First garlic this year

A very quick note now... the summer has been pathetic and I never quite got around to doing any gardening! Some of the garlic has withered enough that it clearly won't grow anymore, so I pilled up three squares.
On the right is white garlic from Square 6 (see autumn post last year); in the middle are what began as bulbils from Square 5; and on the left are some Icelandic reds from Square 3.  The remaining three squares look like better plants and still have a bit of green so I will leave them until August.

May: Carrot time!

I decided not to bother with the early sowing of carrots this year. It was a miserable spring, with a late snow. Yesterday I added old mushroom compost and chicken manure, and mixed it into the top few centimetres. Today I sowed pinches of carrot seed and then covered with a thin layer of sowing compost, and watered it. The weather at the moment is lovely - yesterday and today at least - 14°C and sunny.
The garlic is all looking very good, hard to tell which type looks best. I put carrots in all the empty squares in the garlic box. I grew carrot in that box last year too, but the other one has all sorts of odds and ends in it so this was easiest and quickest.
Might try and plant out the potatoes tomorrow.
There is a lot of grass everywhere, especially among the strawberries. I collected some sea weed last weekend and have put some around the rhubarb.

Winter is coming

At least I suppose it must be, but actually it is still very mild and wet. I sewed a couple of ag. fleece bags: one for the lilac tree and one for the two blueberry plants which are still in pots. I hope that the bags will stay put better than the wrapped fleece which I have tried before - that always seems to work loose in the wind. I put another bag over the raspberry plant since it showed willing and actually produced two raspberries this year! Really must sort out that bed next summer though.
I covered the "special plants" in the back-right box, and also sowed two squares (front one on left side and the square behind it) with sweet chestnut and spindle seeds. Doubt if they will come up and not sure what I will do with them if they do! And I put fleece over the strawberry beds.
There are still some carrots in the left box so that is still uncovered but since the garlic is in there too I will need to put fleece over it later.
As I said, it has been mild, and the blueberry plants and the rose bush looked as though the end buds were either swelling or actually producing leaves. That is probably not good.

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.