Well hello! It’s been a good few months since my last post here… what with a busy old Summer, a huge dip in my motivation and my passion for gardening/blogging taking an absolute battering. But I’m pleased to say I’m determined to get my old self back so I’m going to start off this new blogging journey with a little garden Summer round-up. Because despite not feeling quite like myself this past year I still managed to get outside every now and again. The garden still produced and my Dad worked hard to maintain it, the new flower patch bloomed beautifully and we even introduced some more ladies to the flock…
We had our first proper crop of rhubarb from the patch since planting them out in 2022 and our successional planting of the peas proved to be a success. The runner beans on the other hand cropped all at once and we were inundated with them, it seems a 6 metre double row is too much even for my Dad! The onion harvest struggled this year with weeds so the crop was rather small… we made a note to try and keep ontop of the weeding next year. The lavender hedge put on a spectacular show and I spent a lot of time admiring the bees, butterflies and even a hawk moth which frequented the flowers.
Back in 2023 we sowed some wild meadow seed in the orchard and I was so pleased to see it return this year with a bang. Not only does it look pretty, but it provides a wonderful habitat for so many creatures and the chickens love hiding in it… speaking of the girls, there’s been a bit of a change with the flock. I made the decision to rehome the 3 hybrids after they bullied and pecked poor Hedwig to the point of blood. In April we introduced 3 new silkies to the flock, and then in September we introduced 6 new Orpingtons. Unfortunately we lost 3 of the young Orpingtons which was a huge shock and absolutely devastating, we even took one to the vet and thought it was improving… But I’ll go into this in more detail in another post and I’ll also introduce the new girls. At the moment they are loving life free ranging and they are the sweetest group!
Me and Peter sowed some mangetout and planted out a whole 6 metre row, they were incredibly delicious but yet again a 6 metre row proved to be too much all at once so we’ve made plans to sow them successionally in 2 metre strips next year. The garlic also produced a great crop, small bulbs but still delicious and it should keep a garlic lover content for the Winter. We also managed to enjoy othe majority of our sweetcorn this year and we spent many Summer evenings around the BBQ with flame grilled cobs dripping with butter.
Last but not least I’ll quickly mention my little flower patch… It’s been an absolutely blessing this year and a way of helping me get my passion back. To think that in March this was just an empty patch of dirt and since then it’s produced an abundance of blooms for the house. Yes there’s been a few failures but also some highs too, the gladioli have been my favourite and the Dahlias are still putting on a show. For it’s first year I’m incredibly proud, I can’t wait to learn from my mistakes and hopefully produce an even better display next year.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for sticking with it and reading my little blog. I really do appreciate your support and kindness and I hope to put my all into the social media side from now on. They’ll be weekly blog posts of what I’ve been up too, hopefully a monthly video or two on Youtube and lot’s of posts on Instagram… In fact I’m also tempted to merge the two Instagram accounts to make my life a little easier. The shop account will be staying but to help improve the business and make it more personal I’ll be posting both garden and shop content together in perfect harmony.
So thank you for reading and I’ll talk to you all again very soon!
