Much as I quite like a few moments by the rain barrel to let my watering can fill up, I've decided that I'm wasting too much time doing it.
So I dragged a water trough from the bottom field up tot the barrels at the back of the shed. It was just the right height (with the addition of a few slabs) to go under the tap.
The polytunnel has been a constant source of shame for me over the winter. Full of dead plants and a thick green slime on the plastic.
I was desperate to get it back into tip top form this year, it's such an amazing space for growing I really need to be making the most of it.
What I want to do is say that I think this book is great, but that also it's flawed in a few ways. I really think this book was on the very cusp of greatness, it could have been one that is alongside some of my favourites and then it didn't quite nail it. Which is a real shame as I think it does a few things so differently.
The main thing it does is put it's money where its mouth is. Rather than reading about a theoretical garden and what could be done in it, Huw created a garden 10m X 12.5m, laid it out with raised beds, a small polytunnel and covered beds. He used hot beds to extend his season (something I'm really going to have to try again) and got multiple crops from each bed. He shows how the beds are built and has plans of things you can build.
As well as this he creates his own compost, and makes sure each scrap of space is used. In the book he takes you through a year in this garden, show when he sowed the seeds, when he harvests it and the overall yields he gets from it.
Then I have to talk about the bits I thought were a little lacking. The "In The Kitchen" section is where the book doesn't feel right. the book is written with another guy called Sam Cooper and I feel they haven't let him have enough space. Like there's a section on curry where he talks about it over three pages with a few quick recipes, or a few pages on pastry or No-knead focaccia which has two pages. It just seems a little bit chucked together and random and not really in line with the rest of the book.
With the book only being 200 hundred pages it just feels like a waste of the page count to dip into these things, especially when it's obvious the other author (Sam Cooper) knows their subject, but not give them enough space to show this properly. If they had limited it to just one subject, like preserving, it would have been far better in my opinion.
Maybe it's a reflection of what people want from books these days, a magazine style book. Snippets that can be read easily. I wish this was two books really, both of them having more space to share the knowledge, The Self Sufficiency Garden could have become a bit of a bible for growing food like this if it had.
I still think it's an amazing book and I love what Huw has done with that garden. He writes brilliantly and clearly, the book is beautiful throughout, with thick high quality pages and great pictures and plans. It's truly worth buying for the middle section of the garden month by month alone. It will on the shelf rather than being passed on and has given me a few ideas of things I'd like to try.
Some of these haven't grown at a rate I'd expect. And I think the compost is to blame, bought in, but it's so unpredictable. I'm going to start adding a bit of seaweed feed to the watering can, not something I'd normally do this early on, but I feel they all need a bit of a boost. I don't normally buy liquid feed to be honest but the comfrey won't take kindly to being chopped already.
Saturday there was that yellow orb in the sky that we haven't seen for months. I decided to seize the opportunity, I got up early and set to making bread, then did my chores and lit the earth oven.
I then tended it as I went about getting some gardening jobs (potting on far too many tomatoes and peppers), and invited some friends for lunch. Not much notice but it felt like we needed to grab this opportunity to worship the sun for a few hours.
