Peas!

Pea pods starting to form in our lean-to. Sown into last years tomato pots and compost. Having to keep a eye on greenfly now though. Better to keep on top of it and will clean the pots when the peas are finished.

Path ponderings

We have quite a few grass paths on the plot and they take a fair bit of maintenance. The other day I thought, hmm maybe we should have less paths or at least maybe less grassy paths?

On reflection, and as there are a hundred other things to try and sort out, I figured the paths are quite good after all. If I keep the cuttings separately I can use them as mulch (which I did last year but had forgotten) - good for putting round the strawbs, other fruit bushes, potatoes and a whole host of other uses. Pile them up and let them dry out, and a short while later, hey presto, free mulch!

The photo below is from a couple of weeks ago. It's looking much more lush and green now though, after a bit of rain. Need to get me shears out!

Click on it to view the full photo (added via a mob and it came across a bit funny)

Parsnips, potatoes and parsley

Dug up the last of the 'snips yesterday as the tops had started growing a bit too much. We had parsnip and potato chips for tea yesterday, both homegrown. Funnily enough it was that old coincidence that I sowed this years parsnips yesterday too, between the rows of broad beans, sown with radishes to mark the rows as the 'snips take ages to germinate. The broad beans have finally started to peep through, which is exciting. I'd sown them direct in January under some enviromesh but had almost given up.

The curly parsley sows itself around the plot (originally self-sown from a neighbour's) and yesterday went into homemade falafels, with salad leaves from the lean-to. I have started using split dried fava beans (I.e dried broad beans) to make falafels, produced by Hodmedod's Great British Beans, grown here in Nofolk. Lovely local product and they include a handy recipe book too.

A day in the sun

Today was sunny, hurrah! The site was busy with several people making the most of the weather, including some newbies - it's good to see the derelict plots being used again. Let's hope they keep up the momentum, last year two sets of new comers only lasted one summer before giving up. It's a shame to see their crops going unharvested.

Despite the predicted continuation of poor weather I decided to risk putting in my early spuds - sharpe's express. They won't appear above ground for a while so hopefully they'll be ok. I prepared the bed the other day, dug a trench, added ripped up cardboard and horse poo and watered the trench before filling it back in. It meant today I could just make holes for the individual pots so only took a few mins.

Everything is really dry! Funny, when you think how much snow we had but more recently we haven't had much rain and our sandy soil dries out really quickly, hence adding cardboard to the potato trenches for extra moisture retention. JB weeded the strawb bed which I then watered. I need to add some compost to the bed but didn't want to trap in the cold water, so it should have warmed up in the sun when I go back tomorrow. Same for the asparagus bed and raspberries.

The wind also dries the soil out and can obviously damage crops. I bought some reed screening from Wilkos 1.8m high for £14 I think. I cut roughly in half height-wise to get double the length and also as didn't want to create too much shadow. Have put this along the south-west boundary as this is the prevailing wind direction. Will see how this gets on before buying any more. Am also hoping to make some willow wind-breaks.

Pruning one of the sage bushes I saw my first ladybird of the year, lovely. And a robin and chaffinch were singing nearby. Jackdaws were flying past with twigs in their beaks. JB saw a butterfly but wasn't close enough to see which type. She saw a bumble bee too. Surely it must mean spring is finally here!!

Tea tonight included baby leeks  from the plot (or actually leeks that just didn't grow very big hehe) and some some salad leaves from the lean-to in the garden. Oh and some lambs lettuce that I needed to clear for the potatoes. Quite satisfying!

Seedy Sunday

Sorting out this years seeds into months. Always a surprising number that can be sown early if weather allows. A lot will roll forward from one month to the next though, so mustn't panic! Need to clean out the seed trays too. Better get busy!

Seeds and slugs

Thanks to a welcome day off work, today I've finally got round to placing my seed order, hurray! (normally something I would do in Dec and already have my seed potatoes chitting-away). It's one of things I enjoy doing but also feel a bit pressured with...have I made the right choices? ...Stick to the old favourites or try some new?

Well I've gone for a mixture of old and new. Potatoes - I've decided to do a few less this year as they did almost too well last year and we still have loads in store. In the next couple of months they'll start sprouting themselves (as a way of extending the storage am thinking of trying to make my own frozen chips, which sound pretty easy - parboil, dry, freeze).

Anyway, so I've gone for one variety of early (Sharpe's Express 1.5 kg) and a main (Rooster 2 kg). Normally I would have 4.5 kg total but always end up giving a few away anyway due to lack of space. Both of these are new for me. Rooster is meant to be a good all-rounder so seemed worth a try. I really would have liked a variety resistant to scab (as we sometimes get it quite bad on our sandy soil) but the sizes available didn't suit.

So just a few other examples of my selection -

Sweetcorn Sweet nugget - grew this last year and was v tasty. Froze well too. As I have a few seeds from last year, it made sense to get the same variety as otherwise they can cross pollinate and not end up how they're expected, as I understand it.

