Achiltibuie Garden Blog

 

Achiltibuie Garden Blog

 

Wednesday 14 April 2010

April news from The Garden

Last time I wrote I was stuck at home due to snow and as I write this I wonder if I should put my sunglasses on! The weather has been fantastic since the end of last week and has made outdoor gardening a pleasure. Unfortunately I did hear snow was due at the weekend but I will wait and see...

March and April have been rather hectic here - Di and Allan worked hard to get the growing house ready for opening to visitors at Easter. Stuart was enlisted to help Allan build the 5th raised bed and Di hasn't made her final decision on whether it will be used for flowers or courgettes.

The hydroponic systems are up and running and producing lots of salads. As well as supplying Achiltibuie Stores, Polbain Stores, our local Michellin star restaurant at Summer Isles Hotel with our produce we are now delighted to be supplying the Arch Inn Restaurant, in Ullapool. We will also be providing fresh produce for the cafe on Tanera Mhor, one of the Summer Isles.

With thanks to Peter and Marilyn, our vegetable garden now has rabbit netting on it, so hopefully this season's crops will be safe!

Alison has taken up an area within the vegetable garden as a nursery for our shrubs until such times as we can layout our ornamental garden. Unfortunately quite a few of the shrubs have been victim to the harsh winter we experienced.

In March, Alison and I travelled down to Argyll to attend a seminar hosted by the Moidart Trust, who had given us funding to establish an outdoor garden. There was such a diversity of people there who have businesses in remote locations - some more remote than ours!

In my last post I mentioned our new colour catalogue - great news, we hope to sign it off at the beginning of next week. Although we had quite a few product photos we needed to take more, thanks to Peter for helping out! As we hadn't had a get together over dinner for a long time I decided to host the meal. No problems there -until we had problems with our gas hob and it was disconnected! Having lived on the west coast for almost 25 years I was not going to be beaten so my double oven was put to the test - even for making gravy! It had been our intention to use some of the photos in our catalogue but we were all too busy eating to remember to take any! Peter did manage one of Di though.

With the country enjoying better weather people are now getting growing so we have been busy with mail order. Our local postie and delivery driver are kept busy as well!

Still no further on with our new building - hopefully it won't be much longer before we receive the consents. I think a wee celebration will be in order when we get the digger on site!

Bye from a sunny Coigach.

Julie