Catch-up time!

OK, fully admit that I have been lazy recently.

Here is a picture which I took on September 13th. Three weeks later the garden looks pretty much the same! The weather has stayed warm, above 10°C most of the time, and I think there has been a very slight frost just twice.













You can see that I made a small box for the rhubarb, and moved it from where it was. One plant came from Hvolsvöllur and the other one I bought a couple of years ago but it never did very much - probably because it was between the blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes! They are now planted in garden soil, with some mushroom compost mixed in. I'll give them more pompost in the spring.

Today I cut a bowl of broccoli - actually I have thrown quite a bit away as it had begun to flower. It just keeps coming and coming, as little florets which should be good to stirfry.

I planted some garlic cloves in the shallow box. Nine cloves from a supermarket, and eight from Maður Lifandi (so they are organic). The supermarket ones are in the square where I had the spring onions I think.

I have transplanted some young strawberry plants too. When it gets cold I am going to put the coldframes over the shallow box. I hope that will result in a btter strawberry crop and even some fresh garlic.

Finally, a picture of the parsnips and carrots which I pulled on September 22nd. I wanted them for a family meal when we were all together after the summer - the parsnips were not huge but very tasty! I have left the rest of the carrots and parsnips in, not sure how much bigger they will get but the grass is still strong and green so they may be growing a little. Depending on the weather I may leave them even longer.

More carrots!

I thought that I would see how the Nantes carrots are doing... wow!
In contrast to the Amsterdam (see previous post) they seem to have gone for width more than length. Although actually they are not short either!

The biggest one is 17cm long and over 4cm diameter.

It is still amazingly warm every day with temperatures over 15°C, dropping to 10°C at night. There have been heavy rain showers some days, but not much wind so the carrot grass is still standing and I have high hopes for the parsips :-)

The currants did not do very well. In particular the black currants were pathetic... 40g off one bush! And even the red currants are well under a kilo. They must need feeding and watering better.

The gooseberry bush has produced quite well but apart from a few picked yesterday to eat with some mackerel, I have not picked them yet.

Verslunarmannahelgi!

This weekend is what used to be called August Bank Holiday Weekend in England. The first Monday in august is a holiday for most people. Here in Reykjavik it often means the end of the summer season; the nights are getting darker and the garden slows right down.

A couple of days ago I pulled an onion so that I could use it for dinner. Today I decided to pull them all as I doubt if they will grow much more now. Some of the leaves had died back and all of them had fallen over so it is unlikley that the bulbs would get much bigger.

In all I got about 1kg of onions from a total of 64 onions - not a great yield but probably the biggest onions I have managed here. To be honest, I think I planted the sets too deeply. I followed the instructions on the packet and it said to put a full bulb deep i.e. top of onion buried about a cm. Previously I have put them with the tip of the bulb just covered and I think that is a better method. I think these ones were too deep and stayed too damp around the bulb. None of the bulb was exposed when I harvested them.

About half a dozen went straight in the compost bin as they had neck end rot. The rest are in a seed tray and I'll let they dry out a bit before bringing them in to store. The largest onions were about 5cm in diameter.

Here is a photo of the total crop, and one of an onion with neck end rot. You can just make out some little white insects which are in there too :-(















On a brighter note : the broccoli is still shooting away and the strawberry plants are putting out runners which I plan on rooting to make more plants for next year.

The runner beans have been flowering like crazy now for a month, but not a single bean to show for it. I read on the internet that at best only about 50% of flowers set, and that bees do the pollinating. There are plenty of bees in the snapdragons which I have in the front garden, but nota single one in the beans. Then I heard on Gardeners' Question Time that it is possible to spray with sugar solution - this attracts wasps and flies which pollinated the beans while they get the sugar. So, I mixed up some honey and water, and spalshed it around on the beans. It certainly attracts the wasps and flies, have to wait and see if any beans set now. I doubt if they will mature so late but if they set then at least I may decide to try runner beans again next year - if not, then I think I'll just have broad beans as they do set OK.

Dinner from the garden!

Really could not wait any longer to see if the potatoes had grown!

Now, I had 4 squares of potatoes, 3 were some French salad potatoes and 1 contained Icelandic red potatoes. Today I felt around in one of the French squares and found no French spuds but some Icelandic ones seemed to have encroached into that square. So, I grubbed out six potatoes for dinner. Not bad! The French ones may be deeper, I'll have to look into that.


I pulled up 4 carrots too, all Amsterdam Sprint. They were great, very sweet and certainly long enough.

