Weeding

The weeds are now showing themselves in full force, so I spent an hour or so clearing them this afternoon. Think I might have to invest in a hoe...
The other thing I noticed was how warm the soil feels, even with the frosty mornings we've had this week. Definitely time for some more sowing.

Frost!

Given the schizophrenic weather we're having at the moment (I had to scrape ice off my windscreen this morning - was in shorts yesterday!) I thought I'd better protect my seedlings a bit, time for a fleece covering:

Fruit patch

After tidying up in the back garden the other day, it occurred to me that I had the ideal place for my rhubarb and raspberries. This patch has never really had much done to it and was overgrown with crocosmia. The children's sand-pit (now rarely used) has sat here all winter, so there's not much growing underneath it - weeds or otherwise. The neighbours had their fence replaced last year, which makes this area look even more bare (the old ancient fence was covered in ivy), so this seems like an ideal place for my raspberries. It's south facing so should get plenty of sun to ripen the fruit. Seeing how rhubarb and raspberries are permanent fixtures I figured they might as well both go here. So, a sunny afternoon in the garden and this is what it looks like now - ready to plant.

Chitting potatoes

I bought some seed potatoes (Kestral and Sante) on the 12th Feb and they've been chitting on the kitchen windowsill and in the spare room...

...and this is what they look like now:

Kestral are a second early, while Sante are a main-crop potato. I wasn't really sure what I was doing when I chose them, but my local hardware store had their seed potatoes on display and I was tempted! Having read around a bit, it turns out I picked 2 very good types, with good pest and disease resistance.


The other thing I've learnt is that whereas I'm used to buying "new" or "old" potatoes, growers have 3 types:

1st Early = New potatoes, eaten small and early summer

2nd Early = New potatoes, grown larger and harvested towards the end of summer

Main-crop = "old" potatoes, harvested in the Autumn onwards and the only ones that store well.

A few spare minutes

I had a few spare minutes after school pick-up today, so went out and did some more sowing. Today I've sown mangetout peas in bed 5 and the Innocent seeds in pots in the greenhouse (by now we've collected 3 packets of carrots and 1 of tomatoes). The pea packet suggests planting them in a zigzag fashion, I'm not really sure why this is, but I followed the suggestion anyway.

More sowing

Having spent the morning tidying, I spent the afternoon sowing more seeds yesterday in the glorious sunshine.

Bed 5

In raised bed 5 I planted a row each of Spring onions, Red onions and Spinach, and a wide row (approx 10cm) of Mixed salad leaves.

Bed 2

Lupin seed

In bed 2, I planted Cabbage, Lupins and Brussel sprouts. The cabbage managed a whole row, but the Lupin packet turned out to only have 6 seeds in and the sprouts only had enough for half a row! The lupins were a freeby, given away as a soil improver, so I can't really complain, however, the sprouts I'd bought myself. Not having bought many seeds in the past, this year I've got them from all over the place. The sprouts came from Wilkinson and so far I'm not impressed - not many seeds and poor germination of the ones sown 3 weeks ago. I may have learned the hard way to spend a bit more on better seeds...

Greenhouse growing

In my mini-greenhouse, I planted Aubergine, Peppers, Courgette and Chillies (Joel's favourite!). I had intended to do half a tray of each, but there weren't that many courgette seeds so I ended up planting them all, which meant fewer chillies (I'll plant more later). The courgettes were 1 per cell, but the others are much smaller seeds to doubled up.

Sweet peas

I found some old peat pots in the shed, so filled these with sweet peas (mostly 1 per pot, but a few ended up with 2 to use them up). Sweet peas are one of my favourite flowers and can't be bad for companion planting - can they?

My plot

The completed infra-structure! I'm really pleased with how it's turned out. Let's just hope that the veggies grow!

Spring is here!

