My Time

We’ve had a delivery from Apsley Farms. It’s basically a by-product of the organic process to produce bio-gas from arable crops. The history is an interesting read. It’s quite expensive but hopefully worthwhile, especially on some of our not-so-good soil.

I’m using it as a weed suppressant around the tiny fruit trees. There’s an area left clear around each tree. I’m not expecting it to kill the bindweed but my regular hoeing of the area does appear to have helped suppress it already to some extent… well, we’ll see…

We’ve also covered the area where our broad beans will be planted next month. The area has already been dug and conditioned with lime. It’s spread about 10cm deep. And there’s some left over which we’ll use in Spring. It smells quite strong of ammonia initially, like Guinea pig bedding, but not any more.

I took one of the Festival squashes home and had it roasted with tofu, tomatoes, garlic and chard. It's tastier than the butternut I had the other day - can't eat the skin on this squash though.

The song title is provided by Royal Deluxe and is to commemorate getting some time back as I've stepped down from the HAHA Committee. It's kind of a shame, I've enjoyed it for the last 10+ years but it's taken a bit of a turn so I'll take the opportunity to have more time on our plots rather than thinking about or doing HAHA admin and site management.

Catching Robbie

A short afternoon on the plot today - it was windy but not too chilly (about 8°) and it had only got down to 0° last night. The sun didn't shine much - until we got home!

We dug some more of Plot 8b, but didn't get very far with it. In fact, most of the time I spent trying to get the robin to pose really close for a photo - not very successfully, so I resorted to using the zoom on my little camera instead!

I know this should be on my wildlife blog - but if I put any more pictures of robins on there I should rename it 'Robbie and Friends'!!

Jamie had read in Amateur Gardening magazine that grass cuttings make a good mulch for raspberries, so I have covered all the manure round ours with clippings which Ted produced from his mowing yesterday. The cuttings should just rot down and will keep the raspberry roots nice and wet.

Talking of fruit, our strawberries are still hiding in their holes in the weed suppressant, but there are signs of new life on each plant.