Damaged Stile

I've mentioned before that we've got a footpath that runs across the top of our fields. 

This doesn't cause me much concern for most of the time, I've had a few incidents with dog walkers dogs attacking chickens but on the whole it been fine, people shut gates and most are respectful of the country code. 

Yesterday a walker came up to the house and said they'd found the plywood that slides up and down to make it easier for dogs to go through down the field broken in half. It's not a thin bit of ply (5/8") so it would have taken some force to break. 

I was quite annoyed by this, for starters if my sheep had been in there then the lambs could have escaped, luckily they weren't. But mainly because some one went out of their way to damage it. 

For now I've screwed it shut and left a note explaining why it's shut and when I get chance I'll have to make another sliding gate for it. Part of me doesn't want to bother but then there are a few elderly walkers that will struggle lifting their dogs over. If I do repair it and it gets damaged again then the walkers will have to just use the stile and lift their dogs over. 

Do many stiles around where you live have access for dogs? 

Some Seed Saving Already

I sowed some peas I'd not grown before far too thinly in the spring. I could see it wasn't going to make enough for much more than a meal so I decided to let them all dry and save the seed to grow a much larger amount next time. 

So on Thursday we collected all the dry pods and cut the rest of the bush down to leave somewhere to dry. the best place I could think of was my van sat in full sun! It did a great job, dried them out completely in two days (just need to pod them now). 

I'm in two minds with this seed. I might sow this new batch for a late crop of peas as it would be nice to have some podding peas as I'm sure we'll be fed up of beans in a few months! Risky but the seed has cost nothing! 

I also got the girls on another seed saving project for me - saving grass seed. I gave them a sweet tin and they collected loads for me, this should help patch any bare bits of soil we've got or thicken out thin bits. Certainly saves buying any and they were really proud of how much they collected. 

Who else has already started to collect their seeds for next year?

This Weeks Veg Box

As you know I've been doing a few veg boxes lately and using my friends as guinea pigs. 

Here's one I made up at the start of the week.

It contains:-

One bunch of Di choggai beets (and a white beet "Albino" to try)
Two little gem lettuces 
The last red kohlrabi 
Red cabbage red acre
300g of French beans (filet type, minidor yellow bean)
Yellow courgettes
A small bunch of pruvian black mint
Large bunch of red Russian kale

What do you think? 

Do you like the selection?

What would you pay?

Growing Twice As Much From The Same Area

I love getting as much out of my garden as I possibly can and although it is fairly large as vegetable gardens go I still try to increase my production. 

This year many of my beds are already on their second crop, by double cropping like this I can probably get around 50 crops out of the 32 beds in my main garden, some crops on the other hand need to be in a for a long time and I have some I'm growing out for seed and that takes much longer.

Yesterday was a great example of this, I'd finished harvesting my first bed of kohlrabi and straight away I amended the soil and sowed five rows of carrots in it's place. 

Here's a video of me talking about how I'm trying to get more from some of my beds by double or even triple cropping them in a season.

Normal yearly crop rotation rules have to go out of the window when you do this though. 

Do you get more than one crop from your veg beds?

What fast growing crop do you love?

Attended A Talk By Charles Dowding

I do check my local gardening clubs speakers list sometimes to see if there'd be anything I'd be interested in (although I'm not a member). 

I saw earlier in the year that Charles Dowding was doing a talk on gardening myths and misconceptions (he has a book of the same title), and as I'd long been a fan of his and owned one of his books I decided to attend. He is best know for his work on promoting the "No Dig" method of gardening. 

The village hall was packed out - I think they had over 140 in attendance and he didn't disappoint. He's certainly a well practised speaker and delivered an interesting and witty talk about trying to avoid some of the misguided wisdom that we sometimes inadvertently follow.

I was quite pleased as many of the things he mentioned I already do, although maybe not to the level he does (the no dig is an example of this as for the area I garden it's hard to find enough compost and organic matter to cover all the beds with 3 inches). 

I was also pleased to hear that he puts nettle roots into his compost and doesn't suffer from nettles popping up everywhere, something my mother always tells me off about if she's round when I do it! He also talked about the pointlessness of netting melons, ho you can compost blighted tomato leaves, and using fleece to protect crops, not hardening off as he plants out. 

It was a really enjoyable talk and I recommend anyone that gets the chance to go and see one of his talks, he also has a great YouTube channel here as well with some really informative videos on there. I like any gardener that tries to break the norm and generally make our lives a little bit easier and he's certainly one of those!

Who have you seen as a really interesting garden speaker?