Onions

As expected our last hatch took place over three days, we ended up with just 70% hatch which is OK but not as good as we had hoped, the chicks are all doing well and eating a lot.

We now have some time before the next hatching, this time ducks, we have some eggs under a broody hen and ten in the incubator, hopefully it will all go according to plan.

In the tunnel we have harvested the first of the over wintered onions so that is one less thing that we have to buy, about half of them bolted so they will be no good for storing but as we use a lot of onions it doesn't really matter, as I clear the bed other things take their place, I have planted some more lettuce and I have a few more French beans looking for somewhere to go. We will have the first of our new potatoes over the week end and that will free up another bed.

I have decided to experiment a bit with the strawberries, they are now putting out runners, so we have bought a length of 6'' drainage pipe, this has been cut in half length ways and is now hanging in the tunnel, the idea is to grow strawberries in the pipe. It should make harvesting of them easier and also keep them free of slugs.
Yesterday was a damp day and when Simon went out to lock up the rabbits and hens he found the slugs eating their way through the celery, he killed over three hundred of them in about twenty minutes. They are mainly the small keel slugs and boy can they do damage.

We have a friends female rabbit with us at the moment, she has come to be mated by Peter rabbit, she is totally different from our rabbits in both temperament and behaviour, bad tempered and unlike ours she does not wish to eat the grass, and there was I hoping she would earn her keep by grass cutting for me.