Even the frosts don’t seem as harsh as they were, and as we move into spring the plants – both in the greenhouse and out – are enjoying the warmer weather.
Our home-made cheese is maturing. Read more...
We added three new hens to our flock. Read more...
We're baking sourdough bread. Read more...
We're knitting a woolly blanket.
Read more...
Could beans be the happiest and most cheerful plants in the plot? Even before they blossom they have a happy demeanour and beg for your attention.
With the greenhouse heater in place, we’ve started to pot up more of our seeds, putting in some safety-net duplicates in case the ones in the plot don’t come up.
Cloches are expensive, so we looked for something cheaper but just as effective. A quick root through the recycling bag cane up with the answer: old bottles.
As winter approaches, we decided it was time to clear the front half of the plot ready for a new season of crops. We picked a bumper harvest of beans in the process.
An early morning picking session bagged us a bumper crop of beans, taking our total for the year so far well beyond what we produced in the whole of last summer, and it appears there are still more to come.
We had our first proper harvest at the weekend. Three types of beans: French, runner and broad. Not a huge amount of any variety, but enough to cook ourselves a three-bean risotto for dinner.
It’s a year since we first started to grow our own food in the plot, and so we’re finding ourselves repeating some of the things we did around about now 12 months ago. This time around we have more idea of what we should and shouldn’t be doing, which I hope will be reflected in the weight of the crops we produce.