Holla Hivers. This is another garden journal entry here on the hive block chain. A lot has come along nicely since my last one. I had to leave town for ten days and hired a local lad to water and what not while I was gone. Kid got covid so had to self isolate, so the garden sat dry while I was away. However a lot did ok despite the neglect.
The leeks definitely need thinning now. The idea was to have some alliums growing through the winter to pull on as and when the kitchen required them. I know I should have thinned them sooner, but I intend to eat the ones I pull and was sort of waiting on them to get to a young edible stage.
Despite so many of the wild flowers I sowed into the edge of the hill fort now dying off with the approach of autumn the bees are still loving them. The buzzing is insane when I go out in the morning, almost deafening. It's been nice to give them a friendly habitat this year. As we got such a late start here this year we had to split our focus between food production, and promoting our little ecosystem with the odd helping hand.
My beans took the hardest hit in my absence. I did manage to get some harvest off of them, but the no rain or water did impact their yield in the end. It wasn't nice to come back from holiday to find the poor girls in that state though. However I managed to get a couple bowls off and blanched for the deep freezer.
All in all not a total loss. Again the garden was neglected for over a week of dry weather, so I was happy just to salvage some. The cucumbers didn't do so well either. This lone fellow in the back was pulled for salad when I got home. Having said that, before I left I was pulling two or three off a day and eating them in salads and random dishes. They've produced a lot this year so it's nearing end time. Can't grumble really. I haven't had to buy any this year which was the point of growing them.
The squashes have went gang busters this year. I've got a lot of baking to do with them over the next few days which should be fun. I tend to make zucchini loafs and cakes and freeze them for the winter. Basically I've got a lot of kitchen time on approach. I've mainly been eating the young ones, but I've let some get big for baking uses. The pumpkins are on their way as well which is exciting.
A big thing we focused on when we gave the garden a face lift was creating a healthy habitat for the birds and insects we have here. We live in the middle of an AONB (area of outstanding natural beauty), and people come from all over the country to camp, watch our wild life, hike, etc. Over the past year we have had more and more guests call our garden home including several families of Robins that have raised their young in the hedges on our slopes.
I spent a lot of money and time cat proofing the garden so they have had a safe spot to call home. It's not uncommon to have them flit onto you while you're outside weeding or just pop up to see what's going on. The little fellow below kept landing on me then darting off so we couldn't get a picture. In the end we had to settle on close ups for which he was more than happy to oblige. None of these pictures were zoomed by the way. We just held the phone up to him.
Well guys that's it for this post. Just a quickie really. I've been away for a bit so though I have been playing around on the block chain, I haven't sat down to post in a while. I'm going to be throwing up some more over the next couple days as my schedule opens up. If you made it this far thank you so much for popping by, and as always looking forward to your posts and projects. :)
Image credits: My phone