I really wish I could say there’s been a flurry of activity here at the Smallest Smallholding. But the simple truth is, there hasn’t. The sleeping problems are getting better, however I suffered yet another setback, this time due to my back. I have the back of an incompetent 70 year old. When I was 14, I managed to land a bit funny after doing a standing long jump (as instructed by my P.E. teacher) on the hard school gym floor. My cousin (my osteopath too) thinks that it’s caused some disc damage, which still plagues me now. All I did was get up from sitting on the sofa. A few moments later, there were the rumblings of a bad muscle spasm, and before I knew it, my legs were collapsing and I couldn’t stand up properly.

It’s got better though, at least I can walk upright now. And thank goodness I finished all that ruddy digging, because there’s no way I can do anything like that for a while. It sucks. It really does. But I’ve managed to do a bit of pricking out and weeding for now. I’ve thinned the turnips a few times, and I can honestly say they’re probably one of the easiest vegetables I’ve ever grown. And fast! I got an early variety called Snowball, and they’ve needed next to no assistance from me.

I have a whole lot of transplanting to do, and I REALLY need to get down the allotment to earth up the potatoes and weed the onions. And sow things. But it’s just got to all go on hold again. So very very frustrating. I should be whizzing around doing a million jobs! And to top it all off, I have the dreaded school reunion that I organised tomorrow evening. A whole evening of “so what do YOU do?” and trying not to look like a crip. I have wedge shoes though, which actually helps. And hopefully eveyone’ll get so blotto that no one will notice. Not that they’d notice anyway.

So what’s actually been going on here? Well, Pattie and Yoko had a good run, but as ever one of them had to get a bit poorly. Pattie has got her re-occurring thing again. Her comb goes dark red, she starts drinking like a fish and her crop fills with water. She then has explosions of watery poo and looks a bit sorry for herself. We don’t know whether the course of baytril helped last time, but we’re trying to get her on another course to see if it helps. It’s all supposedly linked in with her sterile egg yolk peritonitis, but I just don’t understand why it affects her in this way. Twice she’s made a full recovery, and I don’t know if it’s just her getting over it herself, or the baytril. Thing is, I don’t want to leave her and chance the fact that it’s not the baytril doing it’s job. So what do I do? She’s the happiest, sweetest little hen otherwise.

Yoko has been sneezing a bit still, but despite that is marching and parading around, when she’s not dozing off to sleep in the shade. In the warm weather they all go a bit quiet and dozy. There’s a massive hedge by the shed that they gather under. They preen, they doze, they make small chatty noises amongst themselves, occasionally they’ll wander about but until much later on in the day they don’t do an awful lot else. What a life!

We’ve also had another round of hedgehog releases here from Bedfordshire Wildlife Rescue. At dusk we pick the carriers up, and leave them open so that the hogs can be merrily on their way to finding a new nest/mate/food etc. There were so many to be released that I ended up taking a load over to my aunt and grandmother’s. They live next to each other and both have 200ft+ gardens, both of which have dedicated wildlife areas and plenty of scope for the hedgies to move in and out to other gardens as they please. Last night I ran into two of my released fatties (they’re gargantuan!) that had met each other under the hollyhocks and borage. I have a feeling we’re going to have lots of tiddlers running around come mid summer…

I have to say I do not have a problem with slug munched flowers or veg at all. If you’re interested in encouraging hedgehogs into your patch, here’s a few pointers:

