Beetroot

We made a quick visit today and came away with some new potatoes, some mange touts, some sweet peas and our first beetroot of the season.

We have left the beetroot to grow into bigger beets this year, more like tennis balls than golf balls. There looks to be about a dozen that are about ready, but we took only the biggest three to try. They are currently boiling in the kitchen and smell pretty good.

Right on cue

Last year our parsnips were superb. They were big, though a bit stumpy, tasty and not at all woody. We grew them by chitting the seeds on damp paper before planting the ones that sprouted into fibre pots. Once the plants were big enough these pots were then planted with their bases cut off to let the root grow on into the soil. All of this is because parsnips are hard to germinate and don't like having their roots disturbed. Planting plants out rather than sowing seed gives them a better start and avoids the disturbance from thinning. This process worked well so we are repeating it, albeit with some changes: We stated a few weeks later, we're planting the chitted seeds into cardboard tubes rather than fibre pots and they will go into the ground, tube and all, a bit quicker. The changes might help to produce less stumpy roots because there should be less root disturbance.

Last year the chitting process took about eight days and, eight days after starting, roots have appeared on half a dozen seeds. I wasn't too sure about how long it would take because we're using a different variety this year. The chitted and tubed tubers will go straight to the greenhouse.

The strong winds have died down and today the sun is shining down from a clear blue sky. The air is still cool but the forecast is for that to warm up too. Jean is sowing beetroot and tomato seeds. The beetroot, parsnips, sweet peas and some teasels for our garden will go up to the greenhouse to bring them on. We have had so little rain over the past month that the ground is dry and hard on the surface, so a day of heavy, warm rain would be welcome.

More seeds

I've taken a look at this blog for this time last year and we are starting things a little later than last year. We intended to do this to give some stuff a better start and so things got less of a shock when they went out. Today thirty sweet peas were sown in pots today, some for home but some for the allotment. We started the chitting the parsnip seeds on wet paper again. It worked well last year, so we will try it again. It is a different variety this year: White Gem, last year we had Patriot. We have a huge number of seeds in the packet which probably means we will get very few to germinate. Our spinach is sprouting well, so it will go up to the greenhouse shortly. The weather forecast is for a colder spell next week but also for some rain which we badly need.

Wilkinsons

We were in Wilkinsons today. That's a sort of discount store, which has a section for gardening. We saw that their gardening section had had a revamp and took a look. They had bags of onion sets, Sturon white onions and Red Karmen red onions, so we bought a bag of each. They also had some garlic bulbs (Allium sativum) for planting at three for £2, so we had a pack of them too. We also bought a packet of sweet peas called old fashioned mix, which we had last year.

The garlic is a bit of insurance - we already have some in the plot but only some it has come up. If we plant these new cloves it will ripen a bit later than the ones we planted last autumn so it should spread our season.

The sweet peas are not edible of course, but we pick them for home and to give away and they brighten up the plot. Last year Bob had a bed of wild flowers which was great. It also brought in bees and other pollinaters which help the plots around - maybe sweet peas will help too.

Onions are new to us too. We have some winter onions growing on the plot, but we have not harvested any yet. The winter onions should be ready in April or May and these new sets (which are tiny onions) will be planted just before then.

Do beans go with fennel?

Our sweet peas have finally finished after a great show. We've had loads of cut flowers from them and given loads away. We've had a good tidy up over the last few days, and things look good. There have been even more spears on the asparagus, they grow really quickly. The runner beans are now ripening increasingly quickly. It's a bit of a game hunting down the bean pods as they hide behind the huge leaves. There are loads of small pods growing fast and loads of new flowers too.

Our cabbages are filling out nicely too. We've pulled a couple to try and they were very good. We've had mixed messages about freezing cabbage so Jean tried freezing some, and it worked well. Fresh is better, but frozen is pretty good too and certainly not the mush some people predicted.

We took a couple of spring onions to try. They look pretty good, but there are not many of them so I'm not sure they were worth the trouble.

