Anyone who has followed the blog over the last year will know the attempts I’ve made to become more self sufficient – starting with constructing a potagère and leading to buying some chickens as well as other fowl. The final purchase were two Rouen ducks which grew to an enormous size and had to be seperated from the chickens into the wider potagère, which they subsequently wrecked by trampling down the blooming veggies and breaking the stone walls.
There were losses if our feathered friends during that time, with the final one being only recent. My husband had forgotten to lock the gate of the chicken area and my daughter had let the dog in there. Our beautiful Lady Jane is with us no more.
As de-confinement started and the markets opened up the girls and I went to get a new chicken. There weren’t very many full grown ones, so we had to buy a bigger chic. They were covered in fluff but bigger than a yellow chic that you see on an Easter card.
We bought two, one each for the girls, but it became apparent very quickly that the grey one was ill. It died shortly after we’d taken them home.
I was gradually rebuilding the beds and trying to get the area in some kind of order. However it soon became apparent that I hadn’t the time to divide between the potagère and the kitchen work, so I’ve accepted that I’ll leave this project until Autumn when I’ll start to prepare for the next growing year.
In the meantime I’ve used the rubble from the fireplace to make paths around the reformed beds to keep weeds down.
Unfortunately our desire to be more self sufficient has led to a new dilemma. My buying the chics had me unprepared to ask questions that I don’t need to think of for my normal, poultry purchase. Boy or girl.
As time has gone on our little Rosie seemed to have big feet. Her wattle seems to be bigger then her fellow birds. She seems to be head and shoulders above the rest, with a bud barrel chest. And even though she’s not yet fully grown the feathers at the bad of neck seem to be taking on a different hue and she seems more aggressive than the others. Finally, just during the past week, her tail feathers seem to be getting suspiciously like that of a coq.
In short, we think Rosie is a Rockie.
So we have to come to a decision; should we rehome Rosie/Rockie or should we keep her/him?
Our daughters are all for keeping him. We’ve explained how roosters fertilise the eggs and they’re excited by the prospect of chics. This has inevitably opened up the discussion to what do we do with those chics when they’re grown. We only have so much space – we can’t support an indefinite amount of hens.
The obvious thing to do would be to rear the hens not just for their eggs, but for their meat too. Yet, as I’ve said before, we’re city folk and the idea of eating meat not prepackaged in plastic is (hypocritically) horrific to us. But there’s something wrong with that isn’t there? Isn’t this why there is so much food wasted in the West? We no longer see the value of food, just the price on the packet. And when the price is low we value it accordingly.
So I’ve been talking to the children openly about farming practices, about where their food comes from and what it would mean to rear our own chickens to eat.
My oldest has decided that killing and eating our own chickens, instead of buying them from the supermarket, is worth it if we can keep Rosie/Rockie and get to have little chics. Obviously thinking and experiencing are different. Nevertheless I’m left wondering should we do this, even for a season, just so the girls have this deeper understanding of the value of food? They live in a world where they have so much. They break something and they think it will be replaced. They want something and they never doubt it will be provided.
There’s a lot to mull over. I’ve made my case about keeping our bird and the subsequent chickens to my husband (he’s not convinced) and tried to be honest to the girls. However it would be a financial, emotional and time commitment and as such we need to think about it some more. I’ll keep you posted.
I told you all about my saga with the chickens, ducks that were really geese and the duck ducks didn’t I? Well, the story hasn’t ended there.
Gradually over time our brown ducks changed colour over the summer. One started to develop a very white chest, the other just a stripe of white around the neck, then one day we saw a glimmer of green on one of their heads. The green spread from around their eye, to their head and then all over. its beautiful, iridescent and similar to the shades of a Peacock. I’d finally found my Mallard ducks, no?
Then they grew. And grew. And grew. Honestly, at one point I thought I was in some kind of fairy tale the rate it was going. I think they’re bigger than our small dog now. My dad kept commenting on our massive ducks. We’re obviously very interesting people in our family, because over the summer we had so many conversations about them that eventually Pops decided he was going to do a bit of research; this is how we found out they were Rouen ducks.
