Growing
Early Peas
Sunday 20 June, 2004
This is the first season I've grown early varieities of peas in addition to our maincrop favourite Greenshaft. On 21st February I sowed 2 rows of Douce Provence and 3 of Pilot.
Despite some early damage by weevils it's been a success, and we started picking and eating the Douce Provence last week, 16 weeks after sowing. The Douce Provence are low growing, at a height of 2-3 feet, while the Pilot are about twice that height. With all peas it's important to start picking as early as possible and regularly, to encourage further flowering and prolonged cropping, even is this means the peas themselves are on the small side - but they just taste all the sweeter for it.
Wednesday night is soup night
Wednesday 16 June, 2004
I'm an opportunisitc soup-maker. If I see something reduced to an outrageously low price in our local supermarket my first instinct is to buy it an make soup with it. And so it happened this afternoon - a big head of organic celery and a load of broccoli all at a knock-down price.
Fortunately my family and I all love soup, any time of the year. So although this probably isn't ideal weather for Celery and Stilton or Broccoli and Stilton soup, that's what we've got oodles of now. If you think they sound good here are the recipes - dead easy and very, very tasty.
A show novice
Thursday 3 June, 2004
As mentioned previously here at TAS we joined the Clackmannanshire Horticultural Society this year, and I have been gently persuaded to operate the exhibitor database for this year's Annual Show. Now, wanting to take a full part in the society, we both intend to enter a good number of classes at the show, which is to be held on September 13th in Alva - Rosie in baking and perhaps some floral classes, myself in the vegetable classes.
The problem is I haven't the remotest of notions about what showing vegetables involves. A quick Google just scared me - how on earth do you produce carrots like these?
Late May sowing
Thursday 27 May, 2004
Sown today:
- Butternut Squash
- Sugar Snap Pea Norli
- Pea Greenshaft
- Runner Bean Painted Lady
- Runner Bean Scarlet Flame
- Carrot Autumn King
- Carrot Parabel
- Carrot Cubic
That's about it for this year. We've got fennel and mangels to sow tomorrow, then it'll just be salad and spring onions and some green manures once harvest starts.
Holiday veg update
Wednesday 26 May, 2004
We've been on holiday the past 2 weeks which explains the lack of entries here (counter-intuitive I know, but we've been busy!). The veg garden has had a good bit of attention, this week I've planted out leeks, sweetcorn, beetroot, sprouting brocolli, 3 varieties of cabbage and a couple of courgette plants. The brassicas are under fleece this year for the first time. In previous years they've been ruined by aphids, so we're going for the barrier method this time around to see if we can defeat them.
Plans are nothing, planning is everything
Wednesday 19 May, 2004
So said some famous military man, I forget who, but it's a sound observation. On Sunday we had about 2 1/2 tonne of screened soil sitting on our drive and nowhere to put it. It was the leftovers of the 3 tonne I had ordered to fill in the pond to make the bog garden - okay, so I overestimated just a tad how much we'd need!
What to do? Well, we had a quick review of what was what and decided to restrict the pig rotation to the two westerly pens (more a back-and-forth than a rotation then), and keep the third, east-most pen for a permanent vegetable garden. Going a step further we decided it would be a good use of the available space to remove the fence separating the east-most pen and the existing vegetable garden, and to extend the raised veg beds to the full length of the new-to-be-united vegetable garden. This will have a number of benefits - the pig ark never needs to be moved again, since it sits on the fence line between the two pens and has a door into each pen; I'll need to do a lot less digging each year; and we'll have a lot more space to grow vegetables, all in permanent raised beds.
Mice or weevils?
Monday 3 May, 2004
Something has been eating our broad bean and pea seedlings. It's not a problem we've ever had before in the raised beds, and the only damage this year is happening in the new veg patch where the pigs were last year - the sugar snaps in the raised beds are unaffected.
I was convinced it was mice or some other small mammal - I've found many under stones and in overgrown areas of the garden before, and Cas certainly leaves the remains of enough around the place to know there is a fair population. But tonight Rosemary saw a bit in Scottish Farmer which says that incidence of pea and bean weevil is on the increase.
Gooseberry Sawfly
Thursday 22 April, 2004
The little bastards are back, but this year I've caught them early and fully intend to destroy them. This morning the first evidence of the annual gooseberry sawfly invasion was found - a few leaves low on the larger of our two bushes had the tell-tale dotted lines of eggs running along their veins, and about a dozen leaves were swiss-cheese holey, meaning some of the eggs had hatched and the baby caterpillars were already munching their way to adulthood.
Honest toil
Sunday 4 April, 2004
Our early spuds - Red Duke of York and Pink Fir Apple - finally went in the ground today, in last year's pig pen. Although the pigs did a fine job of clearing the grass and weeds, they didn't eat the stones, bricks and varied detritus located about 12 inches under the soil. So preparing the trenches for the spuds took just about all day, instead of the few hours I'd bargained for. It's not even a certainty that they'll grow into anything worthwhile - the chitting was less than smooth due to an alternately cold and warm shed, and it was only in the past few weeks that they've had a decent chance to sprout in our spare room.
Asparagus
Saturday 3 April, 2004
Asparagus is something we've always intended to grow, but have never really got around to doing (other than a thoroughly unsuccessful attempt to grow from seed). This year though we ordered 10 crowns of Connover's Colossal, and they arrived yesterday.
Last weekend, in anticipation of their arrival, I prepared their bed. The perennial raised bed will be their home for the next 20 years or so, and it needed considerable attention to get it ready for the asparagus. The resident strawberry plants were removed, the soil dug deep and then riddled to a depth of 18 inches to remove large stones and other debris. Finally a good quantity of compost and well rotted manure were added, together with a few handfuls of sand to aid drainage.
