It's that time of year again, the clocks have gone forward, the temperature's rising, new shoots are appearing all over the place - and I'm off on my hols for two weeks.
Today was my last chance for a session before going away and, amazingly, I found this lump of ice on one of the polytunnels.
It was a bitter night, but I'm fairly sure that from today the nights and days will be getting a fair bit warmer.
The garden is all set for the growing season, and here's a rundown of what's in each bed:
Bed One:Brassicas, including cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. They were being eaten by the pigeons, so we had to put nets up to keep them away.
The plastic bags are supposed to act as bird scarers.
Once these brassicas are harvested we'll turn this bed over to salad crops.
Bed Two:Potatoes. Grown from chitted potatoes (old potatoes which are left in cool, light place to encourage growth of the little shoots).
I planted two rows of Pink Fir Apples which are a knobbly but very delicious potato. They are great in salads and can also be eaten hot. The Veg Growing Club members will learn about earthing up in order to increase the crop, once the shoots start appearing.
Bed Three:This bed contains a fair amount of perpetual spinach which survived the winter. At each end is a pair of brassicas which were transplanted from bed five, which we emptied to make space for other plants to grow.
Bed Four:This bed will be exclusively for strawberries, although at the moment there are still some swiss chard plants going strong.
Bed Five:Two rows of garlic, one and a half rows of shallots, and half a row of onions. The garlic is grown from individual cloves, each of which will turn in to a bulb of garlic. The shallots are grown from 'sets' which look like baby onions. They split and you normally get eight or nine shallots from each set. I ran out of shallot sets so filled up the row with some onion sets from last year (Hopefully they weren't too old!).
The second picture shows an onion set in the ground ready to be covered over with soil.
In early May the Veg Club members will sow two rows of carrot seed. I've orded a mixture of heritage varieties including purple, white and red carrots, which is what they used to be like in them olden days.
Bed Six:Brassicas, including cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. These are covered with nets to keep the pigeons off. The cloche is merely being used for the same purpose as I ran out of netting, but it will be interesting to see the effect on the grown of those plants under cover.
Bed Seven:In the main part of bed sic there are two tunnels, one containing little gem lettuce, the other two rows of recently planted wild rocket.
Along the west side of the bed, in both the large and small sections, I've built a cane structure ready for climbing french beans. We can then grow some dwarf beans in front of the canes. These shouldn't take too much of the sun from the climbers.
We'll also be able to keep the wild rocket growing, but the little gem will have to make way for the beans.
Other random photos [
click to enlarge]:
Purple sprouting broccoli, cabbage, wild rocket tunnel, little gem.
SEE YOU SOON. HOPE TO HAVE THE FIRST VEG GARDENING CLUB WORKSHOPS IN MAY!
Two weeks away and the change in the garden has been fairly amazing. The chard and spinach has gone crazy, the onions, garlic and shallots [foreground above] have come through as have the potatoes (pink fir apples), the brassicas have gone crazy and the fox has dug up the climbing beans.
