Four seasons: before and after

We're coming up to our co-op anniversary.

Remember this? 

One year on, here we are, all dug over, planted, weeded, watered, harvested and eaten. So much easier starting this time round!

The lie of the land in June

Everything is growing. Everything. Thistles and all. Here are some pictures. Above, chives, red and green lettuces, jerusalem artichokes in the background, and plenty of weeds.

Cate planting out the new internet-order veg box arrivals. The things you can get on the web these days! Front left the potatoes, to the right the lettuce cold frame. Behind that more lettuce, peas and root vegetables, including the radishes below.

Lettuces and peas - I could have sworn they were planted with enough space inbetween plants, but it seems not! Had better start harvesting every second one soon...

Our first zucchini (courgette) - with a wee bit further to go - and the first nasturtium flower of the year! Which ended up in a salad. Ruthlessly.

Rabbit fencing at the co-op

OK, here's my top-two of the to-do list:
Job1: get over how many jobs are to be done asap
Job2: put a line between where the resident rabbits will be and won't be - the latter being on our veg patches. So, 3 strainer posts, one gate, 5 fence posts and about 100m of dug trench and hung, tensioned and part-buried chicken wire and 4 days later, we're nearly there.

Here's a picture of the hole Malcolm and David's dug to plant the first gate post - temporarily filled with Cate. Malcolm, that hole really has to be deeper!

And here's the finished product - Cate has been replaced by the left-hand gate post, you'll be glad to hear.

The rabbit fence diaries:

Day 1 - the first 12 metres of trench and fence:

David hard at it, and - ahem - posing with chicken wire. I never thought I'd write that.

Our first co-op plants

With rabbit fencing begun and ongoing, we've concentrated on putting out the less tasty plants:
4 rows of pink fir potatoes (from the Castle Douglas health food shop organic sprouted pile for 50p), one row each for Sarah, David, Cate and Malcolm. We planted the sprouting potatoes in deep grooves, covered with horse manure and kept soil aside to fill in as the plants grow to encourage more root growth. David dug in 3 further rows of charlotte potatoes a few days later (the bolted variety off the reduced shelf at homebase)

We - David and Sarah - dug up a good square metre of broad-leaf wild garlic plants while on holiday in Dumfries&Galloway, and transported them back in three baking trays we had brought along. They travelled back precariously balanced on top of our bags in the back of our miniature car, in sweltering heat - well, not bad for Scotland anyway. The two hour trip back to Edinburgh with open windows was - well - aromatic.

Nenya spent a couple of afternoons tending to the bulbs and distributing them in the far-end woodland patch. I feel a recipe coming on!

On the way back, we stopped by David's dad's place, dug up a large potato patch in his back garden to get them started, borrowed a couple of tarpaulins and offered to thin out the rhubarb patch. Here's one of the six root pieces now in our "pumpkin patch":

First frosts at KB

There's no doubting it: winter is upon us. One of the first frosts of the year has covered the plots in crisp ice shards. The leaf mulch pile is steaming in the sunshine as it defrosts, and that last marrow is destined for the oven. The nasturtium isn't looking too hot either. It's time for rest, hot chocolates and DVDs.