Indoors

As the weather is a bit damp, I'm turning my attention to things indoors. This will also stop me from getting cabin fever.

I'm trying a few things from seed this year - chillies, butternut squash, borlotto beans, yellow french - style beans, sweetcorn, coriander and kale. I've taken a pic of the seed packets to remind me what they are. Everything is outside apart from the chillies. The sweetcorn didn't do well last year due to wet weather so I'm giving them another go as I think we're going to get more sun this year.

The chilli seedlings are doing well in the dining room. I'm not making the same mistake as last year and putting them outside too early - I got overexcited when it was sunny for a few days. I'll wait until June before they'll go into the cold frame for a couple of weeks to harden them off then they can go out onto the path. (We only got a handful of chillies last year and no sweet peppers!!)

I also got some free plant plugs online. A few weeks ago the tomato plant was a few inches tall. Now look at it! Not sure when to plant it outside - the weather is far too wet and miserable so I'll keep it indoors near the window. It's been potted into a home-made newspaper pot. Only problem is that whenever I give it a water, it leaks everywhere! But it hasn't fallen apart yet which is the main thing.

Wet wet wet

The weather has turned, just in time for the bank holiday weekend. It has been raining for most of Sunday and Monday (today). I'm a bit worried about the aubergine, pumpkin and sweetcorn plants as it is a bit cold and wet. So I've decided to cover them in the little bit of fleece we've got left. Hopefully that will give them a bit of a helping hand and keep them warm.

The potatoes have also taken a bit of a battering. As their stems are so long, they've bent over (although still growing away). I'm not sure if it's the wind or the foxes which have flattened them.





















Also the cabbage seedlings look a bit forlorn. I think they may have grown too quickly in the sun and have now fallen over (no pics - it was too wet to take many!). But there is a ray of hope in the kale. The plants are a few inches high and ready to be thinned. The leaves look lovely with their purple veins (I've gone for a purple variety known as "Scarlet"). Again, no pics, but once I've thinned them out, I'll get some up.

Just enjoying the sunshine

Last weekend we spent a lot of time in the garden. As the sun was shining for so long, we felt that we had to be tending the garden although there wasn't much to be done to the veg (although plenty to be tackled elsewhere). After I while I stopped feeling guilty and lazed about a bit, listened to the footie and took a few pics. We finished saturday with a bbq - I enjoyed my first BBQ'd bacon which was yum. I definitely recommend.

Potatoes 3

We've had some fantastic weather recently - beautiful sunny days which has really got the green fingers itching to get out and plant things. It's amazing seeing what impact the ten days or so of sunshine have done to the plants. They've been lapping it up and growing very very quickly.

The potatoes in particular have been growing faster than we can earth them up (this is where you pull the earth up the shoots - this helps prevent blight and the potatoes from going green. Green = poison). However they've grown so fast that they're now far too tall to earth up without creating mountains in the veg patch. Mr has mulched them with grass clippings to keep out the light to help. I've been checking online to make sure that it isn't the hot weather making them grow overly tall (i.e. are they bolting - where plants expend loads of energy growing shoots which distracts from them producing the goods?). We've given them a water plus rain is forecast for the next few days so hopefully that will calm them down. Anyway, check out these pictures showing the heights that the potatoes have grown in the space of a couple of weeks...

The first two were taken on 3rd May and the last four were taken on 8th, 10th, 11th and 15th of May respectively.

It's amazing how tall they've got. In the last picture the tallest I measured was 20 inches... They are supposed to be earthed up at 9 inches (which they were) but they've just shot up again. Soon they'll be taller than me!

Compost

We've had the compost bin ever since we've moved in about a year and a half ago. It has been interesting to see how the food and waste breaks down - although a bit hard to tell as we only ever look in from the top when taking the lid off. There is always an abundance of insects and worms in there though. However it is also a hiding/breeding ground for slugs...

We've got a bog-standard black plastic bin from the local council. All of our food waste (except meat and cooked food) goes in plus paper and a bit of grass (not too much grass otherwise it turns to sludge). The other day Mr decided to take the whole bin off and give the contents a real good turning over as it's pretty difficult to do so just by taking the lid off.

The pics show the compost with the bin taken off

Sowing the seeds

We've started sowing a few things indoors and with the amazing weather, I've been able to stick some things in the ground very quickly. Once they were ready, we put them in the cold frame. The picture shows the cabbage and cauliflower seeds in the background with the borlotto, squash and aubergine in the foreground (I cheated with the aubergine and bought the plug plant online). The borlotto seedling has since been planted into the side bed.



















Last years pea and runner bean seeds were sown straight into the ground a few weeks ago. The runner beans have been very slow to germinate - with one finally appearing the other day! The peas on the other hand were quite quick to appear. They'll need thinning out. Mr has put together a slightly different arrangement of supports for the runner beans and peas this year, with the pea supports in place long before they were sown. This will make it easier as the peas got quite tangled on our first attempt. Last year we tried using a combination of "pea sticks" (twiggy branches) and plastic support from the garden centre - it looks like netting but with much bigger holes. This is then tied to bamboo sticks which are arranged in a line about 30cm apart. The pea netting worked much better than the pea sticks so we're sticking to that this year.

Pea plants aren't very tall - probably about 30cm (1ft) at most but they like to climb. They have these lovely little string curly bits which wrap themselves around the nearest branch/pole. They remind me of little whips (a bit like the one Indiana Jones uses...). I like the pea plants so much, I'm thinking about growing sweet peas next year as they grow in a similar fashion.

