More Carrot Sowings

The fox dug up all the carrots last week. I'm not going to let the fox beat me, so I've sown some more.

12 troughs of carrots

From left to right:
2 troughs Autumn King
2 troughs Early Nantes
2 troughs Nantes Frubund
2 troughs Autumn King
2 troughs Early Nantes
2 troughs Nantes Frubund


We're hoping these will give us a carrots from September to November. It's almost a last chance thing, although Nantes Frubund can still be sown into autumn. We still have some Purple Haze and Rainbow seeds, but we won't sow these until next year.

Carrots

Over the last couple of months, we've pulled up and scoffed some of our carrots that we sowed at the beginning of October last year. They were still quite small at 6 months, but quite good at 7 months. They were Early Nantes and I didn't think they'd take that long to be a reasonable size.

Last week, the local fox raided our carrot tubs, probably looking for slugs. Carrots everywhere. Most of them were tiny, having only been sown on March and April. Many were too small to even be classed as baby carrots. Very disappointing as it will be several more months before we get any more carrots.

Anyway, there was no chance of replanting them all, so we decided we'd use them for carrot wine. We got a total of 1.5lbs (after topping) from 9 troughs, a mix of Early Nantes, Autumn King, Chantenay and Purple Haze. This wasn't enough for a gallon of wine so we had to buy more cheap carrots to have enough for a couple of gallons.

We still have a couple of troughs of carrots down in the veggie patch. One is Early Nantes, sown in mid-October last year, the other is Rainbow. Both troughs are less than half full - many seeds just didn't sprout in the poor weather we've had.

Back to more carrot sowings later.

Potting On & Sowings

The rain has barely stopped this month, but we took advantage of a couple of hours sunshine on Sunday to get down the veggie patch and sort out the greenhouse. The greenhouse is now tidy and organised again.

Mice & Sweetcorn / Peas / Beans
The mice have scoffed more sweetcorn and some of the beans - we have sown 15 more beans into cells. Peas have been very disappointing. We originally sowed 96, but the mice scoffed them. We sowed more, still only a total of 12 have come up so far. We now have new peas (Early Onward and another) and have sown another 24 of each. All of these are now covered to keep the mice out.

I remember reading about an old trick to stop the mice eating seeds - soak the seeds in parafin before sowing. This is the first time I've had problems with mice eating seeds so never tried it before. I don't have any parafin so can't try it yet, but if I ever get round to getting a greenhouse heater, I'll have the parafin so will try the soaking trick.

Tomatoes

The greenhouse is looking very full

The missus managed to sow about 126 tomato plants (lots of varieties). She got a bit carried away! We potted on and now have 60 tomato plants in 3.5in pots. I pulled the rest of them up and put them in the compost. The missus was very sad :( She would love to have kept them, but there are a couple of issues like finding space for them all and I don't think she realises just how much watering and pinching out she'll be doing this summer!

Chillies & Peppers
Not looking great at the moment. We have a small handful of seedlings from several trays of sowings. It might just take more time for more to come through.

Lettuce, Spinach & Salads
The new Iceberg lettuce is doing well in the greenhouse. We have a handful of other salad seedlings like pak choi and spinach - we simply haven't sown enough, so we now have another tray sown. We will need to do some more pretty soon. The pak choi seems to take a lot longer to grow than spinach and lettuce, so best sowing them separately.

The lettuce and spinach we planted out into the patio tubs isn't looking very healthy. It's probably been too cold and wet. But never mind, we've sown a lot more so can replant the tubs later if we need to.

Radish
French Breakfast radish was sown in seed trays of compost and both trays are doing well, but drying out very quickly now. They are starting to swell. Aim is to do one tray every 3 or 4 weeks so we have a constant supply of radish. The long rooted Hilds Roter radish is looking very healthy in the trough in the greenhouse. We have more to sow next month.

Carrots, Parsnip & Beetroot

Our first carrot this year!

We have a few Boltardy beetroot seedlings showing in the outdoor trough. The parsnip trough was looking good with 2 rows of healthy looking seedlings. However, it was waterlogged with the recent rain, so is now back in the greenhouse. All troughs of carrots are looking good.

I pulled up a single carrot from the first October sowing - it's looking good, but we'll probably leave them longer.

