April sowing (2016)

Today was lovely... 10°C and so sunny that it was too hot really!

I sowed the carrots today, a little later than some years but until today it has not been very warm at all.

The spinach squares all have garlic coming up, left over from last year's crop, so I just put seeds around them.

The other deep box has the garlic in it. And I put out some weird potatoes - last year I never got around to planting them out, and they were still in the garage so I put them in potting compost when I was sowing some other seed. The plants look very small-leaved though. Anyhow, I dug holes and put the plants at the bottom and partly covered with soil. If they survive I will add more soil on top.

Swede	Nantes	Nantes	Nantes
Swede	Nantes	Rainbow	Rainbow
Spinach	Spinach	Rainbow	Rainbow
Spinach	Spinach	Burpee	Burpee

Another sunny day

Today I finished off the boxes. I moved the large aquilegia (the seed from New Mexico) out and put them in a flower bed at the front.
I rounded-up some old seed and sowed it as shown below. The only fresh seeds were the foxgloves - they are wildflower seeds and should do well here I think.
The rest of the squares are already filled with broccoli plants, wild strawberries, self-seeded aquilegia and left-over garlic/onion plants.
I also thinned the carrots and swede. The latter are looking pretty good. Most of the carrots are up. It seems that the empty spots are mostly along the edge of the box - not sure if that is because the outside dries out faster or if it is because it is colder than in the middle of the box. I sprinkled a few more seed in the gaps, but I did not cover it so it may not grow. I didn't want to risk disturbing any seedlings about to emerge.

Beetroot X16		Foxgloves
Salad	Salad	Delphinum
Spinach X9	Spinach X9	Spring onion

June is for brassicas

I went to Hveragerði yesterday and bought some cabbage plants (and flowers).
The left-hand deep box has the garlic in it, but there were plenty of empty squares - actually, many of them had volunteer potatoes and sunchokes but I pulled them up. I added chicken manure, seaweed and mushroom compost to each square. Then I put a row of Brussel sprouts at the back, one per square; a row of Savoy cabbage in front, one per square; and the remaining two sqares each got a couple of broccoli plants. I also put four kale plants, two per square, in the shallow box.
I planted them all deep enough to cover the seed leaves - I think that I read that this makes them more stable - and firmed the soil around them. The Brussels will need staking for sure.

The garlic has come on a lot since last month, and the strawberries have a lot of flowers so perhaps there will be a crop soon!

May catch-up

The usual spring gardening was interrupted by a holiday in England this year so I did not even try to grow anything from seed indoors.

Just before leaving  (?18 May) I took this photograph of the garlic bed. All coming along nicely.

And I sowed carrot and swede in the other deep bed.

4x Kálfafells Swede	4x Kálfafells Swede	9x Nantes 5 Carrot	9x Nantes 5 Carrot
9x Napoli Carrot	9x Napoli Carrot	9x Nantes 5 Carrot	9x Nantes 5 Carrot
9x Napoli Carrot	9x Napoli Carrot	9x Nantes 5 Carrot	9x Nantes 5 Carrot
16x Amsterdam Forcing 3 (sprint) Carrot	16x Amsterdam Forcing 3 (sprint) Carrot	16x Amsterdam Forcing 3 (sprint) Carrot	16x Amsterdam Forcing 3 (sprint) Carrot

  Napoli is new for me, it was in a plain brown packet, like the swede seed, so I presume it is quite popular here.

When I was clearing the bed I found lots of old carrots and parsnips (finally!) and used them to make soup :-)

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