• Don’t be too tidy, leave piles of leaves in inconspicuous corners or against a sheltered spot, such as down the side of your shed. Leaves not only provide nesting material, but are home to lots of hedgehog food such as slugs, beetles and worms.
• If you have a pond, try to make sure that there is an escape route for hedgehogs. They are brilliant climbers but cannot really swim. If your pond has sheer sides (fatal for wildlife), try to provide ladders out of the pond. Even better, why not make a wildlife pond with shallow shelves (needs to be about 18 inches in its deepest part). This way wildlife can come and drink without the danger of falling in and drowning.  Likewise open drains can be an accident waiting to happen, so make sure they’re all covered.
• In dry spells and cold spells, hedgehogs struggle to find food and water.  You can buy special hedgehog mixes (such as ‘Spike’s dinner or hedgehog mix with nuts, fruit, insects and fat from noahsarkgardens.co.uk) or provide them with meaty chicken flavour cat food (without jelly, as it is too rich and can cause diarrhoea) and biscuits. Hedgehogs love to crunch! They also have a sweet tooth, so will appreciate the occasional bit of dried fruit, but don’t go overboard as like humans, they can suffer from dental problems. NEVER give a hedgehog bread or milk. Bread carries little or no nutrition and will cause upset tummies. Milk is far too rich and will cause diarrhoea, which can be fatal.
• Be vigilant with your compost heaps - never plunge your fork straight in. I’ve seen hedgehogs that have been impaled in this way, and don’t forget that female hedgehogs will abandon their litter of hoglets if they’re disturbed. A better way is to take small layers off and carefully turn your compost.  This method is better for your compost anyway!
• Never leave a bonfire pile for hours or days before lighting it. This one is pretty self explanatory.
• Make sure you have lots of places in your hedges or fencing where hedgehogs can get through.  You’d be surprised at how nimble they are, and how flat they can go to squeee themselves through the smallest nooks and crannies! Hedgehogs can travel up to one mile in an evening to find enough food, so obviously the easier they can travel, the better.
• If you ever see a hedgehog out in the daytime, it’s in trouble. It doesn’t matter how well it looks - it’s in trouble. Pick it up, bring it in, wrap a water bottle in a towel and place the hog on top if the towel in a box. Then call your nearest wildlife hospital or the RSPCA.
• Slug pellets are evil and should be banned. NEVER use them.

This weekend I finally finished digging out the big veg plot. It’s not that big really - it’s only about 5 or 6 metres long, but when you consider that I have a crappy back, and Rich resolutely left me to do it all myself, you can understand why it’s been quite an undertaking for me. I managed to unearth about 12 small bag’s worth of rubble and hardcore (bricks, ceramic roof tiles, drainage pipes etc), about 30 ant’s nests (hens ate the eggs, bit of a delicacy) and untangled an underground thicket of root systems.

Last time we went down to Biggin Hill to see Rich’s family, his Dad gave me two bags of compost which have been put to use in the plots. Otherwise I’d be growing vegetables in dirty sand. The soil is so poor that I think it’s going to need some super manuring, conditioning and feeding over the winter. Still, my Autumn King carrots like it, despite their daily dose of being rolled and slept on by Lilla the cat. And the Hercules onions are coming along. I’m hoping to get my ’snips in (for a roast dinner without ’snips is a sad sight to behold) too.

A couple of days ago I also moved my tent cloche (another gift from Rich’s parents) to cover my newly transplanted Kilaxy cabbages. I’d started them off in seed modules outside, and they’d vastly outgrown my Primo cabbages that had been sown earlier. So I decided now was a good time to transplant them. I took the seed tray off the garden table and put it down beside me whilst I made little holes for the cabbages to go in. My back had been turned for a few seconds, during which time Yoko had strode over and discovered a tray of tasty morsels.

In the space of about 10 seconds, she’d decimated about 5 of my cabbages. Good work, Yoko. I think she thought she was helping - a sort of quality control and selection process, as I always make a point of growing a few extras. Feeling that her work was done, Yoko soon got bored and wandered off somewhere else leaving me to plant in the remaining cabbages. I didn’t want to take any chances though, and staked down my tent cloche. Because I actively encourage the birds to come and feed, I don’t want to inadvertantly invite a load of pot-bellied woodpigeons down to finish off the rest. I still have a tray left to plant down on the allotment, but have nothing to cover them in. So there it’ll be a case of blind, foolish beginner’s luck where brassica growing is concerned.

Today though, I have to resign myself to a few hours of cleaning. So I’m just about to brandish my Mum’s super duper Dyson in one hand (our vacuum is, for want of a better word, crap) and a bottle of Bishop’s Finger real ale in the other. BORING!

This is a real shame - after suffering a minor stroke Monty has decided to hang up his gardening gloves at Berryfields. I for one am really going to miss seeing him on my screen, he has been an absolute inspiration as far as I’m concerned. I love his earthyness, he almost has a Buddhist monk-like sense of calm and connectiveness with nature. He made me understand why gardening was so important to me.

Daily Telegraph Article

I sincerely hope to see him in other projects on our screens soon. Get well Monty, going to miss you!

Not much going on at the Smallest Smallholding right now. I’m experiencing what I hope to be a temporary blip. I’ve had breathing problems when falling asleep (as in, I fail to take “in breaths”), and as you might imagine it’s playing havoc with my energy levels., as I can’t remember when I last got a solid, undisturbed night of sleep. It’s got so bad I feel guilty about disturbing Rich so I have taken to sleeping on the sofa so at least one of us can get a good nights kip.
My concentration is shot and work is a struggle at the moment, but I’m trying to do a bit of exercise during the day and get out there, whether it be a bit of weeding or more robust work. But other than that I really just don’t have the energy to do much more.