Onions & Garlic
The garlic and elephant garlic are looking good - the elephant garlic is looking very strong and healthy. I poked around in one of the garlic troughs yesterday, not much in the way of swelling of the bulbs yet. I'll be very surprised if it's ready in 2 months time, but no problem if it takes longer.

The winter onions are not doing too well. Even more have "disappeared" and some of those remaining are looking a bit squishy, like they're starting to rot in the wet. The summer onions are looking fine and healthy. I still have 160 in 2" pots. 120 of these are in a cold frame - there simply isn't room in the greenhouse and I want to protect them from the heavy rain which could simply wash the compost out of the pots.

Cabbage, Cauliflower, Broccoli & Kale

Trays of everything in the greenhouse

Lots of seedlings have come up, most are looking good, but some are a bit stringy. Some of the red cabbage got eaten by slugs or snails, but the tray is now covered and the remainder seem to be doing well. Brassicas tend to take up a lot of space, so most will end up in pots after the tomatoes and potatoes have finished.

Potatoes
Everything seems ok so far. I took a quick look at the bags under the weed sheeting - the sheeting seems to be helping - the compost is moist, not soaked, and despite the cold weather, the compost is quite warm. The leaves are coming up nicely - not enough to earth up just yet. 

6in pot of leeks outside

Leeks
Several pots of leeks are doing well, some in the greenhouse, some outside. It looks like we'll have a lot of leeks over the winter!

We found more seeds at the weekend for a larger variety of leeks, so have sown some of them too.

More Sowings

I love this time of year: the sun starts shining, seeds start sprouting, I try to keep up with digging, the sowings and potting on and planting out ....

Lots of seeds are sprouting in the greenhouse - all the cauliflowers have started, some spinach, a couple of cucumbers etc.

This weekend we've sown:
8 Tomato Golden Sunrise
8 Tomato White Cherry
8 Tomato Roma

8 Tomato Harbinger
8 Tomato Pomodoro
8 Tomato Tigrella

19 Sweetcorn Sweet Bounty

8 Pak Choi Rubi
8 Lettuce Mixed Salad Leaves
4 Aubergine Black Beauty

4 Pepper Hot Caribbean Blend
4 Pepper Heatwave
4 Pepper Inferno
4 Chilli Cayenne
4 Chilli Hot Stuff
4 Chilli Twightlight

Large pot Leek Bandit
2 large pots Leek Musselburgh

1 half size seed tray Lambs Lettuce

Small trough Beetroot Boltardy

Large trough Carrot Chantenay Red
Small trough Carrot Purple Haze
Small trough Carrot Charlemagne
2 small troughs Carrot Autumn King 2

24 Red Cabbage Kalibos

8 Cauliflower Violetta
16 Cauliflower All Year Round

24 Kale Dwarf Green Curled

4 Sweet Pepper Jumbo
20 Sweet Pepper WorldBeater

1 Ginger root into an 8inch pot

Phew!

February Sowings

I've always heard about how women love to shop and how they love a bargain. Well true to form, my partner has been out bargain hunting! I should really have known what was going to happen when she moved in with 400 pairs of shoes and 80 handbags. Yes, really, she does have that many pairs of shoes and handbags!

She pops in all sorts of shops when she's at work and found some seed potatoes, onion sets and shallots in the pound shop. She bought some. They were a bargain at only �1. Apparently!  I'm not complaining though, I think it's great!! There weren't many seed potatoes in each bag - only 8 in the first and 10 in the second - but about 50 onions in each bag. That means the onions are half the price they are in the normal garden centres.

Anyway, today was the day we finally got round to sowing loads of stuff - not just the cheapy stuff she found in the pound shop, but other seeds we had and other seed potatoes and onion sets we'd bought. We've had a couple of cold weeks, snow that lasted a week or so, and now it's quite mild again and the weather forecast is looking good for the next few days.

Potatoes - Swift - 1st Early
These were the pound shop seed potatoes. There were only 8 in the pack and all were sprouting, so we put them in buckets for the patio. 4 inches of compost in the bottom of the bucket, spud on top (sprouts pointing upwards), then cover with more compost. Keep topping up as the leaves grow and come through until the buckets are full.

