A very productive day

I spent today working from my favourite office...

... and a very productive day it was too.

The shop-bought tomato plants have romped away; shirley and sweet million in particular have been potted on into their final pots.

Lagging waaaaaay behind are my home-sown red pear and gardener's delight; these are the only tomatoes that germinated so I am determined to keep them healthy so that they produce well later in the year.

In other late germination news, I have one cape gooseberry seedling... it's teeny tiny at the moment, but again, I will do everything I can to make sure it grows.

Hopefully we are over the freezing cold weather now, so things will start to warm up and therefore speed up.

The first of the cucurbits appeared a few days ago and there are now four courgette seedlings, but sadly no cucumbers yet.

I have gone back to the original varieties of peas, beans and sweetcorn that I grew in my first year; these modules and pots contain golden sweet yellow podded mange tout, cherokee trail of tears beans and double standard bicolour sweetcorn.

I also sowed a few of my favourite 'heading' lettuces, lollo rossa and little gem as well as a variety of mixed salad leaves including rocket, mizuna, mesclun and a spicy mix, so will soon be picking rather than buying lettuce for the dinner table.

Outside, the onions, shallots and garlic that I planted out a couple of weeks or so ago are starting to show signs of growth.

But there is no sign of the beetroot or leeks that I sowed direct at the same time... maybe due to the frost that followed shortly after, maybe not... it might just be too soon.

I also got a fair bit of sorting and tidying done; including going through all of my seed packets and disposing of the partially used sachets from 3+ years ago. I feel as if I have almost caught up with where I need to be at this point in the season... long may the good weather continue!

Shopping, chitting and waiting

Today's gardening activity was mainly spent in the garden centre. I needed to get some aubergine seeds (now sown) so thought I'd pick up a few other things too.

I went for bonnie potatoes again this year, a very reliable second early; they are now chitting alongside the sown seeds in the potting shed. This should provide 6 sacks of delicious spuds later in the year.

 

Red onions, garlic and shallots have also been purchased; bit too early to plant out though and the bed I'm going to put them in isn't ready yet anyway... might tackle that next weekend if it stays relatively dry this week. 

 

 

No green shoots yet from last week's sowings but hopefully something will appear soon; am patiently playing the waiting game.



All About Aliums

Last weekend was certainly one for aliums... I pulled up white onions

shallots

and garlic

Since then, the red onion leaves have keeled over so I think pulling them is a task for tomorrow.

I had high hopes for them all when I planted them out late last year, but when the snow came I was convinced that was the end of them... they were clearly meant to be!

Now, I just have to work out how / where to store them all.

Outdoor Aliums

The alium family seem to be doing okay in the raised beds. There are lost of green shoots, mainly on the garlic and troy onions, but the others aren't far behind.

Maybe the ice & snow haven't done as much damage as I first feared.

Concern for aliums :-(

I'm a bit worried about my onions, shallots and garlic... the snow and frost hasn't done them any favours. Most of them were dislodged and lying on top of the soil so I have just been out and tried to push them back in again, although the soil underneath still felt very hard.

I don't think they had enough time to stabilise themselves before the bad weather came... will just have to wait and see I guess. 

Autumn Jobs... even though it's almost winter

So, it's that time of year again... the greenhouse and potting shed needed a clear out, tired plants needed to be thrown out, and autumn onions & garlic needed to be planted out, so that's what I did today.

The pepper and chilli plants in the greenhouse were definitely in need of some attention... most of them were put in the compost bag, although I did manage to pick these little beauties first.

One Bellboy and one Oregon looked like they might have a bit more to give, so I topped them up with a bit of fresh compost and moved them to the potting shed.

Similarly, a couple of the Apache plants are still showing a bit of life in them so I did the same.

Could just be wishful thinking on my part, but we'll see.

50 Troy sets, 50 Electric sets, 10 Jermor sets and 16 cloves of Lautrec Wight have been planted out where the brassicas used to live.

I also emptied out the last bag of rooster potatoes and was again pleased with the contents.

When I was tidying up the potting shed I found a couple of opened packets of salad seeds (lollo rossa & rocket) and an almost empty packet of feltham first peas... rather than wrap them up for next year I thought I'd see if I can get a few salad leaves and pea shoots out of them, so they are now in a couple of troughs in the greenhouse.

I still have a few more jobs to do outside, but thought that was plenty for one Sunday so they will have to wait for another weekend.

Saving Seed

The end of the mange tout and peas, signalled the beginning of my seed saving exploits for this season. I hadn't planned on saving legume seeds this year, but as I was cutting down the plants I came across numerous pods that I had missed when harvesting... they were too far gone to eat so I thought I may as well save them for future sowing.

Similarly I hadn't intended to save alium seed either, but my shallots persist in throwing up seed heads so I decided to collect them this time rather than composting them. I'm not sure even sure if it will work, but I may as well have a go at drying these out, collecting the seed and sowing next year.

