the garden. If I'm honest it's not looking great and it's rather depressing looking at it. But that's winter in the garden for you. 

It's time to get moving and do some work and I have plenty of plans and ideas for this year. I even have an event to prepare for, more on that another time. So today I have started building a bird house or more appropriately a bird and bug hotel. It will be about 7 feet high once in place and have 4 bird house and a big box in it.

You can see that it's coming along well, I just need some dry and mild weather to get it finished. It's made out of an old plasterboard pallet donated to me by my Neighbour Joe! He knows I am a pallet feind!!

Winter Hens

My hens experienced snow for the first time just after Christmas, for the new exbats its must have been such a shock. They had only recently got used to what grass, rain and nighttime are. Luckily their feathers are growing well and the chill didn't effect them to much. Nevertheless I gave them a warm treat of spagetti! I am sure they think they are worms!  

  

My Home and Garden

Its been a long winter so far and I have found it hard to motivate myself to write anything on here. But I am getting the January feeling, that feeling that many gardeners get, the eager anticipation that soon we will be sowing seeds and planting this years crops. My motivation is starting to return! 

I do love my home and the life I have built with my partner, I really can't think of anywhere else I would want to be. For Christmas then I commissioned an art work by a friend of our home and garden for my Girlfriend. I think its brilliant, its not an exact representation but it has all the main features that make it recognizable. The Mrs loved it too!! Which was what I was hoping for!

The artist if your interested is Tim Bridges and you can find him on Facebook through his page Secret Industries. 

New Arrivals, Three Ex Battery Hens

Last weekend we collected three new hens for are now growing flock. I think I can call it a flock, I have seven in all! We got them from our local Animal rescue in Brinsley which had the week before rescued several hundred birds in an effort to give them new loving homes.

My four original birds came to me as pullets and were in fantastic condition and have blossomed into plump, fluffy, egg laying masters, so to see my new arrivals in the miserable condition brought upon them from being battery farmed hens was a real eye opener. Of course like many of us we know what happens to these hens but  to see the difference in reality real rocks your world. Half bold, rather small and skinny, combs pale and floppy all signs that they were in a rotten condition.

It has I have to say been an experience introducing new birds to an existing group. Especially when the group is bigger, fatter and fitter than the new birds.

First steps in the garden

At the first day I ran both groups together either side of a fence, in the hope that would lessen then stress when I finally introduced them properly. The Ex bats where at a loss as what to do, Grass? What is that? They seem to be thinking, wandering around looking rather confused. They neither pecked or scratched at it, which is the first thing my old hens would do. Infact give them half an hour and the grass would be in a terrible state. We kept them separate for a couple of days then brought them together.

Nothing really prepares you for the viciousness of the pecking order!! The old girls took it upon themselves in military fashion to impose their rule immediately. It is nasty but one which needs to happen, all you can do it try to lessen the ordeal. One tip I used was to Vaseline the combs of the new girls, which is supposed to help protect from injury when being attacked. So far no injuries has happened. I have also fed them separate from the others making sure they get as much food as possible. As one of the major areas of conflict when introducing hens is the established group is food, they do not want to share!  

She was rather scared of me, as her face suggests!

Its been a week now and it has calmed down no end in the run. It took about 4/5nights for the new girls to understand that they needed to go to bed in the coop. So i had to but them in bed each night in the dark until they got used to this. They are also laying and I am getting still, 5/6 eggs a day. Which I take as a compliment that they are happy!!!

Finally back online!

So its been who knows how many moths offline....My laptop decided it could no longer continue, when its motherboard gave in on it! Its was an Acer that I only bought two years ago, which makes it even more gutting that it broke so soon. So as you can guess I will not be getting an Acer again.

It seems they have a media card issue, which frequently breaks add to this that the said media card is hard wired into the motherboard means when it goes the whole board needs replacing. The cost of which in a shop to fix is more or less the same as a new laptop. I bought a new one!

Its lovely!

I will try and fix the Acer though, just to see if I can.

With this problem I have pretty much missed the growing season and recording it on here. In brief it has been an up and down kind of year with somethings doing great and others not. Tomatoes, cucumbers and melons have been prolific, but potatoes after growing the most I have ever grown got blight and over half have gone in the bin. No doubt more will follow.

Broken Laptop

So my laptop is broken which explains the lack of posting over the last month or so! I'm due to go on holiday but when I get back I hope to get it fixed as lots has happen in the garden! I need to get on G+ to as I miss the great posts on there, I just can't do anything without my laptop! 

First Harvest of the Year...... Garlic

I have harvested all my Garlic already, its only June. The plan was not to pull it up this early but things happen that change your plans. I over wintered the garlic with my onions and they were doing brilliantly however over the last month or so they got rust on the leaves and were looking terrible. Only the garlic was suffering, the onions are thriving and have no sign of rust yet! The rust was killing the leaves and I noticed that the plants were trying to send out new shoots and at first I thought great they will keep on going. When I looked closer though the cloves in the bulb were growing individually and thus as new plants all together. So if I was going to use them at all I needed to get them up.

I was actually rather surprised at the size of them, most are bigger than any garlic I have grown before with well formed plump cloves. All in all 40 bulbs of garlic are now drying in the shed.

Unplanned as it might have been to lift them now and have an unexpected empty part of my veg bed it does give me the opportunity to get something else in. Its still early enough to get another batch of sweetcorn going so that is what I am going to do. I had an unused pack of Eskimo White Corn sitting in the seed tin. I just got to run some manure and fertiliser through and hopefully double my money.