They have colouring identical to Mallard ducks; males have green heads, white collars, black tail coverts and dark, ashy brown tail feathers, a gray body, and a deep claret breast. The female are a consistent shade of mahogany brown, with a brown crown and tan eye-stripes extending from bill to the back of the eyes. It was the eye stripes that had me thinking she was female before her mate’s head started turning green. Both have blue iridescent feathers on the tips of their wings. When you get a flash of it it’s wonderful.
The difference is size; hence our massive ducks. Adult Rouen ducks are significantly larger than Mallards. They can weigh between 6–8 lbs (2.7–3.6 kg) and 9–12 lb (4.1–5.4 kg) depending on how they’re bred. No wonder Bertie is afraid of them.
They originate here in France, and were refined in England in the 19th century. Well the French and English are cousins, so our ties are strong. The exhibition-type Rouen was eventually bred and used as a roasting bird. It does lay eggs, between 35 to 125 eggs a year, however as other breeds are more reliable and prolific egg-layers its size meant its meat was more desirable to eat. In 1861, the famous cook Mrs. Beeton said of it:
The Rouen, or Rhone duck, is a large and handsome variety, of French extraction. The plumage of the Rouen duck is somewhat sombre; its flesh is also much darker, and, though of higher flavour, not near so delicate as that of our own Aylesbury.
She doesn’t sound overly impressed does she?
When they arrived in England, they were variously called Rhône, after the region in southwest-central France, Rohan, after the cardinal of that name, Roan, for the mixture of colours, and Rouen after the northern French town; Rouen was eventually adopted in England and France.
If you’re reading this blog in the States the first Rouen came to you in 1850 via D. W. Lincoln of Worcester, Massachusetts. They were included in the Standard of Perfection of the American Poultry Association in 1874 and since then have won many titles, often having the most entries in the heavyweight class and doing well in competition with other breeds.
All good so far; except that it’s not actually all good.
Do you remember the warning my friend gave me about the goose; great eggs, big doo doo? Well, its the same with these large birds. The thing is with water fowl is their poo is, erm, splatty. The amount of water in the poo makes it decidedly runny so when they go it has a wide reach, believe me. Eventually I had to move them out of the enclosure with the chickens this summer because their poop was all over the hens’ feet and wasn’t nice.
So they went into the wider potagere. I bought them a duck house with a sliding tray to clean easily and they settled. They regularly sit next to the fence where the hens are and quack at them, but they had a lot more space. So problem solved we thought.
Then they bashed down all the dry stone walls I’d constructed in the potagère and ate all the veg I’d been growing. It’s why I haven’t been updating you on the potagere. It’s pretty much been destroyed.
I actually started to move the veg beds elsewhere in the garden and we were thinking of putting a pond in there for them and just having that area for poultry. But that poo.
The potagere backs onto the garage where we keep the car and it was a bit tricky to walk there as it was either yuck, or I’d just cleaned it all down and it was wet. But you only have a short window even after you’ve cleaned it all down with these messy birds.
They’re so big and more and more I look at them thinking; are we being fair? They obviously want to be in with the chickens, but there isn’t the space for them to be with them as the same dirt problems would start again. So we’ve eventually come to the conclusion that it may be best if we get them a new home. More about that later.
In the meantime here’s a some photos of our lovely birds as they are now.
After my last, sad post I thought I’d update you on some more cheerful potagère news. The weather has turned very warm here so, rather than contain them for the extra week advised by their seller, I’ve let the ducks go out into the poultry enclosure.
They of course had their friend the gosling to keep them company. The trio are forever together and sometimes it looks like the little goose is their surrogate mum. After the loss of the other gosling this makes me so happy to see the little chap have companionship.
Their first night outside I had shown them the old, plastic dog kennel that I’d filled with grass cuttings. It was like a soft warm bed that I kept catching them up and placing them in. Of course the others would be running around and at first this made whichever member of the foul family I had in there waddle out asap. Eventually I managed to get them all in and they seemed to like it.
The produce in the potagère is growing well. My surplus of lettuce is being shredded and fed to the poultry and I’m going to pot some up and take some to the neighbours tomorrow. The beds are kind of crowded you see and reading my month by month veg grower book I’ve started,to think about planting others things that will come to fruition later in the year.
