MY WEEK : 5 ( 29TH JANUARY )

Hello all, welcome to this week's update of my progress. It has been another busy week with the weather enabling us to get a great deal done, the first seeds on my crop list/ planting plan have been sown as planned, as you can see from the photograph we hired a turf stripper to help to remove the lawned area which is needed for growing vegetables, I felt like I was on GROUNDFORCE although there were conflicting views as to whether I was Alan, Tommy or Charlie! the machine itself was very good and made light work of removing the turf once you has established what depth you needed it to cut the turf off.





Some of the turf has been stacked in a corner of the Kitchen Garden to leave for 12 months or so by which time it will have broken down into a lovely loam which we can then use elsewhere. The rest of the turf we have used as a mulch around all of the Gooseberries, Currants and Raspberries, we weeded around these plants and then applied some chicken manure pellets before laying the turf down with the grass side facing downwards, the idea is for it to help retain moisture, keep the weeds under control and at the same time the turf should breakdown and nourish the soil.




We have trenched where the Early Runner Beans will be grown and added a generous amount of chicken manure pellets, in an ideal world I would have added plenty of well rotted organic material such as manure, compost, vegetable peelings & newspaper to both enrich the soil and improve it's water retention, however the manure that we are having delivered is not well rotted so for this year we are making do we will still get a good crop though. The Raspberry canes have all been cut back and the area has been weeded, fed and mulched. Whilst sorting out the canes I removed quite a few new canes that had grown up away from the parent canes as they are shallow rooting and can crop up quite along way from them, I then transplanted these into a trench for use as new stock to fill in any gaps in the rows which will not become apparent until the others have grown later in the year.




The first of the seed sowings were made this week, I have sown Aubergines and Chilli Peppers in a heated propagator set at about 20c, the sowing of the Chilli Peppers is earlier than I had planned to sow them in my crop list/ plan but after receiving advice from more experienced Chilli Pepper growers in which they recommended an earlier sowing date I have taken their advice. The Garlic continues to do well, as you can see from this photograph they are producing a good set of roots and I will be transplanting these weather permitting in two weeks time.



This is the lawned area before we cleared it followed by the picture of how it looked at the end of this week, I think you will agree it is an amazing transformation, all that remains for me to do is to rotorvate it and then apply chicken manure to it in readiness for planting and sowing.


I have created a slideshow below of different views of the hall, it's grounds and plants of interest for you all to enjoy, the drifts of Snowdrops in the woods are amazing at the moment unfortunately the camera does not do them justice really I'm afraid but they still look good.



Well that is it again for another week, next week I will be sowing Cucumbers, Tomatoes and Early Carrots and also making a start on transplanting the Box Hedging as long as the ground does not remain frozen. I would like to end with a thankyou to all of you who have sent messages of appreciation with regards to my writing for the magazines, Daniel is so excited that his Dad is in the Kitchen Garden magazine along with famous people like Bob Flowerdew who he has seen on the TV before and others, thanks to my website visitors who have encouraged me to attain this, see you all next week, regards Steve.