It must be spring! Despite the snow and floods I am sorting seeds and planting stuff!
I have been spending the last few days sorting out my veg and flower seeds into planting order and thinking about a planting plan for both our garden and the raised beds at Compostgirl's school. I need to think about the school garden as well because I teach organic gardening to the children there.
I received my seed order last week, from the always excellent
The Organic Gardening Catalogue and as an added bonus I am an HDRA member so I get 10% off my orders.
I not only buy the seeds
we need for the coming year but also order in the seeds needed for the children at school to grow seeds this year. That way they save on the postage and, as I draw up the outline planting plan for the school garden, it makes sense for me to order in the seeds.
This year I seemed to have a good few less items in my order than in previous years! I realised as I browsed through the catalogue that I have already bought most of the non seed items I need in the past( oops blush), so am just buying seeds and sets and potatoes....but I still seemed to have less seeds than normal; here is about a quarter of my order of seed packets.
However, I then remembered just WHY I didn't need to order many seeds this year....as before Christmas, when I was checking through my existing stash of seeds, so as to only order what I needed as replacements or new seeds, I found I already still had all THESE....
oops! I think I have a seed habit....
So....I am now the proud possessor of 185 packets of veg seeds, with only a few duplicates.... but in my defence I do actually grow virtually all of them, honest!
I grow lots of different sorts of tomatoes for instance, I grow about 50 plants in the polytunnel every year and have at least 8 different varieties. Shirley, Big Boy, Aunty Madge, Yellow Perfection, Golden Sunrise, Black Russian, Black, Gardeners Delight, Spanish Big Globe, Beefsteak, Red Cherry, Moneymaker etc. Some are for eating in salads, some are good for stuffing, some have nice thin skins so are easy to dry, some have thicker skins so are good to sell; ALL are delicious......
The same applies to Aubergines, Peppers, Courgettes and Squashes; I grow at least 3 or 4 different varieties of each, as they all have different keeping and eating characteristics.
I have two new Squash to try this year; Chicago Warted Hubbard from
the Heritage Seed Library and Potimarron both of which look very interesting! I always grow Turks Turban, Tom Fox and Lady Godiva.
Leeks, mmm yum! We grow lots of different varieties (Colossal, Pandora, Alora, Atlanta,Carentan, Bandit, Monstruoso de Carentan, Siegfried) so we can eat leeks from November to April if we wish. We like leeks here and usually plant about 200 plus of them.
Carrots, well they do well in the summer and early autumn but we tend to find storing them in the ground is less successful so we grow carrots and lift them to store in September. We have Carrot Fly around here so I grow Resistafly and Flyaway which do very well, as well as Nantes and Rainbow Mix as summer carrots. Rainbow Mix freeze very well and they make a nice change from ordinary orange carrots.
Potatoes...hmmm this year we have virtually given up on Maincrop potatoes and are growing lots of first and second earlies, but of varieties which we know will be good keepers and eat well, and will replace the varieties we usually grow as maincrop potatoes.
It is getting harder to grow potatoes here now, as the weather is getting more and more favourable for blight ( both early and late) to take hold. We are also in an area where more and more potatoes are being grown commercially, so we are surrounded by a sea of potatoes, and if they get blight, we are done for, even if ours didn't have blight to start with.....
We are going to grow Orla, Charlotte, Nicola, Remarka, Arran Victory and Coleen this year, plus a few Pink Fir Apple. Lots of blight resisters!
I tend to go for several different sorts of Onion and Shallot sets too, so if something bad happens to one variety I will (hopefully) still get a crop. I tend to grow Longor and Red Sun shallots and Sturon, Red Baron and Jet Set onions. We usually plant about 200 Onion sets.
I am going to try Turnips and Celeriac again this year, in 2007 they were really good but in 2008 they were a waste of space.
Kale is also on this year's list, I like Kale and Compostman is OK about it so I shall grow a few plants and see what happens. I have some seeds of Asparagus Kale from the
Heritage Seed Library , as well as some Pentland Brig seeds from the Organic Gardening Catalogue, so we shall see what happens!
On the whole we find brassicas difficult to grow here, not because of club root though, oh no...because of the wildlife! Invariably it all gets eaten by pigeons or squirrels no matter how many plants I grow and how much we protect them! BUT I am going to try again with some Sprouts (Igor), and see if I can't get at least a few for Christmas dinner!
The beans we grow from self saved seed, originally from the
Garden Organic Heritage Seed Library Climbing French Bean Purple Giant and Canadian. We don't grow Runner beans anymore since getting these!
We grow a few rows of broad beans which I start in pots in the polytunnel and then plant out, but we are not over fond of them so only a few rows.
We have no joy with peas at all here due to mice year in year out, but I do have some Purple Podded mangetout from the Heritage Seed Library to try this year! Also this year I am going to try a few new sorts (Bridgewater, Blue Coco) of Climbing French beans from the Heritage Seed Library list.
Gosh, what else do we grow? We grow lots of Sweetcorn, Parsnips, (more about those in a later post) Garlic (lots and LOTS of Garlic), Perpetual Beet (green and rainbow)
And lots and lots and lots of different salad leaves, mainly "cut and come again" varieties such as "Red and Green salad bowl" "Asparagus Lettuce" from the Heritage Seed Library, Spring onions, Radish, Rocket, Mizuma, Mustard leaves and lots of leafy herbs (Coriander, lots of different Basils, Parsley, Chives and Garlic Chives) which we like in salads as well as use as herbs. The herb beds already have the usual perennial herbs (Rosemary, Sage, Lovage, Anjelica, Fennel, Oregano, Marjoram, tarragon, Thyme etc)
I also tend to raise a lot of extra tomato, pepper, aubergine,courgette, bean, leek etc plants which are either used to "fill in" any gaps in the school beds or our beds at home OR are sold at the School gate to raise funds for the School garden.
And in the polytunnel as well as everything else I grow Melons and Cucumbers, we never buy a cucumber from about the middle of May until October.
This year I am going to try a few new things, like growing some spuds as an experiment in a "potato bag" to see how well it works. I have grown in buckets and tubs before but have been asked to try this out.
I also have some new seeds to grow, which I have not tried here before, so will see how things go.
Although looking at the ground at the moment I can't help feeling I need to build VERY HIGH raised beds to do any gardening AT ALL
or maybe even an Ark? ;-)
