First fruits

It's hard to believe that the orchard has only been in place for a year. It's coming on well and this year we're getting a few fruit forming on the trees.


Apricots:

Clapp's pears:

Meteor cherries:

Apples (these are Spartans, I think):


Stanley plums (which look exactly the same as the greengages right now):


The gooseberries are looking good, too:


In one corner of the orchard Mike is working on a bigger outside run for the chicks. The longer term plan is to allow the chickens to range freely in the orchard for at least some of the time. I hope they'll keep the bugs down. I need to train them to go back into the run when I want them to though, before I will feel comfortable about doing that.

Rain please

The seasonal pond behind the house is drying up fast. It is packed with gasping tadpoles. Last year I took bucket loads of tadpoles up to the other pond when this happened, but I'm not going to this year. If these frogs are stupid enough to reproduce in this pond, then I really feel that natural selection should take its course.

There are some impressive cumulonimbus clouds around tonight, though, so with any luck they will produce some rain to add to the utterly measly 5.2mm (0.2 inches) of rain that we've had in June so far.

Vegetable blooms

The greenhouse tomatoes are noticeably bigger than those in the garden and are just beginning to flower. This one is an unknown variety given to me by a friend. It is supposed to produce huge tomatoes, which I can well believe, looking at the size of the flowers. I've labelled these plants 'Cyril's Jumbos'.


Early in the spring, I sowed some broad beans in the greenhouse. I wasn't sure how well they'd do in there, but insects have managed to find the flowers and there are tiny beans forming on each of the plants. My crop of broad beans last year was negligible, so I hope this year I'll have more than a mouthful.


Last year's 'three sisters' bed was a bit of a failure as the corn did badly. This year it seems to be the turn of the runner beans to disappoint. Only three of them have come up (it was two year old seed, but even so...). Last week there only appeared to be one, so the situation isn't quite as dire as I had thought. I must be sure to save some seed from the beans this year, as I haven't any left now. The first batch of pumpkin and squash seeds for this bed also failed to germinate. I had them on the floor of the greenhouse and am wondering whether rodents might have got to them: I had the same problem with the peas in the spring. I re-sowed the squashes and put them up off the floor and this second batch have germinated fine.

The coolish weather has suited the peas (another rather disappointing crop last year). They've been flowering for a week now, and some small peapods are forming on the plants.


The chicks seem to be enjoying their new home. These two were inspecting the nest boxes this evening. The one we're calling 'Cocky' is becoming very friendly now and will jump up on your lap and sit still to be stroked. The female ones are more timid. My daughter and I find them fascinating, but the males in the family aren't particularly bothered about them. As my step-mother thought they were intriguing too (and my father didn't), I wonder if this is a general trend. Are chickens just a chick thing?

3 x 2 x 4

The chicks looked so small next to the perches in their new house that I wasn't really expecting them to use them yet. But by this morning they'd worked it out.


What remarkably bright little things they are. The one in the middle looks like she's having a good nap.

Barn conversion

Most of the things I've read about chicken coops assume that you're either building one from scratch or have bought a ready-made one. The Eglu, for example, seems to be the in-thing for suburban chickens. Our situation was a bit different, as we planned to convert one of the five stalls in our smaller barn into a home fit for chickens.

As the previous occupants of the barn were a lot bigger than chickens (limousin cattle), this involved a fair bit of work to ensure that the chickens wouldn't escape and that the coop would be safe from rats and any possible predators. The chickens were getting too big for their box, so we had to get this finished.

Mike worked hard all day yesterday on this and I joined in when I got home from work. I'm really impressed with the end result. You can see how we've built around the original structure below. The dark wood is what was there before and the lighter coloured parts are the bits we've added. We still need to add a lip (and maybe a perch) to the front of the nest boxes, but as the chickens won't be laying for about four months, this isn't urgent! There's room to add another layer of nest boxes on top of the first ones, if our flock expands in the future. There's certainly room for more chickens in this space.


We've put chicken wire above the edges of the stalls, so that there is still a fair bit of daylight coming in from the rest of the barn. The stall has a window in it too, which isn't shown in these pictures.


The nest boxes were cunningly situated against a gap in the original stall fence, so that we could put in this really neat hatch behind them. This will mean we can collect eggs from the nest boxes without going into the coop itself.


We introduced the chicks to their new home last night. They look ridiculously small in there now, but I'm sure they'll soon grow into it.