This week we had our first meal with our own grown veggies; lettuce and peas. I waited until my daughters came home to pick them as I thought they’d be excited to do so. I was right. They chatted away as we selected leaves from still growing lettuce, leaving their stems to continue on their merry way. My youngest, seeing me shred leaves that had been nibbled by insects and throw them in with the chickens thought that was the point and was happily grabbing handfuls to give them, eek!
So we moved on to the peas, squeezing the pods to see if they were firm and plucking some that were from the stems. We had them in a salad and I’ve never seen my eldest eat so much green.
I’m still trying to figure out how and when to harvest them; do I just keep them on the vine until ready to eat, or collect and store them? I do know that to store them I have to leave their little ‘hats’ on.
I’ve already spoken of how carrots can be left in the ground even after a frost, but I thought I’d show you how they are popping up from the ground. Yesterday I could only see one group, but I swear that after today’s intense heat lots more seemed to have shown themselves.
The beets have at least one plant that are the size of a golf or tennis ball and others are growing well.
The spring onions have grown so well that I’ll definitely have to harvest some tomorrow. The bulbs on some of them are just lying outside of the earth on the ground.
The red cabbages aren’t ready, but I’m finding how they grow fascinating. You can gradually see the shape form, with the central leaves closing in on themselves and the outer ones spread out.
As I can make space in the beds I’m thinking of broccoli, leeks, more parsnips maybe and carrots too if I can get them (they can stay in the ground so long so can be used in the autumn and winter), as well as Brussel sprouts -maybe even some pumpkins?
The markets here don’t just sell good food, you can buy veggies and some fruit ready to put in the ground to continue growing. I’m going to go with the girls and choose some more things to go in.
To hear the birds sing as you tend to, select and eat your own grown food. Yes, this is life pre fall in Eden. I don’t know why I’ve been blessed with this, but I’m so grateful. To think this was God’s plan for all of us. It still is when His Kingdom comes.
I’ve been out gardening today and I thought I’d share how it and the potagère is coming on.
Firstly I want to post some pictures of our beautiful roses. Their perfume is gorgeous!
I’ve been putting some herbs in pots outside the window where the kitchen will be. The left hand one is a lemon tree and the right hand is a cherry tree, but it shouldn’t grown more than 2ms. I don’t think it will stay in that pot, we’re going to be doing some rearranging in the garden come autumn. I’ll update you later.
By the back door is a wisteria that I planted last year and it’s already growing significantly.
A lot of things, but not everything, is growing well in the potagère too. In the below series of pictures you can see that the potatoes, sugar snap peas and peppers are all growing well. So are the weeds around the pots, ha, but they got scooped up after and fed to the chickens who love them.
PotatoesPotatoes and sugar snap peasPeppers and potatoes
In the following you can see the central bed with spring onions, red cabbage, beetroots and parsnips all growing well. The red cabbage keeps getting eaten by slugs though. There are also sweet potatoes there that are growing more slowly, but I think that’s normal.
Central bed
Spring onions Red cabbagesBeetrootsParsnips and sweet potatoes
The right hand rectangular bed has celery, which is growing well, and red onions that are too.
Celery, that needs to be blanched soon
Red onions, with the bûlbs just beginning to show.
The left hand rectangular bed has the carrots, red lettuce, and more red onions which are all coming along nicely.
This is the bed with beans and cucumber in. The cucumber doesn’t seem to be doing well at all and the beans are struggling. I have cucumber in other places too, so it’s not the bed – though evidently I didn’t clear this one out enough as it’s got lots growing in there. Oh well, I said that this was a trial year.
On this side all the lettuce is growing because of the shade. Most of them are getting a lot bigger, although you can see where the shade from the rhodedendrum bush and shed hit as those are a lot smaller. I learnt something about leaf lettuce this week that’s made me realise that I’ve definitely over planted these – but I can always share them with the neighbours.
This bed has the tomatoes and courgettes in. The latter are certainly doing a lot better than the cucumbers! I chose this wall because of the amount of sun it gets and that seems to be paying off. You can see the courgettes are blooming.
When I took the photos the potagère was full of weeds and the girls and I came and grabbed handfuls the day afterwards to give to the chickens who love them. They all stand at the fence now waiting to see what we’re bringing them.
On average now we get three eggs a day. Apple still is in shock I think from the Bertie attack, although she can definitely see out of one eye and her other one is half open. I believe she can see out of that too, but I can’t be certain.
