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Planting Our First Crop of Potatoes

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

planting_chitted_potatoesFinally today we were planted our first crop of vegetables in our rabbit proof vegetable patch! How exciting is that!! :) Already looking forward to eating the results!

We have got a number of varieties to plant including Maris Piper and King Edwards. We are also going to plant the non-raised beds with pots to help break up the soil and help keep the weeds down. I think we counted 86 seed potatoes in total…so I think we shall be setting up a road-side stall with ‘Waterloo Farm Potatoes’ later in the year! ;)

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Making the Raised Beds

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

Large Raised Bed (pre-dropping)

Large Raised Bed (pre-dropping)

Having marked out the vegetable patch and sussed out that it would all fit (we even re-configured the layout to get a few more beds in) we have started to make our raised beds. Fortunately we have an ‘old-fashioned’ wood yard up the road where we sourced our pressure-treated wood.

We ordered 12 ft x 6in (3.6m x 15cm)  lengths, which meant that when we cut those into thirds we could use the lenghts for the end panels. For 2010 we are only planning to make 2 large and the 2 small (wedge shaped) raised beds. So the large beds will be 3.6m long, by 1.2m wide by 30cm high and there will eventually be 8 in total!

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Rabbit Proof Vegetable Patch!

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Rabbit Proof Vegetable Patch

Rabbit Proof Vegetable Patch

We are very excited that at last we have the start of our vegetable patch! If you regularly follow out blog you will know that the Wildlife likes to strike back, so we have had to create Fort Knox to stop the fluffy bunnies (!) thinking we have created them a handy larder-cum-restaurant.

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Posted in Fruit, Garden Improvements, Kitchen Garden, Living the Country Life, Posts with Photos, Self Sufficiency, Vegetables, Wildlife | No Comments »

The Willow Coppice is Planted!

Sunday, February 28th, 2010
Willow Coppice Planted

Willow Coppice Planted

Woo hoo! We have finished planting all of the Willows. In total there were 198!

In theory this means we should (in 5 years!) have our first seasoned wood to burn. Who knows, by then we might even have a wood burner or two to burn it in :)

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Planting the Willow Coppice – Started!

Saturday, February 20th, 2010
Willow Coppice Planting

Willow Coppice Planting

At last after weeks of hard work and slog, and contending with snow and ice we can finally start planting up the Willow Coppice!

It was as ever a family affair and the kids loved pushing the willow ‘twigs’ into the holes and sinking in the cane beside it to hold up the rabbit guard. My Mum was also on hand to help dig and plant so we managed quite a production line, and got over half of the 200 trees planted.

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