Shake a tail feather

It's been too cold to let the chicks out for a couple of days, but today was warm enough and they got a run in their pen. Their heads still look a bit scruffy, but the rest of their bodies are feathering up beautifully:


I hadn't realised how delicate their feathers would be. Here's a close up for the other feather-fanciers out there:


Below is the chick that my dad's wife has dubbed 'Cocky' because of our suspicions about its gender. Are we right, or is this just a fast developer compared to the rest?


Mike picked up some plywood this afternoon so we're ready for the next big job, which is to convert one of the stalls in the small barn into a chicken home for these creatures.

More luck than judgement

The small cultivated areas of the front garden aren't parts I pay a great deal of attention to. They're poor relations, really, to the vegetable gardens and the greenhouse. I do occasionally sow and plant things there: mostly herbs, salad greens and flowers, but there isn't any sort of a master plan to the area (as the post about the lilies-of-the-valley probably illustrates!).

May is a good month for the small stretch of garden in front of the veranda, though, despite the lack of attention. In early- to mid-May the tulips look lovely:


And then at the end of May the irises (planted in our first year and a gift from our neighbour) take over:


This year I managed a small piece of forward planning and sowed some sweet peas indoors (a bit too early, to be honest). I had a mental picture of them growing up the front of the veranda and drenching the area with their perfume. I put them out at the end of March (seven groups of three plants in each) at the back of this bed. This is how one of the groups looked then:


This particular bed gets a lot of sun and is quite warm, as it is next to the house. Otherwise this would have been far too early to plant them outside (as it was, I think I was pushing my luck). For a long time they did nothing at all, but now, at last, they're beginning to grow away well and perhaps the reality will match up with my imagination one of these days.

Lily-of-the-Valley

I've never had Lily-of-the-Valley (Convallaria majalis) in a garden of mine before. Somehow I associated it (and Sandalwood) with 1970s talcum powders - and didn't really think of it as a real plant. It certainly loves the semi-shadiness of the small square of garden under the ash tree beside our front path. It's becoming a bit of a thug there, to be honest, but I love the contrast of the white and green, so I don't see myself doing much about it.

Playing the tourist

My dad and his wife have been staying with us for a few days. It's been great to have a bit of a break and to explore the County from a tourist's point of view. We visited a winery, cider-maker's and a brewery on Friday, went to the Macauley House museum's Lilac Festival on Saturday and off the County to Presqu'ile Provincial Park yesterday. In between the trips we got the tomatoes planted, did a fair bit of weeding, drank generous quantities of local wine and beer (we felt we should show our support for local producers) and, of course, built the chicken run.

We also got to go round the County's first ever roundabout a few times on our various trips. I thought it might seem a bit strange to go round a roundabout anti-clockwise, but it didn't, and the other drivers seemed to be coping well with this new way of negotiating a junction. There was a two-hour public meeting about it a month or so ago. I still can't imagine how they filled two hours just talking about a roundabout, but I'm afraid wasn't sufficiently interested to attend the meeting and find out!

Girls' day out (or perhaps not)

The chicks are getting big enough to spend some time outside when it's warm, so Mike and my dad got building an enclosure for them yesterday:


In the afternoon the chicks had their first outside excursion.


It was great to watch them explore and to get a close look at them in daylight. Although the closer look did raise a question in my mind. Most of the chicks look like this one, with big fluffy tails and pale combs:


But the boldest chick looks a bit different. It has a darker comb (not very obvious from this angle) and the tail is a lot smaller. I'm beginning to suspect that this one is not a girl chick at all.

Greenhouse greens

It's been a while since I mentioned the raised beds in the greenhouse: a whole four weeks, in fact. Things have been coming along nicely since that last photo. Here is the first bed, full of salad greens:

The second bed has lots of peppers and some aubergines and cucumbers in it. I was also using it as a nursery bed for cauliflower, broccoli and romanesca.


They were all a nice size so today I've transplanted them into their permanent positions outside (Mike had tilled the lower vegetable garden beds for me, so the new soil we've added to those is now well incorporated. I hope this means we won't get last year's waterlogging problems). They're now looking a bit limp and sad, but should perk up again soon.


In the third bed are more peppers and a variety of tomato plants. These are growing on well.


I'll be putting my other tomatoes out into their final positions in the garden later this week. Mike also dug out two new beds in the upper vegetable garden today, so a lot of the tomatoes will end up in those, I think. Then even if the lower vegetable garden does get waterlogged again, at least the tomatoes won't end up like last year's sorry specimens.

Chick pic

Here are the chicks, one week older. They're developing little tails now and the feathers on their wings are quite well grown.

