Well I just looked at my last post (sound of bugle in background!) and another three months have gone by. Amazing!

So to recap, the Cherry-Plum jam is gorgeous and sadly nearly all gone already, hopefully we can make more next year. The bottling didn't happen, but we've frozen loads instead and they make really good crumbles.

More raised beds are being constructed as this is proving to be the ideal way of working with the heavy loam we have here. One of my earliest raised beds has now been established about four years. This year I grew parsnips in it and for the first time ever had roots that were difficult to dig because of their length. The nature and depth of the top-soil has changed dramatically having had no compaction from foot or wheel and only minimal cultivation over that time. It looks like 'Reduced Dig' could be a workable technique IF and only IF I keep off the land and that means raised beds with paths! It also means that I don't waste compost on ground that isn't growing crops, but that is another story.

Last and definitely not least, today I want to brag about my cloches, which is where this blog started.
Three weeks ago I pricked out some spring cabbage into a newly made bed and covered them with the glass barn cloches. Unfortunately the last plant in each row wasn't covered. However that has proved useful in demonstrating the advantages of protected cropping over unprotected. The cabbages under the cloches have grown on well, whilst those left outside have not really grown at all, and the weather has not been that bad yet! Oh yes, the white powder is a bit of lime, the slugs don't like crossing it and helps protect the plants whilst they are young.
Well hopefully the photo will show the difference between protected (top) and not (bottom).
Thanks for the visit, I'll endeavor to write more often and get some more pics up soon. Richard

Raised beds and Chicken Tractors

I've just been reading about 'no dig' on the Scilly Organics blog and as I've been out on the land today I got to thinking. I have tried no dig systems before and was disappointed. The soil became compact and the living part became shallower due to the lack of oxygen I guess. However I did not use a strict bed growing system then.For a few years now I have been using a system of (more or less) raised beds. When I say raised, maybe humped is a more apt term. The important point is that I NEVER put any pressure on the soil, not foot or even hand to lean over if I can help it (they are only four feet wide). It has become a bit of a 'thing' for me, but it has worked. I now find that having removed the last leeks yesterday a quick rake over today and I have a seed bed and sowed my first organic seeds.

The soil condition is fantastic, but it has taken about three years to come to that state. Interestingly that was the time which Rosa Dalziel O'Brian, who wrote 'Intensive Gardening' about 50 years ago, said it would take and she insisted that you should not walk on the land!

So why was I thinking about soil compaction and no dig? Well my lovely seed bed and my new raised beds, real raised beds, not just areas that I don't walk on. These new beds are where I grew potatoes last year so the soil is quite clean and open and as the weather has been fine I gave them a quick once over with the hand cultivator. Disappointment! The soil was nowhere near as friable (I think that's the word I'm looking for) as the older bed. So I'll just have to wait a couple of years, with the addition of compost of course.

But there may be a shortcut, I don't know......yet. After using the cultivator to work over the soil my two chickens arrived to look for lunch. After only a few minutes scrathhing around they had produced a wonderfully fine tilth, here and there! Maybe, if they were confined on the bed for a day or two the scratched patches would join up? And so we've invented that device so loved by Permaculturists, The Chicken Tractor.

You may well ask how I reconcile all this talk of not walking on the land with my raving about old Ferguson tractors. Well I'll come to that next time, maybe. Or it may be about apple grafting, it's such a busy and exciting time of the year, who knows.