The Frantic Gardeners’ Blog

i am very happy, near 100% germination of all sweetcorn - goody! the climbing bean blauhilde also started to germinate. have watered the weekend plantlings outside - all happy in their safety zone, those pesky cabbage whites shouldn’t find a way in! DH has done a bit more weeding of the fruit bed. realised i didn’t take any photos of apple blossom - wah! lots of strawberry blossom though.

awaiting purchase of compost to pot on the remainder of toms and the squashes. not quite brave enough to plant them out yet! [and also would have to weed another area!] maybe i should plant out some and see??

but we beat the bluster and went out to sow broad beans. that is me and the smallest undergardener! We are sowing through cardboard again this year as it was so succesful last year. they have gone into one of the bits that last year were nettles. a good choice i thought for the cardboard! i have sown bunyards exhibition, and we have [must look and add!] as well. we only put in half, as it was so cold and blustery that the wee one got a bit fed up. Anyway, its a start!

we have blossoms on the patio peach

We spent most of the rest of the day outside working and playing in the garden.

Fruit bed

I weeded and also did a bit of pruning and training of the minarettes. The cherry seems to have a goodly supply of blackfly on them, so must go out and get some soap solution. The strawberries are doing very well. lots of little green strawblets! must put the mesh on them before birds start to get interested.

the broad beans all in flower, with no obvious difference between those planted in the soil through crdboard boxes, and those module grown and popped in later. the peas are better now hidden with mesh, but a few flowers are appearing, so should change to chicken wire. chris and the girls spread muck for the french and runner bean trenches, chris put in the canes. We have put the runners and french beans currently in modules into the cold frame for final hardening off.

children’s plot

SB and BB sowed some round carrots. Actually there is a half price seed sale on the thompson and morgan site! [cough]SO I bought some more seeds [cough]. SB was ecstatically happy with the round carrot seeds as she has wanted some for ages, as well as the dwarf french beans that can go in her plot! That’s my girl. She danced about with the packets in excitement! Actually, the carrots they sowed in their plot ages ago have started to come up, as have the runner beans [goodness knows where they will run too! might give each a cane!!]

main veg bed

hmmm, this needs some SERIOUS work! the potatoes are starting to come up, a few asparagus spears made it through the weeds! I have hoed the onions again, and popped some sets into the gaps. We really need to sort out some more of it though.

Under cover

well, the cucurbits and sweetcorn are getting keen to see the outside world but it isn’t ready for them - as well as it being a bit early . peppers and aubergines are in the colder bit of the conservatory to get them ready for going out into the greenhouse [both unheated]. The broccoli and flowers have germinated. The toms in the greenhouse are shooting up nicely. Must sow melons and a few etra runners and frnch beans, plus salad bits and pieces. getting there!

I potted up the final cucurbits, aubergines and peppers. SB then helped pot up some final toms to take to people. BB returned and also sowed some seeds - calendula and sunflowers.

found chris had put bricks holding environmesh directly on top of my florence fennel, and I have no more seeds. humph!

well, it is only radishes, but it’s the first harvest of sown this year veg [we still have some broccoli and leeks from last year]. They are only grown as a line marker for other seeds - in this case carrots, as the girls, particularly BB walk over bare earth and emergent seedlings.

Under cover

today I potted up most of the cucurbits and about half of the toms. most of those left won’t get potted up - they haven’t made the final cut. I’ll take them to colleagues at work, and if anyone thinks they may survive the journey to legoland I’ll be happy to take them. peppers need potting up soon too, but the aubergines that survived Chris’s neglect don’t yet.

Chris worked hard to finish clearing out the greenhouse, and is going to revamp the staging in time to empty our conservatory before we need to semi dismantle it to fi it.

Fruit bed

still a slight misnomer! this year it still has strawbs and minarette fruits, but also the legumes. The broad beans are doing well. No flowers yet, even though the ones in the fields on the way to work are in full flower. I guess the farmers were more organised than me - it being their livelihood! Something’s nibbling the peas though. not too dreadfully, will keep an eye on them. doesn’t look classical slug though. I also popped in some florence fennel today. Back to fruit, I think I might espalier a bit the minarettes - well, the bits that I should have pruned already! We have lost 3 of the original 8 - 1 never grew, 2 died last summer. Anyway, will maybe get some more, but some side branching like we did for an archway in Leeds sounds a good plan. I did some weeding of strawbs as well.

The girls plot.

they helped me weed a little bit, and the onions are sprouting. of all the sunflowers, only 3 have made it to planting - which is very disappointing! We gave everything a good water though. They also did a bit of encouraging with the other jobs.

we planted up SB’s flower garden. SB and BB bailed out of digging fairly quickly- the soil was too hard! Its funny that the archaeological dig hole gets bigger and bigger. [both found dinosaur bones and flints today - cavemen. hmmmmm]. Anyway, i dug loads of holes [while they dug for treasure], and SB then planted up beautifully, and watered in. She also sowed up some more of her veg patch - a row of carrots and some onion sets.Chris came back from the supermarket and made us berry smoothies and muffins for a snack - yummy, and dug a patch of the veg bed over. They all then played wild things, and i planted out the peas. I’ve been impressed with the germination rate in the propagator its near 100% of everything so far. I think that’s ‘cos we had the temp up a bit to start with all the harder to germinate seeds, and have now reduced it. The temp control I think has made all the difference. Even the florence fennel has all germinated.

Yesterday was a fairly relaxed day. We spent lots of it in the garden, looking at the seeds sprouting, the flowers, and organising SB’s flower and veg beds by the playhouse. Hide and seek and lots of swinging! We need more of Merry’s cardboard boxes for the veg patch! I did some weeding though.
We also sowed some more seeds - our cucurbits [butternut squash, another squash, pumpkin and courgette], finished the packet of mangetout and also the fennel [which might not germinate as such an old packet! All the last lot of peas sown have germinated, and the spring onions. The broad beans are outside in open greenhouse to acclimatise before being planted.

Today, we have sowed the sweetcorn - including some bicolour from kirsty and some self supporting peas. i need to pot up the toms - anyone needing toms passing this way…

We had a look at our previous sowings, and a few broad beans have germinated, and we have a very thick row of radish seedlings - hopefully marking some carrot ones to follow! We also harvested loads of early sprouting brocolli - yum.

we reconvened to sow peppers, tomatoes and sunflowers. Watered in very well!!

Have been doing both really. the thoughts of being made redundant seem to have frozen me in many ways at the moment, so thought a bit of gardening therapy might be in order.

So, whilst i drink my medicinal glass of red wine, I’ll blog.

My elder girl and I planted out the remaining brassicas and florence fennel - at 5 she is getting the hang of planting out, though I usually say a brief prayer to Demeter that the plants aren’t too gentle minded. We also planted out 2 extremely tall sunflowers.

We took this opportunity to do a fair bit of weeding and hoeing - another prayer to Demeter that the onions will have some roots left!

finally we came in and gave all the aubergines and most of the peppers their last potting on. No prayers needed here as she is most skillful. they both have flowers, so will hopefully fruit at sometime. chris can do the final tomatoes.
Our cucurbits still all have male fowers only - sigh. Hopefully they will catch up soon. Some peas have germinated in the trench of doom - so will hopefully do better than their dessicated predecessors, and we may have a late pea harvest after all. The broad beans continue to be harvestable.
When we’ve weeded the other onion/garlic bed enough so they are visible, I am hoping that the garlic will nearly be ready to harvest.

This weekend we will try and do some more weeding etc. If time, I will look at packets to see if anything apart from salads worth sowing at this time - ? leeks??