Signs of Life . . .

Planted the first lot of seeds  the other weekend, and finally there are signs of life from most of them: courgettes; tomatoes (cherry and beefsteak); shallots; onions; and cucumbers.

The peppers and butternut squash are being a bit slower off the mark but I'm living in hope!

The greenhouses have been cleaned and weeded ready to receive the seedlings, and the potatoes are chitting on the windowsill.  Next job, digging over the veg patches, and planting up some beans, sweetcorn, aubergines, chillis and leeks.

Watch this space!

Potting On

Our growing season actually started a while back - 8 March to be precise - when the first tranche of potatoes went into three of the big pots we'd bought, and the tomato (plum and cherry), broccoli, chilli, pepper, sweetcorn, butternut squash and cucumber seeds went into trays on the kitchen windowsills.

Now, we're at the stage where most of the young seedlings have been potted on, into the large greenhouse, and the second tranche of potatoes have been planted up into the other three pots (as of the 21 March) in the small greenhouse (soon to be moved to the outside world).

The first potatoes are actually on their way up - time for another layer of compost from the looks of this photo - the idea being that as they grow we layer upwards until we get to the top of the pot. Hopefully this will give us our first crop of potatoes in early June, with the second tranche following a couple of weeks later, then the later crop from the veg plot itself, which as yet remains unplanted (just making sure we miss any late frosts).

Still pondering where some of the stuff is going - and the possibilities of a fruit cage remain a matter of debate - we've only changed our minds three times thus far. More updates to follow . . .

And the results are in . . .

Well peanuts are the official food of choice, but only just, the fat balls ran them a very close second. The seeds were largely ignored until there were no other options, and then they managed to scatter most of these on the ground (so much for the hanging seed feeder being less messy).

Not that this went unappreciated by certain representatives of the local bird population . . . and our neighbourhood mouse also seemed quite happy with the situation!

Feed the Birds

We've just added a hanging seed feeder to the bird feeding station (did have a seed tray, but they messed that up something awful), so thought we'd see which type of food proved most popular. We've put out 185g of fat balls (i.e. 2), peanuts, and seeds, and are monitoring which goes first.

Have to say that even at this early stage it looks as though the peanuts have it - but as Martin has pointed out the seeds are a new addition, and presumably word hasn't got out on these yet - so we'll have to replicate the experiment in a few weeks for purposes of scientific validity!