Carrots

I've sown two window boxes of carrots. These are currently outside on the patio but will be moved down to the veggie patch soon.

Early Nantes is an early variety, suitable for sowing in February. There seem to be several varieties of Early Nantes, each with a number - I think these are either 2 or 5, but can't remember. I must look up what the difference is between those numbers.

I have other varieties such as Purple Haze, which is purple, and Autumn King, which is a later variety. I still have these in window boxes on the veggie patch.

I've sown the carrots in window boxes full of fresh compost. The soil in my veggie patch is quite stoney, so not very suitable for carrots. Carrots I sowed in the veggie patch last year were very twisted and not very good. Carrots I sowed on the allotment last year didn't grow very well and were overtaken by weeds. The window boxes seem like the best idea!

I sowed 8 window boxes of carrots last year too. I've only emptied two window boxes so far, and the carrots were a good size and fairly straight. The carrots seem to have stored well over the winter by being left in the compost.

Using window boxes has other advantages - they fill space between other veggies on the patch and the boxes hold down the weed sheeting. It just all makes sense to me!

Books say not to use fresh compost for carrots as it makes them fork. I haven't seen that problem so far. The compost I'm using is just cheap multi-purpose compost, so nothing special.

I'll empty the other window boxes whenever I need carrots - the sooner they're empty, the sooner I can sow some more, so it looks like i could be eating a lot of carrots over the next couple of months!

Last year:

This year, showing 2 freshly sown tubs and a few of last year's tubs with the dead greenery - I've pulled a few carrots out to show they're fine:

Leeks

Leeks should be easy to grow. They can be planted out in the potato bed as soon as the potatoes are dug up, so the ground gets used twice. They can be picked through the winter and can be used in soups etc.

Last year I sowed them in seed trays but they didn't grow very well. I saw a TV programme where they grew leeks and transplanted them - the leeks were about pencil thickness and the roots were quite long and tangled. Maybe they need longer / deeper roots to grow to pencil thickness and maybe starting them in seed tray cells didn't let them grow long enough roots??

This year I've sowed loads of seeds into a 5 inch pot - hopefully the deeper pot will help them grow better. I'll need to sow a lot more later but need to work out how many I'll have room for.

Tomatoes and Peppers

Last year was dismal for both tomatoes and peppers.

The pepper plants grew and flowered, but I was lucky to get a few peppers from several plants. I gave pepper plants to friends and they had 2-4 peppers from each plant. I had no chillis from about 8 chilli plants.

Some were grown in the greenhouse, some outside. The greenhouse ones grew faster and matured earlier, but only gave me one pepper. This year I have a few more varieties and have bought sweet pepper seeds to compare with the saved seeds I've been using from supermarket peppers.

I did get some tomatoes though. Some varieties did better than others, but I was too ill to make a proper note of which ones did best and tasted best. This year I'm repeating experiments.

The one tomato that I know did very badly 3 years running is Roma VF. It's a plum tomato, but the fruits it gave me were very small, and not many of them. This year I've replaced that with another plum variety just called Italian.

I do know Moneymaker and Gardners Delight grew well though. I've grown them over the last couple of years and not had any problem.

I will do better with pinching out tomatoes this year. I did ok with it last year, but when I got ill, the plants did get a bit neglected.

Another problem I found was that of shallow roots. The tomatoes and peppers were in large pots last year and I used a drip feeder in the greenhouse. I'm guessing the drip feeders wet the top of the soil so the roots just didn't grow down into the pot. I'll experiment with drip feeding some tomatoes and normal watering of others.

Chitting the spuds

I now have 4 trays of seed potatoes chitting in the spare room.

Last year I chose numerous varieties, just a few of each. They all grew fine, but I couldn't remember what I'd planted where. First earlies were left in the ground longer than necessary, some lates and earlies are still in the ground right now.

This year I've decided to stick to 4 varieties and be more organised with planting and digging up. They were bought ready bagged, each bag having about 40 seed potatoes in it.

