I have just come after 3 hrs of removing goose3grass, willow herb, thistles, ground elder and stinging nettles from the headge along the drive with Al and Babara. They are still out there even though it is getting dark!
We have shifted about 10 barrow loads of the stuff and we dont have a small wheel barrow!
I hurt! I fell in the ditch but then I was supposed to be in the ditch anyway! My wellys made a bid for freedom everytime I tried to move my feet 🙁
Worryingly there appears to be lots of bell bind - Babara has another name for it but its a creeper thats a real menace - really pretty bell shaped flower and green heart shaped leaves. Once you've got it its murder to get rid of and has a nasty tendancy to choke all the plants you do want!
Anyway time for a well earned dinner now!
Due to having to ration the wormery we have to take most of our kitchen waste to the compost heap - well heap sounds small - we have an industrial type compost area!
There are three piles - this yrs, last yr and the one before (thats the one being used). We have to berry any kitchen wast as the deer and badgers (well mainly the badgers) dig it up - sorry now have a mental image of a deer with a spade in their mouth! Before we even got there you could see the steam rising from the now 2m cube pile of grass cuttings, the smell is gross and Al had to dig (makes gagging sounds). The steam was thick and white and looked more like smoke from the inner depths of the heap - shudders.
Well we have a garden causulty of the lovely wildlife - the tops of all our peas appear to have been eaten by the deer - oh well. We may still be able to get a crop still - maybe 🙁
Still we have been doing extensive weeding of the veggi patch! I'm afriad we had to cull most of the fat hen and transplant the potatoes which were attacking the veg we actually planted! Still ther is some fat hen left which I'm thinking of freezing and using from frozen. This will only work for curries and the like - it being a spinache substitute!
Talking of spinache - it too is growing out of control - sigh - I wish I liked the stuff - still it goes nice in curries and the salads (as long as it has a salad dressing - dont get me wrong its nice spinache its just I dont like it or brussels for that matter - oh well its good for me and Al loves the stuff!).
Also we have loads of cherry tomartoe plants as Babara gave us her spare ones - all of which have survived - we've given some to mum and dad and some to Babaras friend Maureen. I've planted some out in grow bags out the front of the house in the 'gully' bit infront of the window. There is a grow bag either side of the morning glory the Babara is training up our drainpipe - Al keeps making hungry eyes at it and muttering about Ti cooking - Babara said she'd notice if he eats it whilst she's away!
Still I need to put some more tomatoes in pots out the front here and some in the veg patch - I have a feeling if they dont all get eaten by deer, rabbits, slugs and catapillars that we are definatly going to have surplus! Still theres always relish and chutney to be made 🙂
We also planted a second parsley plant out yesturday as a complimentary planbt to the curley parsley that was in the veg plot when we moved here! - As it was just a Tesco's one we bought to cook with which has continued to grow - I doubt it will survive but its worth a shot!
Mowing the 'grounds' is a fall days job pretty much and it really needs doing every week - obviously this doesnt really happen but Al still seems to be spending much time mowing and I taking the cuttings in the wheel barrow to the compost heap so they can cook the compost and ferment into silage.
Unfortunatley for me yesturday Al ask me if I wanted gloves to put the grass cuttings on the heap - I asked wh would I need those - he said so I could throw it all on - I pointed out that I just dumped the whole lot from the barrow. He was interged by this and decided to follow me and watch - I got flumaxed cos he was watching and manged to step straight into the 'bog' (this is the area around the compost heap that has flooded due to all the rain) a foul stentch arose and to make things worse - I was wearing sandels! So I squelched over to the part of the stream that has steps in it - moaning at Al for watching me and washed my foot in the freezinbg stream!
But the comady of errors got worse for me as I realised a) my foot was painfall and going numb and b) my stupid body is still too broken to allow me to step out of the stream by myself so Al had to rescue me - yet again!
Still all good fun!
Well Al is off feeding the worms rice and egg shells - we produce way to much kitchen waste for the wormery to cope with, this will sort it self out to a certain extent as the worm population increases. I only got the minimium amount of worms so they could build their numbers up.
But even then we just cook to much stuff from scratch! Well unlike most people we tend to have three meals a day at home, at least one of which tends to be complex and involving vegatables.
The solution!
When we have enough money we will get another wormery and have more little freinds to feed, and more compost! The only issue we are having at the moment is that we have more 'Worm Juice' than we need. This is the liquid you drian of at the bottom (this has to be done regularly or the worms drown and the environment is two damp and little white disturbing worms appear - I think they might actually be the type that produce condrities for those Geologists out their - or at least that type of thing!). This liquid is excellent plant food - unfortunatly there is more of it than we can currently use - but it does get better with age!
We're thinking of selling it - 4ltr bottle for £1!!!!
Gardening | sarah | 
Wed 14th Jun 2006 8:30 pm | 
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