All posts for the month October, 2009

Sowing Garlic

Its Halloween and its time to start planting out or potting up garlic. Yum. Previously I used shop bought organic bulbs and started them off in rich compost in 3 inch pots, and if my memory serves me well I did this late January. If, unlike me, you stuck to the rules when sowing garlic then you probably would have expected our garlic growing to have gone horribly wrong. Well, it didn’t but I think it was more down to luck than judgement.

For next years garlic I shall be potting cloves up today using a mix of cultivated garlic and shop bought, just to compare. I have read that you should start planting garlic either mid October or on Halloween. Hopefully we will have success again with our garlic, it will be interesting to see which cloves do the best.

Happy Halloween and garlic planting everyone!

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by The Garden Smallholder on October 31, 2009  •  Permalink
Posted in Vegetable Garden
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Posted by The Garden Smallholder on October 31, 2009

http://thegardensmallholder.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/sowing-garlic/

Last of the Carrots

Autumn King Carrots

Not many carrots left now, very soon we will be harvesting the last of the Autumn King carrots. We did very well with this variety, pulling them small in the summer for sweet crisp additions to salads. Only a handful forked, mainly due to not thinning a few rows in time. This variety is definitely on the list for next season, I will do the same and not bother growing an early to save space.

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by The Garden Smallholder on October 30, 2009  •  Permalink
Posted in Harvest, Vegetable Garden
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Posted by The Garden Smallholder on October 30, 2009

http://thegardensmallholder.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/harvesting-carrots/

Goodbye Brenda

Brenda looking beautiful

Brenda, one of our ex battery hens passed away today. She took herself off to the coop which is where I found her. She had 8 months of freedom, I only wish it could have been longer. I don’t like to remember her how she arrived, there are photos of her on the blog in the early days but I will use her recent ones for this post. I cannot write much more, im sorry, my heart just aches.

 Brenda

Goodbye Brenda, I will never forget you girl x

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by The Garden Smallholder on October 26, 2009  •  Permalink
Posted in Chickens
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Posted by The Garden Smallholder on October 26, 2009

http://thegardensmallholder.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/goodbye-brenda/

At Last! Rose Grows Feathers!

Rose October 2009

Well, it’s finally happened. Rose, one of our lovely ex battery hens has at long last started to regrow her feathers. After a few false starts of feather regrowth, and spending last winter quite naked, our lovely little chicken looks beautiful again. The best thing about this is she has gone off lay, Rose is notorious for laying monster size eggs which worry me stupid and I do fear that this will finish her off eventually.

She has been out of the battery cage now for 18 months (along with 5 others) which is fantastic, even longer than I had hoped for. Bald or clothed I love her just the same, im just so pleased to see her looking so healthy and happy. Long may her freedom continue.

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by The Garden Smallholder on October 23, 2009  •  Permalink
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Posted by The Garden Smallholder on October 23, 2009

http://thegardensmallholder.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/at-last-rose-grows-feathers/

The Thugs Have Won

In my last post I mentioned the vegetable garden had a bit of a make over, well it has been completely moved. I admit that the brambles have in fact won the fight and refuse to go away. We dug every single fat root ball up, all 500,000 of them (that’s what it felt like anyway) but still they come back! Grrrr, the root system on these thugs is unbelievable.

We decided to move the beds to the bottom of the garden, near our spanking new posh fence. This area is a bit of a sun trap and benefits from late afternoon and winter sun, all of which will help warm the soil.

I’m much happier now this mammoth job has been carried out, it will make the coming spring sowing much easier to carry out without the worry of bramble shoots, threatening to swamp and suffocate anything and everything.

We still have some main crop carrots to pull, parsnips and sprouts. The rhubarb needs moving too once its dormant. It’s all looking very bare but it will be worth it in the long run. I just need to figure out how to deal with the bramble shoots……

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by The Garden Smallholder on October 17, 2009  •  Permalink
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Posted by The Garden Smallholder on October 17, 2009

http://thegardensmallholder.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/the-thugs-have-won/

Puppy Love

German Shepherd Puppy

It’s all been a bit quiet on the blog front. Oops.

We have a new addition to the family, a puppy! Her name is Boudica and she is a German Shepherd. Jason, our other GSD is having great fun playing with his new baby sister. So, as you can probably imagine, its been very hectic around here lately and the blog has been a bit neglected, the vegetable garden however has had some major changes, but more about this in a future post.

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by The Garden Smallholder on October 4, 2009  •  Permalink
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Posted by The Garden Smallholder on October 4, 2009

http://thegardensmallholder.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/puppy-love/

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