Beans out!

Still not much sign of summer here. The weather is mostly grey and either cold and windy or slightly less cold and windy.
The indoor beans were beginning to look pale and straggly so I planted them out today, except for the runner beans which really would not be happy in such cool temperatures.
I planted them pretty much as planned although I had some unnamed broadbeans which I think now were probably the Italian ones, anyhow I pushed them in where there seemed a little space.
The strawberry plants have plenty of flowers - and also plenty of green insects all up their stems. Sprayed them as best I could with green soap solution.
Sowed another square of spinach. The other square is doing OK, not all stations have germinated yet but most have. Some of the parsnip seed was on the surface which can't bode well. Some of the potatoes are showing and a few of the shallots look good.

Re-potting and potting-on

We ate the first cucumber last week!  There is another just about ready on the second plant, but the poor plants have been eaten half to death by some tiny brown insects which hang around on the underside of  the leaves. I tried spraying with dilute soap solution and that reduced the numbers I think but they bounced back very quickly. Then I tried submerging the whole plant. I tied a plastic bag around the pot, to keep the soil from washing out, then I dumped the whole lot horizontally in a bath of tepid water. That seems to have helped a lot. I did one plant and then repeated it, and did the second pot yesterday. If this doesn't fix it I may just toss the whole lot out and replant.

One of the key lime plants is rather sad-looking so I have cut away the dry bits and re potted it. The other one looks much healthier.

I was given some more chitted potatoes and as there was no space in the garden I made a ply-wood box, and filled it with some of the molta I bought. Not susre if it is suitable for potatoes but nothing much to lose.

I had two plants of big Italian flat-leaf parsley and I put that outside, in the same square as the Jerusalem artichokes. As far as I recall they do not put out much leaf low-down.

I had some busy lizzie cuttings in a vase, they rooted very quickly and I have potted them up. And there were a few small plants in the aerogarden which i also potted-up so now that is turned-off.

It is still way too cold to put out any summer plants. The broadbeans are looking very tall and thin, and some have sick-looking leaves. Hope it warms up outside soon!

More seeds in

I decided to get the carrot seed in while it is possible. The ground is wet now and the air temperature about 7°C over the day.
Sowed:
6 squares of Nantes2
1 square of Rainbow carrots to compare with the carrot week ones
2 squares of parsnip Albion F1, in case the indoor ones fail
3 squares of shallots - 1 bag of Picasso and 1 of Yellow Moon
1 square of spinach Fiorano F1, plan on second square in two weeks time
1 square of mixed salad leaves

That just about fills everything once the beans go in and the second square of spinach.
I never sowed anything else to have indoors. Or the sweetpeas. Plan to do that tomorrow.

Ascension Day planting

We have had lovely weather for the last couple of days and even though it is set to rain now, the temperature has at least gone up a bit and it does not look as though it will freeze... maybe.
Since I had so many indoor things ready to go out I decided just to plant them and hope for the best.
The parsnips which I started indoors were ready to go way too soon I think. They had roots curled up at the bottom of the paper pots so I can't see that they will develop long roots but I put them out anyway. They will need thinning and if I pull up a few and the roots look hopeless I will just pull them all up and plant something else.
I put the potatoes out now too, a bit later than last year. Two sorts, French salad ones which I saved from last year, and some which must be Premier or similar, from a supermarket.
I put out the Italian Kale, four plants to a square, and the calebrese/broccoli, two per square. I also planted out the leeks and the onions grown from seed, and some Alpine strawberry plants. And one parsley plant, I have more of those and some more strawberry plants indoors.
The bean plants are all up now. They can't go out just yet so maybe I should have planted them a little later, will have to see about that.
I watered everything and then covered with fleece.
I will post diagrams of the planting scheme later, once the boxes are full.
The strawberry box is doing well, some plants have flowers already. I noticed that at least one cutting of honeysuckle from my sister's/father's has survived. Also what must be a Bramley apple grown from seed. I put them in the coldframe, each in their own pot, because it seemed they were more likely to survive there than indoors.

Beans, beans, beans!

The weather is still not very spring-like. Finally got around to sowing beans indoors today. I have always had 4 broad beans per square and that seems about right to me. In Mel's book it says 9 per square for bush beans, and 8 per square for pole beans. So with this in mind I sowed enough for 9 per square - except the Masterpiece broad bean which will be 5 per square (mostly because I had run out of tray space!). That is the plan at least, assuming they all come up.
The Masterpiece and Moonlight beans are old ones from last year or the year before. Moonlight did not do well last year but I am giving it a second shot.
The Borlotti beans and some broad beans called Aguadulce Supersimonia are ones which I bought from a farm shop near Derby. They are Italian so may not be suited to this climate.
The French beans are from a Nordic company It will be interesting to see how they perform.
Below is the plan as I see it. The empty spaces will be for carrots.

Jerusalem artichokes	Moonlight runner beans x9	Broad bean Masterpiece x5	Broad bean Masterpiece x5
French bean Lord Nelson x9	Borlotti bean x9	Broad bean Italian x9	Broad bean Italian x9
French bean Lord Nelson x9
Rainbow carrot  x16	Rainbow carrot  x16

Carrot Week!

This year SquareFoot Gardening has added a twist to Carrot Week. Instead of sowing Nantes carrots we are sowing any coloured ones. I chose Rainbow F1 from Johnsons. They are Nantes carrots but in various shades of white-yellow-orange.
Past experience shows that Carrot Week is too early for Iceland but you never can tell what the weather will be like. I sowed one square as usual, and one square of pre-soaked seed. All I did was station three seed together on kitchen-roll, covered with another sheet and then wet the whole lot over night. Then today I snipped the groups of seed off and placed them on the prepared bed. Actually, thinking about it, someone once suggested that you could just bury the whole sheet of paper.
If there is any difference in speed of germination then I may try that next.

I also re-potted some more of the indoor seeds. I also re-potted the cucumber plants... I have not been treating them very well, and let them dry out once. I noticed that they have some flowers, tiny cucumbers even, and I am not sure if this is a good thing or a sign that they are stressed. Anyhow, they should feel better in bigger pots.

Three of the purple garlic are now showing their tips. Perhaps that is why the garlic lady grows this sort, because  they come up late? The strongest growers are the one-year old bulbs but the rest look OK too.

Indoor seeds cntd.

I am a bit disappointed with the aerogarden seed system. Quite a lot of the seeds have failed to germinate so far, and some look as though they never will as they are mouldy. Next year I will try covering them to begin with to keep off mould spores in the air.

The kale and broccoli look as though they do not get enough nitrogen so I have re-potted the larger ones, using paper pots. I need to get more compost and do some more of them. I also re-potted the basil which had begun to flop over.

The dahlia is quite tall now and the lily of the valley beginning to show. The onion/leek plants look quite good and the parsnips too - tend to dry out very fast so need careful watching as far as watering goes.

The weather was very mild for most of March. The garlic is doing amazingly well, or at least it was until the temperature dropped to -7°C! I hope it is OK under the layer of fleece.

Hmm, carrot week has started http://squarefoot.creatingforum.com/t14487-carrot-week-2013#149119 so I need to get that sorted out as soon as it is warm again.