Belated update

Here are pictures taken on July 12th, when I returned from holiday. It all looked fine and my daughter did a good job looking after it :-)















And today I pulled up some carrots to see how they are doing. The one on the left is a bit twisted and is Amsterdam 3 Sprint. The other two are Nantes 2. The carrot tops all look healthy enough so I will just let them grow a bit longer I think.

















The broccoli has done very well. I'm not sure about the flavour, it is a bit stronger than the usual calabrese. It does, however, give a steady crop over a longer time I think. We ate some tonight (see picture) and there are more small heads to come.

Two weeks later

Just wanted to update this as a record of how things are growing. The weather has been warm (12°C plus) but grey and some rain showers. There is one spear of broccoli so far - looks rather lonely there and I am keeping an eye on it so I will pick it before it flowers. Hope that more come then.

All over!

Slight exaggeration there :-)

We have had quite a lot of spinach and beetroot leaves over the last couple of weeks. I am really happy with both of those. The spinach had begun to flower so I picked the last lot of leaves two days ago, and today I pulled up the plants and sowed more seeds.

I also cut the beetroot leaves off and brought them in for a last crop. Then I pulled those out too and sowed more "mixed salad". Last time only the beetroot came up (although there are now tiny seedlings of what might be celery leaves)so it will be interesting to see what happens now it is a bit warmer.

I also put in a pre-sown disc of coriander; there should be time for that to come up.

Everything else is doing pretty well. I've been keeping it all covered over but I think I'll start leaving the covers off during the day unless we get bad weather. One of the broccoli plants has a tiny head forming so perhaps not long until there is something to pick there.

First salad of the summer!

Yum yum!
Spinach, beetroot leaves, chives, melissa and thyme (going to put some of the herbs in an omelette).

Snip, snip!

I try to remember to water the square gardens every day since it has been dry here. I give each garden a whole watering can of tepid water.

Today I thinned the carrots by snipping off at ground level the extra seedlings.

I also put a strip of wood down the side of the potato squares so I can add a bit more compost and give them the full depth of the box.

My mother in law sent a root of rhubarb this week. I shoved it in the veg garden and am watering it frequently to see if it will perk up a bit. If not, I expect it will be fine next year.

Planting plan

Forgot to post the planting plan so here it is :-)

Whit weekend

Way back on March 25th I sowed a bunch of seeds. I ran out of seed compost so used Flúðamold for the last lot. The seeds germinated OK but did not grow very well and I decided to resow the seeds on May 2nd. Here is a photo of the two sets of seeds....

The second lot look SO much healthier! I decided to repot the weak ones and see if they will perk up. As I now have plenty of seedlings I put two coriander, two parsley, and one tomato plant out in the shallow box - in the expectation that they will probably die since they have not been hardened off at all! The rest I repotted after pulling away the peat pots. They all seem to have quite good root systems so maybe now compost will do the trick.
I repotted the new tomato seedlings too, and some of the basil, the rest will wait until they are a bit bigger. The pepper plants are very slow!

Since I needed plant pots for all this repotting I dropped into Blómaval today and bought a pack of three herb plants: chives, melissa and thyme. I put those in the square with the mint. I also bought a tomato plant which is already fruiting (mine look a long way from that!)and repotted that, put it in the little sunroom and moved all the other plants into the large one - that way if the tomato plant has the dreaded little flies I can kill them off in there and not let them out to the rest of the plants.

Here are the two square foot boxes. Really happy with the shallow one now. The onions are growing like mad, the broccoli looks very happy, and the spring onions are all up I think. The strawberry plants are flowering even though the plants are very small, and the salad square shows signs of life even if it is only one type - beetroot leaves I think. The spinach is looking good with a couple of leaves.





The deep box is coming on too. The beans look a little sorry for themselves but the carrots are almost all germinated, the parsnips are coming up gradually, and the potatoes are starting to break surface. I think I will cut a piece of wood to put to the left of the potato row, then I can fill with compost to the top of the box and get the full depth this year.

Must say that the weather has been very kind. Today is 14°C and even though there is not much sun it has been quite warm. I don't think I have ever seen so much blossom on the berry bushes so unless something goes wrong we should have quite a good crop.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

The carrots are coming up :-) Today there are a few seedlings of both sorts. Sucha relief! I will take a photo once there are a few more of them to see.

Nice weather!

8°C at 11 am and sunny and lovely at mid-day. Feels very springlike and the trees have flower buds and are getting greener by the day.

