Digging and shelves

Jean likes digging. She is never happier than when she's doing something energetic and useful, so digging fits the bill nicely. I don't mind digging you understand, but since she likes it so much I leave it to her.

So while she was digging over the now-empty parsnip and leek plots, I started to build the shelves in the newly-extended greenhouse. I built the wooden frames for the smallest set of shelves. As in the old greenhouse, I will cover the frames with wire mesh to make the surface to stand trays on. This worked really well before, it lets light and water through.

A few more garlic plants have come up, so the extra garlic we bought yesterday is probably not really needed, but we realised that there is a spot for the extras near the asparagus so some will go in there.

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.

The last harvest

The last of our parsnips and leeks were harvested today, with some of them pictured in the sink ready to be washed. It clears the way for the winter dig ready for this year's plantings. A lovely stew is in the oven for this evening. The leeks were tiny compared to most of our crops - they were late plantings as afterthoughts. We had some raw at lunchtime with a salad and they were superb. The parsnips have mostly been stumpy like these, but they still have a lot of flesh in them. A few have been huge - all have been delicious. Leeks and parsnips are definitely part of this year's plans.

Allotment society

Last year we joined the allotment society in Kenilworth Avenue where there is a large allotment site. We went along yesterday to join again and to buy seeds for this years crops. Last year their seeds all flourished and the varieties were a good choice, so we wanted to do the same again, but this year they were not ready. We will have to wait for a couple more weeks to get going. We want some onion sets this year - these will be ready even later and the society don't stock red onion sets so we'll need to look elsewhere.

Plan for the year

We've been looking again at what did well last year and what we want to plant this year. Last year we had rectangular beds, but this year we are going to try the annual veg in rows like most people do. The fruit bushes, strawberries and asparagus remain in place and the greenhouse is a bit bigger. We already have the garlic and winter onions in the ground and they're growing on, though only some of the garlic has come up.

We had sent off for a free set of seeds from Gardens' World which include some vegetable seeds but we will also buy some that we were happy with last year. This is the list of seeds or plants we have and ones we want to buy with their variety that we have or would like.

What we have
Garlic
Beetroot, Cylindra
Carrots, Tendersnax
Cabbage, Tundra
Lettuce, Lotto Rossa
Broad beans, Saved seeds
Winter Onions (sets), Gift from Rob

What we want
Beetroot, Boltardy
Runner beans, Scarlet Emperor
Spring Onions, White Lisbon
Carrots, Nantes
Mange Tout, Delikata
Parsnips, Patriot
Leeks, Musselburgh
White Onions (sets), Sturon
Red Onions (sets), Red Baron
French beans, Kenyan
Sweet Peas, Old Fashioned mix
Spinach, Perpetual

Claggy

We added the plastic panels to the green house and it is now a splendid thing. It is warm as toast on a coolish day and the space inside is drying out. I'm very pleased with it.

We have been trying to stay off the plot to avoid making the muddy morass that we created while we made the green house. After we finished Jean dug the ground over to bury the clag. Today we walked on it for the first time in over a week and it just sank underfoot. I still have the shelves to add, but to help preserve the ground I'll wait for a few weeks, we're not in a hurry to use it yet.

We dug some more leeks and parsnips. The parsnips are beginning to look a bit rough, with chunks out of them and blemishes on the surface. One of them was rotten. There are about a dozen left so in a couple of weeks we'll dig them all up, give away what we can and freeze the rest. The leeks have just got better and better, but sadly there are only a few left, some of which were the spare ones that we planted rather late and so are a bit small.

Greenhouse weather

Over the past few days we've popped up to the allotment a few times to rebuild the greenhouse. I wanted to make it bigger so I took down the existing, rather successful one and set about making a new one in the same style. I reused the front side panels and the door and made new, bigger sides. The frame above the door is a little higher now so the slope of the roof will be preserved. The water will run off into the gutter on the shed to add to the water in the tanks behind the shed. The floor area will be about the same as the shed and should give us enough room to grow all we want. The frame is pressure treated one-by-two, which is thin to be light weight and allow lots of light in. We will cover the side and roof with plastic sheets which are easy to cut to size and add a huge amount of strength to the whole structure.

There has been a bit of snow over the past couple of days, with a bit more forecast. There has been much less of the usual guff on the TV about arctic weather and yet actually this winter is earlier and colder than for many years. I've been slightly worried about the plumbing for the water system, but the lagging seems to be working. When I get the plastic sheets on the greenhouse that will restore the heating of the pipes to make that much safer again.

The parsnips and leeks are still going strong - some say frost sweetens parsnips, so we'll see next time we take some. The leeks are standing up to a bit of snow, but the main problem with the parsnips is that their tops have withered so finding where some of them are is getting harder, snow or not. They are also frozen in so digging them up without breaking the root is tricky too.