20th March, 2012

I managed to get some seed sowing underway at last.

So I have sown some aubergine (moneymaker), tomato (cristal and tigerella), pepper (gypsy) and sweet basil which are on a windowsill indoors.

In the greenhouse I have got spring onions, radish and lettuce.

The leeks I sowed three weeks ago are starting to germinate.

There will be more sowing next weekend when I have can dedicate two days to the garden.

5th March, 2012

A rainy weekend and family commitments precluded much work getting done.  Usually on miserable days it's a good time to catch up on some cooking.  I'm clearing out the freezer for this season's bounty and came across some blanched parsnip chunks.  What to do with them apart from the same old roasting? Well we have this marvellous vegetarian cookbook which doesn't appear to have a bad recipe in it, so I tried the parsnip casserole for the first time.  I have to admit it didn't sound appetising, but it tasted wonderful.  Quite a surprise and definitely one to have again.

I also made a leek pie from the same book, again an absolutely lovely meal.

As you can probably work out, the meals are based around what is available (isn't that what veg gardening is all about anyway?).  I decided it was time to start eating the leeks.  They look like this.

They aren't very big at about 6" long in the picture above.  But they are tasty and seem to not be infected with the allium leaf miner that I had last year.  Maybe planting out late (July!) helps?

The potatoes are chitting nicely.  It's probably not necessary but it's fun to mark it in the blog and share with other chitters.  It's what veg growers do to mark the season's beginning.

27th February, 2012

In contrast to last week's blog photo of a snow covered garden, here is a complete contrast with the first signs of warm weather which is that the greenhouse vent has started to open.  Time to fill the staging with seed trays then.

I sowed some leeks (porvite) into two large pots, but decided to wait until March (another week) before starting anything else.

The purple sprouting broccoli is coming along nicely.

The redcurrants have nice fat buds on them.

The floppy broad beans are hopefully going to straighten up.  I need to sow them later (December?) so that they don't grow too much in the greenhouse.

There are plenty of small leeks which I shall use up to make leek and potato soup and a nice pie recipe I want to try.

The garlic is showing through with strong shoots.

I also started to remove more of the Leylandii hedge that borders the side bed.  Most of it is dead, not nice to look at and a pain to keep in shape, so it has to come out.  I aim to try and do this before the beds fill up with veg so that I won't be walking all over them.  The upside is that I can remove the couch grass that grows under the hedge and I will gain as much as half a metre of ground as that is how wide the hedge is.  So more lovely veg!

10th April, 2009

Lots happening now, so this is a monster blog with plenty of pictures! The greenhouse is filling up with seed trays and pots of young seedlings and the beds will have no vacancy signs on them soon.

So in no particular order but just because that is the way I walked round the garden and snapped away here is the latest update in the Kingdom of Veg blog.

Before I walked out the door I took a picture of the basil. It's grown a lot since I last blogged about it on 11th March, less than a month ago. It does very well on the windowsill right through to winter.



This picture doesn't look much but it's the first one that I have ever taken of carrots for this blog which probably reflects the lack of success I've had to date. I've taken the plastic cloche off them as they seemed to be drying out. I'll sow some more towards the end of the month in this bed where the soil is well cultivated (still could do with some more compost) and the carrots should form good tap roots.



The half row of radish have emerged; they will need thinning soon.



I potted up the kohlrabi into individual pots. I'm not sure this was really necessary but it will tell me how good the peat free multipurpose compost I bought from Homebase is at promoting growth. I abandoned the home made mix of turf loam and multipurpose compost of last year. It was OK but seemed to dry out quickly. Too much clay in it I suspect. Mind you the peat free stuff seems to be made of thin bark chippings. So I shall wait and see what results I get. Behind the kohlrabi are the leeks and spring onions which must have put on another inch or two since the previous blog entry (~3 weeks ago).



I potted the cucumbers up into bigger pots and they have been moved from indoors to the greenhouse. I think the greenhouse will protect them from any surprise frosts now. You can see the wood chip compost better. I'm being careful with these this year as before I have lost them due to stem rot caused by overwatering. So now I'm watering sparingly from below and none has succumbed (so far).



The melons and peppers have also been moved into the greenhouse. The peppers took about 3 weeks to germinate (indoors). It was old seed I suppose.



OK, this isn't veg but I get a strange buzz out of seeing neatly pricked out seedlings. It's a very therapeutic way to spend a few hours. The first weekend job I had as a kid was pricking out seedlings in a nursery; it was boring of course but rewarding when you went back next week to see them growing. These are snapdragons.



Peas in modules, the mice and squirrels can't get at them! When the roots show through at the bottom I'll plant them out.



A boring picture of the Dunluce potatoes emerging but useful for the blog records. I planted 3 each in 2 buckets and the shoots popped through in under 2 weeks. I followed the instructions from the JBA seed potato website and added some fertiliser to the compost but did not water to encourage the roots to grow. I used growmore fertiliser which does not have the correct balance of NPK for spuds (so I didn't follow the advice!). I might then just get a lot of leaf and few tubers.