I’ve had this problem on and off for years. So I’m biting the bullet and going to the docs tomorrow. Let’s hope it resolves itself soon as I’m fed up with feeling perpetually stressed and knackered by it. The cats like to rub it in my face by lolling about all over the place contentedly dozing away without any problems. Lilla has found a tear in my thermal fleece which is covering the carrots - subsequently she’s taken to sleeping under the stretched fleece on the warm soil, squashing my carrot seedlings in the process.

Usually I would be moaning my socks off about the rain, the dreaded rain! But it’s actually a welcome relief, things were starting to look a bit parched, and I imagine my water butt is brimming again. Of course, it also saves me all the watering of an evening too. Not such a bad chore, but it’s good to have ‘free time’ to do other ’stuff’.

I haven’t really been that active at the Smallest Smallholding lately. Lots of work and stress in other areas (praying for funds to clear, only to be bitterly disappointed that I am going to have to wait yet another weekend with not a penny to my name), as well as trying to forge ahead on the allotment. We are currently undertaking the UTTERLY BORING task of removing all the twitch in the ‘upper section’ of the allotment by fork and hand. It’s going in a metal bin to be burnt later on. I also cleared around the raspberries (still haven’t worked out whether they’re summer or autumn fruiting), and am currently sporting a slightly infected splinter wound, thanks to our ancient wooden-handled rake.

I managed to get at least 50 more sets of my Hercules onions in here at the Smallest Smallholding though, only 50 more to find space for. Although, if I’m honest with myself, I am really pushing it a bit now. Last year I got through 50 sets in around 3-4 weeks, and by August I had cleared them out. This year I hope at least my inability to plant anything on time has translated into a sort of successive planting plan, where I’ll be able to continually harvest. That’s the plan anyway. It really depends on the weather this year - I’m relying on another run of very mild weather to get everything going. And I’m also relying on Lilla, one of my cats, to NOT go under my fleece tunnels and dig up the onion sets. Or roll in my carrot seedlings and crush and/or displace them. I say rely - unfortunately Lilla is a law unto herself and despite my protests, she does as she pleases.

I still haven’t planted any sweetcorn, and let’s face it - I could be setting myself up for a big failure if I tried to do it now. Bunnies are chomping their way through sweetcorn like it’s going out of fashion, so I may have to resort to (shock! horror!) buying in some plugs to get a bit of a head start. I’m a bit funny about buying in plants from supermarkets or garden centres. I just feel like I haven’t had enough control over them, I can’t really say “look what I grew!” because I wasn’t responsible for the whole process. But then again, I bought my ‘leeklings’ from a WI stall last year, and leeched off someone else’s handywork and claimed those leeks as my own. It feels a bit different though, taking something from another gardener rather than a commercial outlet. Maybe I’m just far too puritan about these things.

My aubergines are going very well and need repotting now. Once the weather has improved a bit I’ll put a few of them outside the door to sell, along with my tomatoes. My tomatoes are gaining height as each day passes, quite spectacularly. I still can’t get over the fact that not long ago, they were tiny dormant seeds, and now look at them! This year I’ve been so much more regimented with my watering. I am a bad earth mother sometimes, but this year I am willing to face up to my failures and try to improve. My tomatoes suffered as a result of my haphazard watering schedule last year. We ended up with black rot under a lot of the fruit. And I had too many plants to contend with, so we ended up chucking lots of overripe tomatoes to the hens. I suppose that’s not such a bad thing, they gobbled the toms up with glee. Free food, and all that.

Oh, and the asparagus that are going to seed are looking glorious.

I am knackered. My sleep is going haywire and it’s been taking it’s toll on me.

And this post is a bit of a show and tell!

Yesterday though, I actually *finally* managed to get down to the allotment. Thankfully Mum had been down two or three times since my last visit, and it wasn’t in too bad shape. I weeded around the onions (because as all onion growers know, it’s vital to keep them weed free), hoed between the potatoes and started reeling in the blankets of chickweed that were threatening military dictatorship of my plot.

