Getting very busy in the garden (!)

We have had a week without rain recently and the ground finally has began to dry out - it could still become very wet very fast if we get any more rain, but for now both Compostman and I decided we could get digging.

We only have leeks, parsnips, spinach and various kales left in the ground in the veg patch and it all looks a bit sad at the moment - it has been just too wet to do anything as even tidying up would involve compacting the very wet soil. So we didn't.

 But today the sun shone, the birds sang and it was glorious to be outside :)

 After lifting last years onion plastic and doing some weeding in the raised beds we got cracking barrowing leaf mould over from by the compost area to enrich the beds.

 Compostman laid out the onion plastic on the new onion bed - I had previously enriched this area with compost and lots of wood ash, before he laid down the plastic and pegged it out.

Then he planted onion sets one per hole in the plastic. I meanwhile planted potatoes in the two raised beds. One had Maris Peer and the other Vanessa - both organic seed  potatoes of course. I believe it is "traditional" to plant potatoes on Easter Day, although I can't see why as Easter can be very early or very late to be planting them?

 We stopped and had a cup of tea while sitting on the bench at the top of the wood and admired the view down into the wood,

And across into the garden and orchard.


I have lots of other veg plants growing in the polytunnel but even so it feels good to get stuff planted in the ground :)

Signs of Spring!

Well the new season finally kicks off :)

Today I saw several Queen Bumblebees and a couple of Butterflies in the garden. The woodpeckers are drumming and yaffling in the wood and the air is full of birdsong. At night I see lots of Newts and Toads getting amorous on the patio and gravel drive :)

Tomato, aubergine and pepper seeds are up in the heated propagators and various salads and brassicas are growing well as are onion and leek seedlings

The potatos are chitting nicely ( lots more out of shot)

and the earliest potaoes are begining to grow in their bags in the polytunnel.

What is the betting it snows, next week?

Lammas greetings - .

So, the end of July and tomorrow is Lammas Day . The garden is in full production now and I am bringing in loads of assorted vegetables and fruits for us to enjoy.

Unfortunately the Rivers Early plum tree split under the sheer weight of plums ( again) it has done this before and we really can't think how to prevent it - the branches are not really suitable to prop up - I think a severe prune is needed.

My pumpkins are doing very well - this is Jack o lantern - should get some huge pumpkins off these plants - I have five of these and five Butternut Squash plants and all are setting fruit very well.

I am picking lots of chard and spinach and today I gathered onions, the first leeks, turnips, beetroot and courgettes - but the salads, caulis and calebrese all seem to be bolting. I guess it has just been too hot for them, even though I watered them every night. I am ppicking the brassica leaves so we will still get to eat something off them :-)

And of course I am picking tomatoes every day, and now the aubergine and pepper plants have ripe fruits to pick. Today we also harvested the last of the broad beans. Which means we are eating lots of lovely fresh produce at every meal.

Off to bake a loaf of lammas bread and walk in the wood in the dusk :)

Busy in the garden doing...stuff.

 Reminder! RHS Hampton Court Flower Show ticket give away. To enter you must  leave a comment on the original blog post. Do this before midnight on 30th June please. Good luck!

So today I started out with some mowing



but then the belts jumped so I had to stop. Compostman fixed it for me :-)


 
Compostman then got out the Allen Scythe and cut a path through the flower and hay meadow area.




The-place-where-the-greenhouse-will-be-one-day looks very lush with wild flowers;



I have seed bombed that area



and today I seedbombed this area



Ginger hens menacing Pearl ( the white pullet)



but they sorted it out peacefully in the end and shared a dust bath



My summer, outdoor potting bench :-)



I got a lot of plants potted on



HSL Asparagus lettuce. Note the arty late summer evening side lighting



The Cucamelons are thriving in the porch, as are various peppers and aubergines which are waiting to be planted out in the polytunnel



and yet more composting



I hope you have all had a good day :-)












 

Rocket Gardens Constant Garden - update on the plants and harvesting!

The weather here over the weekend was mostly ok, sunny and rainy on Saturday, Sunday was dull but dry so I spent a lot of the weekend planting up raised beds, re- potting plants into larger pots and generally doing lots of garden related jobs outside. When it rained I ducked inside the polytunnel to pot on plants - have I said how much I love my polytunnel? I think I have, a few times. 