Daily Harvests

I am really enjoying my daily visits to the garden to see what is ready for picking. This was today's harvest

and this was yesterday's

A quick cabbage update; contrary to my previous post, I think the cabbage was golden acre primo afterall. I have a couple of offenhams starting to "heart up" in one of the beds and they look completely different to yesterday's. It made a lovely coleslaw for lunch today.

I don't mind having courgette and mange tout on the menu every night and am coming up with more inventive ways to cook with them... might have to start looking up cucumber recipes soon.

First Cabbage...

... not just this season, but ever! It took me three years to successfully grow a cabbage and I'm over the moon.

The label says it's a golden acre primo, but it looks oval rather than round, so I'm guessing I mixed up my labels and it's an offenham. I don't really mind what it is. A third was steamed for tonight's dinner along with some mange tout, potatoes, a stir fry of courgettes & shallots and some salmon.

View from the potting shed

The veg plot is pretty full at the moment. This is the view from the potting shed

More experienced gardeners would probably say that things are planted too close together... and they would be right, but I have a lot to fit into the space and it seems to be working okay so far.

I am now harvesting enough of a selection of veg every day so that I don't need to buy any from the shops. In the past few days I have continued to pick mange tout, peas, courgettes and turnips but also had the first potatoes (see patience is a virtue post), first shallots

and first pak choi (although I had to pick this because it bolted, I think they are supposed to grow bigger than this)

A couple of cabbages should also be ready in the next week or so.

I think I could still do better to keep it going for as long as possible. My successional sowing has fallen by the wayside, so I rectified this by sowing a selection of lettuces and salad leaves, chinese cabbage, chicory and some onions for pickling (the last lot didn't materialise into anything).

I also need to get some more root veg in the ground, or rather containers... for some reason they didn't grow in the raised bed so that got filled up with brassicas. The ones that I already have in containers are doing much better so I bought some builder's buckets today and need to get sowing.

Patience is a virtue...

... one which I do not possess.

I posted a couple of weeks ago that I had 5 more weeks to wait for my potatoes... well, various sources state that early potatoes only take 12-13 weeks from planting to harvesting and as today is 13 weeks I didn't need any more encouragement to have a furtle around in one of the potato sacks.

I wasn't disappointed.

A few of these were boiled and joined various other veg: pak choi stir fried with shallots, glazed turnips, steamed mange tout & peas, yellow & round courgettes lightly sautéed in butter (all from the garden), and a roasted free range corn fed chicken (not from the garden) on my plate for dinner - delicious!

April Showers

While the rain has been taking a break from falling from the sky I've been doing a little bit of tinkering outside and moving things around this morning.

The slugs were back in the greenhouse last night and had a real go at the cucurbits...

...to the point where I decided to sow some more gherkin and marketmore just to be on the safe side. The yellow scallop squash seems to have stood firm and only have slight nibble marks. The all green bush courgette had only recently appeared through the compost and were still under a propagator lid, so managed to escape attack.

While I was at it though I also sowed another courgette as one of the earlier ones failed to germinate.

On a more positive note, things are looking up with my tomatoes, I have 3 newly germinated costoluto fiorentino and 3 newly germinated garden pearl... it's still very early days and a couple of them are very weak, but considering I have around 40 modules on another shelf failing to germinate at all, I'm happy with what I can get.

The surprise tomato seedling from last week was also standing to attention and waiting to be potted on. I think it is sub-arctic plenty, but I'll just wait and see if it makes it through to maturity.

The mange tout are looking quite perky in the guttering...

... still a bit small to be planted out yet, plus a couple of years ago when I planted them out the first week in April it snowed the next day! They survived and went on to produce a magnificent crop, but it was still scary at the time.

In the raised bed I could just about see the shallots starting to send up shoots... about time, they seem to have just been sitting doing nothing for weeks.

Anyway, it does look like the sun is trying to come out now, so maybe I'll venture back outside in a bit

The Germinator... or should that be germinated?

Yep, just the one. Of all the seeds I have sown so far, only one has germinated... can you spot it?

It's a cauliflower (all year round). What are the others waiting for?! Having checked my notes from previous years, germination has taken about a month, so I guess I am being a bit impatient... good things come to those who wait and all that.

Anyway, one or two of the garlic cloves have already put up shoots so there is some action in the garden.

So, what did I do today? In the potting shed I sowed:

• Onion (Kamal) x 5
• Onion (Sweet Spanish Yellow) x 5 

in little individual pots, and some rocket in a trough.

Outdoors, I planted the shallots (Golden Gourmet) x 12 in the raised bed, and also sowed:

• Carrots (Paris Market) x 2 rows
• Radish (Prinz Rotin) x 1 row
• Radish (French Breakfast) x 1 row

in a free bulb crate that I got from the local garden centre, and finally parsnips (White Gem) x 10 in the raised bed. Now with the parsnips I have sown in toilet roll tubes (which I did in my first year), and poured boiling water on the soil before dropping in the seeds (which I did in my second year... can't remember where I got that tip from), so hopefully the two in combination should work wonders.

Past Successes - Shallots / Onions

A kitchen staple that is easy to grow, go in everything and store well... I just leave them to it. The amount of shallots I had this year was amazing.