Catching-up

Lovely sunny weather for a couple of days now. So time to cut the grass and try and make things look a bit better. The left-hand deep box is now about full.
The potatoes are all from last year, stored in the fridge over winter. I put the rest of them in the box by the balcony, with last year's molta.
I never got around to starting the beans indoors so I just soaked them overnight and then planted them out - see what happens. Once soaked French beans and Borlotti beans look pretty much the same (and I had already forgotten that I had soaked both!) so they are mixed together in the box.

J. Artichokes still here	French salad potatoes x4	French salad potatoes x4	French salad potatoes x4
Moonlight x5	French salad potatoes x4	Premier x2	Premier x2
Moonlight x5	Masterpiece BB x4	Italian BB x4	Italian BB x4
French beans x9	French beans x9	French beans x9	French beans x3 Black Kale

Sunny at last

We have had SO MUCH RAIN. The grass was very long, and underneath it is all soggy.
Still, sunny today and the forecast for tomorrow is good.
I planted the potatoes in the left hand deep box. Three squares of French ones in the back row, then in front of that another two squares, each with only two potatoes save from last year (largish ?Premier).
I put the last three ?Premier in the square by the wall, added some red potatoes straight from the fridge, and covered the whole lot with the last of the compost.
I thinned most of the carrots, and the beetroot. It is all looking quite good now.
Tomorrow I plan to sow some beans, transplant the parsnips, and sow some salad.

May 15th - 16th

I put in a bit of effort and sowed most of the seeds.
I had plenty of compost left from last year so I topped-up both of the deep beds and added a little dried seaweed too (all that was left).
The leeks, beetroot and spring onions were all just sprinkled in. I intend thinning them later. The carrots were as usual put as a few seeds, 16 spaces per square foot.
I seem to have forgotten the square at the front! The ones at the back are for potatoes probably, or perhaps the parsnips that are growing indoors.
The Carrot Week carrots are up now, seem to be doing OK and will need thinning soon.

7/8/14 sowed some mixed Italian salad seed and black kale in two squares, and transplanted the parsnips - they did not grow well indoors this time so may not do much at all.

Onions (yellow, Stuttgart giants) X16	Onions (yellow, Stuttgart giants) X9	Parsnip (7/8/14)	Parsnip (7/8/14)
Leek (Hilari)	Onions (yellow, Stuttgart giants) X16	Salad (7/8/14)	Kale (7/8/14)
Carrots (Nantes 2) X16	Carrots (Nantes 2) X16	Carrots (Chantenay Red cored 2) X16	Carrots (Chantenay Red cored 2) X16
Beetroot (Perfect 3) and Spring onions (White Lisbon)	Carrot week	Carrot week

First day in the garden!

I finally got around to cleaning the strawberry box. I dug out all the strawberry plants, threw away a lot of mint and couch grass, applied hot water from the hose in the hope of killing-off some mint and grass, added a wheelbarrow-load of compost, and then planted four or five strawberry plants/squarefoot. A lot of the plants are a bit old and woody but with the extra space I can let runners root this summer and renew the plants that way.
The garlic has been emerging square by square for quite a while now. The white and purplish white bulbs came up first, but now even the little bulbils are up - it will be interesting to see how they do.
I sowed two squares of carrots, one Nantes and one the mixed coloured ones left from last year. I sowed them  on April 23rd and the soil seemed quite warm already.
I also took the potatoes out of the fridge and set them to sprout. They had stored very well in kitchen paper in ice-cream boxes, no mould at all.

Indoors I have done nothing really! I started parsnip seed on tissue paper on almost a week ago and some of those are sprouting and will need potting tomorrow.

Autumn round-up

As usual I have forgot to update this!

On Monday I planted the garlic ready for next year. The garlic actually did pretty well this year and I decided to try all four sorts again. In retrospect I pulled up the Icelandic purple variety way too early - I noticed that it did not appear in the farm shop until almost a month after I harvested mine so I probably lost some growth there. In the chart below the Purplish white variety is what I grew on as a one year-old last year i.e. last autumn I replanted round, undivided, bulbs. The White variety did best of all and had very large cloves so it is certainly worth growing, and I think the Purplish white one will be as good next year. The Italian one only had very small cloves and I was surprised to find that although the bulb looks white, each clove is a rub red colour. Perhaps it will do better next summer. I planted 9 cloves in each square.
Some of the garlic had scapes and I let them develop. I saved a couple and scattered the bulbils in one square. From what I have read they take a couple of years to grow full-sized but after that they can be very good producers. Could be fun to see how they do.
The shallots did not do great this year so I decided to try them with autumn planting too - if they do not look good in the spring then I can just pull them up. I think I planted one square of each type which I bought in the spring, 5 per square.
I dug up the potatoes from the extra box of molta - they are small but very tasty. I put the molta into the veg boxes and added the usual seaweed and hen manure before planting the garlic.