Squash - still have a few Potimarron seeds left and it wasn't in the catalogue this year anyway, so have added Crown Prince.

Onions - Am trying Sturon (new for me, normally would grow jet set, which do ok-ish but fancied a change). Have stopped bothering with autumn onions too as they don't do well for me though plot neighbours have good harvests)

Runner beans - didn't grow any last year as couldn't find my seeds! Am trying a new variety Lady Di.

Climbing french beans - Blauhilde - a lovely purple bean that normally does well. My climbing beans were rubbish last year though - the wind really damaged them. Am trying to think of ways of protecting from the wind.

Broad Beans - Express - a new one for me, mainly chosen due to the number of seeds in the pack! (60) We did well with broad beans last year so hope for a repeat.

I always order through the organic gardening catalogue and also get a 10% discount as a Garden Organic member

SLUGS!! A bbc news report says that a particularly nasty species of Spanish slug has been discovered just outside Norwich....Yikes! Better keep an eye out on the plot.

Spring?

The weather this morning was lovely so I ventured down to the plot for the first proper session in several weeks. Aside from a few quick visits to dig up parsnips or harvest sprouts (which I
 did on Xmas day for our roast, mmmm) for various reasons it's been a slow time on the plot recently, especially as I'd usually be down there most weekends in autumn and winter. Anyway, today was too good to miss so I spent a few hours pottering around. Despite the need to do a lot of weeding, I've decided to leave this for a while as I reckon they're possibly doing some good at the moment by preventing nutrients being washed out of our sandy soil. Last year I put down horse poo in autumn and then covered the beds with cardboard but didn't manage to do that this year. Am hoping to get some horse poo soon, so will weed then.

Although it was great to have a warm sunny day to get down on the plot (which then made way to colder damp fog), it's worth remembering that probably the worst of the winter is yet to come!

Autumn harvest

So yes it's been too long since we last posted but will hopefully be back on track now.
We dug up our first parsnip yesterday and it was a big'un! It was roasted with our own potatoes, yum. Whilst the oven was on I roasted one of the potimaron squashes, which went into a spiced soup tonight. Double-yum.
Beans did badly this year, as did red currants but most other things did pretty well. I wish I'd made more effort on the greens though. We do have sprouts and some cabbages but not much chard. As the saying goes, there's always next year!

Peat-free compost

Don't forget that if you want to have real green credentials you should use peat-free compost. New Horizon is the best I've found and it's been given good reviews in several mags recently, including the Garden Organic members magazine. (better yet, make your own! I've read that home compost mixed with leaf-mould makes a good seed compost. Our home and allotment don't generate enough home-made stuff so I buy-in the New Horizon multi-purpose for sowing seeds and growing toms etc in the lean-to, with usually good results and good germination rates).

Today it rained (still is) but we trekked down the plot to attach guttering to the shed, to catch the precious stuff falling from the sky (kind of ironic really!). It was a bit fiddly and the old guttering we'd been donated had been a bit hacked about previously but we managed to get a reasonable seal, fashioning some extra-thick seals from old bike inner-tubes, (we also bought the end-stops and brackets from BnQ) and the tub started to fill up straight away. We just need to find a bit of pipe for the down-pipe but in the mean-time it's happily dripping down from the end-connector bit. Quite satisfying , especially as we have a drought in the east. In fact a sign has gone up on the gate saying that a hose-pipe ban will be coming in at the end of the month - not that i use a hose-pipe anyway - lugging the watering can is extra exercise!

More rain expected tomorrow so the potatoes will have to wait a while before setting out but maybe I'll sow some leeks at home instead.

Thought for the day...

...or thought for last sunday as that's when it occurred to me.... I was roasting the last of our parsnips and earlier that day been sowing the parsnip seeds for next year! The circularity of growing fruit and veggies is quite apparent at this time of year - spuds chitting and sowing seeds of parsnips, leeks, purple sprouting broc and so on, which can grow for over a year before harvesting. Start planning now to prevent that hungry gap!

Our 'gap' is quite small this year as we've got lots of leeks (I sow them now in pots and then plant out once the potatoes have been harvested - makes the most of space, helps reduce risk of leek moth damage. The down-side is that depending on the autumn/winter, you might not get decent sized leeks til the spring), PSB in the back garden, black kale, chard, parsnips just finished (discovered a secret row that I'd missed but the green tops starting to grow gave their presence away - a nice surprise) , still some potatoes in the shed, parsley, rocket (nice young leaves from where it's accidentally self-seeded around the back garden), and in the lean-to: pea shoots, coriander, oriental leaves, lettuce leaves, salad onions, all sown in the old tom compost from last summer (which will get added to the back garden borders when these crops are finished).

I do sometimes feel a bit stressed at this time of year, thinking of all those seeds waiting to be sown but take a deep breath and try and enjoy it instead. The toms, peppers, chilis and so on are all doing well, even producing their first true leaves. They'll probably need potting on soon!