First crops of the year planted at the plot and Bottling the Port!

Today dawned frosty and bright, not a cloud in the sky, so once we'd allowed the sun a chance to melt the frost (and bring the temperature up a bit) we headed straight for the plot, taling the broad bean seedlings and the garlic and onions along to see if we could get them planted!

As you can see from this piccy of plot 2, the frost never truly left us, anywhere in shadow still had frost for the whole of the day, but undeterred by the cold temperatures (and both wrapped up warmly) we set to clear some room, plan out the beanery (going into the beds behinnd the pond), plant the broad beans, clear the garlic and onion set beds and try and get them planted!

One job we also had to do was to get the 'dual plum' tree we picked up from Parkers Garden Center last October! This was due to go into the front bed (on the left), the one with all the Lavender in it!

Plot 2 needs a really good clearing, the sweetcorn / squash bed from last year will become this years 'beanery', with plans for 5 or 6 tall cane support tunnels, a cage for the french beans (to protect them from the wabbits) and plenty of space for peas and broad beans!

The first of the garlic / onion beds at the front of plot 2, now cleared and planted with 120 saved garlic cloves!

The back end of this bed will have onion sets in it by tomorrow night, as will the bed to the right!

The French Bean 'cage', in its new position!

The cloche protecting the first 30 broad bean seedlings, they are AquaDulce, so are frost hardy, but as they were only sowed about 10 days ago we thought it best to protect them with the cloche!

Lee next to the newly planted dual plum tree. hopefully this will take and we should have a couple of varieties of plum to feast on in a year or two!

We also noticed the rhubarb is starting to come up, cant wait till we can harvest the first stalks, rhubarb crumble and custard, yum!


I couldnt resist taking this piccy last night, we had 2 batches of Summer Fruits Wine to bottle, 2 gallons in total, and as I was cooking tea (hence the chopped mushrooms on the chopping board) Lee decided he would syphon it into the bottles, I caught him using his mouth to stop the port from flowing whilst he changed bottles (or so he tells me), and had to run n get my camera, cos it just struck me as funny!


He did manage to get some of the port into the bottles! Lol!

Actually, it was a batch of mixed summer fruits wine, made with 1lb Elderberries, 3lb Rasps, 2lb strawbs and 1lb of blackberries, it came out at about 20% abv, very moorish, quite sweet, but full of flavour, very like a decent port, so its been labelled as Foragers Port, we're taking a bottle round to Pat and Colins tonight, so we'll let you know what it was like tomorrow!

Hope your plot clearing is proceeding a pace, and your early seedlings are coming up in the propogators!