The varieties I've chosen are:
Charlotte - a salad potato - fairly waxy, suitable for salads, boiling and roasting
Duke of York - first early - very waxy, suitable for roasting
Maris Peer - second early - fairly waxy, suitable for salads / boiling
King Edward - a maincrop - fairly floury, suitable for roasting and mashing

The info about waxy / floury etc was from the Potato Council website at http://www.lovepotatoes.co.uk

By being more organised with the planting, I'll be able to dig up a whole bed of spuds and plant leeks straight away (providing the leeks grow this year!)

I haven't yet worked out how much room I have for spuds and whether I'll need to buy any more. I'll check that up next week.

February Sowings

I sowed loads of seeds on 15th Feb. The spare room is filling up!

I'm going to try better at successional sowing this year, so have sown some of each now. I will sow more of each every few weeks in the hope that later sowing mature later, so that I can pick and use throughout the year instead of having huge gluts at various times and needing to freeze everything.

I've sown 4 trays of Twinkle Peas - these are a very early variety. I have other varieties that I can sow later in the year to extend the growing and picking season. There should be enough for an 8 foot row. Last year I tried sowing peas directly in the ground, but a row of about 96 peas produced about 5 pea plants and the weeds just took over. Previous year's sowings were started in cells, and that worked fine, so back to the cells again this year. So far, these peas are about 2-3 inches tall - taller than I was expecting, but that's probably because they've been started indoors.

I have a tray of 24 Green Magic broccoli. Again, this is an early variety and I have other varieties for sowing and harvesting later in the year. They're all looking healthy so far.

The list sown indoors in cells in January:
24 lettuce Winter Gem (all failing)
4 cauliflower Thompson (failing)
7 cauliflower All Year Round (failing)
13 broad bean Aquadulce Claudia (looking ok)

The full list sown indoors in cells in February:
96 pea Twinkle
12 celery Lathom Galaxy
8 cauliflower All Year Round
4 Aubergine
24 broccoli Green Magic
8 tomato Moneymaker
4 tomato Tamina
4 tomato Alicante
4 tomato Black Cherry
4 tomato Italian (plum)
4 spinach Picasso
4 spinach Hector
16 sprouts Brilliant
10 sweet pepper WorldBeater
10 sweet pepper from saved seeds (originally from supermarket sweet pepper)
10 pepper Hot Caribbean Blend
5 chilli Twighlight
5 chilli Cayenne

I'll explain choice of varieties in another post.

January Sowings

I'm making an early start this year. Most seeds need sowing around March/April, which is around the same time as the veggie patch and allotment need digging over. As those months will be very busy, I've sown some of the early seeds already.

I started with Winter Gem lettuce, which can be sown in a cold greenhouse in January, plus Thompson and All Year Round cauliflower and Aquadulce Claudia broad beans. I sowed them in cells indoors - they are in the spare room.

The seem to have got very stringy (lack of light) despite being on a desk in front of the bay window. It's been grim outside, often cloudy and grey. It looks like I didn't water them enough as some of them have fallen over. However, they don't appear to be dead, so will keep them going a bit longer.

I also sowed a tray each of Gardeners Delight cherry tomatoes, Moneymaker tomatoes, and sweet peppers. These will be potted on for sale at the Scout Group Easter Fair at the end of March - all money will be for the Scout Group. Obviously I'd like these to look big, strong and healthy, and they're doing ok so far. I've been a bit more careful with the watering.

Indoor sowing isn't brilliant - the cells dry out very quickly and they need to be watered carefully so as not to make a mess.

Getting Ready

It's been a very busy few weeks. We've had a lot of snow and even when it's not been snowing, it's been pretty cold and wet outside.

We did have a fairly mild day a couple of weeks back, so went down the greenhouse and tidied it up. It's been too cold and wet to do anything to the veggie patch or the allotment, but it'll get done.

I did empty out a couple of window boxes of carrots - we had them with dinners, very nice!

I took a trip to the garden centre with a friend and bought my seed potatoes and onions, plus red cabbage and other bits like labels. Also bought horseradish so I'll give that a go.

I've sorted out all my seed trays and cell inserts ready for sowing. It's all looking good so far ......