All abed

The last two vegetable beds have been repaired and now all the beds are planted, with one gap for the leeks. Today the courgettes went out and the conservatory is looking spacious again.

The courgettes are out!

I picked a sunny day and put some grass mulch around them so hopefully they won't be too shocked tonight.

The celeriacs got planted out today, too

I planted 16 celeriacs, which seems quite a lot, but I hope they'll keep well into the spring. Ever since seeing a poster in my local greengrocer advertising celeriac with the slogan 'The Ugly One', I've had a fondness for it. Much prefer it to celery.

The potatoes need earthing up

We've had a couple of hot, humid days (well, 19C, but it felt hot working on the plot) and things have just shot up in the veg garden. It actually looks like we might have some crops soon!

My experimental corner: artichokes and outdoor tomatoes (and pumpkins)

So far the outdoor tomatoes are doing well just inside the windbreak fabric and the artichokes seem to like their new position, too. I've started using up our grass clippings as mulch. On a gardening website that I consulted it said only to use weed-free lawn clippings. What kind of world do these people live in? A weed-free lawn? Reminds me of the woman on Gardeners' Question Time who wanted to plant a nettle patch in her garden for the wildlife...

Scythe matters

Jim got out the scythe for the first time last week and I have to say I'm very impressed. In just three afternoons he's mown our totally overgrown acre. Things are almost beginning to look tidy! And he's working on his abs at the same time. What a great traditional tool and so quiet.

The Jim reaper

Getting tidier all the time

 Meanwhile we've had our first meal from the veg garden: steamed pak choi, with ginger, garlic and soy sauce. The pak choi plant is an attractive purple, which doesn't seem to be attractive to birds, and it turns a nice deep green when cooked. Very versatile stuff and quick to cook. In a risotto, it's almost like spinach. I've decided that I like growing red or purple varities of veg. The seedlings are easy to distinguish from weeds as they come up and the birds here seem to give them a miss, unlike pretty much anything else.

The digging has resumed. It's going to be a race to get the ground prepared in time for our courgettes, squashes and cucumbers.

Still a lot of digging to do. More potatoes are popping up every day

The courgettes are going for it

Cucumber flower

The tomatoes are doing well. In fact, they were growing so many leaves that I finally looked up how to prune them properly. This morning was spent pinching tomato armpits and removing any bottom leaves that were touching the ground. I've also started an outdoor tomato experiment, planting out nine tomato plants just behind the windbreak fabric. Hope they'll survive.

Tomato blossoms

The kale's curling nicely

We've been waging war with the weeds all week. Never knew what a pain bracken could be. Some more black plastic is needed or weed control fabric. Now for a thirst-quenching nettle ale!

Inside only

The weather has been so wet and windy this past week that all outside activity has ground to a halt. Even the digging. I'm just glad we got the wind break fabric up in time; it does seem to make a huge difference. The one day that the weather was good we had to deal with an outbreak of red mite so the whole day was spent deep-cleansing the hen house, powdering chicken vents and burning old shavings.

The main excitement this week is that the first potatoes are poking out:

The first tattie plants. Now is that an Epicure or a Dunluce?

The birds have been chomping away at all sorts of things and we've had to net over our peas and land cress, which seemed to be their favourites. Our own birds have been trouble, too:

The downside of really free-range chickens. Our cardboard mulch around the raspberries has been well and truly scratched apart.

Strange problem to have: how to keep a peacock off the salad?

Meanwhile, the tomatoes, squashes and artichokes are doing well in the greenhouse and the conservatory. I've moved almost everything out of the greenhouse but tomatoes; it's now the tomato house.

The tomato house

The artichokes

The conservatory is chock-a-block with plants. I wonder when I'll be able to plant them all out. Other than the glorious Easter weekend, the temperature has been a steady 12C during the day since March. It's just not getting any warmer. I've started the climbing beans off in the conservatory and they are getting bigger rapidly - is 12C max and 7C during the night warm enough to plant them out?

French bean seedlings

Celeriac seedlings

The nettle fertiliser will be ready to use from tomorrow. The nettles have totally disintegrated. And the nettle ale is ready for bottling tomorrow. When last sniffed, it smelled of gooseberries.

Of wind and weeds

Probably the greatest obstacle to growing stuff here is the wind. We are one mile from the Irish Sea and it's just a windy part of the world. When it blows from the south, which it does surprisingly often, the wind whistles right up the glen. In December we seemed to get gale force or above every three days. So our first big planting job was a windbreak hedge along the southern perimeter. We picked a mix of blackthorn (for sloe gin in years to come), hazel and elder and put in 225 bareroot plants in early February. It's lovely to see them all coming into leaf now, but it's going to be a while before they provide any real shelter.

Our newly planted windbreak hedge

In the meantime we've put up windbreak fabric around the fence of the veg patch since our seedlings were showing signs of wind burn. Looks like we'll have to plant another hedge right next to the vegetable garden next winter.

Windbreak fabric around the veg garden

After spending months pulling mountains of thick nettle roots and burning them, we've decided we might as well use our nettle supply to our advantage. First up, a batch of nettle fertiliser is brewing up in a barrel. Apparently used neat it is a natural weed killer. Has anybody used it on ground elder?

 If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em

Sweet-smelling nettle fertiliser

Then, onto the culinary uses. I dried a lot for use as tea, but find it better blended with mint or sage than on its own. Jim was really keen on trying nettle soup and this was a big success:

Yummy nettle soup

Next up, nettle beer.

Everything's been greening up rather nicely. The beech trees have come out in a beautiful pale green and we've just started a batch of beech noyau this morning. The last potatoes went in yesterday and the tatsoi salad is going crazy. We're very pleased to have fresh home-grown salad every day.

Time for beech noyau!

Who knew that tatsoi would grow this tall?

The first apple blossom

The pak choi is coming along nicely

We've been carting a fishbox of seaweed back from the beach every time we go down there. We've been using it as a mulch and adding it to the compost heap. Soon we'll make some fertiliser from it as well. Apparently, the crispy texture of the dried seaweed puts off the slugs - I'll let you know if that's true. Fingers crossed.