Tidying the back garden

Having been away for the weekend and enjoying the sunshine, I was raring to get out in the garden this morning. I started with a bit of tidying in the back garden. This area is where the guinea pig hutch tends to spend most of its time in the summer as it's very shady. Over the winter I let the fallen leaves provide a winter home for insects etc., but today seemed to be a good day to clear them away and expose the bricks again. The border looks very bare at the moment, although it won't be long before the Lilly-of-the-Valley start to appear. The friends we visited over the weekend had lots of wood anemones in flower - maybe this would be a good place for them to add some spring colour next year?




 The apple tree is springing into life again - this is a triple grafted tree I bought about 10 years ago. It has Malus Discovery, Fiesta and James Grieve apples on a dwarf rootstock, so it's self-pollinating.

My blueberry bush is also showing signs of life,












and the neglected parsley I thought was dead seems to have self-seeded!

Planting plan

Amy has claimed Beds 1 and 4 as "hers" so these are likely to have strawberries, sweetcorn (lots!), potatoes, runner beans and the broad beans she planted at school.

Bed 2: Cabbage, Lupin, Sprout (but no Dumbledore ;-)
Bed 3: Beetroot, Parsnip, Carrot
Bed 5: Courgette, Onion, Lettuce, Spinach
Bed 6: Potato

I came up with this plan after consulting websites such as http://www.allotment.org.uk/ and the book "Reader's Digest - Food from you Garden" which I inherited from my maternal grandparents, published in 1977. I've used this book many, many times since I've had it as it has excellent, old-fashioned tips and recipes for cooking and preserving fruit and veg. I recently saw a reprint of it (available here) and would thoroughly recommend it to any would-be gardener or cook.

First seedlings

The first seedlings are just beginning to poke their heads through the compost!

Salad leaves

Cabbages

Amy's broad beans, planted at school. Now nicknamed "Biggy" and "Littley"!

Free seeds

 Those lovely people at Innocent are giving away free seeds with their lunch-box smoothies at the moment. We got our first set today - tomatoes!

Gravel, Part 2

Down with the weed-proof membrane...

 Then the gravel...

 But there wasn't quite enough :-(

Gravel

Another spot the difference.

Last weekend I raked up all the moss and the remainder of the grass from between the beds, with the intention of laying down weed-proof membrane. However, I'd underestimated the length I had leftover from a previous project and then the weather got the better of me with first rain, and then snow!

Today's job? Finish laying the membrane (now I've bought some more) and top off with gravel.

Under cover planting

This is another inheritance from Joe - a home-made multi-dibber, made by attaching dowels to a piece of plywood. The propagators were Joe's too.

Cabbages, Brussel sprouts, Red onions and Salad leaves are next to sow. These all seemed to suggest that you could sow them straight outside, but may benefit from a bit of early protection. I have a 4 tier, plastic covered greenhouse on the patio which should do nicely. I'm not sure I'd trust it with very tender seedlings, but for these it should be fine.


I used my Lakeland oven-rack soaking tray as a container for potting up (as suggested by my good friend Sara!). In the end I plumped for using cell inserts for the seed tray, which didn't quite match Joe's dibber, but a pencil worked fine.  After filling 2 inserts with potting compost I gave them a good watering and popped 2 seeds into each cell. Well, most cells got 2 - some got more I think! A final covering of compost and into the greenhouse they go, complete with propagator lids for good measure.

Planting time!

I finally got to do some planting this week! I have bought/acquired various seeds and seeing how I'm a novice at most of these veg I'm going by the recommendations on the packets.

Straight into one raised bed, I've put a row of carrots, parsnips (on a tape) and beetroot.

 It rained (and snowed) alot on Sunday so when I did this on Monday, the ground was still wet and I didn't bother watering before I put the seeds in. All these packets said to make a drill approx 1" deep and cover with a thin layer of compost, so that's what I did. Having the excess topsoil came in handy, along with the garden sieve I inherited from my grandfather, Joe.


Joe was a very keen gardener and always had masses of fruit and veg growing - I hope he'd be proud of my attempts.