2017 Goals ~ Let’s go with Healthy, Wealthy and Wise… and a couple donkeys

I absolutely adore that the advent of the New Year gives one a sense of renewal, a chance to reflect and consequently focus on ones short and long term goals.  We have lots of changes planned for 2017 and, I must say, yes, I must, that we are very, very excited (and a teeny bit scared).  We will be putting all our eggs into our  entrepreneurial basket and focusing our time specifically ~ Pumpjack’s to our new wine business Terroir au Verre and me, Piddlewick, to my Pumpjack & Piddlewick  Shop and the life that goes on behind it, so our blog will get a bit of a face lift too this year.

Welcome 2017! It’s make or break time.
(Hmmm, maybe not a good euphemism when talking about entrepreneurial eggs.)

Building new pallet beds, Part 1 ~ Getting our excuses in early and planting late

If you have followed the weather at all here in France, particularly Northern Burgundy, you will know we have had rain. Rain, rain, rain. Plu, plu, plu. (Don’t you just love the French word for rain? It sounds just like a drop of rain hitting a surface.) Needless to say, all this rain has had a bit of an affect on the garden. Add in a deep frost at the end of April and storms in May, and I have to say I am so glad I have been really lazy this year where the garden is concerned.  Ah, what I mean is… I waited with due diligence until there was an opportunity to truly work on it.

How big does your Pumpkin grow?

Whether it is images for Halloween or the cornucopia concept of harvest, autumn to me can be summed up in Pumpkins.  There is something about these roly-poly orange veg that just makes me smile.  (Maybe that is why we are driven to carve toothy faces into them?)

Chickens in the Vineyard

We have a little vineyard of 90 Chardonnay vines in the midst of our vegetable garden. They are in their second year, which means next year we should get grapes and make some wine. It takes 3 to 5 years for vines to mature enough to be able to start making wine.  In a very productive year you can get up to 2 bottles of wine out of a vine, but generally it’s 1 and a little more.

I was weeding and tucking in the vines the other day and the chickens, along with Maggie Duckling, decided they needed to help me. I can’t say they managed that much weeding, although Maggie ate quite a few of them, but they did enjoy following after me and finding the bugs unveiled as I removed the weeds.

The Cockerel amongst the berries

The chickens help in the vines

Pumpjack surveying his domain

Gertie finds some great bugs

Maggie weeding the vines. Read more about Maggie

Pumpjack and PIddlewick look after the vines

 

Garlic Virgin – Live and Learn Gardening

If you have read my earlier gardening posts you understand that I classify myself as a Garden Virgin.  I suspect no matter how many years I garden, in future I will still think of myself as such.  Why? Because other than the occasional foray into ‘how to?’ on the internet I make much of it up as I go along. Okay, I admit, I do apply an ounce of common sense now and then as well.

I’ve listened and watched the odd gardening programme (oddly addictive) in my lifetime and someone always seems to be saying ‘you have to do it this way.’ I get that experts have worked out best ways to do things through experience, but I also realise that every plot, country, climate, soil, etc. all added up to make each garden unique and different, so I’m all for rules are meant to be bent, if not broken, e.g. what applies to one, does not apply to all. And~ I find half the fun is not planning, or worrying too much, and simply seeing what happens.

Dandelions – Love or Hate Relationship?

Anyone reading our blog, gets the idea that we love re-using, recycling and not letting things go to waste. Now take the humble (or pesky, depending on your point of view) Dandelion. 

Making a Vertical Garden – recycling the previous year

Last year was our first year working our vegetable garden (our first time gardening ever in fact) and we tried a series of different methods; raised beds, wattling bed, pallet planters and vertical hanging wall, to see what worked well. All were made using recycled materials and are being continued into this year, with almost no changes except for a relocation of some of the pallet planters and a some amendments to the vertical garden as a result of lessons learned.

Garden prepared – so where the $%;# is Spring?

Winter is the time to prepare the garden, getting it ready for spring and planting things. This winter has dragged itself out mightily, giving us teasing glimpses now and then of spring to come, the odd dash of sunshine, the hint of warmth in the day, raising our hopes up only to find the next day dawn cold and wet.

I can only tell spring is actually on its way by the hardy flowers that have been making heir way slowly out, one by one showing their bright and sunny, generally yellow (or purple) faces.

The compost is calling… “fork me, mulch me, throw me around”

The sun is finally deigning to show its face and its almost warm. Spring is definitely late this year, at least in terms of things coming up and going in in the garden.  I’m a little behind in my getting the soil ready for planting, I think, but since I know diddley about gardening, I leave it to my common senses to determine what to do when and just see what happens.

I’ve been thinking about asparagus.

How to – Vertical Garden Planting ~ using recycled milk bottles

Every time I tweet about our recycled milk bottle, wall garden I get lots of interest. And it kind of makes sense. After all, the cost is minimal, the space is minimal – could be done almost anywhere you have a vertical space, inside, outside – and looks rather cool (at least I think so).