Smallholding 2
7 Supreme Scottish Gardening Blogs Features Square Sparrow. Gardening in Scotland is not for the feint-hearted!.
We were thrilled to be featured in this autumn list of top gardening blogs by the lovely folk at Thompson & Morgan Seeds. Our garden here at The Sparrowholding is still – even after 20 years! – very much a 'work in progress', and we have so much we still want to do.
Nothing to beat vegetables homegrown in a Scottish garden
Our major impediments (and the reason for the sporadic nature of our gardening blog posts!) continue to be time and money, but even though we may have to cut corners at times and not do everything the way we'd like to, we still have the pleasure of tucking into our own produce for six months of the year (from asparagus and fresh herbs in May through to late plums and fresh herbs in early October) – not to mention leeks and parsnips during the winter months. If you’d like to see more of our photos and short videos, do check out our Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts.
Quick shout-out this month for our long-suffering polytunnel, which is a life-saver at times. Literally, a life-saver in mid-April, when it can provide much-needed shelter for newly born lambs, protecting them from sudden spring snow showers and freezing rain. Even our rough-tough Shetland ewes are grateful for a windbreak during the worst of the weather.
Mark you, the little blighters don’t show much appreciation, as the minute they are unleashed in the garden, the first thing they do is try to scale up the side of the polytunnel and put their sharp wee hooves through the plastic. New polytunnel plastic sheeting may be required soon at this rate!
This winter, we’re planning to cut back Vinnie the Vine significantly, as we noticed during our five days in France last summer just how draconian/vicious the pruning of the vines there was. And we presume that in the land of grapes, they know precisely what they are doing. Our hope is that if we follow suit, the savage Gallic approach might help promote the growth of more grapes – a feature that has been significantly lacking in the last couple of years! We’ve had lots of vine and vigorous leaf growth, but very little fruit.
HunterGatherer is sharpening his sheep/vine shears as I write…
https://blog.thompson-morgan.com/7-supreme-scottish-gardening-blogs/
Fifty shades of green in the garden. The mild winter has been kind to plants in the Sparrowholding garden – and to the animals.
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!"