Potatoes

We've done fairly well with the spuds this year. We haven't had to buy any for a couple of months now.The yield per sack is fairly low though - I'm sure we could get twice as many per sack in a good year.

The Charlottes are nice. We had Swift were good, We had another variety that I forgot the name of, which is a real shame, because they were very very nice.

Charlottes left, Desiree right

I've emptied the first sack of Desiree potatoes. They're a nice red colour, not as big as I'd hoped for, but easily enough for a dinner. They'll make a nice change from the Charlottes we're still working our way through.

We have another 9 sacks of Charlottes to empty. That should be enough for about 25 dinners. Might be better next year if we grow more maincrops in sacks rather than salad potatoes - the bigger the crop, the better!

The greenery in all the sacks has died off. The greenery on the King Edwards and Desiree that were planted in the ground has started to die back. I'll be leaving these potatoes in the ground for a few more weeks yet. When I dig them up, I'll plant leeks out straight away - the leeks are slowly thickening up.

I'm going to get some seed potatoes today so that we can have new potatoes for Christmas.

Bonus Potatoes

Bonus spuds - a mix of Charlotte and King Edward

Whenever you plant potatoes, there's a chance that you won't quite dig them all up. The brassicas bed this year was the potato bed 2 years ago. While digging it over, I dug up enough spuds for a dinner. Bonus!

From checking back through older posts in this blog, these spuds are a mix of Charlotte (salad potatoes) and King Edwards (maincrop) - they were found at opposite ends of the bed and I kept records of what was planted where. I suppose I should really have thought to keep the two varieties separate when I dug them out, but it won't make any difference now, they'll all get eaten this week!

Last year's potato bed is this year's salad / legume bed. I've only dug up half the potatoes from this bed so far.

Potato bed - King Edwards & Desiree

I've also uncovered the potato bed and sacks of spuds. The spuds are looking good. The weather forecast yesterday didn't show any risks of frost, so I removed the sheeting that was covering them. Today the weather forecast has changed and is showing temperatures could be down to 4C tonight, so I'll pop down and recover the spuds tonight.


The pots of Swift were planted 12 weeks ago. According to various websites, they should be ready in anything from 60 days to 100 days. That's only likely to happen in ideal growing conditions.

Potatoes in sacks. Green sacks planted Feb, white Apr

Our Swifts were started in the greenhouse but had to move outside to make room for more in the greenhouse. It's been pretty cold over the last few weeks, so I'll give them a bit longer. In any case, we're not in any hurry for them - we have plenty of others to use, plus half a bed of spuds to dig up.

Must remember that the white sacks are salad potatoes so won't take very long. Guess we'll be eating a lot of salads this summer anyway!

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 Potatoes

Been very busy, loads more potatoes planted.

The potato bed has been dug over and planted with potatoes and covered the bed with weed sheeting. This can stay in place for a few weeks until the frosts have passed. More potatoes are in sacks. The planting list is now:

8 Swift (1st Earlies) in black flower pots 25/02/12
10 unknown (2nd Earlies) in large dog food sacks 25/02/12
30 Charlottes (salad) in white compost sacks, 2 per sack 01/04/12
29 King Edward (Maincrop) in the potato bed 01/04/12
11 Desiree (Maincrop) in the potato bed 06/04/12
5 Desiree (Maincrop) in red compost sacks 06/04/12

Potatoes all lined up so they can be easily covered

We had a severe frost a couple of days ago. To protect the spuds, I folded over the tops of all the potato sacks and covered the potato pots with old weed sheeting. Unfortunately the sheeting blew off some of the stems so they got frost damaged - this may have killed some of the potatoes.

I have now moved all the sacks and pots together into a double line and covered the whole lot with weed sheeting which is being held down with bricks at the sides and garden tools on top. They can be covered or uncovered very easily. I just need to watch out for frost and remember to cover them!

Potatoes covered to protect them from frost

When the weather warms up, the sacks and pots will be moved to the top of the garden - we don't get much sun at the top of the garden at this time of year, but the whole lot is nice and sunny in the summer.

The second photo shows all the potatoes covered up. In the background at the top is the potato bed, still sheeted over. This will be uncovered when the risk of frost has passed.

Potatoes

We've been getting more and more seeds and plants, running out of space to keep them, so decided to plant the 2nd earlies that we got from the pound shop.

From memory, traditionally, potatoes are planted on Good Friday. That's a few weeks away still, but we just need to get things done, and we've got loads more to do in the house and garden. We'll be decorating over Easter weekend.

So the 2nd earlies (can't remember the variety) have now been planted and will go in the greenhouse for the next few weeks.

The 1st earlies (Swift) are in black pots (ex-supermarket flower buckets)
The 2nd  earlies (unknown) are in heavy duty sacks (ex dry dog food sacks)

This is deliberate so that I can remember which ones are which more easily. A few years ago I put several different varieties in black pots and forgot which were which.

Garden centres sell sacks that they call "potato planters" or something, and I've seen other people use old compost sacks for potatoes, so no reason not to use the old dog food sacks. I've popped a few holes in the bottom of each sack for drainage and rolled the sides down. I'll unroll the sides a bit as I "earth up" by adding more compost.

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!

Rain at last!

We've just had a week of badly needed rain. As I really only have potatoes, onions and sweetcorn on the allotment, and they only need watering, I haven't been up there for a week. However, I will go up there this week and pick all the redcurrants and gooseberries.

Fruit at home is doing well. I've picked about a pound of raspberries or loganberries per day from the garden - I have several pounds of each in the freezer, ready for making jam. The gooseberry jam at home has gone. I'll be making some more this week, along with either raspberry jam or loganberry jam.

The rhubarb crowns I split seem to be doing well. 3 of the crowns in the ground have new shoots, along with the one in the bucket. The other 3 are showing no signs of life at the moment. The big old crown in the old rhubarb bed is still doing well - it looks like that needs splitting into 3 crowns this winter.

I've picked some of the small Iceberg lettuces at home. Not sure if they were Mini Green or Little Gem, but they were good.

The seeds I sowed just over a week ago are doing fine - loads of seedlings showing, especially PSB. Hopefully will have time to build a frame and set up some netting for them this time. I'd rather feed me than the pigeons!