Growing
This year's menu
Monday 25 April, 2005
Where does the time go? I can't believe it's nearly May already, and most of our fruit and veg is well underway.
This year I've more than doubled the size of the raised beds, by incorporating one of the pig pens into the veg garden. Strangely enough this hasn't seemed to double the effort required, and for the first time ever I feel almost in control of the veg growing... (Now just wait for some sort of disaster to befall me!)
So, we've got in the ground, or to shortly appear in the ground:
Digging at dawn
Friday 1 April, 2005
How's this for dedication? For the last two mornings, Dan has been out in the garden digging at 6.30am!!
The potatoes really needed to be planted and the weather is a bit unpredictable, so Dan's been taking advantage of the conditions over the last few days to prepare an additional potato bed for the Robinta and the Pink Fir Apple.
He's got all the Red Duke of York planted in the vegetable garden but there wasn't room for the other varieties, so another area has had to be prepared. It had potatoes on it four seasons ago so it should be OK to use again.
New tree
Sunday 27 March, 2005
We have an addition to the orchard. One of of the original 14 trees died over the winter. It's been replaced by a plum tree, Oullins Golden Gage. This variety was carefully selected by virtue of being reduced to £10 in the graden centre. Actually it's a really well shaped tree and looks really healthy.
So, it's in. It should crop about August - a large, yellow dessert plum, sweet and juicy. Delicious eaten fresh, it also cooks well. So says the label. I can't wait.
Spring is sprung
Sunday 27 March, 2005
We've had a busy couple of weekends in the garden.
Dan's finished constructing the new raised beds. The paths between have to be tidied up but the beds themselves are now ready for planting. Actually, some of them have been planted.
Shallots (Longor) are in, as are 800 (yes, eight hundred) onion sets (Jetset). We used Sturon last year, but they didn't keep well. Jetset is quite a new variety, so we'll see how it does.
Beetroot is in, too. We're using two varieties this year; Libero RZ and Carillon. We've grown Libero RZ before and it's very good, but we're trying Carillon for the first time. It's a cylindrical, long beet so it should be good for slicing for pickling, which is what we use our beetroot for, in the main.
Strawberries in the rain
Thursday 10 February, 2005
The weather has taken a turn for the worse, just in time for our new strawberry plants to arrive. We've already planted ten "Pegasus" in the new strawberry bed. Ten "Florence" arrived day before yesterday.
Never daunted, Dan planted them out yesterday - in the gales and the rain. Tess huddled behind the fence and Meg threw her ball to him, as thay all got soaked.
When we're eating the strawberries, with some cream, on a warm summer's day, it will all seem like a distant memory. Meanwhile, Dan, keep taking the "Lemsip"!
Potatoes
Sunday 6 February, 2005
Once again, the weather has been wonderful this weekend. As planned, the shallots have been planted.
Dan has built another raised bed, so that only leaves on more to do. We'll have to get topsoil soon and get the beds filled, ready for planting.
Potatoes are chitting in the front hall. They make an interesting addition to my Arts and Crafts style room. I suppose they are useful, and some may think they are beautiful, so no doubt William Morris would be OK with racks of spuds in egg boxes.
Raspberries, garlic and knobbly spuds
Tuesday 6 July, 2004
Things keep growing, whether we're ready for them or not.
Tonight I harvested another 1 1/2 pounds of raspberries, straight into the freezer for winter crumbles and pies. I also lifted all the garlic, 30-odd heads, which has reached a good size and will keep us going for a year. Just in time too I think, since 4 were damaged by some kind of mould or rot. They were disposed of, the rest are now in the garage to dry thoroughly.
Harvest (contd.)
Tuesday 29 June, 2004
More rich pickings today - our first Red Duke of York spuds (duly despatched to the olds), 4lb of gooseberries, the first of the blackcurrants (just ripe, and really only picked to take some of the weight off of the overburdened branches), our first wee courgettes and more mange tout and spring onions, all for a stir fry.
The potatoes were very encouraging, being a good size and blemish-free. Red Duke of York are our favoured early variety, and it's nice to have them again after last year's order went unfulfilled because of our supplier's seed failure. Their colour straight out of the ground is fantastic - next time I lift some I must take a photo for the gallery...
Peas, peas everywhere
Sunday 27 June, 2004
I continue to harvest early peas. The Douce Provence are cropping moderately, but the Pilot are cropping very heavily, and although the former were of a cropping size about a week earlier, the weight of the Pilot crop and the fact they are still covered in new flowers makes me think these will become our regular early pea. There is little to pick between them in terms of flavour.
So today's pickings yielded about a pound of shelled peas, popped straight into the freezer in a suitable container. There are a lot more to come, so maybe we will be self-sufficient in garden peas the coming year.
June Promises
Tuesday 22 June, 2004
This time of year is one of my favourite. Most of the hard work in the vegetable garden has been completed. We continue to cut and pick salad and spring onions, and other crops are starting to come to fruition - early peas, garlic, shallots, autumn-sown onions. And then there's the promise of a lot more to come:
Gooseberries about ready to harvest; strawberries with the first tinge of red; blackcurrants turning from bright green to deepest black; the first tomato fruits swelling daily; flowers on the capsicums; truss after truss of flowers on the super sweet 100 cherry tomatoes; sunset apples cropping heavily; douce provence peas; courgettes seeming to sprout from nowhere overnight.
