My Tomato Potting Mix

I'm a little late in potting on my tomatoes. They've been in singular pots and growing quite nicely but today my eldest and I decided to pot them up into their final buckets to grow on in the greenhouse.

One large barrow of top soil tipped on an old sheet of plywood

 I no longer grow in just compost, it doesn't hold the moisture and I like to give them a little extra to help them along, that said a lot of what they need is provided in the comfrey food I'll be feeding them every third day whilst they're growing and good old sunlight!

Here's the mix I'm using this year:

Four bags (I added one more) of compost three shovels of wood ash.

Four pots of chicken manure pellets  

The mix coming together

Lots and lots of broken egg shells for added calcium. (these stunk)

Mixed together and looking good

Filling the buckets - these all have holes in the bottom and then an inch of so of stones/broken pots

Plants in the greenhouse looking happy

I'm please I've got this job done, it should have been three weeks ago really but it won;t have affected them too much. I've got two types of plant food brewing at the moment, comfrey and nettle, ready for when they start growing and producing fruit. I still need to pot on my chillies, cucumbers and cucamelons but that will have to wait until next week now. I'm tempted to set up a drip irrigation system I brought for a few pounds at a car boot sale in this greenhouse to ease my evening work load and to make sure they get enough water if I'm not there on an evening.

What does everyone grow their tomatoes in?

Also don't forget about my challenge from yesterday's post- lets see what you look like!

Show Me Your Face!

This week Texan posted a rather lovely picture of herself on her blog and I realised she wasn't at all how I imagined her. 

I'm the one on the left. 

This got me thinking, I'd been reading her blog for years and had no idea what she looked like (and now I have a bit of a crush on her to boot). I could of been sat next to her on the bus and not recognise her (although it would be a weird bus as she lives thousands of miles away). 

Many of my readers I consider to be friends, as I hope they do with me, so my challenge to you all is to show me your face! 

Don't worry if you don't want to, I'll still read your blogs, but I thought this could be a bit of fun, encourage your readers to do the same and post the links below - lets see what you look like! Silly selfies are welcome!

Veg Gardens And Water

On a sunny June morning the veg gardens are looking pretty good. I thought I'd post a picture here before the weeds take hold and it all goes to pot.

Kitchen garden- a little weedy but only two plots left to plant up

Things are coming along nicely, hopefully we'll harvest some early potatoes in a week or so.

Long furrows is getting full now. unfortunately the grass is coming back through so I need to mulch or cover to stop it. 

I seem to have planted a ridiculous amount of food this year, but with both girls eating a lot more I've no doubt we'll get through it. I now need to be better at planing my harvests and working out how long things are going to be in the ground for. 

I want to start selling more veg but until I become more organised it seems that just a pipe dream, I also think that irrigation might be key for ensuring crops take as long as they should (no shortage of water if I save it through the winter) rather than being sat for weeks without growing because they've had no water. Currently I tend not to water anything once it's established (called the Spanish system) and this works fine when just feeding us but if I want to start selling a little extra I could do with things moving a little faster. My idea with not watering is the roots go deeper and they can then survive with no help from me, it's worked every year I've gardened so far but tempted to try a change in system.

Does everyone else irrigate or water each night or every few days? If I had to water both of these gardens by hand it would take hours!

Car Boot Bargains

I've not been to many car boot sales this year, I seem to have gone off them lately as I have so much to do I begrudge the time if I don't buy anything. But Sunday was such a lovely day we thought we'd go as a family for a walk round. Ledbury carboot sale doesn't start till ten either so that's a bonus when you're trying to get two little ones into the car as well!

Turns out it was worth me going. Here is my haul:

£5 - A tub of snap pins and R clips for farm machinery. each one of these is at least a couple of quid.

£3 - set of three Sash clamp heads and tails to fix to wooden batten. These mean I can make clamps any size I want. They would be £12 a set for a cheap set, these are good quality ones. 

£2.50 - Book on carving letters in wood. I tend to buy as many woodworking books as I can, it's great for reference and I never know what project is coming next.

50p - Handy to have some spare hose pipe fittings if they'll work with my other ones.

£5 Hoop and band hinges. It has one of the pins missing but I'm sure I can make one. Makes for a cheap set to hang a gate as they're normally about £20

£5 - good quality hosepipe and fittings. I was going to have to buy the fittings like on this pipe any way as I need to get some water out to my tree nursery. Perfect for the job I had in mind.

Anyone else been to a carboot sale lately and had any bargains?

Sheep Shearing

I had a phone call on Saturday, the shearers were coming in a few hours. 

Not much notice but I didn't want to miss my opportunity with the hot weather we're due next week.

They arrived in force, four of them and a big trailer that folded out into a outdoor shearing station. 

 We rounded them up on foot and then sorted out the lambs from the ewes. My job was to keep the sheep pushed up the race down the middle so they could grab a sheep when they wanted, pretty easy compared to shearing them! I didn't have anyone there to wrap the fleases as I didn't have much notice they were coming, so they each had to roll their own and put it in the wool bags. 

Four on shearing

Shearing begins

Baa!

  They were quick, with four shearing 32 ewes it didn't take very long. They did moan and said that some weren't quite ready to shear as the wool wasn't coming off very easy. I think it's because the second lot of sheep I bought had been shawn in the autumn so their wool wasn't as thick as the others. I have to remember that these guys are farmers and have to moan about something. I'd much rather have the wool of the ewes so at least I can see if any have any problems with maggots in the next few weeks.

Lambs seperate from the ewes. A good opportunity to run them through the foot bath.

One of the two bags of wool

Unfortunately my girls were off with my wife at the mothering laws so they missed it all, but I'm sure they'll be many other times in the future they'll be able to help out! 

Now all I have to do is book in taking in the wool to the wool board and then wait a few months to see if the wool has covered the cost of shearing the sheep. Hopefully I should break even, not including my time.