2nd April, 2012

Nice weather again with plenty of signs of spring.

The fruit trees are coming into blossom.  The picture shows the greengage in front with the plum tree behind.

The flowers are very pretty.

and there are lots of them.  I should remember this year to thin the fruit so that the branches don't break as they did last year.  The good thing is that the trees are still in good health it seems.













The blueberries are also flowering.

I removed some more of the Leylandii hedge to allow the redcurrants more space to grow into.

Next weekend will be the first meal of asparagus!

I have been harvesting more PSB

and leeks.

The seeds are sprouting in the greenhouse.  These are the radish and kohlrabi.

I also sowed some chillies, the seeds were taken from last year's harvest which I dry out and can use throughout the year.

The tomatoes and basil I sowed have germinated nicely on the windowsill but I'll leave them there until they show the true leaves.

I planted the onion sets (golden ball) and potted up some strawberry runners that had rooted and I had missed.  I can give these away to friends.

I replaced the sieve with a coarser mesh in my home made compost sieving contraption.  I don't need it to be so fine and I ended up returning much of it to the compost bin.  Maybe I don 't need to sieve it at all but it does improve the soil nicely.

11th May, 2009

Much is happening and the plants are growing apace. In the greenhouse:

The runner beans are quite large and ready to plant out but there is still a threat of frost so they will stay inside, they are in big pots so they should be OK.



This is a picture of the aubergines (front) with chillis and peppers behind and a second sowing of courgettes with new seed, starting to germinate on the left. The old seed was clearly too old so I had to buy a new packet (Venus F1 variety). I'm disappointed with the peat free multi-purpose compost, it's very woody and the plants don't seem to have done well in it.



Despite my concerns about the compost, the cucumbers are flowering! The one plant I was worried about going down with stem rot has survived although the bottom leaves are dying off (see the top picture).



This is the spare celeriac which I gave to my work colleagues and some flat leaf parsley in front of that. Behind are the sweetcorn growing in loo rolls. I germinated the sweetcorn on wet towels as I did last year.



Like the runner beans the Borlotti beans are staying inside for a few more days yet, despite their good growth.



I have two butternut squash and two pumpkins. They will be planted amongst the sweetcorn but not until the end of the potentially frosty May. I also couldn't resist having a go at an outdoor tomato (Tigerella) despite the blight of last year (they are still to germinate in the pot at the front). At the local charity shop they had free plants for sale and an outdoor cucumber (the one with the wooden label) found it's way into my bag.



The potatoes in buckets are doing well.



I have a cactus in the greenhouse which I left unwatered over winter, now it looks like it might be starting to flower. Is this a flower bud (it's the daker green bit at about the 12 o'clock position in the centre)? If so it is the first time I have got this cactus to flower.



Tomorrow I'll update what is happening outside.

17th March, 2009

A little more sowing has been done, this time it was the peas (celebration) which I was going to sow into loo rolls cut in half but then I remembered that I have modules. I sowed 3 trays of 15 section modules so 45 seeds in all. I still have plenty left so I'll do a second sowing next month.

I sowed some carrots (Adelaide) and radish (French breakfast). The carrots were sown in the patio bed as I call it because it is next to the patio and is effectively a raised bed; the soil in it is lovely and dark, perfect for carrots I hope. I did have the herbs growing here last year but I've removed all but one of each type (sage, thyme, oregano, chives, rosemary). The rest of the herbs have gone to the front garden. Last year they flowered profusely so I think they will be great out front which I haven't yet transformed from an ornamental garden into one that grows vegetables. Maybe growing herbs is the first step.

The cucumber has come up already (less than a week). I'll let them establish some true leaves before putting them in the greenhouse. I struggled to keep the seedlings alive last year but I think that I overwatered them and this causes the stems to rot. So I'll be careful with the water this time.



Here are the chillis (left) and aubergines looking good. Again I'll wait until some true leaves develop before they go in the greenhouse.



In the greenhouse the broad beans I sowed on February 19th have germinated and are throwing up green shoots (always a pleasing sight). These are last year's seeds and they have all come up.



Out in the garden the overwintered broad beans are flowering much to my surprise as the plants are still only around 8" tall.

