Bloody Butcher corn

One of the problems with unfenced chickens, is that they scratch the ground wherever they are able and feel obliged to.  This is my short term solution until the corn is large enough to survive chickens scratching around them.  Then I can put it up on posts and use it to give wind support to the broad beans.  This approach saves the need to fence off the area, but leaving it there too long is a mistake, because the plants it's laid down on may grow too big and make it impractical to remove.  I had this problem with potatoes last year.

Another problem is that I germinated the corn outdoors under an eave where the frost doesn't hit, so only two thirds of it has grown so far.  The rest is either still small, or is yet to sprout.  So there may be some time difference in when the corn is tasseling and cross-pollinating.

Corn var. Bloody Butcher

Invicta gooseberry in Spring 2015

This is the sole surviving gooseberry as of the start of Spring.

Gooseberry var. Invicta

And here it is approximately 40 days later, and it's looking pretty good so far.  Last year I was too lazy to cover it with bird netting, and one day the fruit were there and the next they weren't.  Was it the free ranging chickens?  Was it the birds?  Did they just fall off unnoticed?  No idea! An interesting contrast was the Chilean guava, which has delicious fruit, yet nothing ate them.

Gooseberry var. Invicta

I originally planted two. Where did the second one go? I don't know. Maybe the stoats, possums and/or rabbits ate every inch of it.

The old apricot tree in Spring 2015

At time of purchase, this property had one old diseased apricot tree, a walnut tree and a black boy peach.

This tree below is an unknown variety of apricot, and to the left of it out of frame is the walnut tree.  The walnut tree has fruited well every year, and in the cupboard I've both jars of walnut in form suitable for cake decoration and also pickled in malt vinegar.  The apricot however, was rather lacklustre and provided about five albeit tasty fruit last year.  In the photo below it can be see seen flowering, it flowered early and suffered little effect from the weeks of frosts which followed.

The next picture is three weeks on, and while it's hard to make them out, it is covered in young green apricots.

Here's the tree four weeks on, note that behind it to the right is a sycamore tree.  This is the only real place I've seen bees this Spring and even then only yesterday.  Seriously.  I've been out in the paddock daily looking around, and while there might be the odd bumblebee, mostly it's flies that seem to be pollinating the flowers.

This is a close up of the tree at four weeks on.

And another.

This year is looking good for apricots.

Self-sown opium poppy seedlings

Opium poppies last summer.  These were grown in dirt dug from the drainage ditch at the front of the house, and it was likely sprayed at some point.  So I didn't bother to save any seed.

And the surrounding area as of today.  The green frilly leaves that dominate the area around the barrow are poppy leaves, from self-sown seedlings.  I'm quite happy with how well they've come up, given that my feathered gardeners do a pretty good job of weeding by scratching up all dirt they can access, either covered or uncovered.

I'll scatter some more seed over the top and perhaps get a succession of poppies coming up. Maybe I'll get enough poppy seeds this year to save for cooking.