Spring, what spring?

It has been a winter of endless depressions and abundant snow. Luckily, the snow came and went before returning at once so it never really got very deep.
There was a very bad storm yesterday, with unusually high winds. I went out to replace the fleece on the strawberry bed and noticed that some of the garlic are up - the square of "white" garlic which were the undivided bulbs from last year. I put fleece over the whole box, just in case we get some frost (bound to really).
The rest of the garden looks very wet and sad. There will have to be some serious tidying done soon.

October planting

Another terribly summer! Unbelievably wet and saved only by a good August and mild September.
The Carrot week carrots did well, and so did the Chantenay eventually. The onions did better than some years but the garlic was pretty hopeless.
Some of the garlic failed to divide and most of it only produced a few cloves per bulb. Today I planted out six squares as shown. The White garlic is simply a replant of the undivided cloves.
The beans were no-shows except for two pods of broadbeans! The potatoes did unusually well though, must have been all the rain.
I put the garlic in the lefthand deep box - I need to remove the soil from teh shallow box and renew the liner at the bottom.

Icelandic purple	Italian red	White
Bulbils	Purple-white	Purple-white

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