My neighbour Louis has a smallholding, and keeps sheep. He gave me a big trailer-full of sheep manure this springtime, and I planted squashes and melons on it. I got a decent harvest too, and I gave some to Louis.
Yesterday I collected a couple of loads of manure, and started spreading it on the veg patch, ready for Springtime planting. We have had a very dry year here, after a very wet start to the season. I have a well, so I was able to keep things going, but the ground is hard, and I can't dig up the potatoes that are still in the ground.
I got good crops of tomatoes, and the shallots and garlic did well, onions less so. Plenty of squash (thanks to Louis) and French beans. Enough potatoes too. Runner beans were a failure; plenty of flowers but few beans, and I was disappinted by the sweet corn - I found it hard to pick it at the right time, and it came out a bit chewy and not especially sweet. The best cob I had was the first one I picked, and that I ate raw - very sweet and juicy. The blackbirds got most of the gooseberries, as usual.
Incidentally, Louis has some crocus flowering. I don't know if there are Autumn flowering crocus, or they are normal Spring ones, confused by our strange weather.
I’d be curious to know, Mark, if he is the fourteenth of his line.
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