Anglesey Smallholder

The polytunnel is getting into full swing now!  The two courgette plants are doing well, both heavily loaded with fruits and still producing flowers.  Most of them will be picked early, but I think that I will allow one or two of them to go over and swell into marrows.  A few of them have been lost to slugs – once the protective outer skin is nibbled away then they rot very quickly – however there are still plenty remaining.

The very first tomato has reddened.  Some varieties are doing better than others, but all of them have at least some fruit on.  I must keep more careful track of the varieties next year – this year everything was thrown into the border in somewhat of a hurry.  I’ve also picked the first two cucumbers.  I think I may have left it a little late, not realising that early picking encourages the production of more fruit, however I can see that there are several tiny cucumbers on there waiting their turn.  At the time they were planted, I didn’t have any canes for them to run up so I stretched a length of rope from the ceiling for the plant to climb up.  I didn’t have quite enough rope either, so one plant had to settle for CAT5 computer networking cable.  It turns out that computer cable is a bit too slippery for the cucumber’s tendrils, so the poor plant is left in a kind of puddle on the ground.  That hasn’t prevented it from fruiting, however.  The spring onions are ready for eating, and I’ve planted out 40 leeks that are now coming along nicely.

The weather here has been a little unpredictable of late.  The lovely spell of sunshine was broken last week by a short thunder storm.  The wind was fierce, and caused damage to both the chicken coop and the polytunnel.  The coop was pushed off its stand, and the lid was torn off its hinges.  I pity the poor chickens that were inside it at the time, they must have been quite scared.  The damage to the polytunnel was fortunately not severe – some of the plastic came away from around the door frame.  It should be quite simple to re-insert it into the door frame and batten it down.

Egg production is currently way down.  A little while ago I started finding broken eggs, and was blaming one of the chickens, however I’ve since discovered that magpies are going into the coop and stealing the eggs.  I’ve seen them go in there on more than one occasion – cheeky little thieves.  I can’t really think of anything I can do about this, so I’m just trying to check the coop regularly enough that I get there before the magpies do.