Pushing up the daisies

Finally got down to the allotment on Saturday. It was a brilliant sunny day and in fact I worked up quite a sweat down there! Did quite a few things that I had been meaning to do:

• thinning some winter lettuces,
• pruning the dead branches off the chrysanthemum, lemon balm, fennel herb etc, also the raspberries,
• ripped out all the used-up romanesco, broccoli and sprout plants and some cabbages that were past their best, (that was hard work!!)
  
• pulled up some of the wild rocket that is all over the place,
• manured around the garlic (now in nice 10cm shoots!!), the rhubarb, a few other places,
• put leaf mold on the herb bed,
• pruned and tidied the strawberries: some of the babies I planted in October are coming out of hibernation! so I made sure the plastic was well pulled back so they got sun and put a little earth around their bases to make sure they are better exposed.

Small harvest: some leeks, the last two edible cabbages and a few handfuls of sprouts.

Anyway it is looking a little tidier, even if I have yet to fulfil my winter vow and get my paths in. Still there are still a few weeks before I can start planting stuff...

Labels: lettuce, manure, tidying, winter

Hello to all! As this blog has just hit its 100th message and has had over 1500 visits, I want to thank all those who have taken the time to read it, I hope you have enjoyed it.
As I am getting ready for the new growing season I will be continuing and hopefully will learn lessons from all the things that I did in 2007! The seeds, potatoes, onions are ordered, mostly, and soon I will be chitting, sowing (and probably swearing) as fast as possible.
I will endeavour to have more photos, and try and get online a few more recipes as I know you all like to have those ;-)
Best of luck to all the other budding gardeners, let's hope this year the seasons behave themselves!

My veg list for this season includes:

• Spuds, 3 types
• Red and yellow onions and echalotes,
• Garlic (oh it has well sprouted now, it is at least 10cm tall!!)
• Sweetcorn
• Carrots,
• Beets,
• lettuce,
• Tomatoes,
• Sweet peppers,
• Courgettes,
• Sprouts,
• Peas,
• Beans (green and shelling),
• Red cabbage,
• Melons,
• Pumpkins,
• A little bit of fennel, parsnip and broad beans,
• all the soft fruit as last year,
• Rhubarb (just crowning now, it has been nicely fed this week)

Oh my God, that sounds like an enormous amount when I look at the list!!! We will struggle through I expect.

Labels: planning, winter

Just in case you are wondering have I forgot my garden, no I haven't but it has been horribly wet and rainy here for ages and I have got three jobs on the go at the moment so it is hard to get down there and get anything done.
But tomorrow they predict the rain will stop and I have a day off so I am hoping to go and get some more horse manure and get down there and do some muck spreading and some cabbage destroying :-)
My onion sets will be arriving in a couple of weeks and I want the ground to be ready for that. I promise I will take some pics so I can show you what it looks like in winter, Year 2 ;-)

Labels: rain, resting, winter

Onions
This year I want to start some yellow (ordinary) onions from seed, and only the red onions and echalotes from sets. So as soon as my seed arrives I will be starting the first crop of the season, how exciting!
As I don't have a greenhouse, I will be starting them in trays in the pantry where it is cool (there is a windowsill). Then once I have pricked out the seedlings, in February I guess, I think I will cloche them and keep them outside protected in the window boxes. Then I can bring them in if there is a bad frost.
Any other ideas on onions would be most welcome...