I’ve just done their coop and the lawns whilst my hubby is away and used up all the grass cuttings on the floor of it. They love it, as well as when I use it to line their nesting box. It’s free too -so another bonus!
Although I regularly find poor little Lady Jane in the nesting box sat on an egg. I think she really wants a baby 😞. I was trying to explain to my 7 year old that unless we have a cockerel than she won’t be able to have one. Hey, you’ve got to start somewhere huh?
As Belle likes to fly over the top of the enclosure, but wisely never goes out of the potagere where Bertie is, I let all the girls out to roam occasionally – which they seem to love.
We’ve just gone to take them back in for the night and my youngest ran to sit on the rock that’s in their area. I’ve had to train her to hold my hand and not run around like a mad thing trying to grab hold of them.
I pick one of them up and give them to her as she sits there and she hugs and kisses them (😦). I try and stop her doing the latter, but at least her holding them is better than the former.
Tonight it was Apple’s turn and Lilly kept pointing out ‘eyes’, ‘’ertie’. She remembers.
We had a good look around and they’re excited by what’s growing. Nevertheless I realised that I didn’t know when to pick the produce. So I’ve done a little research and this is what I’ve found out.
Beetroots
You can apparently eat the green tops of beetroots when you’re thinning out the rows. I didn’t plant mine in rows, and I don’t know if I’m meant to be thinning things out 🤷♀️. So, that’s going to need a little extra looking into. However I have found out that the size are really a matter of taste and they’re ready any time after you see the shoulders protruding at the soil line. I think there’s long way to go yet.
Cabbages
I’ve read the cabbage head will feel solid when gently squeezed and need to be harvested when they reach maturity or they’ll continue to grow and split open. It seems other veggies are able to stay in the ground a little longer
Carrots
Carrots are apparently hard to judge – as a novice gardener that’s sending me straight to YouTube. What did people do before?
The tops of the carrots show at the soil line and you’re meant to gauge when the diameter looks right according to your variety. Unfortunately i didn’t know any of this and I don’t think I kept the card to know the variety 🤦♀️.
I think it will be necessary to pull one out when we’re on target. Luckily, unlike cabbages, they can be left in the ground once mature, so I don’t need to worry about spoiling them if I wait to long. Even a light frost is meant to improve and sweeten the carrot’s flavor, so I’m thinking of using them as and when I need rather than harvesting them in one, massive lot.
Cucumbers and Courgettes
My cucumbers are definitely not doing well as they’re described as ‘racing to the harvest’. I can’t even detect the leaves on mine.
However the same is meant to be true of courgettes or zucchini. The advice is to check daily and take then out quickly when they’re firm and smooth.
Lettuce
I got all leaf lettuce, which you treat differently to head lettuce. With these you need to let it grow to about 4 inches in height and then harvest the outer leaves, leaving the younger, inner leaves to grow. They can go on like this for most of the summer. Like I said – it’s obvious now I’ve overdone it!
If you look at the pictures above two seem ready to go. My pops is coming over on the weekend and I’ll ask his advice then.
Onions
With onions I’m looking for the tops to fall over, which looks something like this….
The greenery needs to go a bit yellow too. Then I need to allow them to dry in the sun, before storing them.
Parsnips
Parsnips, like carrots, are said to taste better if left in the ground until after a frost or two. This is great news as I like them and carrots roasted with a Sunday lunch or in wintry stews.
I’ve read if I mulch them I can leave them in the ground over the winter and harvest in spring. I love roasted parsnips though, and unlike the lettuce I only got a couple of plants. They’re not going to l’as The that long!
Next year I’ll be buying more and harvesting throughout the winter.
Peas
Peas are said to be sweeter if harvested before fully plumped and they need to be tasted to determine if they are sweet enough. So that will be a job for the girls then
Potatoes
I ran out of room with my potatoes and I think I only planted new ones. So I’m looking for the tops of the plants starting to flower which is when I can harvest them.
Next year when I have more beds I intend to plant more and store them.
Tomatoes
My daughter is especially looking forward to the tomatoes, which are her favourite. We were out tying them back tonight and smelling our hands afterwards as that lovely, tomato scent remained.
I can’t wait until they’re red, slightly soft and you can pull them easily from the vine.
