We have a new hedge – well at least the start of one! We planted some leylandii at the back of the house behind the huerta. We’d planned to do it last year, but the place which grows and sells leylandii had sold out by the time we worked out what we wanted. So we made sure to get our order in early this year. Well, we only wanted 10 plants, so not as though we were buying all their stock, but I particularly wanted to buy from this place as they grow and supply them, and being quite local I thought the plants would be used to the climate and ‘feel at home’ and start growing straigt away!
The aim of this is two fold, first, it will hopefully act as a windbreak. While the wind wasn’t as bad as I had feared last year, we did have a couple of plants blow over and break right in the front, so it might stop that happening. Also, we’re quite exposed at the back and there’s just a low-ish wall, which wouldn’t present much of a deterent to deer and boar who can cause havoc when they have access to an unsuspecting huerta!
We also bought a camelia, which we’re going to put at the front, a ‘kiwiño’ which is a kiwi type vine, but the fruit are more like gooseberry in size, a bougenvillia (which I had tried to grow several times in Villagarcia, but they kept getting burned and died during the summer – so as there are a lot around here, I hope I will do better this time), two grape vines, a pomegranate (we had one before, and did get fruit, but very small ones!), and a walnut. Ludvig has a walnut every morning, however I’m not sure how long er will have to wait before they come from our own tree!
Ian has dug over the huerta and extended it a bit. He’s planted potatoes, onion and garlic. We’ve decided as neither of us are going to win the percy thrower award of the year, to just concentrate on vegetables we buy most of, so our intention is to try to be self sufficient this year for onion, garlic and potatoes and as self sufficient as we can be for tomatoes, peppers, cougette and cucumber. I don’t think we’ll bother with things like cauliflower and brocoli, as I think by the time we’d factored in waste on top of cost of different things to keep slugs and insects away, it probably cost us a lot more than buying a bag of frozen veg!
This is what it looks like at the moment – hopefully in a few weeks it will be full of growthh!
And we had a picnic by the river inland from San Cibrao, it was one of the first places we had stopped for a picnic and is quite a pretty little spot. (Ooops, hadn’t realized I had stuck my finger into the photo 🙂 )