Labels: onions, winter

Cabbages.
That seems to be an appropriate subject for January, as it is the only thing that will grow at this time of year :-D
This was Saturday's cabbage harvest:Brussel sprouts, the last of the Romanescos (they were delicious, made them into gratin), a few fleeting spears of broccoli and two cabbages
OK I admit that I have cleaned them all up a fair bit for the photo, producing this pile of waste (that will go piously onto the compost heap):

The other event of the weekend was the Great Horse Poo quest. In the weekend drizzle (well, ok it was pretty much rain but I had some time on my hands), the Small Ones and myself trotted off to the local pony club. They obligingly told me to help myself to as much as I wanted of the 3 TONNES of poo that is stacked up in a corner. Unfortunately I didn't make much of a dent in the pile, still we filled up 4 big black bin bags of the stuff, it was boiling hot and steaming!! The kids thought that hilarious and rather odd. To my surprise it weighed a bloody ton, so I asked to borrow a wheelbarrow which they didn't really appreciate. I will bring my little trolley next time.
It made quite a decent pile once we had taken it back to the lottie: if I can go and get the same amount again I will have enough for the areas where I will plant the spuds, onions, beans and tomatoes. Then a bit later I will go and make another pile for the courgettes, melons and pumpkins. Hopefully the soil will be much improved by my work, some green manure where I could, digging in the bean plants, leaf mulching large areas, and I should have some decent compost by the time spring comes too, which I will use mainly in the root veg, salad greens and flower areas.
Oh and I did manage to order some seeds from DT Browns but so far I can't get the online ordering to work at AlanRomans which is a real bugger, he has some great bargains. Mmm can't wait for my first seed packages to arrive!!!

Labels: cabbage, harvest, manure, seeds, sprouts, winter

Spotted on Melanie's BeanSprouts eco-blog:
Guerilla Gardening
- I love the concept of filling in waste ground with "proper plants", even edible ones, what an idea!! I was wondering where I could put some sunflowers in the summer, to provide the local birds and rabbits with some wholesome food??? Although these fellows go the whole hog, actually replanting strips and areas around buildings with quite sophisticated plantations. A lovely idea, I would love to do something with a grassy area that sits in the car park behind our building. I wonder what the other residents would think???

Labels: flowers

Someone on A4A posted a brilliant link to a site that has a seed planting guide that works in relation to your last frost free date in your area.
http://www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s1-5-19-212,00.html
Being a bit of a clever dick, I pasted it onto Excel and set up some calculations so I could see exactly when I need to be sowing my seeds!!
Hmm what will happen if I paste that in here??? Bugger, I have had to swap it from Excel to HTML to bloody stupid Word, but it has finally worked it seems. I didn't actually know exactly the last frost free date here, I know that generally in May here it is warming up so, hopefully this will be OK:

The Spring Frost-Free Date in My Garden is 01/05/2008

CROP	WHEN TO START INSIDE	DAYS FROM SOWING	SAFE TO SET OUT TIME (RELATIVE TO FROST-FREE DATE)	SETTING OUT DATE
Basil	27/03/2008	42	1 week after	08/05/2008
Beets*	13/03/2008	35	2 weeks before	17/04/2008
Broccoli	13/03/2008	35	2 weeks before	17/04/2008
Cabbage	28/02/2008	35	4 weeks before	03/04/2008
Cauliflower	13/03/2008	35	2 weeks before	17/04/2008
Collards	28/02/2008	35	4 weeks before	03/04/2008
Corn*	17/04/2008	21	0 to 2 weeks after	08/05/2008
Cucumber	17/04/2008	21	1 to 2 weeks after	08/05/2008
Eggplant	12/03/2008	64	2 to 3 weeks after	15/05/2008
Kale	28/02/2008	35	4 weeks before	03/04/2008
Kohlrabi*	28/02/2008	35	4 weeks before	03/04/2008
Lettuce	06/03/2008	28	3 to 4 weeks before	03/04/2008
Melons	24/04/2008	21	2 weeks after	15/05/2008
Mustard*	28/02/2008	35	4 weeks before	03/04/2008
Okra*	10/04/2008	35	2 to 4 weeks after	15/05/2008
Onions	14/02/2008	49	4 weeks before	03/04/2008
Parsley	13/02/2008	64	2 to 3 weeks before	17/04/2008
Peas*	23/02/2008	21	6 to 8 weeks before	15/03/2008
Peppers	06/03/2008	70	2 weeks after	15/05/2008
Pumpkins	24/04/2008	21	2 weeks after	15/05/2008
Spinach	28/02/2008	35	3 to 6 weeks before	03/04/2008
Squash	24/04/2008	21	2 weeks after	15/05/2008
Swiss chard	13/03/2008	35	2 weeks before	17/04/2008
Tomatoes	27/03/2008	49	1 to 2 weeks after	15/05/2008
* These crops are usually direct-seeded outdoors, but they can be started inside.

