Garden photos and veggie update

The garden this year is looking good. Perhaps it's the extra long and cold winter, but the roses are really blooming and everything just looks lush and full of life.



The section of ground directly to the side of the kitchen conservatory was just a glorified plant dumping ground last year! A place to put plants that didn't have a suitable place elsewhere to grow. At the beginning of the year I thought this area would be ideal for a herb garden, but now, seeing how beautiful my "dumping ground" is, I'm tempted to have my herbs elsewhere. I had a little gap with nothing growing and some left over tomato plants, so the two seem to go very well together.



The actual veg plot is finally doing its thing. It's taken its time though with the bad start to the year and I know I'm not the only veggie grower to notice a difference with the produce this year.
This photo shows the peas (I finally managed to grow a successful second crop - took three attempts), a couple of lines of parsnips still at the very baby stage and raised bed in the background with chilli and spring onions. Both bags of free seed potatoes did well - both now harvested and thoroughly enjoyed! Also in the plot are two rows of garlic, which have been extremely disappointing (so far all very tiny), two rows each of spring onions and leeks.

Chilli

The weather has been lovely these last few days, so spring-like and so needed after our long, long winter.

This afternoon gave me my first opportunity this year to get out into the garden and potter. I have a couple of projects to get on with, other than vegetable sowing. Firstly I've started clearing the cottage garden patch in front of the conservatory as I'd like this to become a herb garden. It attracts the sun all day long so it should do well. Secondly, all the pretty cottage plants and bulbs will need to be moved to other places around the garden and these places generally need a good weeding ready for their new arrivals. That'll keep me busy!

Today I've sown eight chilli seeds which will germinate on the conservatory windowsill, all being well. Over the next few weeks I'll be sowing leeks, peas and tomatoes as well as the free potatoes from the Potato Council. I also need to put in some canes for the peas - hoping to do double the amount this year and skip the runners.

Snow apparently is forecast for this week, so most of this may be put on hold, we'll have to see.

Veggie update - lots of progress

Tomatoes (indoor) and Chilli plants are beginning to flower. I'm amazed at how much taller the tomato plants are indoors compared to the two planted outside, even though the weather has been glorious lately.

We also have the distinctive mauve flowers on our self-seeded potatoes which have taken over the onion plot so much now that I have to part the leaves in order to find the onions. The potatoes grown in the black bags from The Potato Council are still flourishing although I've had to water them up to three times a day during the hot weather and there aren't any flowers on them yet.


The onions are looking fine, but small. I didn't have much hope for them from the start as they'd taken so long to get going, but they should be OK. Small is beautiful (and flavoursome).


My pride and joy is the peas. I'm so glad I decided to plant them and have actually sown more (having watched the River Cottage program recently where he liberally sowed peas rather than carefully spacing the seeds out like I'd done). I read somewhere that eating the peas once the pod has been popped is one of the biggest pleasures of home grown foods - so right. I think doing this is higher up the enjoyment stakes than digging up potatoes. I wasn't sure when to actually harvest the peas and didn't want to pick them too soon or too late. Having Googled Kelvedon Peas I read that it's best to harvest them sooner rather than later as the peas are much sweeter. This seems to be true in my opinion. I discoverd some very fat pea pods and found the goods rather bitter compared to pods that are plump but not bursting.



I've also plucked up the courage to try growing sweetcorn again - hopefully I'll do better than last year. The reason I've found some spare space in the veggie plot is because the little cabbages I grew went to seed and then promptly got eaten by the chickens! Nevermind, I'd rather have sweetcorn than cabbages.

Progress ... outside

The beans have been added to now so there's three different variety of beans in there. One lot are dwarf from last year's supply and the other two varieties are from a friend so not sure what they are! I grew quite a few seeds indoors which turned out to be the perfect amount in the end as I had to replace a couple that had been completely destroyed by something or other - most probably the hens. This is why the "keep out" netting is back around them. Although I've just finished planting these out, the second lot are exactly the same size as the first lot. Hope they liven up soon - perhaps the ground is a little too cold for them. At the end of the row I've put in a couple of tomato plants as they were surplus and I didn't have the heart to get rid of them!


Planted out two pumpkins which had started off indoors. Had to replace one of them as it was looking pretty dodgey. Luckily I had a healthy spare still on the windowsill. Both have grown quite well since the wetter weather. These are planted in a thrown together raised bed with last year's compost, which I've read they love. Their leaves are going a bit yellow (I've noticed this with the first lot of beans too) - will watch what happens.


Look at these pots and plastic bags of potatoes - all doing fabulously - just need some flowers now. Wonder if they'll be white or purple.


Peas are gradually climbing, they are now up to their fourth line of supporting string. Getting lovely white flowers now too.


Garlic is looking good and strong and the spring onions, sown between the rows of garlic and also in their own section, are beginning to look more settled in their new positions.

Garlic and peas update

The garlic is doing extremely well and is look very healthy.

The peas grew exceptionally fast in their first seed pots and quickly needed planting out. The hens immediately focussed on the new seedlings and starting pecking at them! Had to construct a very makeshift fence to keep them off!

Bean poles and pumpkin patch

The children do some preparations with the veggie plot on Sunday. The weather was glorious - lovely to be outside for so long with the extra light too in the evening. Wasn't so good losing the hour on Sunday morning though I must say!

I used a pile of old bricks to build a quick veg bed for our pumpkins. I didn't quite have enough to make a minimum 12 inches in depth (as suggested by a magazine I have recently read), so I rummaged around in the log pile and found some suitable chunky logs to make up the few extra inches needed. Having read that pumpkins love to grow in compost heaps I decided, with Ben's help, to fill the new bed with the majority of last year's home made compost. Really pleased with it - it's composted down beautifully (with the odd tea bag still lurking!). Now I have space on the compost heap for this year's lot of kitchen and garden waste, including a fresh bag of horse manure to kick start it.

So, have dug over and raked the main plot, Katie helped put in some tall poles for the peas (which are doing really well indoors) and later the beans. They also both helped plant up the four free potatoes, plus a couple of others which we found sprouting in the garden!

First wave of Spring seeds

Feels good to see rows of potted seeds on the conservatory windowsill. Over the last week I've sown individual small pots of Kelvedon Wonder peas, spring onions, Jelapeno chilli and a bigger container of mixed salad. I've got the bug now and want to crack on with all the others! Potatoes (from the Potatoes for Schools campaign) are chitting slowly on the utility room windowsill, they need to get into their individual bags within the next couple of weeks.

As Pepper, the kitten, is rather into digging in fresh soil (he'd completely dug out each seperate section of spring onion seeds within seconds of me bringing them into the kitchen), I decided to rig up a small barrier of sticks, string and silver foil to keep him off the salad! It's working so far - in fact the salad has already started to grow! I am also so amazed at how costly bags of salad are in the shops. As a family, three out of the four of us aren't huge salad eaters, but Paul does enjoy a bowl of salad with dressing when serving up chilli or something similiar. I often find a bag of salad will very quickly go soggy if not eaten within a couple of days. I used to buy just Iceberg lettuce and chop it up as we needed it, but it seemed a little dull! Growing and cutting your own salad leaves is such a brilliant and cheap way to getting just what you need.