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Ulrike gives the hugelkultur bed its 4th watering of the year.
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Not sure how long this hot spell is going to last, but we do feel we earned it as we battled through the snows during the Winter! The hot weather is helping things to catch up at Windmill, but we've been beaten in our quest to stay mains water free in the last 2 weeks, as we've finally used up the water from our massive water butts and had to resort to using the tap. This is really telling us that we should store more water. The roof of the polytunnel can definitely supply more water than we are currently storing, so we need to add more barrels. If you have any spare bins or barrels, we'll happily take them off your hands.
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Annette managed to be colour-coordinated
whilst watering! |
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Lizzy watering behind beans that look pretty
good despite infrequent watering.
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Anna managed to multi-task -
weeding and watering at the same time! |
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Hassan's first job - watering!
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We're still succeeding in keeping water use down though - most beds only need to be watered once a week, and we are still managing to keep the polytunnel going with watering on alternate days. We reckon deep roots are the key. Watch out for a "top tips" on that coming soon.
On the plus side, we were delighted to welcome new volunteers happy to help us water, so we managed to get it all done pretty quickly.
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Hugh took a chance to get some shade.
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We also lifted our first lot of potatoes. This gave us the chance to enjoy a lunch of new potatoes with bacon lardons and salad - yum! Even better, the fruit picking season is in full swing, so we used some of it to make a mixed fruit dish with greek yoghurt. The fruit cage and the raspberries are really getting productive this year, but it was so hot that the blackcurrants actually "cooked" whilst sitting on the table - changing colour like they do in the pan! Our camp-shower solar water heater bag showed us how hot it was too - creating water almost too hot to use for the washing up!
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Chris admires the potato crop
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Ray with the rasps
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Guy quickly mastered the art of
blackcurrant picking
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The fruits of our labours....
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Oh - and we just noticed our first ripe tomato - and it's an outside one, not in the polytunnel - amazing!
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| The first ripe tomato of the season. |
