Whit Sunday

We are having a spell of lovely sunny weather (if the forecast is to be believed) so I made an effort and spent a bit of time in the garden today. Here is the status:
Deep box, left hand side - most of the potatoes are up now, and the Jerusalem artichokes. The poatatoes showed up when we were still having frost but at that point I had not filled the box with compost so I just piled more on and I think they should be safe enough from now on. The spring onions did not germinate at all so I re-sowed them today. The carrot week carrots only germinated about 50% and the rest of the carrots had quite a few missing stations so I sowed some more today - it is still plenty early enough to do this.
Deep box, right hand side - I transplanted the broad beans during the week, just because they were getting too tall, especially the Masterpiece ones. There is a full row of those, with four plants per square. Then three squares of Mendes broad beans. The parsnips did not start to show until this week and there were a few still missing today so I resowed in those positions, even though it is possible that the first lot of seed was still coming up. I put four broccoli plants in two squares - bought them at Garðheimar last week. That leaves two squares for runner beans and one for sweet peas. Those plants are ready to go in really, not sure if I will put them out tomorrow or wait another day. >/br> Shallow box, right hand side - this box is now full to bursting point. I pushed in four kale plants (from Garðheimar) amongst the garlic. The garlic experiment is interesting - the single cloves of Chinese garlic are not doing much at all. The bulbous cloves which i grew last year look great foliage wise, not sure if they are making a garlic bulb or not. The garlic cloves look OK too but again no way to tell what is happening below ground. The New Mexico aquilegia are doing fine, going to leave them where they are this year. I pushed in some freesia bulbs with them so interesting to see if they will flower or not. I added one square of spinach today, and one of mixed salad leaves (Ovation) - it says harvest after 21 days but I don't believe that. Three squares are taken up by onions (Hercules) which Elvar insisted on planting to go with the pepper plants indoors. he planted them and them seem to be coming up nicely.

I think that I started the beans all way too early this year so next year they should be two weeks later than this. I'm not sure if it is worth doing the carrots so early either. Some of them have one true leaf coming now, not convinced that I will get any carrots earlier this way and it may be just as well to wait longer next year. It does depend on the weather though. Indoors the various paprika and pepper plants are doing fine. Elvar's (from Natsha) is flowering already. The basil is looking good and I trimmed enough to make some pesto last week. The melon plants are storming upwards and I have tied them to canes. The Squash plant has emerged but doesn't seem very keen on life - wonder if it is too warm there? I also have a Bramly apple seed which is at least germinated and growing, and an orange pip which germinated but has not grown much in the compost.

Jerusalem artichokes

Yet another experiment! I saw Jerusalem artichokes in Bonus and bought a bag of them (these are from Denmark). I think it is rather late in the year to be planting them so they may not doa great deal but if they are tiny come autumn then I can replant and leave them over the winter so they get an early start next year. I put four of them in the spare square in the box where the potatoes and carrots are. If they grow then they will need staking. The carrot week carrots are still not up, no surprise there really.

Carrots and parsnips

Just rounding off the seed sowing today.

Two squares each of The Student and Javelin F1 parsnips in the righthand deep box. I will post the plan when I have added the other squares in. I think I will have four squares for each of the two braodbeans, like last year, and then four squares of runners IF the customs let them through.

I also sowed four squares of Royal Chantenay carrot in the shallow box, next to the garlic. Last year they seemed too short a carrot for the deep box.

Each square was dressed with a handful of mushroom compost/chicken manure/dried seaweed.

The shallow box seems to have a lot of grass seedlings, not very happy about that.

Beans etc.

Note to self: keep better records!!!!
I'm not sure when I sowed the broadbeans last year, I seem to have planted them out on May 5th so I suspect I am a week or two late with starting them indoors. The trouble is you never can tell what the weather will do!

I had beans left over from last year so I used those again: Medes and Masterpiece.
I also started some left-over sweetpeas and nasturtium.

The sweetpeas are in toilet-roll tubes, seated in fine pumice and filled with Pindstrup. The others are in plastic pots of various sorts. My sister says that they are fine and just as good as peat-pots in her opinion.

Speaking of my sister, the runnerbeans and basil seed which I had sent to her has arrived so she should mail it on to me next week and if the customs don't make a fuss it should arrive soon and then I can try Moonlight runners which are supposed to self-fertilize.

Happy Summer!

Thursday was the first day of summer and certainly it is sunny but not terribly warm yet (7°C or less).
Ómar's mother gave me some chitted potatoes yesterday and told me to get them planted so I did! I added some leftover chicken manure and then decided I might as well get the carrots sown too. So I bought a bag of mushroom compost, a container of chicken manure, and one of dried seaweed. I put a handful of each in very square before sowing the carrot seed - see below. I added one square of spring onion seed too and there is a blank square left.




The garlic is looking pretty good now. I put some fertilizer round it today and covered it up again. Here is a picture of how it looks, and one of the potatoes before I planted them. Quite a mixture of potatoes, some I bought last autumn and kept in the fridge, the others are some French ones which I allowed to sprout a little.

Seeds sown

I bought two neat little plastic propagators from Tiger (purple-pink ones) and have now sown the following:

Parsley - Plain Leaved 2 (4)
Basil - Tiger (4)
Basil - Sweet Genovese (4)
Pepper - California Wonder (3)
Pepper - Patio Red (3)
Pepper - (Hot) Hungarian Black (3)
Brussel Sprout - Evesham Special (3)

Happy Easter!

It is Easter Monday and a lovely sunny day so I did a bit of tidying in the garden.
The official Square Foot Gardening site (http://squarefoot.creatingforum.com/) is having its second annual carrot week on April 16th +/- 1 week so I took the chance offered by the good weather and sowed some Nates 2 seed in one square. I added some chicken manure first and then the seeds - I was generous with the seed because they are from 2010 and may not germinate so well.
A while back we had a bad storm which washed a lot of seaweed up along the coast and I collected a few bags of it. I tipped it into the compost bin and gave it all a light stir. Seaweed is supposed to accelerate the rotting.
I plan on sowing some seed indoors in the next couple of days, basil at least and a couple of pepper plants.
The garlic is doing fine still. I had a poke around and it all seems to be making bulbs so perhaps I will actually get a crop this year?