[pgkevet]

This years sowing /planting to date:
Greenhouse 12 assorted toms, e each  3 sorts melons, 2 each cornichon, nice cues and moneymaker cues plus sweet peppers, jalopenos, aubergines. Courgettes flowering in there already, radish, chinese cabbage and small lettuce. In trays about 6 40-module trays different brassicas, 1 tray each celery and cape gooseberry and 150 french beans, more courgettes and pumpkins, 20 runner beans (I prefer the french ones) and 120 sunflowers (for the seedheads for the chickens). home grown geraniums/lobelia and petunia seedlings moved to their tubs now. 2 tubs leek seedlings. A few spring onions about ready
Planted out so far 70 garlic, 500 onion sets, 130 onion seedlings, 400 potatoes, 60 broad bean seedlings, 200 sweetcorn seedlings and sown 20m rows carrots, peas and 2 rows parsnips, 1 row poppies (for the seed) - none germinated yet. Things like peas have to be sown under chicken wire.

I've been doing my best to rehome the spare plants FOC ..hate to throw them.. still got toms, and squashes spare.

I'm waiitng for the soil to warm up a tad more before the next direct sowings - lots of flowers this year plus turnips, swede and everythign else I've forgotten

[doganjo]

Still a bit chilly in Scotland but I've put in a few bits & bobs.  Need to get my raised beds filled up then i can transplant the seedlings into them.  Thanks to Bloomer my fruit bushes are established but need to get the netting secured so the pup can't run through them.

[Bert]

You have been very busy  . 20m rows of carrots    How big is your veg patch?! Love the idea of sunflower seed heads for the chicken.
In my polytunnel  I've got 11 varieties of tomatoes,  14 varieties of chilli, 3 varieties of sweet pepper, 3 varieties of melon, 2 varieties tomatillo, 12 varieties of salad leaves, 2 varieties of onions, 4 varieties of carrots, cucumber, aubergine, 9 varieties of basil and edible flowers. Out side I have runner, French, pea, yard long beans, peas, lettuce, onions, beetroot, cabbage, cauliflower, chard, kale, leek, courgette, marrow, pumpkin, squash, potatoes, parsnips, herbs, garlic and strawberries. I think that's all of it. It's still not even close to the amount you are growing.

[cloddopper]

Bert , most of the strawberries we swapped have started to flower .. Thanks .

 I've got loads of square feet squares  planted with onions, garlic ,leek broad beans , sugar snap peas , Chou d' Au Benton ,  rhubarb , alpine and Cambridge favourite strawberries .
 In the glasshouse I have 96 filled bottomless  min pots in to soak in de chlorinated water ready for sowing with various veg & flower seeds . should I get al that done I'll concentrate on getting six hanging baskets set with seed or start the seeds off in more mini pots .

I've got thirty or so geraniums , mostly in flower  that I've managed to successfully over winter .

 Spent a few hours today using some of the new jellyfied Round-up , squirted some on a small sheet of plastic and then used a 10 mm paint brush to coat as many leaves of bindweed that are climbing up irises & glad's etc. as  I could wwithout getting any on the wanted plants .
 I also  got to coat quite a few clumps of couch grass that came out of several bags of Municipal authority produced ,environmentally friendly,  locally produced finest soil free ready to use compost .......aka " Weedfest Crud ",  that I trialled last year for cheapness .... never again will I try that little trick .

[Mammyshaz]

I think I started some too early and lost a full tray each of tomatoes and chillies and a packet of cucumber. All started in house and got damp-off 
Restarted and also have potatoes, onions, garlic, rhubarb ( just planted some choppings from a neighbour ) raspberries, strawberries, shallots, carrots, parsnip, swede all outside.
Chillies ( hot ), sweet chillies, cucumber, pumpkin, courgette, leek, beetroot, cabbage, cauli, sprouts, broccoli, runner beans, berlotti beans, sugarsnaps, lettuce, spinach, swede, herbs and flowers all starting off in poly.
Not masses of each but enough for a variety of dinners over the year along with the male chickens we are rearing and plenty of eggs 
Oh and trying ginger root this year but no sign of growth yet 

[pgkevet]

20m rows of carrots    How big is your veg patch?

Space outside isn't an issue for me so I work on the 'plant enough something should grow' method with enough space between many of the rows to run a  rotorvator down for weeding.

Bending is a big issue for me - painful and can end in spasm and the need to stretch out on the floor. Crawling along rows to plant works OK but might mean having to crawl to a  fence post to get upright afterwards if I do too much at once. On the other hand sowing stuff in pots is easy to arrange.

OH doesn;t like gardening but will cooperate with harvest. As in I fork the spuds up, she'll sort them for drying off and help bag them later.

I alternate two 1/4 acre patches. I've just run the topper over last year's except for the leek and broccoli rows which are still OK. It gets all the chicken and lamb bedding waste chucked on it, sprayed down with glyphosate later in the year and then ploughed for next year.

I keep meaning to make longer handles for the gardening tools for my height.


I do end up with lots of excess of some things...just gets ploughed back in but equally friends or visitors usually leave with carrier bags of stuff. Excess of popular things like toms or cues are easily given away in the pub - nothng wrong with a few brownie points.

I popped in there yeaterday for a quick drink and was asking a bunch of sheep-farmers what to do with my 2 adult sheep. Theirs number in the hundreds and thousands.  After they finished laughing someone offered to come round and shear them for me.....

[Bert]

I forgot my broccoli & brussel sprouts 
 I'm with you pgkevet on the bending. Why do the things we enjoy doing have to be so painful. Also with you on the other half not being a fan. He's not aloud in the veg patch without supervision  .

[Lesley Silvester]

My OH's contribution to the gardening is to eat the produce.    To be fair, he also heaves bags of compost around and does any other lifting.


Today I potted on courgettes and tomatoes and sowed three short rows of Chard. As I was drawing out the drill I discovered the local cats had been calling again. I've netted the bed this time as I'm sick of finding all my seeds rearranged and killed off. Hopefully, this will do the trick. The other raised bed has been covered with goat manure which usually puts the cats off. I intend making dips in it which I will fill with potting compost and plant the courgettes in there. They'll enjoy the food.


I've also sown some squash seeds. The resultant plants will go into potting compost on the manure heaps. should get a good crop.

[devonlad]

been an odd year in the veg patch so far. Usually it is the main focus in early spring (with the exception of lambing) and from Jan onwards I'm usually found out there digging , preparing and sowing. this year however it lay dormant and derelict just a month ago, used as a dumping ground during the building of our new extension and I had been focussed on indoor jobs like painting and tiling and with the huge project of completely restoring our trashed flower garden still to come. . at one point i'd resigned myself to no veg this year, but its amazing what dry evenings and weekends can achieve. in the absence of the usual fussing time I decided to just grow those things that usually require little faff (or that I love so much I wouldn't want to go without) so its peas, broad beans, runners, beetroot, sweetcorn and courgettes and nothing else this year.
 No toms, carrots, parsnips, celeriac, spuds, lettuce, swede, brassicas or sweet potatoes. early signs are encouraging and despite a fraction of the usual faffing about the patch is already bursting into life. I've long thought about just focsussing on the things that grow easily here as time is always an issue here and having had to do it am thinking it might be a sign of things to come