Plot Moving, Chicken Keeping and Growing, Lately

Since my last update on starting my own vegetable patch, there have been a lot of changes. As well as dreaming of growing my own veg, I have also been dreaming of more animals and, as that dream was realised with the alpacas, I had to rethink a few things.

Since the fox attack on my chickens late last year, I have been moaning to the farmer about a more secure are for them.

I had dug out quite a large area for the veggie patch which was much harder work than I ever imagined and kept dropping big hints to the farmer about a mini digger which largely fell on deaf ears.

Then the farmer announced he was going to make me a penned area for my hens (I hadn’t got them at this point).

Great I thought but then I realised because he was using some of our original fencing and coming out from that, he was effectively fencing my veggie patch too. I had moaned for so long about the secure area though that I felt I couldn’t stop him from making it-whether it was near the veggie plot or not.

If you have never had hens, the thought of putting a vegetable patch in their area is madness. They would scratch it all up with their feet and, if anything did manage to grow, it wouldn’t last long with these inquisitive creatures.

I am not going to lie, the enthusiasm has waned somewhat. Not for home grown produce-I am still excited about that but the actual groundwork bit has really put me off.

Do not despair. I have a number of raised beds, grow bags and other containers for my plans and, if I decide to plant anything larger, like pumpkins, I have a couple of months to find another place for them and start digging again.

The children planted green beans and peas at the last Junior Farmer’s session and the beans were on the verge of taking over my window sill so they are out now. I have also planted some potatoes in a bag and I already had garlic growing but have added onions now too.

The mint and strawberries from last year lay dormant over winter and seem to be coming back to life and I have some other herbs still inside until the threat of frost is gone.

My biggest mistake was planting a load of seeds in an improvised propagator and forgetting to write down which plant were which. What a fool. I now have at least four types of vegetable plants growing and I have no idea what they are.

I suppose it will be a pleasant surprise.

So my kitchen window sill is heaving under the jungle that I have planted and I am just waiting for Easter and hopefully the end of frost to plant everything out and probably start another lot of seeds in my kitchen.

I am going on a growing veg course this weekend to fill in any all the gaps so watch this space.

Have you started growing yet?