Happy New Year

I am so excited about the coming season; spent an hour wandering around the local garden centre this morning; ordered new seeds online (more about that later); and the sun is shining today, which I am taking as a sign that this year we will have more favourable weather than last year.

I have already started some things off; in the autumn I planted some onion sets and they seem to be doing pretty well

 

I also started off some peas and have so far managed to keep them pretty happy in the potting shed

 

Again I am trying with broad beans, which are now planted out and fleeced to keep out the cold, and hopefully the dreaded blackfly which seem to be present all year round

 

 

 

I was seduced by a mailing from one of the online garden centres which advertised “Potatoes for Easter”, so currently have 15 swift tubers chitting on the kitchen windowsill; they need to be planted in January so I will probably do that at the weekend and keep the sacks in the greenhouse for now.

I’m planning on trying a host of new produce this year:

Whilst I love french beans I’m not really a fan of runners, so this year they will be one of my “if I grow it I might like it” experiments; I will be trying hunter and jiminez.

I can’t seem to watch a cooking show, either professional chefs or amateurs without celeriac popping up somewhere, so I’ll be trying monarch this year.

I’m going big on winter veg, so as well as re-introducing leeks which I really missed last year and regret not growing any, I will be attempting two new varieties of squash; festival and sweet dumpling.

I’ll also be introducing a couple of heritage tomatoes, green zebra and cream sausage, just the names of them make me chuckle.

The most challenging new addition will be mushrooms, chestnut button portobello and white button; although, according to the write-up they are the easiest things to grow, so we’ll see.

So much to look forward to, I really can’t wait to get going.

End of Year Review

So, here it is... my end of year review. First things first, lets get the disappointments out of the way:

Beetroot - what on earth happened there? I had new varieties, burpees golden and chioggia to try but they came to nothing more or less; partly because next door's cat thought that the freshly sown bed was put there for his benefit, but even subsequent sowings were poor. Old faithful boltardy did better, but I still didn't get as many as I should have done.

Brassicas - the less said about these the better; I'm not even going to detail them separately as absolutely nothing grew.

Broad beans - my first proper attempt was devastated by blackfly.

Courgettes - not a single fruit formed on any plants... actually, that's not strictly true; there were a couple but they just shrivelled up, and I have never failed to grow courgettes before.

Cucumbers - after the first couple the plants just seemed to give up so I also gave in and pulled them up.

Herbs - failed to germinate... end of story.

That's enough of that, now onto the good stuff.

I had more berries than previous years; a constant supply throughout the summer, from strawberries

to raspberries

and blackberries

Onions were spectacular

and tomatoes were consistent; they kept cropping until November

This year I also kept a tally of how much it would have cost to buy all of the fruit and veg that I produced; excluding the few things that never made it to the kitchen scales the grand total was.....




... drumroll




... £115.85 and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I'm under no illusions that I'm near self-sufficient (especially not this year), or have broken-even but still, it means I didn't spend it on produce.


The highlights were:

Potatoes £29.00
Tomatoes £15.31
Parsnips £10.55
Raspberries £8.62
Onions £8.54
Peppers £8.48
Strawberries £8.29

So, onwards and upwards to 2013 and next season!

First Seedlings

Yes they are tiny, but earlier this week saw the appearance of the first seedlings. You can just about see the rocket in here

Slightly easier to spot is the mixed salad

In harvesting news I pulled a few leeks

and dug up the last of the parsnips

on the same day that I sowed a row of white gem into a recently re-built raised bed.

I also sowed 6 mini-white cucumbers in the greenhouse. I have returned to this variety because they have always produced perfect results for me and in large quantities. I seem to struggle with the more traditional longer cukes so have decided to stick with what works well for me.

Now for a confession... I had to re-sow some broad beans. My autumn sown batch that were doing so well were killed in the frosts. My own fault; I kept reminding myself that they needed to be fleeced but never got round to it, so there are six new sutton sowings in the greenhouse alongside the cucumbers.

New Year, New Plan

So, 2012... year of the London Olympics and time for a new sowing schedule. This year I will be expanding my beetroot selection to include chioggia & burpees golden and also a new lettuce, webb's wonderful.

I have also come to the conclusion that I do not have enough space to grow as many brassicas as I would like, so this year I am trying some smaller varieties; cauliflower (fremont), broccoli (matsuri) and cabbage (caraflex). 

Back in October I sowed some broad beans for the first time; this was shortly after they'd poked through the compost

after a couple more weeks

and today

I have never been a fan of broad beans, so this is another of my "if I grow it, I might like it" experiments.

Other than those few changes, everything else I intend to grow remains the same.

This year I am also going to weigh and price up everything that I harvest, just to see what value can be attached to it. I won't include things that were grown for last season, like these last few potatoes that I uncovered today

or the remaining leeks and parsnips that I still have in the ground. In a week or two I will start sowing... bring on the new season.