Bulbils			Shallots (round)
Purplish white			Shallots
White
Red Italian	Icelandic purple	White	Purplish white

Wet summer!

Really! Was it summer at all?
A quick run through what happened... a new cat on the block decided that the veg boxes made perfect cat toilets :-( so the few carrots which struggled to germinate were decimated by digging. No carrots at all from the usual sowing period. The "carrot week" ones did rather better and I have a few nice carrots from them. They are Rainbow carrots so not quite as vigorous as normal orange ones, still, better than nothing.
The parsnips which I started indoors look fantastic! At any rate the leaves do, I have not pulled any up yet. The parsnips which I sowed as normal have hardly grown at all so I think this indoor method is the way to go in the future - assuming that it is not all top-growth.
I dug all the French La Ratte potatoes today, we had a couple of meals previously. the tops were being eaten to death by slugs so it seemed wise to get them up and out. Got about 2 kg all told which is pretty good from two squares. The adjacent Premiers are looking good but I left them in for now.
Beans... hmm, well it really was not warm enough when I put them out and the French ones died back. The summer was cold and wet and not a good one for beans. It looks as though there are a few broadbeans and two Borlotti!
The leeks are doing OK, all things considered. I did not thin them properly so perhaps they would be bigger if I had. Worth trying again next year. Same with the onions from seeds, they grew at least large enough to eat.
The shallots did OK, not huge but use-able. They had onion thrips when I took them up.
The Italian kale grew but I never actually used it! Kept waiting for it to get bigger. The broccoli had heads but did not do very well. 
The garlic was pretty successful. Both the cloves saved from last year and the 2nd year bulbs grew nicely. The purple ones from Frú Lauga did not do much - I may have pulled them up too early though, they may be a later variety. The soft neck from Italy did not make very big bulbs, they look as though they have divided but not grown much. May stick some of those back in later.
The rhubarb did very well, I took three small crops off it and it grew all summer. The strawberries suffered from lack of sun. I just picked the redcurrants and got about 600 g of those plus a handful of white currants.
There is a plague of slugs now, munching the potato grass and the last few strawberries.

17th June!

Yesterday I finally had time spare for the garden so even though there was a light drizzle I did a bit of work.
I planted-up the patio planters - with an odd mixture of flowers and salad leaves. Sweet peas at the back so they can go up the trellis, busy lizzies in front in one planter, and the other one got a few clumps of mixed Italian salad leaves which I had started indoors, and a couple of geranium.
I pulled some more rhubarb, almost a kilo this time. Still problem with slugs eating the talks.
The potatoes are doing well now. For some reason the carrots are barely germinated in the right hand box, not sure if I should cut my losses and sow some more or what.
I transplanted one of the aqualegia plants and put it in a flower bed. If it survives I might move one of the others too because they are too big for the box now. They are flowering and should not be in there.
The broad beans are rather sad looking and the french beans look half dead! One or two have flowers but must of them are dead back to the first pair of leaves. It looks as though they might be regrowing from that point though so I trimmed the stems and I will see how they do this week.
Looks like I may have plenty of empty squares soon :-(
The one nice surprise is the parsnips. The ones which I started indoors are flourishing. I pulled up two plants since they need thinning anyway, and they have lovely little roots! Perhaps I should try doing carrots this way too next year? The "carrot week" ones have germinated quite well this time but starting them off indoors would mean that they would be well away by now.

Bought some timber yesterday so that I can edge round the veg boxes and put down woodchips to make it look neater. Once that is done I will post an update picture to show how things are growing. We really need some sunshine.
Oh, forgot to say that I planted out the runner beans too. They have been outside in a tray for over a week so the garden should not come as a shock but they were started too early indoors, as were all the beans.