I was met by another nice surprise - we have a raised asparagus plot on our allotment. We snapped a bit off but it was tough as old boots and some stalks had already gone to seed, but nice to know for future reference. I already have a tonne of asparagus growing here at the Smallest Smallholding in the flower borders, but I let it go to seed because it’s so striking. Speaking of going to seed, the rhubarb had grown about 3ft since I last saw it, and was starting to flower. I pulled out the biggest leaves from the base in the vague hope that I’ll still be able to harvest some of the more tender rhubarb in the coming weeks…

All is going ok here. I’m still horribly behind with my sowing - sweet peas are so late now that they’re going to have to be sowed directly and I’ll hope for the best. I’ve saved some old squash bottles and cut them in half to make mini cloches, to try and protect the growing sweet peas from the clutches of enquiring hen beaks. The broad beans are coming along nicely though, despite also being about three months late. Cabbages - Primo and Kilaxy - are both coming along nice and despite being left outside in their seed modules have evaded the beady eyes of the woodpigeons.

My super duper early Tendersnax carrots are actually coming along quite nicely in the pots. I’ve been pricking them out two or three times a week, but I’m still sure I’ll only end up with enough carrots for about 2 meals. My directly sown early Nantes (I think? Still yet to put in labels) carrots are pushing through. They’ll be a bit of an experiment this year as I haven’t put ANYTHING of nutritional value into the soil yet. I might try and feed them as I go along…bit cobbled together but that’s just the way I seem to work at the moment. The tomatoes are going great guns in the conservatory, aubergines are coming along VERY nicely, and my other mystery seed trays are doing ok. The lavender and rosemary cuttings have been a bit of a disaster though, I think I neglected to water them enough and now I only have one surviving specimen of each.

The rabbits - or The BunBuns as they will be know as from hereonin - are getting through a bag of curly kale every day. So I think it’s time that I hunted down a packet of seeds and started to try and opt for the cheaper option of growing my own. Thing is, it probably won’t be ready until late autumn/winter. Oh well. There’s always next year. Trouble is, I am starting to run out of space, so I’m going to have to dig out yet another veg plot here. I haven’t even got around to finishing digging the other one yet. Hence why no parsnips or sweetcorn in the ground. Oh heck - HELLLLLLLLLLLLLP! My uncle has a turf spade which may help my plight, but it’s the digging out of the rubble (I still shake my fists at the builder that thought it was a good idea to bury it) that takes an age.

So on the agenda for next week (and yes, it’s late, I’m working at Lucy speed):

• Finally sow sweet peas direct (wildlife magnets)
• Sow sweetcorn in trays
• Sow butternut squashes (might try grow bags even though I intensely dislike them)
• Think about growing parsnips (and actually sow if have space)
• Get the last of the blasted potatoes in at SS (and enjoy very late crops of early and maincrop potatoes)
• Put in a few remaining onion sets (my version of successive sowing/growing)
• Get down the allotment and Weed for Britain

I think I need a new motto - “Better Late Than Never”

Rich and I went to a wedding on Saturday, not too far from the Suffolk coast. We decided to make a quick detour to the beach en route home (which involved going in the wrong direction, but nevermind), and as I was driving, I let Rich navigate and choose which beach we would visit. It was only going to be a half hour stop or so.

“Well there’s no yellow beach bit at Aldeburgh, but it looks like Leiston is on a beach. It’s got a visitor’s centre too, let’s go there”.

So off we pootled for 25 minutes or so. “Where’s the beach?!” Rich kept exclaiming.

A big dome loomed in the distance, and as we drew closer through the small town of Leiston, the sandbanks came into view and the distinct sea breeze wafted in through the car windows.

“What is that?!” Rich exclaimed, as the dome and brick fortress loomed over us.

“Rich, you’ve only gone and navigated us to the bloody Sizewell B nuclear power station. Well done,” I said.

I’ve known about Sizewell B for years, having visited Dunwich and Walberswick further up the coast since I was a child. We thought Dunwich - despite it’s award-winning chip shop - was a bit too far as a detour. Now I wish we’d gone there instead.

The beach was pebbly, the view was…well, tainted. Rich loved the strange oil-rig type structures around the shoreline, obviously something to do with pumping the sea water into Sizewell B.

Apparently the warm (not radioactive!) water that is pumped back out into the sea from the power station attracts lots of jellyfish to the area. So swimming around there really isn’t much of an option either.

We took pictures, marvelled at Sizewell B’s sheer presence, pondered nuclear power, and turned on our heels. I wanted to get home - Rich wanted a cup of tea. I allowed him a takeaway cup of tea (from the ‘visitor’s centre - aka slightly tatty beach side/nuclear power station side cafe), most of which he spilt on his lap as we drove through the wiggly windy lanes of coastal Suffolk. Well, he had to pay a penance, didn’t he?

