It's all go here ... ...

It has been a some what hectic few weeks, well it always is this time of year, what with getting ready for veg growing, fixing all the stuff in the garden that's been damaged over winter (fences mainly) and general tidying up.
And then there's more of the same at the allotment, I'd have to say though we've done a lot of prep work in order to have a productive year, and of course the chickens are keeping us busy, all of them are now laying eggs, and on average we're getting at least 2 eggs a day and 3 eggs every other day, and the chickens are still young, so egg production may increase a bit over the next few weeks, fresh eggs every morning, can't beat it.

Fresh eggs -

Yum.

 

On the subject of chickens I've made a few adjustments to their accommodation since they first moved in, the coop and run now have an extra 3 foot section, that has a door (makes life easier) and the run section now has a roof, which can be removed on sunny days, I only built it because the chickens really dislike the rain, well ours do.

Door section -

Makes things easier.

 

With the roof on -

The roof gives them some shelter.

I have also sectioned off the bottom part of the garden where their coop is, so now they have even more space in which to do chicken related stuff, so far none have escaped (fingers crossed they won't start trying) the kids are still (after 4 weeks) very into chickens, they spend most of their time with them now, helping them dig up worms and such like.

New fencing to contain chickens -

They have already looked at it with a 'we can get over that' eye.

 One of the major jobs I really wanted to get done was the green house, for the last few years we've had one of those metal framed things with a plastic cover, and for the last few years the cover has fallen apart, it's like the plastic has degraded, so this year I decided enough was enough, I'm not going to buy another cover for it, and so I covered it in wood (from the massive pile of pallets I had) well some of it, it's got a plastic roof and windows on two sides.

Used to look like this (only green) -

Not much, but it worked.

 

Basically what I did was fix planks of wood to the metal frame, and I've also added a little extra support so the thing doesn't fall down, I'm happy to report it's quite sturdy and seems to be working well, and it was given a coat of green paint by my lovely wife.

New green house -

Excuse the bins.

 You can see how it's put together, I've just replaced the plastic cover with wood, I had to change the roof slightly, but on the plus side we now have an extra water collection device, which is good seeing as they are banning hoses in this neck of the woods, I just need a new waterbutt or some kind of container.

The other side of the green house -

It gets quite a lot of light.

 The door is now a door, rather than a flap of plastic you roll up -

A proper door.

In all it's cost about £30 to fix the green house, I only had to buy the plastic sheeting, the whole thing is much stronger, and I can get more stuff in it now because I can add more shelves.
We've already started some things off, like turnips,broccoli,tomatoes,squashes and a load of other stuff.

I also made some small boxes to fit on one of the walls which we've started growing radishes in and small chantenay carrots.

Wall boxes -

Really easy to make.

  You might guess that we are trying to use the spaces we have in the best way possible, and this shows that even if you don't have a garden a couple of wall boxes can be used to grow a wide range of things.

And lastly the allotment is already in production, well it will be when the stuff grows, I planted a few rows of spuds at the beginning of March, about 60 spuds in all, and we've managed to get most of the plot dug over and ready for planting, we also put in about 5 rows of carrots,6 rows of peas (more to go in later on) a shed load of onions, some parsnips and some celeriac, which if you haven't eaten is very tasty cooked, it's also nice raw in some homemade coleslaw, I'm sure I've planted some other stuff as well (brain like a sieve) we have however got some interesting stuff to grow this year, not that spuds and such like aren't interesting, we have some purple carrots, yellow tomatoes, yellow cucumbers, which are called lemon cucumbers, because they grow ball shaped rather than long and thin, we've also got some spaghetti squashes to grow along with luffa's (loofahs) and even some liquorice plants.

The spud rows -

Much more than we planted last year.

And that's about it really, other than loads of gardening we've been looking after chickens and trying to get into gear for the spring and summer, I'll keep you posted on the progress of the garden and the allotment, and anything else we get up to, I have also managed to move my shop site to another provider (it's not quite finished yet) and I've also been turning some new stuff, so if you have a spare minute go and have a look and see what you think - www.the-shed-and-beyond.co.uk (opens in new window)

Thanks for reading.