29th October, 2008

This is an update on the pictures I should have taken last blog. First are the chillis in the greenhouse looking very straggly; I don't think they will survive the winter especially since today and yesterday saw a heavy frost which is very early; some parts of the country had snow.



These are the broad beans in pots trying to germinate. No signs yet. I've got enough I think without needing to do a second spring sowing. I've still got broad beans in the freezer from last year!



The spring onions have germinated after all! I can grow them. They are on the right in the picture below with the spinach in the other pot.



Below are the lettuce underneath the plastic squirrel protector domes.



And some more under the cloche.



I planted these on a lovely sunny autumn day and was quite hopeful that they will put on some growth but the latest cold snap will probably slow them down and I may be lucky to get much at all. Maybe I'm expecting too much and perhaps I should just pick the young leaves.

A good thing about the frosts though is that it will kill off many of the overwintering pests, hopefully some of these guys.



The onions are showing their green tips, a lovely sight.



The garden chores are slowing down now. I've been digging in some compost and last year's leaf mould in the bottom bed. I will have to continue to collect this year's leaves. I want to make two permanent cages for the leaves, one for the current year and one for last year's. I'm undecided how to do this at the moment. I'm inclined to go for the simple chicken wire cage, but I want to make them really big as I can collect a lot of leaves.

Now that we have had a frost I can try the leeks and parsnips, they should have sweetened up nicely. The horseradish will be good to dig up too, I'll need to get the ingredients to make some horseradish sauce.

The cold weather has driven me indoors and into the kitchen. It's warm when the oven is working. I made some more pickled beetroot and two jars of apple jelly. The jelly has already been tried on sandwiches by the kids, so I'll probably be making more which is no problem as there are a lot of apples to get through. I had a go at making an apple pie too. For some reason I had thought there was some magic art to making pastry but on the BBC food website there is a video masterclass that shows you how using a food processor. Works a treat!

20th October, 2008

I finally dug up the last of the Sarpo potatoes. The Miras were up first and they were very badly damaged by slugs. I reckon at least half of them were affected. So I wasn't too hopeful for the Axonas despite the few I had dug the previous week being damage free. But good news, only a few were eaten and even that was mild damage. The two varieties were grown next to each other so I think this is a good comparison and I shall be keeping some of the Axonas back for next year. It's not recommended as disease may be carried over, but these spuds are blight resistant so they should be OK, and I got blight on the tomatoes this year but not the spuds.

I made an order of seeds and potatoes from Thompson & Morgan. The bill came to around £40 which is a lot less than last year as I hope to use some of this year's unused seed.

I planted out some shallots alongside the onions. The shallots were selected from bulbs of this year's harvest, so no cost again. I did the same trick for garlic (Solent Wight); the cloves are a bit small but I planted them in the bottom bed where I dug in a lot of compost to help them fatten up.

The greenhouse was cleared of the tomato plants. There are still a few sweet peppers left, none of them has turned red though. The chilli plants don't look like they will survive the winter but I'm not too bothered as I'll just grow some more next year.

I sowed broad beans (Aquadulce), freshly arrived from T&M, in 3" pots and they will overwinter in the greenhouse. Likewise, I sowed some spinach and spring onion in large pots. The spinach has germinated quickly but there is no sign of the onions. I used a new packet of seeds to exclude the possibility that my past failures with spring onions was due to old seed. The nice weather recently has heated the greenhouse up nicely and should be good for germination, if this doesn't work I don't know what will.

I transplanted some lettuce (Little Gem) which I has sown a few weeks back, into the side bed and covered them with plastic cloches. It's a bit of a gamble but I may get some young leaves for a winter salad.

I pulled up all but one of the courgette plants which is still flowering and I even cut a courgette last weekend. It's been a good yield this year as was last year.

The chillis I strung up have nearly all turned red; I hadn't expected that.

The flowering stems of the blackberry plants were cut down and this year's growth tied in.

The butternut squash plants are dying back revealing some small fruit, I don't know if they will taste any good.

Finally, the leaves are starting to fall and I will be collecting them for leaf mould. I plan to make a cage out of chicken wire to put them in rather than the black bin bags I have used before.

Sorry no photos this post.