Bell peppers
I’m so disconnected from the earth that I didn’t know that bell peppers are often from the same plant, just left to ripen longer.
I’m not a fan of green peppers, so I’ll be waiting for them to turn. If the hubby is in disagreement I can tell him that not only are they sweeter they have increased vitamin C content as well. Being a mega cook he probably knows that though.
The advice is to make a clean cut with a knife or secateurs, being careful not to topple or otherwise disturb the plant in order not to knock off any fruits that are still developing.
Celery
I’d read it was important to blanch celery to stop it going bitter, but didn’t know what that was. I found this helpful video online and I’ve embedded it here.
My celery is just starting to show it’s top, so that’s a job for the next few days.
I’m loving it. I can’t tell you how much joy it’s giving me. Walking round our little patch, discussing the growing plants with the girls, their excitement evident. Heaven.
In my last potagère post I spoke about speaking to my pops about where to plant the veg I’d bought – being a newbie I had no idea. I started planting on his advice and then I looked around; evidently I’d bought too much! I looked into extending the growing space but realised that there was no way this would help. Yikes!
I came up with a two pronged solution; extending the planting area and looking into complimentary planting. You can do this based to make the most of your space and on enable your plants to grow better. I quickly got confused by it all. However these are some of the sites I found helpful in trying to work out a planting plan.
This has lots of vegetables with a link to each one which takes you to an in-depth page on what to plant with it, and what to avoid. It’s good, but lots of clicking can be time consuming.
This has information and a chart that is basic to look at, and a good size amount of veggies detailed. Good to start getting your head around the subject.
This was one of my favourites; a good sized list of veggie soup in a basic format. I found it really helpful as I’d bought a large selection and this meant I could get quite a bit of information quickly.
We have a seperate, pre existing herb garden, but eventually I want to move them into the main potagère. With its focus on herbs I’ve bookmarked this for future reference.
After the research this is what I came up with.
On the far bed I’m growing red lettuce as it’s a little shadier there. As the lettuce grows mainly above ground I’ve added carrots – which grow predominantly below ground and are good companions – as well as onions, which grown below ground too but seem to grow at different times and at take up a different space below ground. I kept double checking whether onions were ok to grow with these two as they can, apparently, affect what grows around them.
The middle bed was interesting to lay out. I’ve mixed red cabbage in with beetroots – one grows above ground and at a different time than the other. Additionally parsnips and sweet potatoes (towards the front of the picture – I’m hoping I’ve spread them out enough 😟) and spring onions are intermixed throughout.
Planting onions was the most difficult thing in terms of planning. I bought three trays; red, yellow and spring. They don’t look like anything much, but actually the growing distances really spread them out so it takes some thinking through. Particularly when added to the fact that they affect other plants.
This one has celery interspersed with red onions – largely based on the fact that celery can grow with onions. This is an afternoon shot, but it’s actually one of the sunnier beds.
I’ve put these pots all along the wall – eventually I’m going to do another dry stone wall. We have to have a door put in an internal wall which will result in sufficient stone, perhaps towards the end of the summer it will get done. In the meantime there are cucumbers with potatoes (these grow we’ll together) and mange tous. I was originally going to put onions with the mange tous, but they’re not a good match.
Above are some beans and cucumbers too.
All down the side where some bed’s that had had hydrangea that needed digging out, the sides of which weren’t very high. In addition further along was the area where many of these rocks came from (you can see all the befores here) and I so wasn’t looking forward to this as my body was achingly from all the work. Then Pops came up with the genius idea of just laying bags of compost there.
Not the best photo, as my hand is in the way. You can see where I’ve grown plants that need deep roots (tomatoes and courgettes) I’ve used two bags. I cut a hole in the top of one, then in the bottom of another before placing that over the other. Then I cut holes in the top bag and planted.
The other bags, which have lettuce in them, are only one deep.
This saved so much time and if I have enough rocks post doorway I’m just going to build up the sides and use the dirt here rather than digging out again.
I bought waaaaaay too much and ended up giving some veggies to my Pops. In fact I’ve planted hardly any potatoes due to space and so I’m going to put the rest in the cool larder in the garage. Perhaps when I have the bigger beds next year I can plant more, but I’m already thinking of removing some more of the hydraenga to make some more room in the exterior beds.