We have been growing Florence fennel as an experiment. The bulbs are beginning to fill out, so we took one home to try. It ended up much too small and very green, rather than the white bulb I was expecting. It tasted good in a salad, so when they are bigger we'll try some more. Gary on the next plot grows herb fennel for its root. I'll give him some of ours to see what he thinks of it. I wonder if it freezes?

The digging's dug, now for the growing

The back of the plot is finally dug over, free from junk and weeds and fairly level. The pile of junk is pretty big for such a small plot.


The rest of the plot is growing fast, except our garlic. It is our biggest disappointment so far. It is weedy and most have died.


The broad beans are fattening up nicely. I think we might get a glut - I hope so - I love broad beans.







As well as the veg, we have a few flowers around the plot. We planted some sweet peas which are just coming out now. The more we cut them the more flowers we will get.

Cabbage scoffer

We have a cabbage scoffer in our midst. The little plants have been sitting still, quietly growing, guarded by overhead CDs dangling on a string, but at the edge of the range of the CDs a scoffer snook in. It was probably pigeon shaped.

We planted the remaining cabbages out and put up more CDs, with a better coverage. If the scoffer has still found a way in then I'll put up some netting. We used the greenhouse space left by the cabbages to put the young tomatoes in, which should suit them.

We turned the compost from one bin to the other and watered it well. The sweet peas are thriving but the asparagus is yet to show.

Getting warmer

Spring has sprung, or so it seems. The weather was warm and dry so a bit of sorting out was due. We moved the netting to the new sweet pea spot. They have survived a couple of days - the last lot didn't survive overnight - so the netting frame was moved. It was easier than putting it up originally because there was no tangle.

The cabbages are romping away, so we planted half of them out. They were sown two to pot in case some didn't grow, but they all came up, so we split them up and planted them all individually. A string with some dangling CDs over them should keep the pigeons at bay.

We put some more of the remnants of pernicious weeds into sacks to take to compost, and I knocked down the extremely rotten wooden frame that had been a large compost bin. It didn't take any effort. We then took the rotten wood to the tip along with a pile of plastic and broken glass pulled out from the site. We are still getting rid of rubbish that we didn't introduce, the glass is particularly annoying.

Sweet peas, beans and pumps

We dodged the showers to do a bit more work on the allotment. The remaining sweet peas were getting very tall and floppy, so we planted them out. The last lot got eaten in a few hours, and I think that was rabbits, so this lot were planted inside the fence, so I hope they survive. These nine plants are the last of our sweet peas, so if they got scoffed we're sunk.

We also planted another fourteen broad bean plants. The first row we planted a few weeks ago now have flowers forming. We're holding off sowing the last beans to delay their growth otherwise we'll be overrun with beans all at once. You have to pick them when they're ready, except for the few we will allow ripen fully. These will be next year's seeds.

We have moved all of our leeks up to the greenhouse now. There are about one hundred little plants. I think we can just fit that many into the bed we've set aside for them. They are way too small yet, but the weather forecast is saying that the temperature should go up next week, so things will grow more quickly.

If the temperature goes up, so the need to water will increase. I'm still mulling over the best way to automatically water plants, but no firm decisions yet. I have found a pump from MUTR which is an outfit I have used before. It runs at 3-6v so, since I'm thinking about using a car battery, I'd need to step the voltage down. I think I'd also step the voltage down to a circuit board to time and switch things. This stepping down is worth it I think because a car battery is a big reservoir of energy, I have an old car battery to use and I have a solar powered 12v battery charger ready to use. I've looked at a few simple systems on t'internet, but they don't get any recommendations from people who have tried them.

We harvested some more spinach for a couple of meals which I can really look forward to.

All systems go.

We've just dodged a shower to plant out another couple of rows of parsnips, again under a fleece tunnel. The last lot look fine and the ones in the greenhouse are thriving so we went for it. It is clear that the plants in the greenhouse are doing much better that the ones on window sills at home, which is interesting. At home they are in heated rooms, but the extra light in the greenhouse is clearly what makes the difference.

