Garden round up

I know it might be a bit later but......Happy Easter!

Happy Easter from Cheneycraft.BlogSpot.com

We celebrated Christ rising from the tomb with a joint Easter Sunday service, followed by a lovely roast lamb lunch.

Easter weekend fell at the end of the school holidays this year and this year the new term brings exams for all us!!  Josh has AS exams this year, Jacob is taking some of his GCSEs a year early and Andy & I are both sitting the first exam for a diploma in Business Analysis.

Apple blossom at Easter weekend

At times, over the holidays, our dining room took on the appearance of an internet café as we all revised for our relevant exams.

However, we also found time to declutter/clean the house and spend time in the garden.  I'll cover some of the house tasks in another blog soon, but this one is all about the garden.

Cheneycraft.BlogSpot.com garden border

Andy's raised vegetable patch is starting to show promise of goods to come.  We have potatoes, French beans, radishes, beetroot, carrots, broad beans and herbs growing.

Raised vegetable bed

Following the changes to the lounge decoration last year, we have had the old kitchen doors laying around, looking for a new purpose.  When Andy tidied up the garden and moved the roof box, he found that the lid had become brittle, but the bottom was still sound.  Inspiration hit and as we don't yet have a greenhouse, Andy has constructed his own recycled cold frame.

Roof box and doors recycled = cold frame

We have a problem with slugs in the garden and we had hoped the raised bed would deter them, but it would seem a bit of mountaineering is not beyond their talents!  So I found a tip somewhere on the internet that said to put down a plank near the vegetables and then after the slugs had come out at night to feed they would find the plank a comfy, cosy place to hide for the day.  All  we have to do is to turn the plank over in the morning and the slugs are exposed.  Andy wasn't sure, but he dutifully placed the plank down.  The next morning he wandered down to the vegetables and came exclaiming "It worked", there on the plank were lots of slugs ready to be disposed of, or left for the birds to eat (away from the vegetables).

Slug catching plank

One other tip to share with you is our homemade cloches.  We have been using the lids from the seed trays over the seedlings when transplanted out, but we didn't have enough.  This week when I was putting out the plastic recycling Andy noticed that the meat trays were almost the same size as the tray lids.  So we had new cloches to use to protect our seedlings.

Meat tray "cloches"

The Bible passage we are looking at this week is a reminder that God is pleased with us, just as we are, not for what we do. Believe and receive.

And without faith it is impossible to please God, 

because anyone who comes to him 

must believe that he exists 

and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. 

Hebrews 11:6 

Our prayer as family this week is for all those who rely on their own grown goods to survive.  We pray that this year's harvest will provide and that those of us with plenty will learn to share in better ways, to pay a fair price and realise the good things we have been given and not to take things for granted.

With God's blessings from my family to yours,

Jo x