Debra Manskey

Yesterday, I wrote about teaching Food Gardening so I thought it was only right and proper to give you all a little update on my own urban farm.

While it’s undoubtedly spring and the soil is starting to warm, I suspect my patch is about two or three weeks behind where we were last year. Raspberries were setting fruit this time last year and I was getting ready to lift the main garlic crop for curing. At the moment, all the berries are only just flowering and the early garlic (my main crop) is nowhere near ready yet. Nevertheless, there’s bright spots – it looks like I’ll get my first Tayberries this summer ❤

Tayberry flower

Also, we’ve had a rough entry into spring, with very warm weather followed by snow and a few very cold nights in the past month. This didn’t seem to hurt my young apricot tree, which has quite a few fruit on this year. The plum an nectarine are loaded and I’m thrilled that my pollination plan with my 2nd year dwarf apple trees worked a treat. All four trees are looking incredibly healthy and all carrying fruit. I’ll be thinning it pretty drastically to encourage stronger trees and discourage biennial fruiting but I’m very, very happy to be finally looking at a few home grown apples at the end of summer.

Baby Royal Gala apples

Because of the up and down weather, I haven’t planted out this summer’s tomatoes yet, but I decided to grow them on a bit longer in folded paper pots. It’s a really good way to use up newspaper and come planting time (this weekend I hope), I can put the whole thing in the ground and avoid transplant shock.

Mama Mia tomatoes, waiting for the sunshine

As you can see above, I mark the plant name and the date they were potted up as I tend to lose plant tags. If anyone’s interested, I’ll write up some instructions on this great little paper recycling tip.

In the meantime, the zucchini’s are in the ground (most of them survived the cold) carrots are starting to size up, the late garlic that I’ll be lifting in the new year looks fabulous but a good deal of the early garlic that I normally dig up in November looks like it’s rotted in the ground. Incredibly distressing! Also, the Snow Peas were decimated by slugs this year but the potatoes are looking great.

Through it all, the chickens just keep on laying eggs! Considering most of my ladies are quite elderly (4 years and older) they really are quite remarkable and I’m struggling to keep up with them!

Madame Mephisto

So that’s all for today – I’m off to bed early tonight as I have to do my six monthly blood test tomorrow morning and I’m helping out with a fencing job afterwards. Sometime tomorrow I have to make bread, write a story draft for uni, do my prep for teaching work on Friday and maybe do some catch up with weekly work for uni. (I’m tired just thinking about it!)

Take care friends and see you soon ❤

Sunset from my backdoor