Snip, snip!

I try to remember to water the square gardens every day since it has been dry here. I give each garden a whole watering can of tepid water.

Today I thinned the carrots by snipping off at ground level the extra seedlings.

I also put a strip of wood down the side of the potato squares so I can add a bit more compost and give them the full depth of the box.

My mother in law sent a root of rhubarb this week. I shoved it in the veg garden and am watering it frequently to see if it will perk up a bit. If not, I expect it will be fine next year.

Planting plan

Forgot to post the planting plan so here it is :-)

Whit weekend

Way back on March 25th I sowed a bunch of seeds. I ran out of seed compost so used Flúðamold for the last lot. The seeds germinated OK but did not grow very well and I decided to resow the seeds on May 2nd. Here is a photo of the two sets of seeds....

The second lot look SO much healthier! I decided to repot the weak ones and see if they will perk up. As I now have plenty of seedlings I put two coriander, two parsley, and one tomato plant out in the shallow box - in the expectation that they will probably die since they have not been hardened off at all! The rest I repotted after pulling away the peat pots. They all seem to have quite good root systems so maybe now compost will do the trick.
I repotted the new tomato seedlings too, and some of the basil, the rest will wait until they are a bit bigger. The pepper plants are very slow!

Since I needed plant pots for all this repotting I dropped into Blómaval today and bought a pack of three herb plants: chives, melissa and thyme. I put those in the square with the mint. I also bought a tomato plant which is already fruiting (mine look a long way from that!)and repotted that, put it in the little sunroom and moved all the other plants into the large one - that way if the tomato plant has the dreaded little flies I can kill them off in there and not let them out to the rest of the plants.

Here are the two square foot boxes. Really happy with the shallow one now. The onions are growing like mad, the broccoli looks very happy, and the spring onions are all up I think. The strawberry plants are flowering even though the plants are very small, and the salad square shows signs of life even if it is only one type - beetroot leaves I think. The spinach is looking good with a couple of leaves.





The deep box is coming on too. The beans look a little sorry for themselves but the carrots are almost all germinated, the parsnips are coming up gradually, and the potatoes are starting to break surface. I think I will cut a piece of wood to put to the left of the potato row, then I can fill with compost to the top of the box and get the full depth this year.

Must say that the weather has been very kind. Today is 14°C and even though there is not much sun it has been quite warm. I don't think I have ever seen so much blossom on the berry bushes so unless something goes wrong we should have quite a good crop.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

The carrots are coming up :-) Today there are a few seedlings of both sorts. Sucha relief! I will take a photo once there are a few more of them to see.

Nice weather!

8°C at 11 am and sunny and lovely at mid-day. Feels very springlike and the trees have flower buds and are getting greener by the day.

The seeds which I sowed indoors are all doing fine at the moment but were all sown too early by two weeks I would say. They need watering every day and have had a few droopy moments.I have most of them by an open window today and I may put some outdoors and see how they do soon - I have plenty of extra ones which I can keep indoors in case they are needed as replacements.

I put a few small roots of mint in a plantpot, lined with fine mesh, just so that there is a little bit in the garden. Need more really, have to think about that.

Most of the spinach is up now, and the first shoots of the lettuce mixture. Still no carrots though which is worrying me a bit. If worse comes to worse I will have to resow them late in May.

Green bits!

The onions are all peeping up nicely now, and the spinach are showing - at least enough are to be sure that they are spinach and not a random weed!
The weather is lovely today so I have officially opened the compost bin for business. I put a good layer of dried stems which I pulled out of the flower beds, then my first veg peelings, an apple core from Briet, and (getting desperate)I got the strimmer out and cut a handful of grass to have a bit of green.

Sowed more seeds

The seeds which I started in Flúðamold are not doing very well - the surface of the soil quickly became covered with some orange fungal stuff.
Sowed more of the same in plastic seed starter: 4 each of tomatoes, basil, coriander, parsley and peppers. Bit late probably so may well end up buying a tomato plant as well.

Few more added

I am worried about the bean plants which are indoors, they are getting so tall, so I decided to stick in some beans today and then I can decide later if I plant out the others or not.
Also sowed some spinach (Picasso F1) and mixed English salad - left over from a few years ago, I put a pinch of mixed seeds in each of 9 positions.