Disclaimer!

It has come to our attention that 'Valley Gate' has religious connotations. For those of you who have arrived here expecting an allegory on the Gates of Jerusalem, you are going to be sorely disappointed! 'Valley Gate' is the name of the house and the association derives from the name of our road. Valley Farm is just down the road......

Sunday, 15 January 2012

Cold weekend in January

Today we started planting for 2012 with 67 garlic cloves going into one of the raised beds.  We have bought garlic bulbs from the Garlic Farm on the Isle of White for the last few years and it has always done well are still working our way through the 75 cloves raised last year.

It was also time to prune the fruit trees.  This was a bit overdue for the apple trees planted in 2010 and it seemed a bit brutal following the advice in the RHS Encyclopaedia of Gardening.  I guess time will tell.

I have also started feeding and mulching the trees with some of the 4t of cow manure that out neighbour Wilf kindly let us have last year.  It is still a bit 'fresh', so I put a layer of straw down first and then covered this with the manure at the rate of 1 large barrowfull per tree.  The raspberries have started to get the same treatment.

We have also started turning the compost heap and mixing in some of the fresh manure so hopefully it will break down faster.  Back breaking and rather smelly work!

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