Outside in the garden beds, the overwintered onions looking hunky dory. Notice also what a lovely sunny Easter break we are having. /sarcasm.



The overwintered broad beans are getting taller.



Garlic. Finally a picture of them to show that they did overwinter just fine.



Onions sets emerging; planted them about 3 weeks ago.



Raspberry bed with lots of new shoots racing skywards.



The rhubarb almost looks like a mature plant now. Behind it which you can't see well, are the puny crowns I bought and planted last year. They have only just started to show, I thought that I had lost them.



I'm hoping the summer raspberries I bought last year will really get going this year, I don't expect much fruit. I gave them some growmore and a mulch, I hope they noticed.



This is what my compost looks like. Quite woody really, but lower down it is acceptable. I'll be laying this in the bottom of the potato trenches. The potatoes are going to be planted in the beds where the lawn was and the soil structure is still quite dense with clay, so this stuff, I hope, along with the turning of the the soil will improve things.



Alright don't laugh, this is my Heath Robinson style potting up station which I hastily made (can't you tell) from old hardboard. That's hardboard not cardboard! The kids also purloined it for a step up to climb the tree.



Still no sign of the asparagus, yet others are reporting theirs coming through.

I sowed courgette, squash and cucumber and left them to their own devices in the greenhouse. I've sown more than I need but if they all come through I can swap the seedlings at my work's plant swap day.

Phew! I'll leave it there. I have some more pictures of the pear and plum blossom which should provide a reasonable amount of fruit. The fig tree was moved from the greenhouse on to the patio and it is developing about a dozen figs already! No picture this time.

25th March, 2009

Despite the sunny weather it is still quite cold once the sun sets, there was a frost one night, so I decided to use my plastic cloches to protect the carrots sown in the patio bed and to warm the soil.



The rest of the bed has strawberries (nearest) and to the left of the cloche are the perennial herbs (rosemary, chives, sage, oregano and thyme) which have all survived the winter well.

I've been sowing more too and the greenhouse shelves are filling up which is good to see. I sowed beetroot in two trays of 5x3 modules, seen on the lower shelf. You can also see the Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi seedlings on the top shelf in half trays nearest the camera position. At the back are some annuals for the front garden, Rudbeckia and snapdragons. In between are 3 trays of peas which I had hoped would have germinated by now, but maybe the cold nights are holding them back. On the lower shelf, is celeriac in a half tray and then in the plastic containers with lids towards the back is parsley.



I germinate parsley by soaking the seeds in water indoors overnight then spread them out on to multipurpose compost in those lidded containers. Those are what biscuits are sold in at Sainsbury's. I just poke some drainage holes in the bottom and there you have a mini propagator.

The leeks and spring onions are coming on, they are about 2-3" tall now. I also sowed some lettuce (Webb's wonderful) in pots and these are in front of the leeks/onions. The spring onions that I transplanted outside though have done very little, cold nights again?



I planted the onion sets (Corrado and Golden Ball) out into the bottom bed. I put them quite close together (about 3" apart) and 10" between rows, as I have got a lot this year due to a free bag offer from Thompson & Morgan. There was a half row left so I sowed some coriander there with the intention of sowing more in 4 week successions.

I was concerned that the overwintered broad beans were not very tall and the lower leaves are yellowing (wind damage?).



I checked my blog entry for last year for comparison and I was concerned then that the beans were not very big. Also this year's plants seem to be a few weeks ahead of last year to my surprise given the cold weather. So keeping a blog has proved very useful in that regard and no doubt I will be making further comparisons with last year for other veg.

11th March, 2009

Further sowing was done this weekend. Veg sown are as follows:

Cucumber (Swing F1 hybrid) only 4 seeds per packet and not cheap (£3.49) sown in individual 3" pots.
Pepper (Gourmet) 7 seeds sown in one 3" pot
Melon (Edonis F1 hybrid) 3 seeds sown in individual 3" pots
Tomato (Gardener's delight) 6-7 seeds grown in a 3" pot
Celeriac (Monarch) 12 seeds sown in a half seed tray.

I bought the celeriac seeds on impulse at a garden centre as I would like to have more overwintering veg to fill the hungry gap. I also bought some purple sprouting broccoli seeds for the same reason, but won't sow these until June.

All of these were placed indoors to germinate as they require some heat to get started.

Here they are along with some basil that I bought as a living plant from the supermarket and repotted into three pots. Also on the windowsill are the aubergines (germinating) and the chillis (not germinating). Only 3 of the aubergines are germinating but that may not be so unusual given that I am using last year's seed.



I also sowed kohlrabi (Kolibri F1 hybrid) and Brussels sprouts (Nelson F1 hybrid) and these were placed in the greenhouse.

The leeks are germinating which I sowed on February 19th and left in the greenhouse, so no heat required and they came up in less than 3 weeks.



The automatic vents of the greenhouse have started to open and close this week with temperatures reaching over 30°C inside. Further evidence of the warmer temperatures are apparent in the garden.

The blueberry flowers are emerging.



The pear tree buds are bursting.



The autumn sown onion sets (Radar) are looking nice too.



