Sunshine / Vegetables / Cooper - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Monday 12 May, 2025

by Rosemary at 9:10am in Smallholding No comments Add your own

Monday 5^th May to Sunday 11^th May

Can’t do a daily diary unless I do it daily, so this is a weekly one. The weather has remained warm, sunny and dry. Mainly warm, definitely dry; we’ve been putting the sprinklers on in the vegetable garden and front garden alternate nights. The lawn grass is crispy, but the fields look well.

Sprinkler on.

 

I love my Merlin app, but didn’t need it to identify the flock of starlings on the lawn. I love starlings – they remind me of a raucous family!

Starlings.

In other birds, a photo of some of our six hens. They wouldn’t pose. They’ve gone a bit off their lay – might be the weather, might be a moult. They seem healthy otherwise and they have laid all through winter, so can’t blame them for having a rest.

Our chooks (or most of them).

It’s been mainly gardening, apart from moving the cheeps out into the field pen. They seem to be doing well and enjoying, well, cheeping about. The kittens find them fascinating (as does the fox) but the cheeps seem unbothered by being “Cheep TV”.

Cheeps.

Planting up Bed 3, of Near Ditch as Dan calls it, continued this week and finally reached a conclusion.

Bed 3 planting underway.

I weeded Bed 4, or Far Ditch, on Saturday and found a few plants to start planting it too. I bought 144 perennial plug plants from T&M; they arrived on Friday, so Saturday’s first job was potting them up. Sunday, I potted on the thirty six lavender I bought as plug plants – twelve “Munstead”, twelve “Hidcote” and twelve that are either one or the other. Time will tell. Of the 24 geraniums, 22 are going strong and all 12 Bacopa are growing away fine. I did buy three little alpines to go in terracotta pots, to sit along the front of the sitooterie.

Lavender.

Geraniums.

Dan has weeded and weeded. The fruit garden, the vegetable garden, the heather bed. He’s also planted out runner beans, peas, sprouts, butternut squash, sweetcorn and courgettes.

I have more sprouts plus cabbage, broccoli and cauli to prick out next week. And I’ll have to make a start on direct sowing leeks, carrot and beetroot. The shallots are doing well.

Sald (front) and brassicas behind.

And the outdoor strawberries are flowering.

In the orchard, the trees are in blossom, but we’ve lost a few more, which is sad. The pear trees are in full leaf and laden with tiny pears.

Pears.

So, plenty to be getting on with this week. Could do with a bit of rain though.

And the sitooterie

The sitooterie. And Dan.

And Cooper, posing.

Cooper, posing.