We have loads more seed potatoes - 2nd Earlies from the pound shop, and King Edward and ?? from the garden centre. We'll probably plant the 2nd Earlies in sacks of compost, and the King Edwards will go in the potato bed in the veggie patch.

Elephant Garlic
Hands up if you've been given an elephant garlic bulb as a Christmas present! We did!! We used a couple of cloves in cooking and decided to plant the rest. So 6 cloves into 6 inch pots of compost.

Garlic needs frost / cold weather to encourage it to split into cloves, so this might be the wrong time to plant it. It might need to stay in pots until summer next year. We'll have to wait and see.

Carrots
Another 3 troughs. 1 each of Nantes Frubund, Early Nantes and Rainbow. The rainbow carrots said to sow from March, but it's quite mild weather and we'll be keeping the troughs in the greenhouse for a few weeks, so decided to take a chance on sowing them now.

Cauliflower
Back in the autumn we found Romanesco cauliflower in Surrey Street Market in Croydon. And then we found the seeds in the garden centre, so we just had to have some! It kind of looks like something from another planet - it's green and spikey, but it's definitely cauliflower and tastes like normal cauliflower. And while we were in the garden centre, we found Purple Grafitti Cauliflower seeds - this looks the same as normal cauliflower, but it's purple.

We sowed 4 Romanesco, 4 Purple Grafitti, 16 All Year Round. We love cauliflower, so we'll be sowing more in a couple of months.

Broccoli
We love broccoli too. There are enough varieties (broccoli and calabrese) to ensure we can pick broccoli all year round, and we have several varieties of seeds here. We already have 15 Summer Purple growing in the greenhouse, so today we sowed:
16 Green Magic
8 Summer Purple
We'll be sowing more in a couple of months.

Tomatoes
We want literally as many tomatoes as we can grow. If we don't eat them in salads and sandwiches, we can cook them or freeze them for later. We are going to need LOADS of big pots! So the list of todays sowings is:

24 Moneymaker
4 Belle (Beef tomato)
1 Shirley (as it was the only one left in the packet)
19 Pomodoro
4 Tumbling Tom (Cherry) for growing from hanging baskets
4 Sungold (Cherry)
16 Gardeners Delight (Cherry)

Chillies & Peppers
We love chillies and peppers too, so need to grow loads of these. The sweet pepper seeds we sowed last month did nothing, and I don't normally have much luck with chillies, so hoping for better results with these. Today we sowed:
Chilli (Cayenne)
Chilli (Hot Stuff)
Chilli (Twilight)
Pepper (Caribbean Blend)
Sweet Pepper (Worldbeater)

Cucumber
Had trouble finding greenhouse cucumbers this year. Only found one variety called Bangkok. The packet says 5 seeds per pack - we got lucky, we got 6! OK, so we're not going to need loads and loads of seeds, but it still seems a bit tight of the seed companies to only put 5 (or 6) seeds in a pack. Anyway, we sowed 4 today, wait and see what happens ....

Celery
Never had much luck with celery before, but love it, so trying again this year. 4 Lathoms Galaxy sown. Will do more later. Must find out the best ways to grow it.

Spinach
Baby spinach leaves are always good in salads, and bigger leaves are good in a curry etc. I've always managed to grow spinach just fine, so sowed:
8 Hector
8 Picasso
I'll sow some spinach beet this year too and hopefully find a permanent home for it.

Onions
The other half found Stetton and Stuttgarter onions in the pound shop - approx 50 per bag. We picked up 100 Red Baron and 100 Stuttgarter Giant from the garden centre too.
Packs often have a few more than they say, but some are dried up or rotten, so it's always just approximate. We planted:
100 Red Baron
50 Stuttgarter (from pound shop)
10 Stuttgarter (from garden centre)
all in 2in pots to give them a head start against the weeds in the onion bed. We'll start the other onions in a couple of weeks time.

And Then ....
.... it was time for a well earned cuppa. We've got loads more sowing and planting to do, and loads of other garden jobs to do. It's going to be a very busy year!

The New Year Update

A little bit overdue ..... been very busy with sorting the house out and decorating, not had much time for any updates on here .... will try and do regular updates all year now!

