Monday, September 26, 2016

Autumn: general

It was a very wet spring. I suspect that everything got washed out of the soil and even though I added the usual amount of chicken manure and dried seaweed, and the second half of the summer was lovely, nothing grew very well except for the strawberries. Even the kale, red cabbage and swede, bought as plants, did poorly and were mostly not even big enough to eat.
The carrots are still growing now, and I dug up the few potatoes today - they were mostly the weird-looking ones that had been in the garage for over a year; I failed to plant them out last spring. They had become lots of very small potato plants, with small leaves, so I did not expect much from them. Got quite a lot of tiny potatoes though; I will see if they keep OK and plan to sow them properly next spring if they do.
I moved the damson plants, apple plant, lilies and Dad's honey suckle into the right-hand deep box. I am going to give them decent shelter for the winter. They were all in small pots, sheltering in between the strawberry plants so I hope that they do better now.
If it wasn't for these "special" plants, I would aim to empty and renew the right hand box next year - it has a lot of hedge roots in it now I think, and one of the screws holding the green line came out of its hole (rotted a bit). But since I only moved the plants there this year I think I will need to put that off. Perhaps it would be smartest to deepen the front right hand box instead.

Autumn: garlic



Sown Autumn 2015

Right box




Pur-white
I Purp


White
+3 Pur-white
White


Bulbils
Bulbils


The white garlic was sown as cloves, the Icelandic purple too. The Pur-white was undivided bulbs.

Harvest Summer 2016

Right box




3
4


5
1


6
2


1: OK size, nicely divided (white)
2: Mostly very small and undivided, 2 are divided
3: Three nice size and divided, rest small and undivided (pur-white)
4: Small bulbs, undivided
5: Three nice size and divided (two had flowered), rest OK size but undivided
6: Mostly very small and undivided

Left box (all volunteers I think)








1
2



3



1: small, seem to have done little, but flowered and made bulbils
2: must be Icelandic purple, smallish but divided
3: nice divided bulbs

Sown Autumn 2016

Left box




1
2


3
4


5
6



1: White  (from right box) (9)
2: Purple-white (9)
3: Purple-white (I think) (9)
4: Icelandic purple (9)
5: Bulbils (now small undivided bulbs) (9)
6: White (7) plus purple-white (2)

Note: I added quite a lot of chicken manure and dried seaweed. Must still add more around them in the spring. I need to improve the leaf growth somehow.
This year was a pathetic crop. By the time I had taken out the cloves for re-planting there was little left except undivided bulbs.