English Homestead Blogging Seed Swap

This year I'm going to start saving a lot more seeds. 

It has many benefits, it saves money, plants get adapted to your own conditions and you can select the traits you want in your vegetables (smaller, bigger, colour etc). 

But as well as this I want to start swapping seeds with fellow gardeners and bloggers around the country. 

If you've got an interesting vegetable that you grow and always recommend it to everyone then I want to have it! 

My plan is relatively simple. In late autumn/early winter, when we've all saved our seeds from our favourite vegetable plants I'll take any that you want to give away, I'm planning on saving my small sweet pepper seeds and cherry bomb chillies for starters and maybe cucamelons, just make sure none of the seeds are from F1 plants. Then once everyone who wants to be involved has sent me their seeds, I'll divide up what we've got and everyone gets a selection of all the other seeds sent back to them.

This blog post is just to see if anyone is interested in this idea (it's only going to work in the UK due to the legality of it) or if you know other bloggers who might be interested and don't follow this blog then let them know and point them in this direction. 

If we get enough people interested it could be a great way to increase our varieties of veg for the price of a couple of postage stamps!

Back From A Week In Devon

Sorry for my lack of comments or replies to comments left on my blog this week. I set up scheduled posts as I knew that we'd be away and it turned out we had no phone signal or wifi either. I think that turned out to be a really good thing and it was nice to have a break from it all (although I did manage to check on the blog a couple of times).

The first day was sunny!

 Our week away was in North Devon and although the weather wasn't amazing we had a great time with loads to do there. 

Sheer Bliss On Evs face as she met Peppa Pig!

 We went to the beach, had a day out at the big sheep (an adventure farm place for young kids) visited the zoo, went on a nice long walk, went to a car boot, flew kites and spent lots of time together as a family. 

The little one and my wife enjoying the rain!

A really nice week away and a nice way for my wife to finish off the summer holidays before we change roll again on Monday and she goes back to work and I stay at home to look after the kids. I'm really excited about being at home again and I've got lists of jobs, games and fun activities to do over the coming months as well as some interesting stuff for the blog. Now I'm off to check everyone's blogs that I've missed over the last week!

Ripening peppers

Every year I grow chilli peppers and I always do well with them. Sweet peppers on the other hand normally elude me. I can grow the plants but the peppers never ripen properly, the skin is too thin and they don't change colour very well.

"Cherry Bomb" chilli peppers - meant to be like peppadews, I'll let you know when I've pickled them

This year I decided to try to tackle the problem because we eat a lot of peppers. I decided to just grow a variety that's meant to have small peppers that are quick and easy to ripen due to it's small size. These "Mini Bell" peppers have been growing well in the greenhouses this year and we've had one ripen so far with loads nearly ready (I feel a gult coming on). We ate the first one straight off the bush, I don't think I've ever eaten one so sweet in all my life, it was delicious!

My small sweet peppers "mini bell"

So if anyone else struggles with peppers like I did then I can recommend growing a smaller variety to try to get them to ripen quicker and have thicker flesh. 

Unless anyone has got any tips on getting peppers to ripen faster or grow better?

Glueing My Shoe

The other day I was trying to glue my work trainers back together and thinking that it's probably only people who read my blog that would understand why I bother to do things like this!

Staring to fall apart

 It's not being tight, as some of my friends would have you believe, it's making the most of what I've got. I've not worn these steel toe capped trainers very much (I prefer boots, but during the hot summer I do like something a little cooler on my feet) and they were quite expensive (Dewalt) so I'm annoyed that they've started to fall apart already. I'm not going to rush out and buy some new ones if I can repair these myself.

Clamped up

This isn't something new with me, when my wife and I first got together she used to get annoyed at my trainers that I had then. I had glued them together 8 times in different places and when she brought me some new ones for Christmas I said I'd wear them when my others wore out!

Being frugal is hard sometimes, even if the hardest part is justifying it to other people! 

What's the most number of times you've repaired something before chucking it out?

Chicken Weeding

I'm a firm believer in everything on our homestead has to earn it's keep. 

That even goes for the chicks, although they're too small to lay any eggs or be really productive but I can get them doing something - weeding!

The chicks and mum needed a bigger home

 They needed moving out of their ark, but with the predators around here they still needed to be contained so I thought I'd build them a temporary pen in the veg garden. That way they can eat down (and muck) a veg plot and save me some work.

The plot on the end has gotten a little over grown!

The pen didn't take long to put up as I got given some fence panels a couple of years ago and they're great for making something like this. I built a little coop for them to sleep in last year that's perfect for the size they are at the moment.

building a makeshift pen out of some panels I was given

Happy in their new place

Doesn't even look too bad in the veg garden

Anyone else using "animal weeders" in a controlled way?