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Posted: Sunday 27 March, 2005

by Rosemary at 9:45am in Growing Comments closed

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.

We've used Tender and True parsnip variety. It's always done well in the past - lovely flavour and not woody, however big the roots get. We don't tend to get great germination but the flavour is so good it's worth it for the few we get.

We're trying calabrese for the first time. I can't remember the variety. Other than this, we're probably not going to grow any brassicas. If we do, they will be under fleece until they are harvested. We don't seem to be able to do these well.

Three varieties of peas have been sown. These will be planted successionally. We've got sugarpea Norli. We're only doing a couple of rows - we grew these last year and had a bumper crop. We were absolutely sick of looking at them The peas didn't freeze well and there is only so much soup you can eat!

In the greenhouse, tomatoes, lettuce and melon have been sown. We're only doing Supersweet 100 tomatoes this year. They were superb last year. The lettuce is up already so we're looking forward to fresh salad soon.

We're trying Sweetheart melon - because it's recommended for first time melon growers and that's us.

Hopefully, potatoes will go in this weekend.

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