My cucumber plants seem to have died already ( 😞). I’ll see how they go, but this is just going to be a learning year I think.
What’s exciting is that we are now getting about three eggs a day! We had to stop Lilly going in and picking up Lady Jane Grey as she’d stopped laying. But the only one not laying now is Apple, who I think is suffering from PTSD after the dog attack 😧. She’s doing a lot better though.
Yesterday the girls and I took four eggs each to our neighbours who seemed thrilled and were really excited we have chickens, which is sweet. One of our neighbours was asking about the porch and saying how lovely it was. When she asked where I got it from and I told her leboncoin she was really impressed; apparently they’re very expensive. It’s nice to know we’ve had a bargain!
I’m off to water the tress at the front now, God bless!
These will stand out in your borders – just spray paint with gold and write on them with a permanent marker. When you need to change the name spray paint again.
In my last post I spoke about my joy at having completed some of the huge stone beds in our potagère and how, in celebration, we’d bought some chickens. Wowee! That opened up a can of worms, if you’ll pardon the pun.
The girls were so excited when we went to Jardiland on our way home to pick them out; I’d spoken of a surprise all day. As we went in the shop Lilly was eager to see the chickens in the enclosure there. She always loves to go and look at them; just a year ago she would scream blue murder whenever I had to eventually haul her away. She’d literally stop the shop! She’s growing up so much as, although she was happy to see them, she wasn’t behaving, well, manically, around them.
However, when the woman came over to get them and Lilly realised something different was happening she became so ecstatic. She was literally jumping up and down on the spot. She couldn’t get any more words out except for ‘This, this, this’.
As I took the trolly to the cash register everyone in the vicinity was laughing, delighted at her delight. She was climbing on the bars of the trolly to take a look in the boxes, in little girl heaven.
We managed to get them home and I had to sort out the food, water, nesting box etc before putting the cluck clucks in the coop. Here’s a video of their introduction….
Then as I shut the door to the coop disaster struck. The uprights holding the gate and wire fencing are made of concrete, but they were evidently too old as when I closed it one broke. I couldn’t believe it. Two chickens in a broken coop!
I managed to temporarily fix it and we all went in, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that I didn’t sleep at all that night. Fear of the cluck clucks being taken by some fox in the middle of the night gripped me. How would I explain that to the kids? Ruby’s set of Role Dahl books with their fantastic Mister Fox took on a whole new, sinister meaning.
I’d been praying all night for an idea to mend the coop when I found myself wandering into the spare room. There was an unused iron bed base and I realised it was the size of the door space.
For the next three days I lugged that bed base between the coop and the shed, trying to work out how to use it as a secure gate. There were many trips to the bricomarché I can tell you.
Each night, desperate to keep the chickens safe and for some sleep, I had to move the chickens from the weakened coop to the bathroom in the studio apartment we have next to our house.
During our first such transportation Ruby watched me pick up the chickens to take them inside. She was fascinated by my holding them and after some time she plucked up the courage – maybe she would try holding them too? Just as I handed her to her Lilly let out one of her excited squeals and the chicken, frightened, flapped her wings.
The opportunity was gone. Ruby had decided, no, holding a chicken was not for her. “Maybe, Mummy, when I’m your age I’ll hold a chicken.”
Closing the door on the chickens in the bathroom I couldn’t help but remember the stories of my grandfather’s set of chickens, given to him by an old lady on his milk round. They lived in the bathroom too, and their feet had grown deformed from clinging onto the side of the bath.
Was history repeating itself? Would I too psychologically damage my children for life serving up their favourite chicken for Sunday lunch one week?
“I want a leg Dad.”
“I want a leg too Dad.”
“There’s only one leg.”
Silence. Wailing.
“Hoppy! Noooooo!”
Ours are layers, not cookers.
As the days wore on and I dragged the bed base around the garden some more, my body becoming more and more tired, along with the same process each night. Pick the kids up from school. Walk them home. Get them dinner. Go into the garden to get the chickens in. Chasing round the garden to grab the dog, to keep him away from the chickens. Being surprised by the reappearance of the dog, let out by Lilly, as I held a chicken in my arms. Trying to get the dog back away from the other chicken with my feet, original chicken still in my arms.
I won’t tell you how chickens express fear. You can guess.
