Last weekend was lovely. I sat down in the sun to plant some seeds and all the kids joined me. They really got into the gardening and started planting their own seeds in pots, and also sectioned off their own little plots. They then worked really hard digging and raking the soil and planting seeds. They planted peas, french beans, runner beans, carrots, chard, fennel and beetroot. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they are going to have some success, and that the pesky slugs don’t munch through all their hard work.
Our youngest daughter who is 8 also decided to make a mud face. Kids are just so wonderfully free in their thinking. I think it’s brilliant.
Herbs really are at their best at this time of year. Even the woody herbs, such as rosemary and thyme, have got beautiful tender green leaves. Now is the time to use as many as you can in your cooking. We’ve currently got rosemary, thyme, sage, chives, parsley and mint, and we use lots of each. The only one that didn’t make it through the winter was our oregano. I cut it right back after the snow, but there is still no sign of any growth. It doesn’t look dead all the way through however, so we’ll leave it a couple more weeks just in case. Our herbs seem to double in size each year. Rosemary and sage leaves are excellent whatever the size of the plant, but we find thyme can get very woody as it grows larger, and so tend to replant it every 2-3 years. We’ve currently got 3 small thyme in pots that we grew from seed, ready to replace the large one in the veg patch.
Not only do we harvest from our garden, we also like to harvest from the sea, and last weekend’s harvest was very exciting indeed. We were in Dorset visiting my parents. Sunday afternoon turned out lovely and sunny so we headed for a beautiful bay. Charlie (aged 9) did a spot of shore fishing, but without any luck. David went one step further, donned his wetsuit and entered the cold cold sea (9°) to see what he could find. After about an hour he could hear something knocking together, and it took him a minute or so to realise that it was his own teeth chattering! A couple of large mullet escaped him, but then he spotted a spider crab clinging to the rocks. He had fun trying to get it in his bag whilst the crab wrapped it’s legs around his hand and nipped him with his claws. This is the first spider crab he’s found, in fact his very first catch from the sea, so we were all very excited. We are hoping for many more spider crabs as the meat is beautifully sweet. We only got a morsel each as there were 8 of us and we all loved it! Spider crabs come into shore around May and June, so this one was quite an early arrival. If you fancy one, grab a mask and snorkel (a wetsuit helps too) and get searching. There is a minimum landing size of 12cm (female) and 13cm (male) from ‘nose to tail’, so don’t keep anything smaller than that. We’re not sure how to tell the difference so we go for 13cm and above.
Our kale and purple-sprouting broccoli have both come to an end. The kale is in full flower and there are no more spears on the PSB. We feel slightly cheated out of PSB this year. Last year we had a 
You always seem to get one troublesome hen. Ours kept escaping from the pen and wandering all over the garden. We needed to find out whether it was the same hen, so we tied some string around her leg to identify her. Sure enough, it was the same hen and she is now called Stringy (funny how they pick their names up). She is the Houdini of the chicken world. We’ve gone over and over the fence and have no idea how she is getting out. And one of her wings is now so short that surely she can’t be flying out. Anyway, with our tender young veg on it’s way we couldn’t afford to have a greedy hen wandering about, so into the ark she went. We put Croppy in there as well to keep her company (more about that later). After a couple of weeks we felt sure Stringy would have forgotton how to get out, so we put her back in the run with the others. Within 1 hour she had led the Great Escape and we found all 6 hens wandering around the veg patch. Back to the ark it was. Since then none of the others have escaped. It’s obviously just in Stringy’s nature to get out. They’ve got a lovely big patch to scratch about in, but it’s just not enough for a hen like Stringy!
Anyone who has a shed or a greenhouse is likely to have their own little objects that they particularly like, or that make it that little bit more personal. Here are ours.
The greenhouse is fully planted now. All the chillies, tomatoes and melons have moved from the windowsill into their final home. They were getting rather tall and certainly needed to move. Some of the melon plants were even flowering. Tomato plants often do get a bit long, but the good thing about them is that you can bury the stalk in the soil when you plant them so that they are a more sensible height. The tomatoes and melons are planted directly in the ground, and the chillies are in pots. David also divided the lemongrass and put that into 3 pots. We’re hoping that this year it is going to get large enough for us to use. The strawberries we’ve got in the greenhouse (to give them an early start) are coming on very nicely. They are an early variety anyway (Darlisette) and we’ve got quite a few decent sized strawberries growing.
These salad leaves look good enough to put in a vase on the table. Unfortunately, they just taste too good for that, and so these ended up in the most wonderful egg sandwich. Everything was fresh. We had freshly picked salad, freshly picked chive, freshly laid eggs (although they are a devil to peel when they are very fresh) and freshly baked sourdough. And it was the BEST egg sandwich ever. Sorry no photo, was too busy enjoying!
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