12th March, 2012

Another busy weekend with my son's swimming club; it was the second weekend of the County Championships which meant sitting in a swimming pool and anxiously watching his times.  He came away with a gold and 3 bronzes.  Not too bad.  I did manage to enjoy the weather and take some photos.  This church is very distinctive of where I was. Anyone care to guess?

I did have some time on Sunday morning for a quick tour of the garden to take some pictures for this blog. The purple sprouting broccoli is ready!

The blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes have fresh green leaves breaking out.

The overwintered onions look puny at this time.

The broad beans have started to throw up new shoots from the base to compensate for the floppy main stem.

Next weekend I have Sunday free to start sowing and probably take more time over taking the photos to check that they are in focus!

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!

20th February, 2012

I managed to get out in the garden during half term break. I tidied up the front garden so not a lot of work was done on the veg plots, but then there is not so much to do yet.  Mind you the weather was quite mild and it was nice to be active and outside. The week before was not so good with a deep covering of snow.  Beautiful to wake up to though.

I pruned the apple and pear trees.  The apple tree was hard work using the extended loppers.
The raspberries were cut down and I continued to collect the leaves to make precious leaf mould.

The broad beans were planted out as they were getting quite leggy and flopping over in the greenhouse, so I decided to plant them outside even though the nights are still frosty.

The kestrel seed potatoes (and fertiliser) have arrived and have been set out in egg boxes in the cool conservatory for chitting.

The apples have stored very well. Most of them are pristine like this one.

18th January, 2012

Nearly 2 months since my last post! I haven't been very busy in the garden so not much to report really. I've done the following on occasional weekend when I can becase it has been quite wet.
Cut down the asparagus and weeded the bed.
Collected the leaves for leaf mould.
Emptied compost bin contents and spread it over the bed to break down over winter.
Harvested the parsnips.

In the greenhouse the broad beans are growing rather too well. Here they are flopped over after a frosty night. But I think they will be OK.

Here is part of the side bed where I have lad a relatively thick layer of the compost.

The purple sprouting broccoli are safely protected under netting. The unprotected ones (I don't have enough netting) have been stripped bare.

The parsnips have grown good tap roots this year but haven't fattened up much. They taste fine though and were a lovely addition to the roasting pan for xmas dinner.