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!
It's been ages... not posted since January; so far this year it's been a slow process but hopefully things are looking up with the weather and it shouldn't take too long to catch up.
So, what's doing well?
I have a fine selection (if a bit slug & snail munched!) of courgette, pumpkin & squash in the greenhouse; some of the larger ones should be ready for planting out soon.
Cucumbers and a couple of watermelon plants are also coming along nicely.
Tomotoes are coming into their own after a very slow start.
There is a very fine tray of various lettuce needing to be planted out...
... a few peppers and a couple of cape gooseberries coming up behind everything else.
The potatoes (for Easter) clearly didn't arrive in time, but they are looking quite healthy; I doubt they will be ready yet, but I might have a bit of a rummage in the sacks to see what's there.
And finally, there are loads of flowers on the strawberries so hopefully that means there will be lots of fruit.
There is still a lot to be done though; haven't sown any peas or beans yet, only have a few brassicas, sweetcorn germination was very poor so need to resow, not sown any leeks, parsnips or turnips either as it's been too cold... I am going to be very busy for the next few weeks!
I'm trying not to get too excited, but I think I may have harvested a whole salad... along with the rest of the grow your own community I have been battling with slugs this season so these two lettuces that have made it to picking size only slightly nibbled are a particular success
All washed up; literally leaf by leaf to make sure there were no lurkers in there, they look great and the taste is far superior to what you get in the supermarkets
Tomatoes have been ripening at the rate of about 2-3 a day which is slower than normal, but again the taste is amazing; this is the last few days worth
First beetroot came out of the ground today
Sadly the cucumbers are way behind where they should be so they don't get to realise their potential today, but there are some signs that I may eventually get something to harvest
Add a few of today's potatoes
and I think I've got a pretty decent salad there.
Just need to get some of the other veg: courgettes, french beans, brassicas and carrots to catch up!
I'll soon be harvesting the first crops of the season... the first sowing of mixed salad leaves are coming on a treat in the greenhouse; they're almost at full picking size
I have tried a couple of leaves already and they are extremely flavoursome. For some reaon the rocket leaves sown on the same day are a fair bit behind
I suppose that means a staggered supply so it's not all bad.
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.
... and I'm off! Sowing for the 2012 season has finally begun; a little bit later than originally planned, now that I think (hope) there won't be any more harsh frost.
Everything is in the potting shed with the tender stuff in unheated propagators, so fingers crossed it all germinates. I have sown:
- 40 tomatoes; 8 varieties (moneymaker, roma, gardener's delight, cherry, principe borghese, sub arctic plenty, rio grande, san marzano lungo)
- 40 chillies; 6 varieties (hungarian hot wax, rokita, orange wonder, aji crystal, cayenne, unknown from a mexican restaurant)
- 40 sweet peppers; 5 varieties (california wonder, corno rosso, bellboy, diablo, ozarowska)
- 6 aubergines; 2 varieties (viserba, black beauty)
- 6 cape gooseberries
- rocket
- mixed salad
and finally, the charlotte seed potatoes have been put out to chit.
Bring on Spring!!
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.
So, what became of my attempts at potatoes for Christmas? Well, a couple of weeks ago I thought I had failed miserably... I had some friends over for dinner so decided to liberate one sack of red duke of york for roasting and discovered that 99% of them were covered in what I think is scab and the remaining 1% were rotten. Peeling didn't bring the scabby ones back to edible status.
Completely my own fault I think; I hadn't been taking care of them properly for a while and kept telling myself that I needed to move them undercover but never got round to it. The sacks had been waterlogged and I just left them to their own devices.
Anyway, I left the remaining sacks outside to deal with another day; one more red duke of york and two charlottes.
Today, I went out to pull up parsnips for tomorrow's dinner, more about them in a minute, and decided to empty one of the charlotte sacks just to see... well, I was pleasantly surprised.
There were a couple of dodgy ones in there but the vast majority were practically perfect. Now, the yield was a bit smaller than I got from the summer spuds, but as I have never successfully grown Christmas spuds before, I don't know if that's normal?! I will empty the other two sacks after Christmas, just to see what they are like.
Right, back to the parsnips... the final row has now had a couple of frosts so should be sweeter that the ones I have previously pulled up. This row was sown too close together so are smaller in size individually, but were much easier to get out of the ground than the earlier mammoth ones... I got these up with my bare hands.
Today's final harvest was a few lettuce leaves; these will be joined by some prawns for that classic starter we all know and love.
I already have my own carrots, sprouts, swede, romanesco and french beans in the freezer and am so excited about bringing it all together for Christmas dinner.
I hope everybody has a good one!
Most of my sowings from last week have already come up; in the potting shed, chinese cabbage
and lettuce
Outside in the wicker planter, both chicory and wild rocket have come up
I may get some autumn / winter salads after all.
I also have some larger seedlings in the potting shed. I went to a food festival a couple of months ago and one of the pop-up restaurants was giving away chilli seeds. Even though I thought it was probably too late for them to mature and produce any fruit this year, and unlikely I would be able to successfully over winter them I sowed a couple anyway... this is them now.
Will just have to see how I get on with them.
Once again my good intentions to sow successionally have fallen by the wayside, so today I attempted to rectify that by sowing a selection of lettuce (reine de glaces, little gem, romaine ballon and romana bougival), chicory, wild rocket, spring onions, chinese cabbage, calabrese and autumn king carrots. I'm about a month behind with the carrots so will just have to wait and see if anything comes up. It would be fantastic to have some to pull up on Christmas day.
On that subject, the potatoes for Christmas are coming along nicely; the plants are now peeking over the top of their sacks and looking very healthy
I gave them one last topping up with compost so they should be okay outside for a while yet.
Today's harvest made for a very pretty trug so I thought I'd share a picture of that too
I have decided that the peppers are actually sweet banana... I saw some similar plants in the garden centre today and they look exactly the same, plus the description that they ripen to orange then red was exactly what mine have done.
Similarly, I think that the orange chilli peppers are cheyenne because I saw them in the garden centre too... mystery solved.
Where does the time go? It didn't help that today was almost a complete washout... this is how I performed against the plan:
lettuce to sow - nope
lettuce to plant out - yes, a selection of little gem and reines de glaces now reside in the wicker bed
brassicas to plant out - sort of... well, 50% of the ones I intended to plant out have been; 2 romanesca nautalino, 3 flower sprout and 2 savoy cabbages are now in a raised bed. The rest are still in the potting shed.
tomatoes to pot on and/or plant out - yes, 4 moneymaker have joined a slangen longoda and a mini-white in the reusable growbags
chillies to pot on - yes, all done... no photos though.
sweet peppers to pot on - yes, all done and they are flowering / bearing fruit already
squash to pot on - nope, but on closer inspection they didn't need to be
melons to pot on - again nope, but didn't to be
courgettes to plant out - yes, the final all green bush is now planted outside. Had to dispose of one of the earlier ones though and I'm not sure if it was a tondo di toscana or a gold rush... as I only had one of each of these might have to resow a couple of each.
cucumbers to pot on and/or plant out - yep, see mini-white above... the other ones, marketmore, marketer and a gherkin aren't actually ready to go out yet.
peas and beans to plant out (and work out why some of the ones already planted out appear to be dying) - nope, urgently need to to this during the week, but the good news is the earlier ones seem to be perking up.
sweetcorn to plant out - yes, all done
a raised bed that needs clearing - yes, this is where the newly planted brassicas are.
a fruit bed that needs weeding - yes, and I also put down some straw to hopefully keep the remaining strawberries clean.
nematodes to spread... that will teach those damn slugs! - oh yes, all out war has begun.
