Pushing up the daisies

Officially that is...
And the garden is definitely waking up. I worked hard down there this weekend (even made a semblance of tidying the shed, God forbid!). In went the mid-season spuds, Rosabelles, now just have enough room for the Desirée maincrop.
In went a row of spring onion seeds (probably a waste of time as usual, but you never know).
In went a seedbed of spring lettuce and leeks (which are doing hopelessly indoors. I wonder if the seeds are rubbish?? They hardly seem to have germinated).
I weeded the flower beds, and mulched them even, so they look really tidy. I relaid my paths in two places where they were getting out of hand, looks really different.
And I harvested all the old onions that were resprouting - gave me a whole heap of spring onions that I put in a stir fry! Yum! And had the first harvest of rhubarb - only 4 small stalks but they were yummy and the plant looks like it will give a good harvest this year, after lots of TLC in the winter. My second plant was divided so it is a bit smaller but that was to be expected.
The garlic has started coming through with a vengeance, and so have many of the echalotes. A few of the onions are laready showing green, which means they are taking root. I love watching alliums grow :-)

At home, I am a bit disappointed with some of my seeds. The aubergines and peppers are now doing Ok, they need to be transferred to new pots, I will buy some new potting mix for that I think. But the tomatoes are really slow coming up?? There is saved seed and bought seed and it doesn't seem to make a difference? I think I will still have at least 10 plants, but it is strange as usually I have so many I don't know what to do with them? Maybe it's still a bit cold...

Labels: paths, potato, rhubarb, spring, tidying

The new year doesn't really start in January at least not in the garden. In February, new shoots start to appear on many plants: the rhubarb has shown its face and new shoots have come on the artichokes.
So yesterday was an excellent moment to prune the raspberry canes before the buds grow, to divide and plant out rhubarb crowns (hope I did it properly! I just stuck the spade into the clump and planted the bits that came away!) which is what I also did with my artichoke that is a bit tired. Now of course I have little artichokes in several places - I might have to give some away or there won't be room for anything else!
Last day for Brussel sprouts, I had a magic crop this year, and now they have been ripped out, poor sods. Also dug up the last parsnips (excellent flavour, White Gem. must get more, except Alan Romans have none left :-( ) and snipped out some baby rocket leaves. Delicious.
Have started planting shallots. I am a bit concerned about the garlic - I can only see one sprouting so far. Maybe I will plant some more now to be on the safe side. They were planted in December during a moment of respite from the bitter cold. I hope they were not frozen. maybe they are just taking time to root....
I also did some tidying up yesterday - put manure and shredded paper around the fruit bushes, spread the manure a little more, cleared off the paths and pulled out all the dead stems of flowers etc. I also pruned the roses, better late than never.
So little by little it is getting ready for a new year of cropping. Now I just have to wait for the first bursts of spring that mean it's time to really get stuck in.

Labels: artichoke, parsnip, pruning, rhubarb, sprouts, tidying, winter

On Saturday I did something that was approaching insanity. My kid had to go to a rugby tournament and he had to be at the stadium at 6.45 am. Yes you read that right. "Sparrow's fart" as my friend Sandra would call it.I dropped him off and then instead of crawling back to bed, I went to the allotment. And spent 3 hours working, mostly unaccompanied except by birdsong and the sunrise. It was glorious. I should do it more often. I took some pics (bad ones again with the portable phone), and then set out to do the following:

• Tidy the edges, digging out dandelion and scraping earth back onto the plot.
• Weeding the peas, uncovering their netting and letting them grow in the fresh air. They are now big enough not to interest birds.
• Sowing a row of beetroot, a patch of rocket and two rows of green beans, one row of drying beans (end of a packet) and some yellow butter, or wax beans.
• Moving around some chive plants that are getting a little invasive on the paths.
• Cleaning the paths a little.
• Earthing spuds.
• Planting some lettuce plants and transplanting some marigolds here and there.
• Netting the gooseberries, a little sloppily but I WANT THAT FRUIT this year. They are full of tiny berries.

It was a wonderful morning, but tiring, and in the next couple of weeks, I need to have almost all the season's crops in the ground, namely the tomatoes, melons, courgettes, corn and squash. So I still have a large section to dig over and weed (about 4 x 2.5metres) and also uncover and dig over the 3 sisters patch which is currently covered to prevent weeds.
I took a couple of pics, not terribly clear...

This shows the rhubarb in the foreground, and the few flowers that surrounds it, and behind, the herb bed, with lemon balm, thyme on the left, mint behind that, sage to the far right, andparsley everywhere else. There are a couple of rose bushes here and there too. The artichoke can be seen in the bed opposite. The bessa concrete blocks are for the water tanks that are being installed - not on my plot next but one will go behind mine, to save water.

