Some years, we'd be getting all kinds of seeds planted and things would be growing already, but not this year. We've been having a proper "don't forget your thermals" Winter, with a prolonged cold snap that has left us all appreciating the small fire we light when it gets really chilly. The cold has also given us a bit of extra time to do some general sprucing up of the site, so today we gave the pot area a makeover.
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| Vanessa and Rachel tackle one of the blueberries. |
We are pretty sure that one of our major problems in the pot area is due to squirrels or other wildlife eating our damsons and either discarding or caching the stones in the blueberry pots. This means we have a lovely array of little damson trees (and a few really large ones) growing out of our large planters. The blueberries that are supposed to be the main feature, have been having to compete with these vigorous growers. Last week the pots were too frozen to do anything, but today we bit the bullet and managed to restore the blueberries to their rightful places.
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Ellie and Vanessa separating the damsons from the
blueberry roots |
We also discovered that some of the pots had turned into couch-grass farms! It took a lot of fiddling to remove the spaghetti of roots, but we finally managed it!
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| Just a little of our couch-root collection. |
Whilst we were playing with the weeds, Brian was getting on with the preparations for the bottle screen. Ellie helped to do the last bits of painting, and it's now ready for putting the bottles on, weather permitting.
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| Brian sets up the last few planks for the bottle screen |
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| It's normally hard to feel blue at Windmill! |
In the orchard, Mac and Hassan did a grand job cutting back some over-grown hedging and using it to plug the last gaps in our defences.
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| Mac and Hassan give the orchard a haircut |
Lunch was a bean chilli with lots of our own produce, which went down a treat. Hopefully next week we can get the bottle screen finished and start actually planting some stuff. Fingers crossed for a bit of warmth!
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