Category Archive: sunflowers

December 20th, 2012
post by Timber-Gray | | 0

Long time needed catch-up!

Well now things have changed with the girls BIG time! We have added @roseycosie after the major loss of Cluck-Cluck. Rosie gladly let us use her name for our then newest girl who we still need a photo of I know!

Now we have three more girls! We have two brothers that are mates of our from the allotment site who have been deployed and we took in three of their chickens. Yes I know we need photos of them as well, but they aren’t looking proper as they’re molting and refuse to have their photos taken until spring when all  new feathers have come in and they look chickalous! Their names haven’t really been decided yet because I’ve not been able to spend the time with them like I was able with the first six. But I have some names I’d like to use with them, Mabel, Gretta, and Bird-Brain. It seems that the girls molt during the winter (burrr cold!) so they just wouldn’t look their best so we’ll get their new photos come spring, even new ones of the older girls of ours, because they’re all about the same age. The three new girls will be easy to tell apart, they definitely look different then the others and two are different breeds then our lot. So all we can do is hope they don’t drown or turn into ducks over the winter with all the rain! The new girls had another house put in the run just for them, but from what Si can find out, only two girls are using the new house which is good as not all nine girls are squished in the larger coop.

We also need to start getting out seeds together for the allotment and what we’ll be planting, but as I write this the allotment is a swimming hole due to two days of nothing but rain! Si took photos for me when he went to let the girls out, good thing we now have wellies as if not his feet would be drenched it’s that deep! I hope to try some corn again, spinach (us and the girls), potatoes, peas, rhubarb, our apple trees, and berry bushes, onions, carrots, garlic (trying again this year), broccoli (us and the girls), lettuce (us and the girls), strawberries (US ONLY!) sunflowers for their beauty and then the girls to peck apart again this year, some peppers Green and possibly red and Hot Peppers for the chili, maybe lavender in the tubs again this year, carrots again in the bath tubs, tomatoes, and who knows whatever else we decide or not decide to plant this year.

 

allotment, apples, beans, broccoli, carrots, chickens, coop, eggs, food, lettuce, onions, peas, peppers, potatoes, rain, rhubarb, strawberries, sunflowers, tomatoes, tub
May 28th, 2012
post by Timber-Gray | | 0

What Have We Planted Lately??

Now that the winter and rain has passed we are getting our plants in the ground that I have been working on in the greenhouse, that was until I found out I had little visitors who were hungry, MICE! They knocked over a few of my seedling trays and ate the seeds from within my corn, butternut squash and spaghetti squash! Not what I wanted to see as after this they went after the seeds in the greenhouse, eating my sweet corn, spaghetti squash, butternut squash and they tried the brussel sprouts but didn’t like them.

So after scavenging thru the toppled seedling trays for some seeds, I was able to salvage about 15 squash seeds, some sweet corn seeds, but that is all. So I replanted what I saved and what I could find left over, but this time I brought all the seedling trays home to go in one of our greenhouses. At home I just have to worry about Keagan and Baxter but they didn’t seem to care about them luckily.

After about four weeks or so I had some large sprouts growing and knew I had beaten the mice this time!

In total we have a lot of new plants recently, we bought a few tomato plants from the Society’s but sadly they died over night once they were planted, even with newspaper at the root ball for moisture. Out of three plants two died and a dark red tomato plant surrived.

The saved plants are some squash, no idea what kinds but I know five sprouted. After that comes three sweet corn  sprouts, sadly I wish more had sprouted but no more did, but luckily I think I have some more seeds that’ll be sowing into my greenhouse again.

We also planted some strawberry corn. Weird sounding I know but it sounds great on the package! What you do is dry it out and then put in airtight container, and after two months you put them in the microwave, and then eat the popcorn off the cob and what has fallen off the cob. There are about nine of these plants and they’ll be cared for very well, trust us on that one!

And next to last we planted continuing growing spinach, this just keeps growing throughout the year. This is another plant that we’ll be keeping an eye on with the luck of Popeye, we’ll have lots and lots of spinach all the year long and into winter.

Finally we have about 25 brussel sprouts growing for the girls and our landlords, since neither of us eat the sprouts. But it’s amazing how many grew have grown in the greenhouse. I just hope most take and grow because the girls love them!

That’s all the newest plants we have, we’re still growing the potatoes, strawberries, rhubarb, onions, garlic, bathtub carrots and a beautiful Golden Delicious Apple tree. There are also two berry bushes growing nicely, we just hope berries are growing on the bushes so we know what we have.

That’s our allotment at the moment, enjoy reading about our continuing adventures as our 2nd year as allotment owners now with chickens!!

allotment, apple, butternut squash, carrots, chickens, flowers, food, garlic, lettuce, onions, peas, peppers, plastic bottles, potatoes, strawberries, sunflowers, tomatoes, tubs, veg, veggies
July 18th, 2011
post by Simon | | 0

>Sunflowers from seeds

>

These are our sunflowers growing nicely, protected by some tires they are growing larger and larger week by week. Each time we look at them we’ve had to thin it out because we planted a few in each pile with just the hope that something grew. We’ve been lucky they were late plants and we could only hope they grew.
sunflower, sunflowers
June 25th, 2011
post by Simon | | 1

>This past week

>After dodging monsoon rains, watching a smoke from a scrap yard fire we was able to get a lot done with help from a couple of friends (one is now on the list to hopefully get 1b)


Bit out of date now (the clump of grass closest to the camera is gone) but this is what can happen if you just dig


Like this :)


We was given 7 lavender clippings by Brian so they get lined up next to the door to the hut.


Apart from the old asbestos roof which is to be removed and replaced by the council the building itself is quite sound, was told by the council that it’s available to us to use as a shed. According to one of the older allotment holders we’ve now got the most secure sheds in the site (well after a door is on) bit of cleaning up the guy before us allowed fly tipping so there is a bit to deal with.

Potatoes are growing well got some more (earlies) as a ‘just in case they grow’, hoping to get some turf so the area in front of the hut looks nice and that it’s safe for the mutts to finally come.

Since the council also dealt with the pile of rubbish and clipped tree I was able to plant some sunflowers along the side of the hut.

allotment, digging, hut, Lavender, planting, plants, potato, shed, sunflowers, Tomato