The First of the Crop

Yesterday was a beautiful day and so I decided to work in the vegetable garden. This was the bed I started in Spring, and the potato crop had just finished being dug from it then.
I often find new potatoes growing as I dig more of the patch and its lovely to have new potatoes for dinner with a splash of butter!

It has been a while since I managed to find the time to be out there for more than five minutes and so it needed a bit more of a tidy up. I usually spend about twenty minutes every second day or two to hoe and weed around the plants or maybe sow some more seeds, but with the busyness of Christmas, New Year and family the weeks have slipped by.
I actually thought my Dad might have too, but he took it easy this time and only found my herb garden under all the weeds. Another job that I hadn't started since winter!

I worked for a bit until I got too hot, then stood in the shade for a time and eventually had it all weeded and new seeds and plants put in.

I like to let our hens out to roam as much as possible so they pottered and scratched around me too, but it also means I have to cover up the seeds and new seedlings.


Harry made this moveable netting frame a few years back and its very handy.
Its two pieces of half round fencing posts with some hen netting stapled to the top or each. He measured the width of our garden plots (there are four all of the same width) and made it to fit.


But the highlight was seeing the first cucumber ready to eat now and the promise of a good cabbage in a week.

It wont be long before I will not have to buy any vegetables from the shops for a while.

I would love to be able to do this all year but I still need to plan a lot more.
Even with fruit I need more trees for each season.