To be fair I don't plant all of these and I always start beets and spinach off directly in place, but I guess that in that case it will give me the approximate sowing times under cover?? I think it is quite a clever system, and will be a big help. Except I can see that once again the house will be invaded with loads of small pots and trays, driving the OH up the wall. He hates gardening stuff. Maybe I can persuade him to buy me one of those balcony greenhouses made of a shelf covered in plastic, then I can stick it outside the window and save some space.
I looked again at the seed catalogue and I was right, the DT Brown seeds site is considerably cheaper for a number of items, especially the beans and peas which are almost half the price in comparison with Willemse!! And already Willemse was cheaper than many of the seeds I saw in garden centres last year... So I think I shall buy the seeds from the UK and only buy the spuds and onion sets here.

Labels: planning, planting, seedlings, winter

OK we have all survived another Christmas, it's getting to be a time of year that I really dread, it just seems like such a hollow celebration. I'd rather been down with my veg to be honest :-)
Anyway slipped over to the lottie site to sign up for my second year, yay! The garden is really at its low point, except for a few things that seem to be hard to kill, rocket everywhere as always, still a few sprouts, parsnips, romanesco and cabbage.
Big news, I received my seed catalogue from Willemse and I have also compared with a good UK site, which I realized sells certain items much cheaper, especially beans, peas and various seeds. So I think I will buy from two different places this year. Of course, the actual sets like potatoes, onions etc cannot be imported so I will get them from Willemse.
So far my choice is leaning towards:

• 2 types of spuds, a maincrop called Caesar and an early called Bernadette, 5 euros each for 25 plants, which will give me 50 plants, probably enough if the crop is good,
• some Red onion sets,
• some Jermor echalotes,
• Cylindra long beets (recommended by tim from Allotments4All),
• Danvers half long carrots (maincrops),
• Lyon Prizetaker leeks (winter crop),
• some Declic green French beans and Purple Teepee purple beans, for a change (these are only about 2 and 2.50 euros a packet, very cheap by French standards where they are about double that!!)
• Sweetcorn, "incredible" variety (this will be the first attempt at that),
• some Bedfordhsire Champion seed onions, just to try out,
• peas, maybe an early called Spring.

I still have plenty of seeds of some things, like parsnips (won't do so many this year! just a row), radish, tomatoes, lettuce, brussel sprouts (might try sowing them this year), calabrese broccoli, broad beans and herbs.
Of course the garlic is already in, I don't know when I can expect to see it sprouting though, a few have come up, but not all, it's a bit cold yet.
The things I will not do this year are: gherkins, not so much cabbage but maybe try and spread it over the seasons (I will buy plug plants for those), fennel, which was a flop (Maybe I should plant it very early?? it didn't seem to like the warmer weather???), spinach which just didn't grow successfully, coriander which just went straight to seed, and all the bloody rocket, I expect I will still find it all over the shop for years to come.
Things I want to try: corn, red onions, echalotes, broad beans. And more herbs, in a "simples" garden, the thyme and parsley are overwintering brilliantly and I would like to try more herbs like marjoram, oregano. Also a second rhubarb plant
Just hope that the weather is more normal so everything doesn't fail miserably like last year :-( or else I could start to be discouraged. I will try to get some pics soon so I have a good record of what went on in every season of the year.
Year 2!!! What an exciting challenge!

Labels: buying, catalogues, planning, seeds, winter