A lot of the veg plants I planted out, or potted on, were the remains of my second and third delivery from my Rocket Gardens Constant Gardens selection of veg plants - I put them as small plug plants into pots where they have grown well but it is now time to put them outside in their final places in the ground. Today into the raised bed I planted out various brassicas, some celery, leeks, onions, chard and spinach, some french beans, beetroot and more salads. Several weeks ago I planted out onions and leeks (in another raised bed) and last week I put in the runner bean, pea, pumpkins and courgette plants.

All these plants are growing strongly and for several weeks now we have been eating salad and spinach or chard from the plants which were already in the garden or in the polytunnel (on my salad bar). I picked the first peas last night :-)/

As I said in my last post, I had to come up with some way to protect the raised bed I am planting them in and I am still very pleased with the results :-) It is easy to unpeg one side to plant more plants or to harvest some.

After all this activity I still had quite a few salad plants left over, so I came up with a way of using some "alternative" containers for planting them in. I know lots of people don't have the space to plant veg in the ground that we do here, so I thought it would be good to show how well plants grow in all sorts of containers, and not just plant pots!

I have a friend who gives me lots of these plastic mushroom trays which get used here for all sorts of things. They are quite shallow so I decided to grow some salad plants in them, which don't need a huge depth of soil.

 I lined the tray with newspaper, so the growing medium stays inside the tray.

I added the growing medium (a mix of Fertile Fibre coir based  and Moorland Gold reclaimed peat certified organic, but any good peat free potting or general purpose mix would do)

Looking down from above to show how I spaced the salads plants out. I was aiming for a "pleasing to the eye" pattern, which also gave all the plants space to grow.

As always I had feathery company around me. Sweetie the Speckledy jumped up to see what I was up to

 Naughty Sweetie! She tried to eat the herb plants I had just potted on! Gerroff!

Finished planter :-)

Lots of lovely cut and come again salad leaves, to add to the salad bar in the polytunnel..

I planted  up an unwanted wicker basket three weeks ago with celery plug plants from my Rocket Gardens delivery #3. I lined the basket with an old compost bag and punched some holes in it for drainage.

 

The celery is doing well and putting on lots of growth, and tastes delicious ( I sneaked a stem yesterday)

The Strawberries which came with the Small Fruit Garden are so wonderful! Juicy and plump and huge :-)

The fruit bushes from my Small Fruit Garden are all growing well, still in big pots as I have not yet decided where to site my new fruit garden. Need to think about that, so as to protect it from the chickens.

I am so impressed with the plants I have recieved from Rocket Gardens, they are all growing well and are tasty varieties which we enjoy eating :-) I am also very impressed with their customer service, as when I told them about a couple of plants which were a bit sad in delivery #3  I was sent replacements by next post and they thanked me for telling them, so they could do something about it :-) Which was nice :-)

I am expecting delivery # 4 of my Constant Garden in the next week or so, so I had better get back out into the garden and plant out the rest of the last one, and think where I want to plant out the next lot ;-)

I am enjoying being a Rocketeer!

Wordless Wednesday - busy in the garden.

How to plant out Parsnips grown in tubes.

 Remember I planted parsnip seed in toilet roll tubes? Well they are ready to be planted out in the garden now.

Do not wait until "true leaves" have grown -if you do the roots may have also grown out of the bottom of the tube.

And you want to get the tubes in the ground before the tap root comes out of the bottom . 

The reason being that if the root has grown long enough to poke out of the bottom there is a risk that the parsnip will develop a forked root, and we don't want that as it makes it harder to peel !

For the same reason I have always found that carrots do not like being transplanted.

 
 So, make a hole in the soil - I use a bulb planter

 

hold the tube firmly so the contents do not fall out and carefully put the tube into the hole, so that the top of the tube sticks up a cm or so above the surface of the soil, This protects the seedling and shows you where it is in the ground

Plant out the rest, spacing them at least 8 inches apart to get large Parsnips. If you want to pull them as small ones you can space them closer together.

Water well, think about covering with fleece or net to stop birds ( hens, in my case) or cats from digging them up.

Weed as needed. Job done :-) And on to the next job on my ( never ending ) list.