We've decided to try planting the remaining sweet peas inside the fence - it seems likely that their nemesis was rabbit shaped. There is no sign of asparagus yet, but the spinach is big enough to harvest some for a meal tonight.

The gooseberry bush and currant bushes have flowers on them and they are bursting into leaf. The two small plum trees are also coming into leaf, as are some of the little trees we planted. The rhubarb is growing fast, I think we will harvest some soon.

We tried to remove some more of the weed roots from the hedge bottom, but it was not as easy as I expected. They have rotted down, so much is more like soil and is very heavy, so we don't want to overload the council bin with it. I'm still sceptical that the soil made from these roots won't be full of seeds from nettles, bindweed and docks.

And a partridge on the shed roof

The asparagus crowns arrived today. What great timing. It snowed again overnight and is set to be frosty again tonight. The planting leaflet says plant without delay, so we set off to plant it.

The snow had all melted and the ground was wet but not too sticky. The patch set aside for the asparagus had loads of manure dug in few weeks ago. A pit was dug, about one metre by one and a half and about twenty centimetres deep. Then three ridges were built up along the bottom. The crowns were laid out four to each ridge, with the roots spread out on either side of it. Then they were carefully covered over. There is enough soil left to bank them up if needed.

I now have to wait a whole year before I can cut my first shoot, but if all goes well I could be cutting about 90 shoots each year for twenty years. I do hope so.

The sweet peas we planted have been eaten to the ground. We kept some back just in case, but I don't know what ate them so I don't know how to protect the next batch.

And the partridge ... it was sitting on the shed roof when we arrived. A lovely red-legged partridge. Hey, I hope he's not the sweet pea eater.

Trees 1, Parsnips 0

After a spell of windy, cool weather, today has been warm, calm and sunny. We set off to do a few jobs. The greenhouse is helping plants along, except our parsnips. We put some in the allotment greenhouse, partly to make room at home, and it's been a disappointment. They are wilting and not really growing well at all. I think the fibre pots are drying out too quickly, so that's not a great success yet. We will keep the ones at home where they are until they nearly ready to plant out.

I put some plastic netting up for sweat peas to grow up. I avoided the worst tangle but it was still a bit fiddly. We planted half of the sweat peas against the net - I hope they latch on to it soon. We only planted half in case we're too soon, we have some to fall back on. These are also outside our rabbit fence, so they could be vulnerable to munching.

I cleared some poles and planks from around the edge of the site so we could plant some tree seedlings. They grew in pots all last year so I decided to plant them out to see how they do. There are some hazel, oak, whitebeam and rowan trees. Eventually I want them in the hedge (maybe not the oak) but growing them for a year or two inside the fence will give them a better start.

The forecast is for more cold and windy weather in the next few days. I hope spring starts properly soon.

Legumes brassicas and alliums

A fine afternoon tempted me up to the allotment. I wanted to build a simple frame to support sweet peas. I bashed a couple of short posts into the ground and screwed a long post to each. This way the long posts are not in the ground so they won't rot away. At the end of the season I can take them down and store them for next year. The short posts are old and can be discarded. I strung a wire across between the posts, anchored to the ground at each end. When the sweet peas are ready to plant I'll add some string supports from the top wire for each plant.

Earlier we planted savoy cabbage seeds and some more broad beans, both in individual pots, at home. The last broad beans have grown too fast and become leggy, so these new ones will go outside almost as soon as they show. The first broad beans, sweet peas and some leeks have gone up to the allotment, into the new greenhouse. The weekend is forecast to have very strong winds, so once they have passed the broad beans will go into the ground. The sweet peas will be a couple of weeks yet and the leeks even longer.

Jean planted a lot of flower seeds for our garden so space on window sills is tight. We tried to grow parsnips last year but not one came up, so we are trying something different. We have sown some seeds onto damp newspaper, covered with a propagator lid. If it works we will transplant each seedling into a fibre pot. When they are ready to plant out we will cut the bottom out and plant the whole pot. If you disturb the roots they split and don't grow well.