Wearing well

Organic chicken manure. Dual-purpose food, both for the soil and the dog.

I’m out in the garden looking at the raised beds today. These planks of wood stuck into the wet ground for the last five years are wearing extremely well. They have been moved a few times, unceremoniously thrown onto the back of trailers, but have held both themselves together and the soil inside them. We have noticed a real lack of worm activity in our soil this year; maybe they are hiding deeper as it seems pretty dry at the moment. The compost bin seem to be void of our slimy friends too, hopefully the numbers should increase soon with the warmer weather.

KEEPING THE WEEDS DOWN
I have been putting weed-suppressing webbing down on one of the beds. We were given some red onions a few weeks ago and although we said we were only going to be growing vegetables that grow upwards this year, we thought a few salad onions would be useful. I made a few small holes in the webbing then pushed the baby onions into these. The sprouting bulbs will hopefully push their way out to the light, leaving us free of weeding for the season. As they grow I am sure we can make good use of the space in between the onions by planting broccoli and kale. To clear the bed completely I pulled up some old leeks as they were tiny and aren’t doing anything as they were left too long last season before being transplanted. Still they were pretty tasty in a soup with the last of the brussel tops and a few rogue spuds that had been left in the ground over the winter. There are even see some old parsnips surviving even after the soil has been turned. I dug a few up to check them out and added them to a stew. I had to cut off quite a bit of rust though.

GETTING STUCK IN
Before putting the webbing over the onion bed I forked in loads of organic chicken pellets. Unfortunately the new dog seems to be rather fond of them and as I pushed the fabric down around the bed, she was scratching and digging the webbing up and chewing on the hard smelly nuggets. The only solution is to get the pepper out and sprinkle it everywhere. This sounds a bit cruel, but it is doing a good job stopping her sitting in the plant pots and also stopping her eating through the internet cable outside the front door. I just have to remember to sprinkle more down after it rains.

I’ve never had a dog like this one for eating things. Only last week she was leaving us deposits that contained half a roll of silver foil, which would no doubt been more uncomfortable for her as it was inconvenient for us to tidy up after her. The other day she also got through nearly a jumbo bag of guinea pig food that she had managed to push onto the floor in the garage. Not wanting to go into too much detail but we were left with messes in the kitchen that resembled Muckish, Sleeve Sneacht and Mount Errigal complete with small seeds that resembled the rocks and topped off with the remains of the silver foil to give a look of the last of the snow. Not very pleasant, especially for Julie as she was the one that cleared it up.

CLEARING THE SHED
My other job earlier today was to clear out the shed. Where on earth does all of the rubbish come? I found ten pairs of Wellingtons in sizes none of us are, old mouldy spuds, leaky fishtanks, old cardboard and everything else that hasn’t had it’s own place over the long winter. I have also been finding my precious tools scattered around the place too. I am one of those people that enjoy seeing the painted silhouette of tools on the wall like in a mechanics garage complete with a hook to hang them from. It shows you at a glance if something hasn’t been put back. I haven’t got around to doing that just yet, so when I need my secatuers, it usually takes me a while to track them down.

No one takes the credit for moving the tools around of course, so it’s obviously the new dog that’s responsible. She gets the blame for everything. There was a day over the Easter holidays when the dog managed to get one of the lad’s large chocolate eggs out of the box in the front room. It then proceeded to open the gold foil around the egg and scrunch it up into a small ball then eat all of the chocolate, leaving not a speck on the floor. I got the blame of course, but I know it’s a personal battle between us to be top dog.