The seeds which I sowed indoors are all doing fine at the moment but were all sown too early by two weeks I would say. They need watering every day and have had a few droopy moments.I have most of them by an open window today and I may put some outdoors and see how they do soon - I have plenty of extra ones which I can keep indoors in case they are needed as replacements.

I put a few small roots of mint in a plantpot, lined with fine mesh, just so that there is a little bit in the garden. Need more really, have to think about that.

Most of the spinach is up now, and the first shoots of the lettuce mixture. Still no carrots though which is worrying me a bit. If worse comes to worse I will have to resow them late in May.

Green bits!

The onions are all peeping up nicely now, and the spinach are showing - at least enough are to be sure that they are spinach and not a random weed!
The weather is lovely today so I have officially opened the compost bin for business. I put a good layer of dried stems which I pulled out of the flower beds, then my first veg peelings, an apple core from Briet, and (getting desperate)I got the strimmer out and cut a handful of grass to have a bit of green.

Sowed more seeds

The seeds which I started in Flúðamold are not doing very well - the surface of the soil quickly became covered with some orange fungal stuff.
Sowed more of the same in plastic seed starter: 4 each of tomatoes, basil, coriander, parsley and peppers. Bit late probably so may well end up buying a tomato plant as well.

Few more added

I am worried about the bean plants which are indoors, they are getting so tall, so I decided to stick in some beans today and then I can decide later if I plant out the others or not.
Also sowed some spinach (Picasso F1) and mixed English salad - left over from a few years ago, I put a pinch of mixed seeds in each of 9 positions.

Planting underway!

Amazing progress now!

I mixed together all of the stuff that I had. It was not quite enough to fill both boxes and I bought a bit extra which was still not enough but will have to do for this year.

The picture shows the two empty boxes, and half of the ingredients: 80l of Pindstrup Plus, 84l of sveppamassi sterkur; Hekla pumice (two sorts, 24l of coarse and 60l of medium).

The coarse pumice was not as suitable I think, so I mixed that in near the bottom. Here is a picture of the medium pumice, with a spade for scale.


I had been thinking of using wood for the dividing lines - still think that will be smartest but as a cheap solution for this year I used plastic coated washing line, tied to screws. Not so pretty but very fast :-)

After I had done all of that it took no time at all to plant/sow things! For the seeds and the onions sets all I had to do was push in my finger to make a hole. The potatoes I planted by digging down almost to the bottom, placing the potatoes, and filling in. Piece of cake!

In the deep box I planted:
3 squares of some French potato, funny shaped salad-type
1 square of Icelandic red potato
3 squares of parsnips (javelin)
3 squares of carrots (Nantes 2)
3 squares of carrots (Amsterdam 3 sprint)

In the shallow box I planted:
4 squares of onions
1 square of spring onion (North Holland Blood Red)
3 squares of strawberry plants

I watered the boxes a little feeling sure it was going to rain anyhow!




Finally, I covered both boxes with agricultural fleece.
The filling and planting was spread over two days. It is drizzly today so it is great that I got the work done while it was dry. I plan to sow a box of mixed salad leaves when I get the chance. I have the bean plants indoors still, really did sow them way too early so not sure if I should resow, or even try sticking beans straight in the boxes since I have left overs and nothing to lose.

Two down....

Huge help from Elvar today. We cleared the mint patch and the strawberry plants out of the garden and levelled it roughly.

With a bit of trouble we managed to get two boxes screwed together and aligned one on top of the other. We fastened them together with two wooden strips inside the box, on opposite sides. Think that should hold it together quite well.

The plan is to finish the third box tomorrow and put them in the garden ready to fill.

We (well, Elvar) drilled guide holes for three screws in each plank, put the screws all in place, then took two planks and screwed them together. I used a tile (30 x 60 cm) to make sure that the angle was 90°. Then we added a third plank, then the fourth. The first box had one side too long so we had to saw off the excess. The second box we checked the lengths before we started and it came out fine. The third box will have one side too long as well so we will have to trim it.

I meant to take a photo of the garden before we started but I forgot. Need to take some tomorrow.

Got the timber!

Well that was interesting!
I thought I would buy the timber for my boxes at Húsasmiðjan but found out that the timber section has moved out to the suburbs!
Anyhow, I bought the screws there and then went to Byko for the timber.

I had intended making a box 25 x 120 x 240 cm since I thought the 6" depth in the squarefoot method was a bit shallow for some things.

Then I decided to make one box 15 x 120 x 120 and another one 30 x 120 x 120. One for salad and flowers and onions and so on, the other for potatoes and carrots etc.