The pics below show the supports. In the first pic you can see the green netting (click on the pic to enlarge). The peas may get a bit more (photo) attention this year than the other plants due to my fascination with how they grow.

Leaf mould

At this time of the year when the seeds are sprouting but not much else, we spent quite a lot of time preparing for future years. One of the things Mr has built is a wire bin to make leaf mould. Building it wasn't quite as easy as first thought - for one thing it has been difficult getting the wooden posts to stay upright! It was constructed with 4 wooden posts, a role of chicken wire and u-shaped nails - all available in the local DIY/garden store. The 120cm posts were about 1m square apart and the chicken wire about 120 cm tall. Mr laid out the posts on the ground, unrolled the chicken wire on top and hammered the wire to the posts using the nails. The whole thing was then stood upright in position and the posts hammered into the ground. Hey presto, you then have a wire bin.

Leaves do not compost very easily, so it is best to compost them seperately. Once the autumn leaves break down, added to the soil, they really help improve its condition (but not high in nutrients). In some parts of the garden I've just dug the leaves straight in (but not too many) and the worms get to work on them quite quickly.

We've got loads of trees in our garden, including a small oak so there are plenty of leaves every year to keep us going! I spent an hour clearing out a couple of wheelbarrows worth of leaves from one small corner of the garden. Slugs love to hide under these piles of leaves so that's even more of an incentive to get rid of them. When we moved a pile of leaves that were next to the compost bin, we found a few green ones waiting to eat our hard - grown veg...

We've positioned the bin under one of the trees in a spot that gets some sun but not too much. We have to keep the pile wet and adding grass cuttings also helps. In a year or two we'll have to see how it has got on.

The Side Bed - experimental veg

We're sowing most of our crops from seed this year. I've also set up a side - bed to put the "experimental" veg which doesn't really fit into the trio of beds (plus they are Mr's babies so I leave well alone!).

This side bed gets quite a lot of sun -which is a blessing in our garden as we have a lot of shade - creating trees. We've discussed chopping down the huge cherry tree - although would that be bad for our green - karma...? However it creates massive shadows across the veg beds particularly when the sun is lower at this time of year.

Back to the side bed - I moved one of the shrubs and gave the soil a good tidying up. Digging in some leaf mould and compost seems to have helped a bit, although the proof will be in the growing. Last year I had real trouble; everything I planted got eaten by the slugs. So this year I come armed with slug pellets (organic ones - promise!) as I cannot face another year of plants with holes in them. The first two pics show the bed - I've removed the left shrub in the second picture.

Into the side bed will go borlotto beans (like runner beans but pink/red pods and the beans remind me of zebras), squash, pumpkin, beans which look like french beans but with yellow pods, sweetcorn and some sunflowers. I was going to try the "three sisters" method of growing (where you use sweetcorn to support runner beans and plant low growing squash between) but some blogs say that the runner beans grow to quickly for the sweetcorn so I've decided not too. However as the sweetcorn didn't grow well last year (poor summer) - I fancy another go.

The third pic shows the bed after a good tidying. You can see the cane supports for the borlotto beans. I've sown two of these seeds indoors- one has grown a lot quicker than the other, so I planted the big one out yesterday after leaving it in the cold frame for a week. (You can see it on the right). I've also put out one of the shorter bean plants (I have to look up the name - all I know is they have yellow pods). I also ordered some free plug plants - pumpkin, tomato, pepper, aubergine, pumpkin and courgette. The pumpkin has gone out into the side bed. I have no idea how big it will get. I've also sown a block of sweetcorn around the pumpkin. The first lot of sweetcorn seeds I sowed indoors failed to germinate (old seed - well 1 year old) so I bought another pack and sown direct outdoors. The forecast for the next few days is mild with a mix of sunshine and showers - so hopefully they'll sprout! I am worried about the slugs though.

The aubergine has gone into the cold frame as it needs a bit more growing and I've brought the tomato and pepper plant indoors to pot on. Unfortunately I had a mishap with the courgette and managed to snap it in half...! That's the danger of using garden gloves - bare hands are much safer as you can feel what you are doing to the delicate plants. Mr is growing courgettes in the main bed so I don't mind too much. It was annoying though!

Potatoes 2

The potatoes have been dug in two trenches - one long, one short. We've also put 2 in 2 pots and 2 in the corner bed as we had some going spare... The ones in the bed went in first and have already sprouted and are growing nicely. As the potato shoots grow, Mr has to earth up the soil over the foliage every week leaving only 15cm showing. This is to stop the tubers being exposed to sunlight which will make them turn green (and inedible). This is done until the ridges reach about 30cm high. As for the potatoes in the pots - well they've only just sprouted so I will cross that bridge when I come to it. The pots are big, but they may become top heavy if I need to earth up to great heights..

Potatoes

This year we are growing potatoes for the first time. We have two varieties - the main crop (King Edwards) and new potatoes (Foremost).

Mr has planted them out in the root bed - this was done in March. He ordered seed potatoes online and left them to chit in some old egg boxes.

A new year

It's a new year and a new gardening season. Time to get those gardening gloves out, unpack the seeds and flick through the catalogues.

We've rotated the beds and Mr has drawn up some excellent plans for each one. This is something I recommend - scale diagrams - he has referred to them constantly during the planting season so far.

After making plans, the first task was to prepare a bean trench (digging organic matter into a trench where the beans will be planted). Mr used our own compost which is looking lovely - although you wouldn't think it from looking in the bin from the top. Next was decide on what to sow indoors and when to start - sometimes it is difficult to wait because you just want to start sowing straight away. It feels like there isn't much to do in winter...!