Despite the odd few days of frost and snow here and there, we’ve had a fairly mild winter here in Kinross-shire, and the plants which are still growing around the garden are looking well for this time of the year. Of course, the only slight concern is that a plethora of pesky horticultural pests that might have been killed off by prolonged periods of frost will instead have survived the winter and are currently lurking in wait under a pile of leaves, intent on munching their way through our produce very soon!
The bay leaf plant is HG’s pride and joy!
HunterGatherer hauled the big red tubs he’s been using as giant planters (in his war against chickweed) out of the polytunnel over for the winter. The bay leaf is looking particularly bright-eyed at the moment, and the rosemary is also in rude health. Our last red cabbage is waiting to be cut for supper very soon, and we’ve been enjoying curly purple kale right through the winter.
Our poor leeks have a long way to grow yet before I can make my favourite leek and potato soup…
The slugs may have had the outer leaves, but we’ll be having the best part of the red cabbage!
HG bought this herb at the garden centre (“It’s supposed to be very good for you, apparently,” quote he…), but then he couldn’t remember what it was called – he thinks “hyssop”.
It may not look much, but this is one of my favourite plants because it is so complex and fascinating. The tree onion has stems you can chop and eat, produces bulbs you can eat and even self-propagates (hence the name “walking onion”).
Meanwhile, on the animal front, Ivan the Shetland tup (or ‘ram’, depending on which part of the country you live in) spent a happy eight weeks amid his fleecy harem in the hill paddock over the winter, but last week – no doubt much to Romeo’s grand chagrin – the seven ewes were put back into the front paddock.
“We’re waiting for our breakfast – get a move on, mum!”
We’ll have far fewer ladies lambing this spring, as we sold half a dozen of our ewes (as well as almost all of our lambs) this year. We did, however, keep four of our own female lambs and have bought in two ‘full pedigree’ newbie ewes – the alliteratively named Juno and Jinja.
Three heads are better than one!
Fortunately for us, Farmerbruv’s horse feed Blox are equally popular with our woolly jumpers. They have tried out all the different types and their favourites are definitely the Timothy Hay Blox and the JustGrass ones. When it’s blowing a hoolie outside, it’s great just to be able to nip outside quickly and throw a few Blox into the field from the fenceside, knowing that (unlike the loose hay) it’s not going to disappear, airborne, into the Kingdom of Fife within a matter of minutes.
New acquisition Jinja (on the left) is sniffing her first-ever Halley’s Blox. Wasn’t long before she was tucking in with the rest 🙂
Socks is putting her foot down: “It’s my Blox!”
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