A wee bit more...

We were away for the weekend but went straight out into the garden when we got home on Sunday afternoon.

A little more digging over by Pete means that the one long bed up the right hand side of the garden (looking out from the house) is ready.

I also sieved some more earth and we planted seeds for leeks (musselburgh, left over from last year) and parsnips (white gem). As with last weekend's carrot, tomato and pepper seeds all the seeds were planted in pots, trays and eggboxes in the greenhouse to be replanted outside once seedlings have come up.

Garden Work

Having created a paving path up the left hand side from patio to shed plus some digging over a couple of weeks back, this weekend Pete dug over most of the remaining strip back to the shed, mixing in the compost from the old compost heap and the remnants of last year's grow bags.

I sieved some soil which we then used to plant seeds for our two tomato varieties (Ildi and Tigerella), our carrots (Chantenay Red Cored) and our mini peppers (which I'd saved from peppers we'd bought and enjoyed from Aldi last year).

2009 Purchases!

Purchased 15 Feb 2009:

Courgette - Tristan £1.69
Parnsip - White Gem £1.29
Tomato - Ildi £1.99
Tomato - Tigerella £1.99
Sweetcorn - RHS Ovation F1 £1.99
Carrot - Chantenay Red Cored 99p
Pea - Sugarsnap Ann £2.49
Pea - Hurst Greenshaft £1.99
1 medium bag of potatoes £2.95
contains one first early variety and two maincrops (possibly epicure, majestic and navan)

Also planting

some old lettuce seeds
mini pepper seeds harvested in 2008 from Aldi mini peppers
cabbages
leftover leek seeds (musselburgh)


Oh and we have discovered a harvest of spring onions from last year, that we'd forgotten about! Pulled first one 15th March, will pull rest over coming weeks.

New Year, New Resolution!

Last year was a pretty terrible year, both on the blog and (in some respects) in the garden.

Firstly, an update on where we are now. The greenhouse finally got installed and is a wonderful big space - despite the dreadful weather (which resulted in things like the sweetcorn being an utter failure, with near-constant cloud and rain just as the poor things needed sun) we got a pretty good quantity of tomatoes and peppers out of it. The courgettes and aubergines were less successful, but hopefully we can work out what went wrong this time around!

The onions were something of a disappointment, failing to grow much larger than the sets. The garlic did something very similar, despite being in the ground for a ridiculous amount of time.

The potatoes and carrots were a mixed success. We certainly got a crop, but neither were particularly heavy. The carrots were also very ... 'rustic', as you can see! But they weren't a complete washout, and we ate plenty of (very tasty) carrot and corriander soup and managed to be self-sufficient in potatoes for a few months. Ahh, the advantage of there only being two of us!

In an attempt to keep this thing a little bit more frequently updated, I've added my wife to the author list so even when I'm being rubbish (or "working in the garden", which I've decided will be my excuse this year!) she'll be able to keep things vaguely up to date here.

Crops for 2008

So now would be an excellent time to record what's been bought, what's made it into the ground and what our plans are for other crops this year.

We still have a fair bit of seed left over from previous years (frankly, we always do!), so we managed to keep our shopping list quite short. This was probably a good idea considering that at the same time we're investing in big things like greenhouses!

We got very lucky on seed potatoes - an excellent deal in Ayletts which gave us perhaps three times what we had last year, for £2.95! We divided this roughly one third first earlies (Red Duke of York) and two thirds main crop (Pentland Squire). In theory, this means that our first earlies should be about the same volume as last years, plus twice as many mains. And all for three quid.

Next up was garlic bulbs (Cristo) - four large bulbs for £2.49, which obviously break down into an impressive number of cloves.

Finally, red onion sets, again for £2.49. Although we still have seeds from last year, they (obviously) didn't get very big and I thought it would be interesting to compare the experience of using sets rather than seeds. We shall see.

And that's it for the shopping (until the greenhouse is up and we go looking for tomatoes and suchlike). The other crops we've pencilled in for this year - leeks, courgettes, sweetcorn, lettuce, spinach - are still in the drawer from last year. They may not be quite as fertile as they were, but I've always found that something will come up given time.

In The Ground

Having got this late, of course, lots of things are already in the ground growing. The garlic, early potatoes, red onion sets and leeks are all in - the garlic and the earlies are making great progress, the leeks are doing the usual thing of getting about two inches high and then just sitting there doing nothing. The onion sets went in fairly recently and are just beginning to peek out of the ground.

Should Be...

The main crop potatoes should really be in the ground now, as (ideally) should the sweetcorn. That's all currently on hold until we no longer have a stream of men stomping across the garden to build things like sheds and greenhouses, but that should all be sorted by the weekend so then we'll have to settle down to some serious planning and (argh!) digging!