10th April, 2012

I feel that I should be busier in the garden than I am but I'm relatively up to date with the chores.  I've plant the potatoes in what I call the middle bed where the soil is still very sticky and stony.  But this year digging the trench was much easier, so all that compost I've been adding is slowly but surely working to improve the soil structure.  This time I added a nice layer of compost to the bottom of the trench, sprinkled on some potato fertiliser and then placed the chitted spuds about 18" apart.  This is a bigger gap than I usually give but I seem to have more space this year.  I may regret saying that.

The tomatoes, basil, aubergines and peppers have germinated nicely on the windowsill.  When the first true leaves appear I'll pot them on into their own pots.  I've already done that for the Tigerella tomatoes and they are in the greenhouse.

My lemon tree did not survive the winter.  It dropped all its leaves and I hoped that new ones might sprout but no.  I'm not very successful at overwintering tender trees in the conservatory.  I lost a peach tree too.  I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong as I thought the lemon tree I had was tolerant to -5C.  I was really looking forward to eating home grown lemons too.  All that I can get to survive are cacti and Venus fly traps.

The Aloe cacti produced lots of side shoots which I potted up for friends.

The Swiss chard is getting bigger after over wintering.  I had nearly given up on these but maybe there will be a meal or two there.

I added a nice compost mulch around the base of the greengage and plum trees.

Now it's time to mow the lawns but this year I'm going to experiment with leaving areas uncut to generate a meadow effect.  Well that's my excuse for not mowing it.

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.

19th April, 2008

Brrrr! It's still cold with a stiff easterly wind that seems to be blowing directly from Siberia. The temperature according to my thermometer is only 9°C. Even the greenhouse is struggling to get above 10°C. Consequently, there's not much growth except for weeds of course, so I did a bit of hoeing and turned 2 compost heaps. Regular turning helps aerate the pile and aerobic conditions are needed to produce good compost rather than an anaerobic smelly sludge.

I found a dead rat in the pile which did give me a bit of a shock but it wasn't a total surprise . I know the neighbour has been putting rat killer down and a few weeks back I saw Roland (aren't all rats called that?) in the compost bin rather sick looking. I added his body back to the pile to aid the decomposition process; I learned this from Bob Flowerdew (Gardener's Question Time, BBC Radio 4) who recommends adding dead animals (such as roadkill) to the heap as well as peeing on it. I do both now!

I've got 6 compost bins and even that doesn't seem enough. I did collect and fill the bins this January with farmyard manure. My wife's friend is a farmer's wife and they let me have some although I did have to go and bag it and bring it home myself. It didn't smell too bad.

Compost bins at the bottom of the garden. It would be better if they were in full sun to warm them up and promote the rotting but they have to go out of the way under the trees.

Below is a picture of what I call the side bed with south to the right, so it gets plenty of sun. It's full of the maincrop potatoes. The soil is still quite pale so I must add all that lovely compost. This bed used to be a flower bed so the soil is in reasonable condition, but it still is very heavy to work and the hedge, although providing a wind break dries the soil out.

Below is the bottom bed and part of the middle bed to the right. The viewpoint is due south with the base of the Bramley apple tree in the background. Under the enviromesh are the spring greens and behind them are the overwintered broad beans. This soil is very stony and has large clumps of pure clay in it. It's going to take several years to get the soil how it should be so growth on these beds may not be exceptional. Certainly, last year's onions and cabbage could have been bigger, and the soil dries out quickly and becomes concrete. I think I will be making another trip to get that farmyard manure again (and again).