More pissy weather this week then. Hasn’t exactly been conducive to a lot of work. I haven’t been near the allotment for ages and I fear that Mr Mole has wreaked havoc with my onion sets and potatoes. Oh well, I never was really that bothered about planting in straight lines.

Urgh, the chicken saga continues. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m actually spinning around on some level of Dante’s spiral of Hell and damnation when it comes to grappling with sick hens. Oh of course, I’m being melodramatic. They seem ‘ok’ today - Yoko is in better spirits, having had a really good day on Monday, and then a couple of crap days. I think the breakthrough in sunshine today is helping. She has one or two days of baytril left, then we have to assess. She could be going in for a bit of a risky procedure to try and drain off some of the egg yolk in her abdomen.

Pattie laid a tiny ‘wind egg’ (a bit of egg white, aka albumen, no yolk laid in a shell about the size of a large grape) three days ago and hasn’t laid since. Apparently wind eggs (also known as cock eggs, since people once thought cockerels laid them, and fart eggs - can’t answer that one) are fairly common. But the problem is that Pattie hasn’t laid since. I have read that it can be something to do with coming to the end of a ’strain’ of eggs, and that it may take them a few days to get going again. But Pattie refuses to perch at night. Before Yoko comes in, she makes a beeline for the nest box, intending to settle down for the night. Cue the big bad Yoko who, thanks to her sterile EYP, needs the nestbox, Pattie is pushed out. At the moment Pattie is refusing to perch, which is worrying.

More worrying!

I had the rabbits out and about the other day. The hens were not too pleased, as they spied the rabbits charging about. Yoko assumed a rugby-type stance before pecking Smudge on the head for getting too close (I think Smudge was just coming up to investigate), and when Smudge did an about-turn and charged off, she was met by Maureen and Pattie. Pattie flapped her wings and both she and Maureen jumped on the poor wabbit. Chickens are so vicious sometimes. There’s no way I’d leave them out there unsupervised together. Smudge was fine though, I think she was just having fun running around under the hedges. She and Snoopy were doing lots of investigating.

I also brought them in last night to meet two of my cats. The other two live upstairs, they’ve sort of paired off and have their own private routes in and out of the house. Tortoise and Tom, the downstairs cats, weren’t too sure about bunnies charging around the living room. Tortoise is a moody mare sometimes, and she got in a right huff and grumbled as she waltzed off to the kitchen. I swear she was pouting. Tom is a lovely scallywag, totally in awe of Tortoise, sometimes nothing else in the world matters. He can be a bit dim and scatty, and didn’t seem bothered by the rabbits. Not even when Snoop worked out a route up onto the back of the sofa. Eventually they all settled down together, and by 11pm everyone was crashed out in the living room.

Right. Enough about animals.

SEEDS.

It’s going well!

My early Snowball Turnips have come up trumps - they’ve germinated really quickly under the fleece tunnel, so I’ll be pricking them out very shortly. Aubergines are going really well, although a couple withered and died in the seed tray. Peppers popped their heads out of the soil a few days ago, and the tomatoes are going great guns.

My rosemary and lavender cuttings are also establishing themselves, although the rosemary seems to be doing much better. I might try and take larger cuttings of the lavender, and give it another try. i sowed trays of Cosmos too. Last year the flowers lasted right into November, when the bees were still out. They are fantastic for colour, height and most importantly, attracting and providing food for bees. The bees and butterflies could not get enough of them last year. I thoroughly recommend them. Try growing them in seed modules, transplanting to large plots (about 2 or 3 per pot). Wait until they’re fairly well established and quite meaty in the stems, and then plant them out. I did this last year and they were poker straight, strong and lasted for months.

The Tendersnax carrots are doing well in the pots, but my seed scattering skills are not exactly desirable. I sowed most of them in a big cluster in the middle. I think by the time I’ve pricked them all out, I’ll have about 5 carrots per pot. Not exactly a veritable success. I’m still undecided about growing carrots in pots. I don’t think I would recommend it, unless the pot is massive, and unlike me, you are actually able to sow thinly.I suppose you could just harvest tender baby carrots instead. I might try that.

Garlic and super early onions are doing ok too, although the super early onion sets were put in late, so should really be described as fashionably late.

Oh, and I have still neglected to label anything I have sown. I’m too lazy to find a pencil or a waterproof pen. So I am relying on my somewhat currently patchy memory to recall what is what and where.