Words on Birds

Despite the cold weather of February with its short days and long nights our 5 girls have done brilliantly well - eggseptional in fact!  Our monthly total was 86.  Now Winifred's down time should be taken into account as she was really quite poorly when she went through her mini moult last month. At £1.00 for 4 eggs, we made a grand total of £12.00 in eggs sales.  Yes, I know; it's hardly a fortune but it should be realised that our house lies on a loop off an unclassified lane with no passing traffic. We have an eggs sales box at the end of our drive and our eggs a mostly bought by neighbours or walkers using the public footpath that runs alongside our house.  We have kept chickens for a few years now but feeding 5 happy birds each day and collecting their eggs remains a real pleasure!

Perfect Pansy

In the greenhouse today! Out of the freezing winds and away from the damaging hail and the vicious squalls.

Less of a Meadow - More of an Orchard!

After Saturday's planting, I can now claim that we have an orchard of our own!!  I have hesitated to say that because we are surround by vast acreages of serious orchards.  Wikipedia's & Google's definition of an orchard is:

1 tree with 3 grafted varieties: Cox's Orange Pippin, Sunset & Herefordshire Russet

Orchard is an intentional planting of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit, vegetable, and nut-producing trees which are grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of large gardens, where they serve an aesthetic as well as a productive purpose.[1] A fruit garden is generally synonymous with an orchard, although it is set on a smaller non-commercial scale and may emphasize berry shrubs in preference to fruit trees. Most temperate-zone orchards are laid out in a regular grid, with a grazed or mown grass or bare soil base that makes maintenance and fruit gathering.

Old English: ortgeard; the first element from Latin hortus 'garden', the second representing yard.

PTC's very own orchard

Well, we have done our best to plant out in a grid but that was difficult given the fact that we already had an aging pear and 2 fairly mature apple trees which don't follow our grid pattern.  From the photo, it appears that the spacing between them is enormous but it really isn't.  We were determined that they should not be crowded and that each specimen should have room to grown and mature.  I have yet to tie on our copper labels as I'm waiting to see if any copper wire can be found.  Fingers crossed!

Serious Outbreak of Hyacinth Flop!

As predicted, we have another outbreak of Hyacinth flop this year.  In anticipation of this outbreak an following an attack of great foresight, I cut some little 'Y' shaped mini supports from Birch and Hazel twigs back in the autumn. These really do make the perfect supports.  They look entirely natural and there's no fiddly tying up with ugly string.  They are easily inserted and easily removed for use with the next outbreak.  All in all, the perfect cure!!  If only all cures were so easy!

Orchard in an Orchard!!

At LONG last, we found time to invest in some additional fruit trees for what we can now call our orchard!  We bought a King James II Chelsea Mulberry. a Rivers Early Prolific Plum, a Lord Hindlip Apple and a family tree with 3 grafted varieties: Cox's Orange Pippin, Hereford Russet and a Sunset.  We also planted 2 very young cob nuts. These fruit trees all came from Frank P. Matthews who are pretty local to us and I do not exaggerate when I say it is 'Tree Heaven'!!  They guarantee that pot grown trees have only been in a pot for a single season so there's no poverty stricken pot bound specimens and, even better, they also sell bare rooted specimens.  It's an astonishing and impressive nursery and visits should be mandatory!!  Say no more.  They even provide their own named copper labels AND even the wire ready to be twisted on in spirals so that it never harms the tree by becoming too tight.

I should perhaps mention (for those who don't already know) King James II bought this fruiting Mulberry tree to feed his silk worms and because it was entirely the wrong mulberry leaf, all his silk worms dies and no silk was ever produced!

All our little trees are now planted and we didn't have to worry about self fertile varieties as we're surrounded by another 24,000 apple trees!!

Cheering up the kitchen sink & Speeding up Spring!

After 1 day indoors

After 3 days in doors!

We can get a little impatient at this time of year so I've been speeding up spring! I have been cutting Prunus twigs, arranging them in water in the kitchen and forcing the flower buds to open well ahead of their natural timing.  I know that many people smash the woody stems and leave them to stand in water in a cooler room first but, I find this also works well and the buds will open in about 3 days depending on room temperature.  Even when the flowers drop, the leaf buds will continue to open.  The same can be done with Forsythia and Horse Chestnut bubs look very dramatic when forced.  A few spring flowers in an old teapot can cheer up the kitchen sink on a dull and miserable day - and we can never have too much cheer at the sink!

Spring in February?

In between the dark, mizzly rainy days, we have had the odd sunny and frosty day and, yes!  More Snowdrops and Hellebores are popping up in the Woodland Border. In the greenhouse, Hyacinths and Tete-a-tetes have popped up along with more Pansies and Polyanthus so, it's looking pretty colourful.  The Violas have battled with our winter weather and some have won, others are looking a little care worn!  The Irises are beginning to bloom - all in all, on these precious sunny days, it's looking really quite spring-like!