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Author Topic: 2016 gardening  (Read 5721 times)

pgkevet

  • Joined Jul 2011
Re: 2016 gardening
« Reply #15 on: December 31, 2015, 08:35:51 am »
Last year I stored half the onions in nets hung in the bar and the overflow were just spread out on the hay store floor... they kept way better than in the nets. So this year the whole lot is just spread out. We'll see how well they keep but I did start with 900 sets in the spring. 200 were reds more than half bolted - so that's an end to growing reds.
It's spuds that are too much work. I have endemic scab so end up throwing half the crop away as unstorable. The effort in planting, earthing up, spraying for blight, digging up and sorting/bagging ... it's backbreaking for 8 or 9 £5 sackfulls.
I grew lots of lovely red cabbage no-one wanted. kholrabi i love but so do the pheasants. Planty of greyhound and savoy but always have to peel away a lot to get under the slugs. The sweetcorn was planted further from the house this year than last  and the wildlife ate more than i did. last year i ended up with 100+ cobs frozen... this year....none
With that record - is it worth it?

Exactly the point. You all know how many peas you have to shell to end up with 4Lbs in the freezer. there's still 8 metres of carrots in the ground and 15metres of parsnips and some 150 leeks that haven't bolted. It's not helped by OH currently upgrading her wild pheasant feeding so that a record 30 of them rocked up at lunchtime by the barn last week. At the same time it just seems wrong not to be growing something on 50+ acres of hobby farm....

Perhaps time to buy a rocking chair and whittling knife

cloddopper

  • Joined Jun 2013
  • South Wales .Carmarthenshire. SA18
Re: 2016 gardening
« Reply #16 on: December 31, 2015, 11:27:51 pm »
Some long handled tools are very very useful  when you have low level raised beds , not only can you reach to the middle of the beds whilst standing to teh side of them you don't have to bend your back so much either .

 

 Over the 40  years or so of being disabled in my left shoulder I a pitch fork made into a four tined  light weight long handled garden fork back in 1982 the top of the long smooth ash handle  reached  to just below the topmof the left shoulder when I'm stood with o=it on a concrete slab .  The spade is similar but this time it's a light weight ladies border spade that has been bespoke fitted to a pitch fork shaft ( one of the old waisted  straight shafts )  the height was the same as the fork initially but it's now worn down over the years so its nearly three inches shorter .

Initially it took me a while to get used to working with the spade & fork as I was using it strapped to my right arm due to the left one being a useless skinny bone for several years. Over the years I learnt how to use them more effectively and am still able to use them a bit most days iif needed even with  20 years of having a damaged spine as well .

My flower & veg beds are quite damp but not overly so , raising them up to 900mm has been fantastic for me so has the fact that they are only 36 inches wide , I don't have to lean over the beds as I stand on cast concrete paths that surround the beds  & of course because of this I've never ever stood onth beds since th day they were built .

 Currently we still have ball cabbages , over wintering spring greens  , perennial kale , main & late crop carrots , some beet root , parsnips , turnips and leeks left in the beds as well as several stone of stored onions & a couple of pounds of garlic .
 We've also got about seventy jars of home made pressure canned food  in the indoor store cupboard ,
 I'm nearly finished in drawing up the sowing schedule for 2016 , this time round I'm going to try and grow a cauli a week , a cabbage every 12 days and have four or five periods of carrot crops along with about 60 pounds of glasshouse grown tomatoes and a couple of pickling cucumber plants . Plus the normal veg 7 salad stuf I grew last yer .

Like several of you my strawberries didn't do much this year due to the colder wetter  weather we've had here ,. they'll get moved to a new bed  that got manured in Sept 2015 sometime around the middle of Feb 2016 .
 The Rhubarb has not stopped growing despite a thick over coat dressing of well rotted stable muck at the end of October 2015

 Hopefully the now in the fourth year 15 asparagus crowns will start to yield some reasonable spears as well.

 
Strong belief , triggers the mind to find the way ... Dyslexia just makes it that bit more amusing & interesting

 

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