Onions
Last October we started a whole load of winter onions in 2in pots. They started off well, and about 110 were planted out in the veggie patch around the end of November. The rest stayed in the greenhouse in the 2in pots.
I'm a bit disappointed because a lot of those that were planted out have just "disappeared". It looks like they have been pulled out by birds or trampled or kicked around by the foxes. On the plus side, I'll still have plenty of the early summer and I'm ready with the summer onion sets (see the next post).

Herbs
The whole lot failed to sprout. Guessing the greenhouse over winter (even a mild winter) is not a good way to start them.

Carrots
The carrots sown at the beginning of October seem to be doing well in the greenhouse. They are in large troughs. The second sowings of carrots sown mid-October were quite poor - one trough had just the one seedling, so given up with that - emptied it to start again.

Garlic & Elephant Garlic
The normal garlic (from supermarket bulbs), planted early October, is looking really good - big strong thick stems growing straight up. The elephant garlic planted mid-November has sprouted, only a couple of inches tall, but looks good and healthy.

Cabbage & Cauliflower
All sprouted but died. They were sown early October - guessing that's a bit late to sow them - they probably didn't have enough time to grow big enough and strong enough to survive the winter in the greenhouse.

Winter Gem Lettuce
Doing well - clumps of leaves about 4-6 inches tall. We've had some leaves for salad. I'm going to set up a cloche next weekend and hopefully plant a few under that soon after, and plant others outside to see what happens.

Pickles, Chutneys and Jams
We made some jams late last year - they've gone down a treat! We made some pickles and chutneys too - I'll get round to posting the recipes on here soon. My favourite was tomato and chilli chutney - tastes amazing with cheese and crackers! We'll be making loads more this year!

Life in General
Life is good! After 11 years as a single parent, I now have a partner living with me and everything just seems so easy. I'm a lot more motivated with work, the house, garden etc - it's all good! I have cleared and decorated the box room, so I now have a home office. I have cleared half the loft and lagged it. We have been out in the garden clearing brambles. We must have taken 10 car loads of crap to the dump! The house is looking much nicer now - although it was "mostly clean, mostly tidy", it was lacking that woman's touch that makes it look better - the pictures on the walls, the ornaments, the things that make a house look homely.

And best of all, she loves growing fruit and veg and cooking it too! It's going to be a really good year!!

More Carrot Sowings

Another 2 tubs of Early Nantes carrots sown today.

Overwintering Update

2 weeks ago we started sowings for overwintering. The results so far are:
Garlic - shoots are now 2 inches tall
Carrots (Early Nantes) - seedlings are now 1 inch tall

The seeds we sowed in the cells have sprouted, but we used home made compost which turned out to have some sort of weed seeds in it. Luckily these weeds are easily identified with the Cauliflower and cabbage, but we're not sure if the Strawberries have sprouted yet.
Lettuce (Winter Gem) - some have sprouted, maybe to half an inch or so
Cauliflower (All Year Round) - seedlings are coming on well, most are between 1 and 2 inches tall
Cabbage (Durham Early) - about 8 out of the 12 have sprouted to about 1 inch tall
Cabbage (Winter Jewel) - all 12 have sprouted well, looking healthy
Strawberry (Sarian) - some green growth, not sure if weeds or strawberries - will have to wait longer ....

Back in Business

Sat 24th September we raided Wyevale for the 50p seed clearout. Got loads!

Sowed various seeds that should grow over the winter in the greenhouse:
2 tubs Early Nantes carrots
24 lettuce Winter Gem
24 strawberry Sarian
24 cauliflower All Year Round
12 cabbage Durham Early
12 cabbage Winter Jewel
1 tub of garlic

The lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower and strawberries were all sprouting within a few days. These will be transplanted into pots in the greenhouse when they're big enough.
The carrot tubs will probably stay in the greenhouse all winter. Hopefully they'll be ready in spring.
The first garlic clove was showing a small green shoot within a week. The garlic tub will stay outside through the winter so that the frost gets to it and makes the bulbs split.

I've dug up half the potato bed - got one bucket of new potatoes. The other half will be dug up when the bucket is empty!
We've picked loads of apples. Some have been peeled and sliced and frozen - these will make good crumbles throughout the winter. I still have loads of blackberries frozen too, so we'll have variety with crumbles etc. We've also had apple sauce with our roast this weekend.