Dahlias lifted for another year

Following the sharp frosts we had early in the week i took the opportunity to lift my Dahlias and put them in the garage to dry out a bit before giving the a good fungal dusting just prior to packing them away in a couple of weeks time. The variety is that good old favorite Bishop of Llandaff which is supposed to have been around since the 1920 and is still very popular. Some other varieties i have decided to not keep over winter this time as i think i will try some different varieties allthough I'm not sure which they will be yet. What i am looking out for is a type that will not grow more that a couple of foot tall so as not to need a lot of staking.

Back to business

Just arrived back from a short holiday in Tenerife and blimey does it feel cold, still we will soon get used to that. The Dahlias that i set up before i went have sprung into life with quite a good few strong shoots coming through when they get to about 3" long in about a fortnight I'll take them as cuttings then divide the original root when it regrows which should give me enough stock for planting out once the last chance of frost has past.

New steps in the spring

Spent some of the weekend getting a few Dahlias set up so as to be able to get some cuttings taken latter on in the spring they aren't any special variety just a few i grew from seed last year and i liked the look of, I wanted to get them done as we are going off on a winter break for 10 days to i hope warm sunny weather and while i was on with the dahlias i chitted up 4 Maris Bard potatoes that i will plant in a barrel in the greenhouse when i get back so as to get an earlier crop.


Kevin has been here most of the week putting in some new steps up the garden, it was one of them jobs that i seemed to never have the time to get round to so i bit the bullet and called in our local handyman/ landscaper, OH! wouldn't it be nice to have a level site, i think he was a bit suprised at how much rock and stone he had to dig out just for a few steps. ( i wasn't when i set up my veg patch which is now at the top of the steps i had to remove 5 skip loads of stone then i had to cart in even more soil and compost to fill and improve the plot ) A couple of hydrangea cuttings which had started coming in to leaf i have brought inside so as to not let them get checked if we get another cold snap.

On the Farm our first sheep lambed triplets then one had a single they are some pure bred Texels that we keep so as to breed our own Rams to use on our commercial breeding ewes they are inside at the moment but should be fit to go outside in a couple of days if the weather is OK. Our stock bulls started fighting quite a bit this week so we had to separate them i guess they were just trying to decide who is number one and as they have not had much work to do they are improving in condition and can fell spring in the air.

On the football front well what happens when the best home record meets the best away record in the league?
United beat Doncaster 1/0 of course. Our promotion push continues.

Steady work for early January

January I have to admit is not my favourite month, the grounds usually to wet to work and so it seems jobs start piling up, having said that this weekend has been reasonably dry with just the odd shower, so I did get the chance to rake up the final drop of leaves of the front lawn it is a bit shaded at the best of times having three Oak trees one Sycamore and a Beech tree growing in it so we do have a lot of leaves to deal with and it certainly benefits from a good raking which i do quite roughly so as to drag out some of the dead thatch and moss. Oak and Sycamore leaves seem to rake up quite easily but the Beech is a different cup of tea altogether, small leaves and a mass off beech nuts that if you dont remove seem to poison the grass .
I had a look at the dahlias that i put in store and was a bit disappointed with the way that some had stored about 1 in 4/5 had started to rot, i was a bit worried when i put them away in November that the condition of them was not ideal with such a wet backend and no frost to kill the tops some seemed a bit soft and immature and even though i did dry them in the greenhouse for a week before packing them away, as a precaution I packed each one individually so as not to encourage fungus spread so the results may have been worse had i not . Any way the sound ones got another dusting of anti fungal and a 24 hour airing before repacking so hopefully things will be better from now on . I got a chance to prepare a base for sighting some barrels to grow long carrots this year, this will be my first attempt at growing them this way and we will just have to see how we go on (look back in august September to see how it went), any carrots i have grown before have just been in the veg plot and i have never had a great lot of luck with them probably because my ground is a bit stony and heavy. On the work front well we treated all breeding sheep which had the first snow off winter to deal with (see picture) for Fluke parasites which took a couple of days, and then did a bit of sale preparation on the last 6 store cattle that we will be selling on Thursday 13th I am reasonably confident of a decent trade but they won't be a flyer as they are the last to go of the 2006 calf crop.

Football result United 3 Port Vale 2 Now 2'nd in League