We had to rehouse them in a bigger box, as last night they knocked over the water container and flooded the base of the old one. The water container is now on an upturned plate, which makes it more stable and also prevents them kicking wood shavings (and even less savoury items) into it. We've elevated the feed container as well. Being somewhat dim, the chicks would kick shavings over the food and then not realise there was any food there. The feeder is now sitting on two old egg boxes and is relatively free of shavings. I'm hoping the egg boxes will give them inspiration for their future role!

Vegevangelism

I spent much of today ensconced in Deseronto Public Library, attempting to sell some of my young vegetable plants to people. The day started well, with local vegetable expert Vicki Emlaw (who runs a company called Vicki's Veggies) being interviewed on CBC as we were driving over. She was explaining about how wonderful heirloom varieties of vegetables were (audio file on CBC's site). And guess what I was selling?

I sold nearly all of the tomato plants (Purple Russian, Riesentraube and Amish Paste)and most of the peppers (Cayenne and Tomato). The three 'edible baskets' of Red Robin tomatoes and mixed salad leaves all went, too. The cosmos plants were popular, but the red cabbages (I sowed far too many this year!) were a complete failure: not a single one sold.

It was pleasing to have sold the plants, but the really fun part of the day was getting to talk to people who have never grown vegetables before and persuading them to give it a go. Quite a few initially-dubious window-shoppers went away clutching a tomato plant or two.

Rabbit-repellent corn

I had a bit of bother with last year's attempt at a Mohawk-style Three Sisters bed. The corn part of the partnership just didn't work very well. At the time I blamed poor germination, but later wondered whether it was the fault of those cute little rabbits that were lurking on the fringes of the vegetable garden last year. This time round I decided to sow the corn in cardboard tubes in the greenhouse to give them a head start and perhaps make them less tasty for the furry blighters. Using the tubes means that the roots will have minimal disturbance when they go into the ground. The seeds had a 100% germination rate, which seems to bear out the rabbit-muching theory.

The weather is looking promising now (no sign of a frost in the forecast), so I've put the first sowing out into one of the lower vegetable garden beds. These have all been supplemented with extra soil this year in an attempt to prevent a repeat run of last year's tomato-drowning catastrophe.


The runner beans have been sown there too and the squash plants were sown in the greenhouse, enjoying a more sheltered start.

We enjoyed our first rhubarb harvest last night. One of the three plants that were planted in the tyre garden last year died, but the other two are looking healthy enough. You can see the asparagus plants are enjoying being in their tyres, too!


I've transferred the plants I hope to sell tomorrow into plastic boxes. Mostly they are heirloom tomatoes and peppers, but there are also some red cabbage seedlings and these cosmos plants:


Purple Russian are THE tomato plant to have this year, I understand. ;-)

The chicks are coming along fine. They are starting to look a bit tatty as their feathers are coming through. I'm sure they're growing, but that is hard to detect when you're looking at them every day. Where there is a noticeable difference is in their combs: those do look a bit bigger now than they did on Monday. You can really see why they're called combs, too!

Chicks (and other stuff)

The chicks I'd ordered for the end of the month arrived a little early. Mike had a call on Friday to say that there were a dozen Buff Orpington females left over from the May 1 hatching and would we like them? We said 'yes' and Mike swung into action, buying chick feed, a heat lamp and a feeder and water-holder for them.

I was travelling back from England on Sunday, so Mike arranged with Jason Cain (the man who runs Performance Poultry), to pick them up today. It wasn't very far to go - the farm is only 7km (4.4 miles) away. So, here are our twelve blonde chicks:

They spend their time eating, drinking, sleeping and preening (and cheeping). Their down is gorgeously soft:

Other things have been moving pretty quickly, too. Here were some of the heirloom tomatoes, hot peppers and an edible hanging basket (the contents are edible, not the container) on 28 April in the greenhouse:

And, less than two weeks later, this is how they're all looking now:

I'm hoping to sell these plants in Deseronto this weekend at the town's Sidewalk Sale event, so if you're in the area, pop by and say hello!

The tyre/tire garden asparagus, which was planted last year, had also really taken off in the last week. So much so, that despite dire warnings from my inner head gardener (does anyone else have one of those?), who sternly told me that I shouldn't cut any until next year, I harvested a few spears tonight and we had them for tea. Delicious.

Summer?

Today was the first day of summer. The garden furniture was retrieved from the barn and used for the first al fresco meal. Herbs and onions were harvested from the garden for a potato salad and the seed potatoes were planted in their trenches. Tree swallows are nesting in the martin house and, in the barn, an Eastern Kingbird* has taken over last year's barn swallow nest.

In the orchard, the apricot is in full blossom. It has been a wonderful day.


*Also known by the rather unkind Latin name of Tyrannus tyrannus.