This one shows the plot from the far end, I am standing near the strawberries, so you can see the potatoes on the left and the onions on the right. The peas are netted here but just after I took the pic, they were un-netted and weeded. I also planted some lettuces next to them, where there was a blank space.
You can also see my shop-bought cold frame and the home-made one on the left. Still, they work...

And here, I am a couple of plots down and the plot with the orange roof tiles along the edge is mine. This year it is looking really good (well compared to some previous years!). Gives you a look at our plots (see today's other post).

Labels: lettuce, peas, potato, spring, tidying

I had a bit of a tidy up on Sunday, as the summer draws to a close. Overall it has been mediocre, too cool and humid to get any of the real summer crop flourishing. It's a year with 13 moon cycles, so I am told, and some people say bullshit but the old timers seem to believe that they are bad crop years (like 2007), and I am inclined to believe that.
Anyway I ripped up all of the tomato plants and stakes and the black plastic, the useless melon vines and the summer cabbages (digging only the cabbage leaves into the ground so as not to waste their nutrients). I covered that area and have decided it will make the onion and garlic patch for the new season. I guess roughly speaking, the rotation plan for 2009 will be:

• spuds 2009 vs beans 2008
• alliums 2009 vs tomatoes 2008 (and follow them up with the winter cabbages)
• Three sisters 2009 vs spuds 2008 (I will probably have time to do a little dabbling in that patch, spring radish, or seed beds)
• Beans 2009 vs brassicas 2008
• Roots 2009 vs three sisters 2008

State of play:

• the brassicas are doing very well, I think they like it cooler, the red cabbages are terrific.
• The last lot of dwarf beans should be giving fruit in the next couple of weeks.
• The late carrots are growing well but they need to plump up a bit still.
• I have left the last three pumpkins on the vine for now, they still seem to be growing.
• The rhubarb is slowing dying off, it has finished for the year. Soon I will divide it and plant a third root and I will do the same with the artichokes. I want to mulch them both well with manure over the winter and spring.
• The celery is a bit of a mystery. The branch type doesn't seem to be growing well, although it is healthy enough, just too small, and the root type, I don't know what is going on with it. Maybe not enough water?

Sigh so what to do next year? I guess this year was a small improvement over last year, I got lots of fruit and a decent crop of alliums and potatoes. But I guess it is still not the bumper crop that I was expecting. Although I do know where I went wrong in most cases, so maybe I can make it better next year?
Good resolutions for 2009:

• Plant more earlier and under cover (works well for peas).
• Get a salad leaf box going for all year round greens (and give up on sowing individual lettuces, they just don't work for me).
• Plant more spuds, closer together, heavily mulched, more maincrop and a really nice salad variety. That Caesar variety was good, very big spuds.
• Repeat the Three Sisters experiment, adding in runner beans and planting the corn closer together. Get a nice variety of Butternuts going.
• Really look more into the varieties: this year was an improvement but next year should be better. Remember that the Colmar carrot was a success, the Lark corn and Coco de Paimpol beans do well here, the Gatrenperle tomatoes were crap but the Harzfeuer were nice and tasty. Get better varieties of beans, broccoli, beetroot (try that Cylindra type). Try two types of garlic to see which works best.
• Sow my own onions in January and plant them out.
  
• Get a polytunnel up and running and do aubergines, sweet peppers and chillies.
• Mulch and cover, mulch and cover, mulch and cover and GET A WHOLE LOAD OF HORSE CRAP ON THERE!!!!

Well I am glad I got that off my chest...

Labels: cabbage, carrots, fruit, summer, tidying, tomatoes

Sunday - not quite as glorious as Saturday but fairly warm, although overcast. And, miracles of miracles, Hubby (who is a hugely non-gardening person) offered to help me with the paths. As the offer does not come every day, I said yes, ignoring the agonizing muscle pain that I had in my legs and bum from all Saturday's work.
We lifted two of the carpet paths, levelled out the ground and laid cardboard then my little wooden squares. It looked very nice when it was done, and it has left a lot more room for veg plots, I have gained quite a bit of space. Unfortunately, there were 3 horizontal paths but only enough squares for two. So I will need to find more wood, methinks. He then helped me make another path up the middle of the lot with two rows of wood hammered into the ground and wider planks flat between them, so I have space to walk. Thank you Hubby for all the hard work ;-)
He then watched (appalled) as I tidied the shed: the bag of peat that I somehow can't seem to get rid of had spilt all over the place (I am suspecting something was digging in it because the bag had no holes), so I scraped up all that, tidied the poles and sticks that were all over the place and found two bags full of composting weeds that were now full of a black sludgy stuff, at which hubby turned his nose up while I was exclaiming "Brilliant! that will go on the compost". Gardening horrifies him, I think. The compost bin is looking decidely full so I will have to put up the polytunnel later in the week and dig in some compost and plant the first carrots, beets, rainbow chard and spring lettuce. there is a lot of compost ready at the bottom of the bin, that I started in January 2007.

Labels: paths, tidying, winter

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