This week, since my greenhouse was becoming increasingly overcrowded, I decided to treat myself to a polytunnel, so that I would have more room to grow what I wanted.
We adopted four ex-battery chickens yesterday from those wonderful people at The British Hen Welfare Trust.
After a back breaking weekend, and sunburn on top of sunburn, we finally finished ‘Chickenopolis’
I had a fantastic start to my weekend when I received an email from those lovely people at Wahaca to say that I had won their competition to be their resident ‘Chilli Guru!’
I’m looking forward to showing how anyone can grow chillies, no matter whether you have a sunny windowsill, or a garden the size of a small county. I’ll also be showing how versatile chillies can be, and how each variety of chilli is different in terms of flavour and heat, and can be added to all different types of food, even chocolate!
Watch this space for further details …
July is usually one of the driest months so a lot of time may be spent watering. You can reduce water loss and save yourself some time by preventing water loss. Mulching with a layer of organic matter will help preserve moisture but may encourage slugs so you will need to take action against them.
After weeks of waiting, our allotment site finally got a hive this weekend.
Even better news is that I’m one of the five people to be chosen from our allotment site to be trained up as beekeepers.
Both myself and @luckylottielisa have been busy bees over the weekend.
As you will have picked up from yesterday’s post, I’m a big fan of Cafe Direct’s ‘Sow Your Own’ campaign.
As you know, I constantly go on and on about how I feel that everyone should grow their own veg if they can, even if it is just one tub of salad on their patio, or some herbs in their windowbox.
The lottie took a back seat this week, as I had to pot on the numerous chilli plants from the 19 different varieties of chillies that I’m growing this year.
I was worried earlier this year that the majority of the crop was going to fail, as they took such a long time to get going compared to last year. It must have been the long winter/cold spring, as they have most definitely cranked into life. It is a good job, as I’m now reaching the end of last year’s crop which were either dried, pickled or frozen, as I had more chillies than I knew what to do with at that point.
Achiltibuie Garden
Dartmoor Chilli Farm
Figo Frames
Freshly Forked
Greenhouse Sensation
Handpicked Media
Tozer Seeds Direct