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!

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.