What's growing in the garden Pip ?

At the moment down the road on the farm we've been colloborating by growing Spuds and Onions together. We've been digging the Spuds out gradually, the early Spuds were lovely, and there seems like a sea of Spud tops to go at  yet.

The Onions are still growing and not falling over yet, so we have only had a few of those out so far.

We've planted  a whole pile of greens for winter, I grew a lot of Sprout and Kale in pots up here in my home nursery, tthey've started going in the ground down there where the Spuds are coming out. I still have another 25 or so Sprout plants groiwng in my nursery, I'll need to get those down the road soon.

The plan is to grow more than we need for our two families and sell the excesss to Green Valley Grocer.

We've also started a few compost piles around the farm, getting ready for later in the year when the piles of compost can be used to top dress bare soil in the veg garden, down there.

As you can see I'm actually growing in two locations.

In my garden the veg is growing biggggggggggggg, the half a dozen Courgette plants are giving us lots of fruits, I planted 6 plants as I was thinking that at least 2 of them would be munched by the fecking slugs. Howevere the slugs have not been so forward this year, maybe that really dry spelll we had earlier in the year limited their population somewhat ?

Last night we ate some of the yellow Courgettes and they were much the same as the green variety, I was sorta thinkiing they'd taste different.

I planted some Sprouts in the garden , oh , back in June, it looks like we are going to have sprouts to eat fairly soon, the sprout balls are gainging in size as we speak. My thinking was , last year I just didn't plant my Sprouts soon enough, I had thought that they'd carry on growing through the winter towards xmas , whereas in reality they stayed as miniscule plants and never got beynd about  foot high.

This year I seem to have over compensated by planting too early.

But anyway, I planted some Sprout plants and also Kale, now the Kale makes me very happy to see, its all grown fairly big but I saw Ange's Kale last winter and the plants were abso massive. And I mean abso masssive.

The 3 Rhubarb crowns are producing far more stalks than we can eat, hehehehehe talk about overkill, so I've been pulling extra stalks and dropping them on the ground as mulch, I can tell you that Rhubarb leaves are the best mulch material growng. Although the Comfrey has produced a good crop of stalks and leaves which I've taken down the road and put in a dustbin to make comfrey juice with. I've put a tap on the bottom side of the dustbin, and then simply pile the leaves inside the dustbin and wiat for them to rot down releasing the sap from within the plants. The dustbins are black so absorb the summer heat beautifully. I took the foliage from the Comfey down the road as I didn't have a use for it up here and there;s hardly any growing down there. I shall be remedying that state this week as I've grown approx 20 Comfrey plants in my garden nursery, this is all the Bocking14 type of Comfrey, which is the non-spreading variety.

The starwberry plants haven't produced many berries to date----a disappointment methinks.

The Perpetual Spinach patch continues to push up plenty of greenery, I planted maybe 50 plants in a smallish area,

my thinking being that it would be allowed to bulk out as winter arrives and then would give us winter greens this year, winter greens have been the thing I have concentrated on this year. I get so much Spinach growing I hv been cropping it and throwing it to the chickeens who love the stuff. Also for the chickens I've been growing a green manure mix of seeds, they contain Mustard, Phacelia, Buckwheat and Clover. To anyone out there  with chickens I reccomend growing some of the green manures to feed to the chickens, it certainly makes them happy to eat it, and translates into the quality of the eggs you'll recieve in return.

As well as these plants I've also been growing salad type plants which ave been good, Golden Beetroot is coming on well, the Red Beetroot that I planted in amongst the Courgettes hasn't really moved onwards as they're being over shadowed by he bigger plants. Yet the Endive I planted in with the Sprouts have grown really big.

Thats all for now, I'll come back later with some news about the fabulous Scything Festival that was held down the road a week or so ago. I'll see if I can manage to get some photos up too.