Growing
More veggies in
Saturday 30 April, 2011
Sown another row of spinach and one of kale. Planted out two rows of peas and direct sown another two. Got the dwarf French beans in and just going to put out some cabbages (Pyramid) and some runner beans. Dan's building the frame for the runners.
I'd also like to get the carrots sown but Dan wants to riddle the soil first - he's more particular than me. Then pot on the celeriac - fabulous scented leaves on the seedlings.
Spuds are through and so is masses of ground elder and other weeds. We'll beat them in the end though.
More veggies sown and planted
Tuesday 19 April, 2011
I've planted out the first cabbages today - two rows of Elisa, which is a summer cabbage. In the brassica bed, the row of spinach and row of kale are showing now. The other cabbages and the brussels sprouts are in the greenhouse and tiny seedlings are starting to show.
John built a wire frame for the peas, so the first double row of Hurst Greenshaft are in, having been started in the greenhouse. John's made a number of frames so I can get the spacing done. There will be four double rows of peas - the second is in the greenhouse now and the last two will be direct sown. I sowed two gutters of Sugar Ann, a sugarsnap pea today.
More veggie gardening
Tuesday 5 April, 2011
It's been another glorious day - windy, though so I'm not sure if I'm sunburned or windburned.
We have 5 beds in the vegetable garden; bed 1 now has garlic, onions (red and brown) and shallots planted. Sweetcorn and leeks will also go in there.
Bed 2 now has potatoes - maincrop Druid and Rooster, with Desiree still to go in. John's been planting them today. The earlies are in the fruit garden.
Bed 3 has some strawberry plants on a temporary basis; Dan and I sowed sunflowers and red clover today. We sowed eight varieties of sunflower - Russian Giant, Taiyo, Velvet Queen, Pastiche, Helianthus p. yellow, Italian White, Sunspot and Yellow Spray. We will try to sell the flowers at the gate as cut flowers; if that doesn't work, we'll use the seeds for the hens and wild birds.
Onions and shallots
Monday 4 April, 2011
We planted our onion and shallot sets yesterday in the first vegetable bed. We've already got garlic and elephant garlic in, so these were next to go.
I only bought brown onion sets- Hytech - so we planted 210 sets. Our shallots are Jermor and Pikant; we planted 20 and 15 sets respectively. The sets had been stored in the boot room and the Pikant had taken a bit of a hammering and quite a lot were mouldy. The Jermor had fared much better. We bought some red onion sets today - Red Baron - so if the sun comes out or at least the wind drops, I'll go and get them in. Also in that bed will be spring onions, although I'll just sow a few rows between the maincrop onions, sweetcorn and leeks. The leeks are already sown in trays and growing away. We'll sow the sweetcorn in a couple of weeks in the greenhouse.
More spuds
Friday 11 March, 2011
John put some more spuds in yesterday - International Kidney and Kind Edwards. That just leaves Druid and Rooster chitting in the boot room. We've run out of cleared space now though, so that adds another job to the "to do" list.
I spent an hour in the hail raking up dead grass in the hen run. The grass was long when they moved in there before Christmas - the hens are great at raking grass but no good at putting it in a wheelbarrow and taking it away. It took me an hour to do about a quarter of the run - filled the green wheelie bin and about five wheelbarrow loads. I'll try and get back to it tomorrow - some bits are worse than others but I don't reckon anything is going to grow under the thatch, so it has to go.
First spuds in
Thursday 10 March, 2011
John put the first potatoes in yesterday - Anya, Vivaldi, Red Duke of York. Still got King Edwards, International Kidney, Druid and Rooster to go in but the rest of the bed will need to be cleared first.
The cabbages - Elisa and Pyramid - that I sowed a couple of weeks ago in the greenhouse are showing now. Looks like they have all germinated in the guttering.
The sweet peas and marigolds are also through but no sign of the tomatoes or the celeraic yet.
It's soooo windy here today - lovely sun, but blowing a gale. Off to do the outside chores now.
Seed potatoes
Sunday 23 January, 2011
Our seed potatoes have arrived - I didn't realise I had bought so many.
We have Vivaldi, Anya, International Kidney (the variety that is Jersey Royals), Red Duke of York, Druid and Rooster. Looking foward to getting planting but the ground will have to soften a bit first.
It's still very hard and the frost seems to be coming out slowly. The drainage ditches are well down but in parts of the fields, there is ice under the grass which makes for a strange walking experience.
Planning the vegetable garden
Monday 27 December, 2010
I've spent the last couple of evenings working on the planting plan for the vegetable garden. Well, actually, the planning started a few weeks ago when I did the basic bed plan, decided what vegetables were going where and then chose the varieties we're using this year. After that, I placed the order for our seeds, seed potatoes, onion and shallot sets and garlic. I've done this for a couple of years now, but it's the first time at Dalmore, where we have more and bigger beds and, obviously, different growing conditions.
Vegetable garden raised beds
Saturday 20 November, 2010
Dan and John built the first of five raised beds in the vegetable garden today. In the rain. It took them an hour and a half; the rest will take less time now that they have a method. Filling them will be a bigger job!
Soft fruit garden
Sunday 5 September, 2010
We've identified the walled garden as the site for our eventual soft fruit garden. It's 12m x 9m, roughly and walled on three sides; the fourth side adjoins the barn and is now open. John and Linda cleared part of it in May and planted some spuds and beans. We're now clearing the rest. The weird thing is that despite all the pulling of weeds, I haven't seen a single worm and we reckon that this is due to a lack of organic matter in the soil.