I had a very helpful pwerson in Byko cut the wood for me so I paid 11232 kr for 4 lengths of 2" by 6" pine. After a bit of a struggle he managed to cut it into 120 cm lengths so I got 12 lengths to make 3 boxes - the plan is to stack one on top of the other.

Byko didn't seem to have anything like the laths which the book suggests so I bought one "réttskeiðar" for 762 kr and I am going to try and split it lengthwise into three narrower strips.

The screws were fairly expensive, at 42,75 kr each they came to 1539 kr for 36. I bought 20 smaller ones too for 157 kr, to faster the grid down to the boxes.

I still need to get nuts and bolts or something similar to fasten the grid the way the book shows.

The seedlings are all growing quickly indoors. The weather is still very cold. next week should be warm, then cold again. It might be ok to get the boxes done this weekend and then the potatoes can go in, and the carrots and parsnips can be sown even if it goes cold afterwards.

Finally!

The last sweet pepper plant came through today so that is "all" of the seeds up - in fact some of sweet peas haven't germinated so not sure if they are slow or not happening.

The seedlings are now all in the sunroom and seem to be doing quite well. I'll have to pull them back into the house on Monday as the sunroom floor is being tiled then (finally).

Still haven't done anything much about the squarefoot garden. Bought two 80 litre bags of potting compost so need a bit more of that plus pumice and mushroom compost. Not long to the first day of summer so need to get organised and buy the timber and stuff.
(So far have spent about 6000kr on the compost.)

Biggest and smallest!

Now the kidney beans, sweetpeas, and snapdragons are up.
I probably planted the beans and sweetpeas much too early - I doubt if it will be warm enough to plant them out before mid-May and I have a feeling that six weeks indoors will be too long. Have to see how that goes.

It is bitterly cold outside, a few degrees of frost at night and just over freezing during the day. I'm not touching the garden yet ;-)

More seedlings

The basil and tomatoes are strating to come up now.
It seems to work well to put them out in the cool part of the sunroom.

And now the broccoli

Yes! The broccoli is sprouting today so that tray is in the sunroom too.
Lovely sunny day today so I hope that it doesn't get too hot for the seedlings. perhaps I will organise some shade for them to be on the safe side.

Up already!

Amazing! Some of the calendula are already germinated so I've move dthat tray into the light.
I picked up my book about square foot gardening today and I intend reading it over the weekend. If all goes to plan I will get the wood for the frames so that Easter can be spent sawing and screwing it together.

Seed time

I am always on the late side with sowing seeds indoors. There are no suitable window sills in the house and seedlings tend to get too leggy before they can be planted out.
Now I have a sunroom (we glassed-over the balcony) and I'm going to see how seedlings do in there.

Planted in peat pots:
Sweet pea - Old Fashioned Mixed
Runner bean - Hestia

I've never had any luck with runner beans before, the leaves have gone papery as soon as they are planted out. I might keep these indoors longer if that is possible. I wanted broad beans but there were none in the garden shops, just runner and peas. Fingers crossed. The sweet peas are because I love the smell so much. No idea if they will do much here.

Planted in plastic trays (1 or two seeds per space):
Calendula - Art Shades
Antirrhinum - Tom Thumb Mixed
Broccoli - (Stem) Kalibroc F1
Tomato - Ailsa Craig
Pepper - (Sweet) Minimix
Coriander - Delfino
Parsley - Plain Leaved 2
Basil - Sweet Genovese

Those are the seeds that caught my eye this year. The coriander claims to be slower to bolt than the normal one, it has pointed leaves. Most of these are for growing indoors I think - unless global warming really takes off! I have carrots and parsnips to sow outside when that is possible. The seed trays are all covered with plastic and at the moment are on the landing - as the seeds germinate I'll move them somewhere lighter. I used some imported potting compost, mixed with some fine pumice.

A new start!

Another "summer" is beckoning! Every year I get fired-up with the idea that I will be able to grow tons of veg if I get everything right.
The main snag is that I am a very lazy person :-) and although I enjoy digging, weeding, and sowing in the spring I'm not too good at the after care.

I've had a small veg plot for 15 years. The soil is terrible, seems to be the original soil for the area: acid. It has always had a lot of horse-tails ready to grow like crazy, then a few years ago I added some manure and introduced annual weeds which I simple can't get rid of.

A few weeks ago I saw something about squarefoot gardening which claims higher yields for less work which sounds perfect! So that is my new plan.

I've ordered the official guids to the method, off Amazon
http://tinyurl.com/yzjankx

Hope it comes soon.

Next step is to sow some seeds indoors so that I will have plants ready when things warm up outside.