A fool on April Fool's Day!

Rhubarb bed
(with forcer and first crop of 2012)

No, not us, thank you: we’re actually referring to the first harvest of the year – forced Rhubarb on 1st April - lovely. The forcer (see photo) was a wonderful Christmas present, shipped in from somewhere in England after we’d seen them in the Lost Gardens of Heligan (well worth a visit – better than the Eden Project) last year. It is brand new and (I’m assured) a real bargain (particularly the shipping costs). In truth, we didn’t make a fool, we just stewed the stuff and had it with local organic yogurt (from Mossfield Farm). Sitting outside on a sunny day eating our own produce – this is an awfully good life.

It was during digestion of said Rhubarb that realisation dawned – we’d barely posted about any of the produce from the garden, just what we’ve done (usually wrongly) in putting it together. A decision was made, therefore, that successes need to be reported on rather than failure – after all, the country is miserable enough, while we’re actually very happy in what we do and have achieved. While this feeling probably won’t last too long, here goes nothing.

Despite the lack of posts, we’ve actually managed to do a fair bit of long-term work in the garden over the winter and early spring. Much of this is stuff we’ve had planned for ages, but other bits are new ideas. The best of these was what we were going to do with the raised beds of ornamental shrubs at the front of the house. Whilst the shrubs have been handy for hanging bird feeders on, we’ve not managed to do anything much else with them and the result has been the slow deterioration of the beds.



Potager
(the front is actually straight, although the curvy sleepers look kinda funky!)

Whilst some of them will never be much more than ornamental, we decided we’d have a go at turning one into a Potager (fancy eh?). We’ve not actually done much with it yet apart from cleaning it up and putting down a new layer of weed suppressing membrane covered with bark chips, but we have started – two Blueberry bushes are in, and there may be more to go, and some sort of obelisk with runner beans is a definite possibility. This bed will certainly be a slow burner as we’ll probably only add the odd thing in now and again to see how it looks – an appropriately organic process – very fitting!