Mayday Bank Holiday

The garden is suffering from the long lack of rain, but it is also looking very pretty this year, mostly down to the Under Gardener's vigorous weeding and digging.  He has now also dug over all the beds in the kitchen garden, except the one with the cabbages in.  Now he has turned his attention to that patch of wasteland behind the shed (up by the grape vine) and has created two new beds.  One is dug and nearly ready for planting. The other is nearly dug.  the path has been properly trodden down.

I have now potted on my tumbling and standard tomatoes and planted seeds of cabbage, chard, more sweet corn, and seaside daisy.  Everything is doing really well.  Even the pumpkin seeds, which I was beginning to think had upped and died on me, have now germinated.  We are eating pickings of asparagus, and the new asparagus plants are beginning to show signs of life.  Each row has two or three plants with spears in evidence.

My Hangingwater apple tree was beginning to look very stressed indeed.  So we put the hose on it and left iot for a couple of hours.  The tree looks less stressed now, but not entirely happy.  But it is weeks and weeks and weeks since we've had any rain.  We are putting the hose on the other trees now too.  They are all covered in baby fruit. It would be a pity if lack of water were to get them!

One of the Lohman chickens has been very broody for the past couple of weeks.  I think we might have dissuaded her now - she's coming out of the coop much more and is following the other chooks around more happily.  We are getting an average of 3 eggs a day.  In April we got 93 eggs at a cost of .007p per egg.  In total since the chooks arrived at the end of  June last year we've had 982 eggs at a cost of 46p per egg.

The biggest thing we've done recently is to clean out the fish pond.  It's been looking very murky and horrid for a while now.  The filter has broken. There was a crack in the wall at the back.  We had thought of catching the fish and putting them in one of the water butts, but then we discovered that the square at the back of the pond is separated from the main part by a low wall.  Usually there is enough water for the fish to swim over it, but the drop in water levels over the past few weeks meant we could empty the back part and clear it out and mend the wall, which the Under Gardener did  few days ao, then bucket the water from the main pond onto the garden and transfer the fish into the newly filled square at the back.  That took all morning on Monday but was a surprisingly fun activity.  And the fish are really enjoying their newly de-mudded pond with nice clean water (although we mixed it with quite a bit of the original pond water so it didn't come as too much of a shock!).  Now we just need a new filter.

Refilling the fish pond - under close supervision!

 The days are being sunny and warm and dry.  But it is only just May.  The nights are cold.  And frosty.  All tender plants and seedlings remain in the greenhouse.  We close the greenhouse at night.  Must not let the weather lull us into a truly false sense of security!!