The second sowing of garlic that I was worried were not showing have all come through too.

Next duty will be to plant out the onion sets later this month. I'm still waiting for delivery of the ones I ordered although I do already have a free bag that came with the seed order. There will be plenty of onions this year.

I perhaps should plant the early potatoes now but I've had minor surgery recently and can't do anything too physical for a few weeks so I will have to wait until April.

At long last I fitted the louvre window and its automatic opener to my greenhouse. It's warm enough to be working outside without having to wrap up. I really enjoy being outside on mild days and observing what is starting to grow, such as daffodils, snowdrops (in flower) and bluebells. Marvellous.

Anyway, back to the louvre window. It took longer than planned because I thought it would have to rest on a pane of glass rather than it sitting at the bottom of the greenhouse where I wanted it. I think this would provide better ventilation. First mistake, and not the first time I've done this, is to measure the size of the pane wrong. It was 2cm to tall. Second when I fitted the window at the top it wouldn't allow the louvres to move as it was fouling the frame of the greenhouse. I was about to chuck it all in the bin when I returned to my original plan. As it turns out the louvre does allow a pane to rest on top of it and with several glazing clips in place the glass is held firmly.





I had to have new louvres cut as the ones provided were not wide enough (but I knew this might be a problem despite the information provided with the window stating that it would fit most greenhouses; mine is not in the most category). I fitted those eventually after getting confused which way up they go. Then I find I need 5 glass louvres whereas I ordered only 4; second mistake. So suitably frustrated, I was in the mood to cut my own glass. I have several panes lying around with broken corners from when I moved the greenhouse but enough to cut a louvre from. I laid a layer of dust sheets on the patio table and cut the glass on this with a long piece of heavy wood as a guide. To my surprise it cut easily. Then I cut the 2cm of the new pane that sits above the louvre and I was successful at that too although it wasn't a clean cut. It all fitted together finally and the day was saved. It could have turned out so differently and if so I would have been too embarrassed to blog it.

Finally, I put up the temporary shelving ready for the seed trays that fit in them, but I need to buy some new seed trays. Notice also my trays of loo rolls ready for the parsnips. Those trays are what Sainsbury's sell their mushrooms in.



I have been inspired to start sowing now. The temperature has reached ~20°C in the greenhouse. So I took the plunge and have sown aubergines and chillis in 3" pots which are on the windowsill indoors. In the greenhouse I have sown some broad beans in individual pots (only to use up last year's seeds), leeks in two 5" pots about 100 seeds in each and some more spring onion (white Lisbon) in a 5" pot. Those I sowed last October had grown to about 4-5" and I planted these outside. I've read on David and Karen's blog (Evington Hilltop Adventures) that this is their method for success, although I have planted mine out individually rather than in blocks.



Finally, a work colleague provided me with a strasberry plant which she grew from a seed from the fruit she bought at a supermarket. They are a cross between a strawberry and raspberry; it looks like a normal strawberry plant (so no picture). I've not heard of them before.

27th January, 2009

I emerge from my blogging hibernation; it's been a cold winter! The good side to the cold snap is that I hope many of the garden pests such as slugs, will have been killed off. Let's see if their numbers are reduced this coming season.

I have done very little in the garden and have not posted as a result. The only activity has been digging up some of the leeks, which are not as big as last year but they taste great which is the whole point.



The parsnips were fine too but again somewhat on the small side and I didn't grow enough.

In my last post (November!), I wondered about the lettuce tasting bitter, well I did try some and they were fine. But I'm not used to the idea of picking lettuce during the winter and forget to brave the cold outside and get some as a crispy addition to a sandwich.

The broad beans are about 4-5" tall now.



I may need to plant them out soon if they grow anymore as they may get potbound. But at the moment they look very healthy.

The seed potatoes arrived from T&M. I ordered International Kidney (aka Jersey Royals) for salads and Kestrel (maincrop) which were recommended by the grapes on the GYO forum. A third pack of Dunluce was also included free with my order along with some Corrado onion sets.



The blight resistant varieties I grew last year were too floury and were not that nice to eat all said and done. They resisted blight well but the idea for me in growing your own is for maximum taste.

The overwintering onions (Radar) have not grown much, not surprising given how cold it's been.



Likewise the garlic and shallots have stood still over the winter. The second sowing of garlic have still not shown themselves, however, the rhubarb is beginning to emerge.

The garden is fairly waterlogged so there has been no digging. Despite all the additions of compost last autumn it still looks like the soil is mostly clay. My compost bins are full though so the goal to transform my soil continues and I suspect will never end.

5th November, 2008

Not much activity now. I've been collecting leaves for more leaf mould.





The beds look very empty now. I've pulled up the squash and pumpkin plants and taken down the runner bean wigwam. There were two green marrow shaped and sized pumpkins which I am going to leave for a while to ripen up hopefully.

Leeks and cloches over the lettuce in the side bed.



Just parsnips showing, but I've dug in compost/leaf mould at the far end and planted garlic next to the parsnips, bu there is no sign of their green tips yet.



Only the parsley left in the middle bed.