Spring is such an exciting time, warm breezes full of promise, the smell of damp compost in pots on the windowsills, palm-fulls of little seeds. It's a real time of expectation. This year it's especially important to me since I've found out I'm having a baby in the early Autumn! Enough about me though, on to the gardening!
This year I've bought some v exciting sounding seeds from The Real Seed Catalogue and here are my Russian tomatoes (above)! Named Urbikany they are an early tall bush variety. Last year due to the damp we suffered badly with blight, and these toms are apparently faster to mature in our 'glorious' English climate, so they may avoid blight which often strikes later in the growing season.
Other plants sown at the moment are an Italian green knobbly pumpkin, a spherical courgette, a weirdly shaped squash, a cooler climate melon and some butter bean type runner beans. Also I have seeds for sweet violet and a lovely bush sunflower. This weeks job is get those potatoes in!
More excitement came this week from the first egg from our Crested chicken, Rosie. The Crested are (I think) the same as a Columbine, they are part Cotswold Legbar which is an old free ranging breed with cool pompom head feathers which lays blue/green eggs. The hybrids are being developed to produce a smaller hen that will lay plentiful blue/green eggs. I think the ratio is 80% blue/green to pastel. Look it's blue/green, This pleases me greatly as I really really wanted a blue egg layer!
Another brill thing that's happened lately is that Nath's dad gave us some money to buy a space for more chickens, so we purchased an Eglu Cube in pink. It's very spacious and the hens seem to love it although the oldest ex battery chciken is having a problem getting back up the ladder in the evenings, bless her.