Then, on another half hour drive away to Bricomarché, I came across another dog. A Yorkshire terrier was in the road, obviously lost and tired. I’m English, I couldn’t leave her there. So I had to chase her down and as the Maire was closed she joined the circus that had become my life.
Finally the dog was given to the Maire, the coop was completed, the chickens were permanently placed inside and I managed to sleep.
Ruby’s talking about a black chicken now. And some ducks. I need a drink.
This post has been a long time coming because I had to keep redoing the walls of my raised beds. I couldn’t decide on the design, you can see from my initial post how I’ve changed, and I ended up finding big stones to sit on the bottom of the beds so it was more secure. The work has been back breaking. But I’m so pleased with the result.
I knew it would be expensive to fill the raised beds with soil, so I was waiting for a bargain. Thankfully Lidl came to the rescue with a 20litre bag for 1,30€. I spent two days driving from Lidl to Lidl stocking up; I looked odd with shopping trollies full of soil. Overall I got 96 bags. Yes, you read it right. 96.
It sounds complete overkill, but two thirds of that went in these huge stone beds. The remainder will go in a third bed I’m planning, which will be a diamond shape in the middle (I’ve drawn it in in the image above). I’ve no doubt that the rest of the soil will be well used there.
You’ll notice how in the image above there is a pile of rocks. I nearly broke myself getting that in situ! I’ve placed them there as my folks gave us a sundial for christmas. It’s beautiful, but pointy and not great for children running round. So up high and out of the way seemed like a safer option.
You can see that I’ve continued trimming the tree as this section of the garden continues. I’m plann on a little hedge of various herbs, or lavender where I’ve drawn the scribble hedge; but I’ll have to think carefully about that as they may not get the sun.
I’ve also filled one of the gaps that lead into this section of the garden. I’m making the other one wider as each is a little narrow, so this seems a sensible thing to do. My daughters, standing proudly beside the newly filled in gap, helped with this section a lot. You can see we’ve planted a shaped topiary there as well as some flowers we moved from the shaved off section. I hope the bush grows to fill in this gap more, making that section of the garden quite private from everywhere else.
The girls also enjoyed trampling down the newly placed dirt in the beds. It all seems to be holding up so far!
In the original post I told you how I’d removed a hydrangea bush from the circular section. I’m thinking of planting a small fruit tree there as it will add height and further enhance the seperate feeling to that area of the garden.
So more work to do before we start the planting and I’ve been pretty exhausted by hauling bag after bag of earth, rocks and everything else around. So……I got a little crazy.
My body aches. I started the project yesterday and continued today; the family potagère, our kitchen garden. We have a walled section of garden just to the side and I thought it would be perfect for one, especially as I intend to focus on healthy eating this year. So, with the kiddos off school and little point in my starting internal projects, I thought this would be the perfect way to keep them occupied.
The day was crisp, but not overly cold, as I set to work lobbing branches from an evergreen that dominated the space. I’m afraid I can only show you pictures of the site once I’d started, as I was so eager to get going, but believe me just cutting of as much as I had made an enormous difference to the space and light. It now awaits my husband to get going with the chain saw on the weekend.
When he’s does there will be a tree stump as well as another previous one. As I won’t really be able to plant on this patch I’m hoping to put a chicken coop there one day – though that’s a dream at the moment.
Along the side wall had been a row of Hydrangea – I’ve managed to remove four, replanting one at the side fence (though I don’t know if it will stay there). All the back fence and side wall already have Hydrangea so I don’t feel it’s a loss to remove the others completely.
The area is surrounded in the main by walls as well as some open flower beds. The wall diving it from the rest of the garden is ancient and used to go to the main house. As sections of it have been removed the stones have been used to edge flower beds and created little walls throughout. There’s also a large pile of them next to our neighbours back wall.
When I started to research potegères there was some lovely examples of raised beds with stone edging. As I wanted raised beds this seemed like a good idea for ours.
I’ve made a preliminary plan for the layout based on the little research I’ve done; what to plant and how, bed rotation and sunlight availability and I’ve used this to start to mark put where the beds and paths are going to be. However I’m going to do some more research on other things like companion plants. I’ll write more on this later.
In the meantime it’s turning out to be a challenging, but hopefully rewarding, project for us as a family. The girls certainly like helping, for short periods of time anyway 😉.
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