Poppies, Plants and Polytunnels

I'm just sitting here in the car with all the windows open and the door open. I've just finished off in the garden. I've watered the polytunnel, the raised beds. I've given them a good soaking today with the hose pipe. I helped with the calves. George came so I let him and Phil get on with the feeding. We're not doing that much feeding now because we've got two bays who have been weaned. They still occasionally shout for milk but they're eating lots of corn, barley straw and hay and the first two bays will probably be weaned fairly soon and Phil was talking about getting them outside so that will be happening imminently.

We've still got Tiny who's the smallest and her twin is quite small so they'll be on milk for a little while longer and they were also late addition so they're a few weeks behind the first lot and we've got another bay next to them. Those calves are not so small but they'll probably be a similar age to Tiny and then we've got the two at the end. So this morning I fed and watered the two at the end and I always do it in two stages because they never have any water when I come so I give them water and quite often they'll have drunk most of it before we finish so I'll go and top their water up again and I'll give them some barley straw which they absolutely love. I think all of them really like the barley straw and then when we've finished everything I'll go and give them some more barley straw. So yeah kind of do that in two phases.

One of the calves yesterday wasn't looking that great but it's perked up today. Phil gave it an injection yesterday and that seems to have done the trick. So yeah everybody's looking good. It's beautiful here today and it's really warm. I'm not sure what the temperature is. It's not massively hot but it's just a really nice temperature. We've got lots of roses out, loads of poppies. Last year I took all the heads off all the poppies and I let the seeds dry out a little bit and then I scattered them everywhere. So yeah there's absolutely tons and tons of poppies and a lot of them are in flower at the minute so I'm very happy about that because I do love the poppies and I protect them. Phil sometimes goes round with weed killer and he has strict instructions not to go anywhere near any poppies, even the ones growing up between the flags on the path and in sort of weird places.

So yeah they're doing really well and this year hopefully I'll have lots more seeds and I'll scatter those around as well so next year we'll have an even better display. But there are all sorts. There's some quite small poppy flowers, big ones, just different types and the sweet peas have started flowering so I cut the first one off yesterday. I think it's the first time I've actually grown sweet peas successfully. I have tried in the past I think, not very often. I remember my dad used to grow them and he trained them up the side of the shed and yeah we used to have lots of sweet peas but this time I did try and grow them from seed I think last year but I don't think they did very well so this time I just bought some that were already growing, just small seedlings, planted those and yeah they're doing really well.

I think you do have to keep cutting them off to make them grow even more so I need to cut some tomorrow but the reason why I'm not doing it today is because I've got some errands to run and by the time I got them home they probably have wilted too much so yeah I'll cut some tomorrow and take them home and put them in some water but yeah everything is quite lush at the minute. Phil's got a lot of different roses here and there, some of them smell lovely. Last, was it last year, was it earlier this year, might have been earlier this year, I pruned everything back really carefully but I gave everything a really good prune and I think it's paid off because they've really flowered well this time. I think it's helped that we've had good weather, last year was very rainy and nothing really grew but this year everything's doing so well.

What have we got planted as well? The tomatoes are coming along, there's some green tomatoes on the plants so just be waiting for those to ripen up but quite a lot of tomatoes coming. I've had some strawberries, I've only got a couple of strawberry plants so I don't expect we'll get a bumper harvest off those but I'm enjoying just eating those when they're ready. The cucamelons look like they've started growing as well, they're very tiny at the moment. I've got the grapes, I don't think they'll do anything this year, the first year probably is too early. What else have we got? We've managed to protect the broccoli, that's not being eaten as much so hopefully that will succeed. We've got some cauliflowers that are coming along, I need to give all these beds a really good weeding.

I have got some poppies in between the veg that I refuse to pull up so I do need to get rid of the other weeds to make sure there's plenty of space for everything. We've got potatoes and we won't know how they're doing until we dig them up but yeah it's coming along and last year was kind of our first year growing stuff and it wasn't the best but this year we've created the foundation and everything seems to be doing well so happy days.

So right I'm going to go, I've got to go and run some errands and I've got quite a lot to do today. I'll share some more about that with you over the next couple of weeks and yeah that's about it so have a great day and I'll be back soon, bye for now.